Everything is Relative

It was like someone turned on a switch on the 21st of June and TADA we got summer. The last four days have been warm and sunny and I am WEARING A TANK TOP!!!!!
Of course, every silver lining has a cloud and Monday, on the hottest day I have yet to experience in NL, I was sent with crew of 2 young and tender lads to weed a 2 acre field of trees not yet big enough to give shade. Some of the weeds were bigger than the trees. This is not a complaint, I'm just setting up a story.
Normally, at the nursery, the most dreaded chore is bagging up a soil mix for sale in the retail garden centre. We sell a lot of the house brand soil mix, because good soil is scarce here, and I have learned from experience that when you buy a bag of 'soil' here that is usually what you get. A bag of mineral soil, with precious little organic matter and no nutrients whatsoever. While our soil is not good composty stuff, it is better than most. But bagging it for sale is a monotonous chore at best, and there are some who theorize that it is actually a punishment when the boss is a little grumpy. Something akin to a cat-o-nine-tails on a 19th Century warship.
After 7 hours of weeding on Monday however, I announced (with a little trepidation, in case it lead to an all out mutiny) that we would be bagging soil for the rest of the day. I guess everything really is relative because their eyes lit up and they actually cheered.

Terms of Endearment

and other colloquialisms...

The following are gleaned from lunch room chatter. The translations are mine, from the context they were taken.

Booze Bag - an alcoholic

Fartin' an Spittin' - describing someone who is impatient or angry as in "He was out in the car fartin' an spittin' while I was still in doin' me hair."

Give me left testicle for it - describing how much you would pay for something you really really want.

Got me goin' around like a blue arsed fly - describing how hectic and busy the boss expects you to be.

Jesus in the garden! - an exclamation of surprise or sometimes an oath

Lower than whale poop - very low. I actually heard this on The Hour when General Rick Hillier was interviewed and he was describing the morale of the Canadian military when he took over as Chief.

Never did a big lot - describing someone who in terms of life accomplishments 'didn't do much.'

Shaggin' Around - despite what it sounds like this simply means hanging out or puttering around, hence men can say that on Saturday they were "shaggin' around with the boys."

Small clothes - what you wear to bed

Snottin' an ballin' - crying or whining

True as Christ - very true

Re-Lent-Less

Definition of relentless: Newfoundland spring.
Today, we saw blue sky for 30 minutes, the first time in 8 days. (And there was great rejoicing.) The temperatures soared to a balmy 6 degrees Celsius, well above the average daily high of 2 degrees with a wind chill of -5.
Although for days our weather announcer has been promising a break in the drizzle and fog I have lost all hope of that happening before July.
Canvassing my co-workers at the nursery I have learned that this March-like hell we are experiencing is completely normal and that this is indeed what Newfoundlanders consider spring. We had freezing fog this morning.
I am wearing more clothes to work now than I ever wore to walk the dog all winter. Winter was in fact warmer because when it wasn't snowing it was sunny. And the province wasn't surrounded by icebergs, essentially turning the Avalon Peninsula into an outdoor icebox.
Yesterday it was announced that there are 22 icebergs off the coast from Pouch Cove to Cape Spear, a distance of less than 30km as the ship sails. Although, if I were in a ship sailing on those waters I be sure to leave my Celine Dion CD at home.
I have started taking cocoa to work because break time is only 15 minutes long, and it takes at least twenty to peel off all the layers when the tea caffeine hits my bladder.
Every morning as I drive to work, I hear the commuter report on the radio. With heavy fog and drizzle making visibility almost nil, the reporter on CBC radio cheerfully announces how many moose have been sighted on the outer ring road. (Today it was 9) I haven't spotted any yet, but with the fog so thick I could have followed one all the way to the airport without knowing it. Unlike the Elk at Banff though, Moose don't seem to hang out at the airport. Maybe because everybody they know is already here.

The Postman Always Knocks 'Shave and A Haircut'

It doesn't have the same ring as the title of the classic dark thriller, but it has the advantage of being true.
Our postman really does knock "Shave and A Haircut' when he has a package to deliver. We get a lot of packages. Study boy has substituted buying tools on EBay with buying books on Barnes and Nobel (and Ebay, and Amazon...).
A few weeks ago I was walking the dog on Merrymeeting Road and we passed a postman delivering mail. It was our postman, I didn't recognise him because postmen are like waiters, they all look the same, but he stopped me and asked if I was going to be home that morning as he a parcel for me. I was blocks away from my house and he not only knew me out of context but also knew that somewhere in a truck full of mail, I was going to get a parcel that day. I am amazed at this. We live in a city! It's a small city, but I'll bet that his route has as much mail to deliver to as many households as a postman in TO.
Then this week, we came home to find a notice of attempted parcel delivery in the mailbox. That's the card they leave to tell you where you can go to pick up your mail, after noon the next day. Usually it is a postal outlet in a drugstore, in our case it is the Shoppers on LeMarchant Road. The card indicated we could pick it up at number 10. The postman had left our parcel with Fred and Jean next door. I'm pretty sure he's not supposed to do this. We live in a city. They don't even do this in the country! I'm not complaining, I liked it.
The next day I was walking the dog on Aldershot, blocks from my house when I saw our postman again. He asked if I got my parcel, and said that Fred and Jean have lived at number 10 for years so he figured it was OK. It's true, Fred and Jean have been at number 10 for fifty years. Apparently a constant address is a good enough reference for Canada Post.

