The Punctuation of Snowdrop Time
Spring in Mount Royal Park (2020). Some observations:
1. The Snowdrops are out and in bloom. So are the Siberian Squills with Mason Bees as managers. With their arrival and assurance of springtime climes, phenological timetables tell us it is time to plant the hardy spring veggies and flowers, such as radishes, peas, carrots, chard, lettuce, spinach, calendula and cornflowers (among others).
2. I love phenology and the snowdrops as markers of our seasons. They make us, if we are willing and patient, pay attention to what is around us far more; to the spring in terms of the snowdrops rather than the date on the calendar. And while I appreciate the standard heuristics of marking time for gardening through calendars, with days, years, and thus standardized benchmarks, they do make the world adhere to our schedules and ideas about the world. So, all things considered, this slower place, where I have somewhat forgotten the date and the day, I must say that it has been an opportunity to pay more attention to different markers and time in general. And I prefer the snowdrops on the mountain, the buds, and the bees to tell me what time it is to plant.
3. The sight-line at the top of the mountain is so, so very clear. And this isn't a strange day—in fact, many more days have been clear because pollution (as evidenced by the Montreal Air Quality Index) has been far lower and less invasive in every way (including with reference to breathing) this March and April. It is a strange experience, as a response to a virus, to be presented with the impacts of our lives and bustle on our environment and health in such a straightforward, dramatic fashion. While this has been demonstrated in studies of pollution indexes and heat maps of other locales, it is abundantly clear in Montreal right now. So, amidst all of the other confusion this moment presents, one has to wonder: what is the cost and what are the options—is there a better way? Is it always the case that there is a trade-off between our health, the environment, and jobs? Is it possible to restart with this in mind?
4. There is a brand new vernal pool on the mountain this year. After so many days and years of getting to know this space and place. People and places that we think we know so well, sometimes change all at once—surprisingly and delightfully so.
5. In emergency lock-down, John and I have taken it upon ourselves to (re) watch The Wire: re-watch seasons 1-3 and watch seasons 4 & 5. And in season 4, we quickly recognized several scenes shot in Wyman Park, Baltimore. This is the place, after I met John, that we would run every day. It is also the place where J-F first caught and 'surprised' me with a black rat snake (fun) and where we met our Box Turtle, Henry. (It is also where bodies would be regularly dumped and where people would hide out from the police, but that's another story). It was wild and beautiful and designed by Frederick Law Olmsted. So was the park where I spent much of my time after graduating and getting my first job in New York—that is, Central Park. And Olmsted designed the park where I have spent most of my life walking and wandering with my kids—Mount Royal Park. Olmsted’s ideas—his attention to wild spaces and landscapes, his fight for publicly available green spaces for all social classes and citizens, his attention to wild things and beauty in urban environments—these have been central organizing features and principles of my adult life. It was Olmsted who believed that in these spaces we not only find our home in terms of the seasons, dictated by the buds and the bees, but also our place and home with one another. And nothing could be better, in this time of social distancing, to find the reminder of our place and experience together than in the experience of walking the Olmsted path, with snowdrops along the trail.
—Anna-Liisa Aunio
Snowdrop (Galanthus nivalis)