Spring is here, finally

There are still stones everywhere, remnants of winter grit: small, annoying, gritty stones all over our street, in the flower beds beside the street, in the car park, in the school playground, on the way to work, everywhere that counts in my daily range of operation. And I clearly walk in a funny way because they end up in my shoes too almost daily. You know that feeling when you’re walking along looking normal, or at least assuming you are, and suddenly bend over like you’re having a heart attack. On a good day, a concerned passer-by might ask if I’m OK and I say, it’s OK, it’s just razor sharp stones in my shoe that I’m clearly not able to cope well with. I empty out the feckers and change to the tip-toe totter for the rest of my journey to avoid recurrence; who cares about looking normal.

Those small stones are the last vestige of winter here, apart from the die-hard piles of snow like in our depressed-looking garden. We’re calling it Mount Everest for mites. The sun isn’t high enough in the sky just yet to melt all of the snow, but its days are definitely numbered.

I’ve never experienced such a long winter as the one just gone and it’s been mentioned in the press here as the longest on record. We had deep, deep snow for four months and less snow, but snow nonetheless, with minus temperatures for two months before that. I loved this winter, especially the reliable snow that came and stayed. I never got tired of it until, that is, it started to melt. It did come to the point soon into the melting phase that I just wanted to have a Juliet moment and shout, “Hie hence, be gone, away!”.  Slush is just plain miserable, no matter what way you look at it.

Even though we’re over half-way through Spring, it’s only just beginning to feel like spring has arrived. Up to now, it’s been more like a bad hangover stage after a long winter party. The ground is still gritty and dusty. Fences and gardens look battered and there’s not a flower in sight. Green patches of would-be grass are still flattened and parched brown. We’ve even got our own snow Mount Everest still hanging on in there in the morning.

Normally, spring appears in the trees first when you look up and see the foliage but even that seems to be in fright this year.

And it’s amazing when the snow melts, how the litter suddenly appears and how dirty the world looks. It’s the detritus of winter that was lying in snow for so long and is now laid bare on the footpaths, in the school grounds, everywhere. Like after any half-decent party, there’s a major clean-up required to set the world to rights again and make the place look presentable.

But, this being Norway, it’s all in hand. The Gritter-Man will be out roaming the roads one of these days, but this time he’s sweeping instead of spreading, sucking up all of his little stones to stash them away for next winter.  Step one in Operation Spring. Next comes dugnad, which is the annual community effort to sweep, tidy, paint, prune and generally refresh streets and neighbourhoods.  It’s coming our way here on Saturday and the kids are already looking forward to it, although that might be something to do with the chance of doing some damage with paint and a paint brush and getting a bolle, or bun, for their efforts.

Earlier today in central Oslo, there was an attempt to make a new Guinness World Record, with 5,981 kids gathering together with brooms to sweep the street for one minute continuously¹. Our boy’s class was part of the effort and he was hopping with excitement this morning; what a school day this was going to be. We haven’t heard yet if a new record has been set but if nothing else, it confirms that Norway is in communal clean up mode now that spring has finally settled in. Setting a new world clean up record is quite a statement.

And after the general clean up comes the next stage of Spring. We’ll dust off the bikes and take off with gusto on the clean streets. The kids have been monitoring the basketball hoops in the playground for weeks, waiting for the snow underneath to melt so that the six week old birthday basketball can finally get some use.

And I’m looking forward to leveraging the skill learned in breaking a world record. Room cleaning, sweeping, digging a garden will surely be no problem to him now. That’s my encouraging line anyway and I’m sticking to it.

¹Here’s a link to some cool photos from a local newspaper.  Just click through if you want to take a look.

http://akersposten.no/nyheter/et-nytt-bevis-pa-at-oslo-er-europas-miljohovedstad/19.2236