May

Living in the city today, spring doesn't mean so much to me.  But when I was growing up in rural New Brunswick, winter was fiercer and spring was more welcome. (Or at least it seemed that way in my youth.) There'd sometimes be warm weather in April, but it was in May that the real warm weather started.

Mind you, it could still get cold in May.  When we drove on rural roads we'd sometimes see some vestigial snow in the ditch.  In a few years, it even snowed in May!

May was the month when we'd start to prepare our vegetable garden.  I'd start by deepening the ditches around it, digging up mud and dumping it on the garden side banks.  My brother John complained that this had a "diking" effect, but I couldn't see any other way to do it.  I should have said, "Do it yourself if you want it done better." (John was the big gardening expert, but I did more of the work.)

We'd also till the ground before planting. (We used to rent a machine for that.) We bought our seeds from a Vesey's catalogue in P.E.I.  After I'd moved to Toronto in 1990, for a few years I'd continue to visit New Brunswick in May and get the seeds planted, until my parents moved to Toronto too.