Snow Day

Jake is enjoying the snow in front of the house. Underneath that pile is the sidewalk and about 4 feet of street where we normally park the car. We are meant to get another 15 cm dump tomorrow. If this keeps up, the house will completely disappear by February.

Words

I keep meaning to add new newfoundland words to a lexicon list on this blog, but always forget them before I get here.
Tonight I learned that a traditionally shaped kettle, the squat angular type with the handle that goes over the fill hole in the top is called a slut.
Excellent.

Parking notes

About a month or so ago, the landlord's dad came by to put a new screen door on the back door and at the same time, he took away some rotting timbers that had been part of a raised garden bed in the front. The raised bed was next to the house sitting on the sidewalk pavement, and as he removed them he mentioned that if we got rid of the soil we could park there in the winter. Both Studyboy and I thought the idea of deliberately parking on the sidewalk was a little strange but we let it pass. In fact, it was the second time someone had mentioned the possiblilty of using the sidewalk as a driveway. The landlord had mentioned it too, when we moved in. We live in an area called Rabbit-town, and mostly the neighbourhood is comprised of row houses sitting directly on the sidewalk of a narrow street. Our house is an infill house, it is detached and is set back a little more than the others next to it. Our sidewalk is 5 feet wide instead of three. If we got rid of the raised bed soil we could just about fit a motorcycle in that space, but not a car, let alone the truck, unless you were planning on exiting the vehicle out the sun roof, which neither Erica or Casper have.
We let the idea pass without comment because we assumed the landlord and his dad were missing the obvious point that people would need to use the sidewalk for walking. Silly us. Now that we have had some snow, I understand that snow removal is, at best, just a suggestion in St. John's. The city gives the streets a lick and a promise when it snows, but sidewalks are not cleared by city workers unless they are close to schools or hospitals. Fair enough, but most cities have a bylaw stating that people are responsible for clearing sidewalks adjacent to their house. St. John's apparently does not have this bylaw, so people don't. In fact, people who do have driveways shovel the snow onto the sidewalk, creating undulating King of the Castle hills all the way down the street. This means, between the mounds and the iced packed footstep tracks that the sidewalks all over the city are impassable and dangerous. Everyone just walks in the streets, which is also dangerous but easier. So we were silly to assume that people would need to use the sidewalks for walking.
It turns out, people do pull their cars up onto the sidewalks for winter parking. It's like the city version of a front lawn during a summer barbecue. Now of course, the left over soil that we didn't remove is frozen solid until April, so no chance of extra parking space for us.

Fall in St. John's

One of the nice things about living in the country was watching the progression of seasons. All cities on the other hand, seem to have the same progression; one day it is summer and the next it isn't. Those in between stages seem to happen without much fanfare. St. John's is no different than any other city I have lived in, in this way. We have one tree in our back yard. It is a pin cherry, Prunus pennsylvanica for those of you who care. When we moved here in early August, it had green and lush leaves on the last foot of each branch but the rest of the leaves were skeletonized from an earlier infestation of what the neighbours called 'worms'. Over the next month it recovered and grew some new leaves where the first ones were damaged. September came and went and there was no change to the tree or the distant view of Pippy Park beyond. Thanksgiving came and went too, still no change to the tree, but a little fall colour began to show in the distance. 'Out beyond the overpass' as they call it here. Then about a week ago we finally got a hard frost that affected our neighbourhood. In two days our lush green Pin Cherry went the clear yellow of a Post It note.
St. John's weather so far has been a lot like Vancouver. Grey, overcast, and light rain most days. The difference between here and there is that St John's also gets wind. In Vancouver, wind was such an anomaly that it was remarkable. Really, as in "Wow, it's windy today" if there was more than a hint of gentle breeze in the air. In St. John's it is remarkable when there isn't a wind. So for a day and a half, our Pin Cherry was yellow, and now it is bare from the constant buffet of the gale they call a breeze. Poof, that was fall in St. John's, all 6 days of it.
And here is a little strange but true fact of weather in St, John's: if it is above 3 degrees Celsius then the neighbours are sure to remark "Beautiful day, isn't it?"
If it is sunny but the wind cuts through you like a knife its "Lovely day..."
If it is overcast and raining like a Bible story, but warmer than usual its "Nice day...'
If the wind is still but the fog reaches from the harbour to 'out beyond the overpass' it's "Gorgeous weather...it's enough to kill ya."
These are actually the words that our neighbour used today to describe a dull windy morning with intermittent showers. I can only surmise that the important factor is the temperature, which admittedly at 12 degrees C is higher than seasonal.
The funny thing is that I find myself doing it too.