more than a thousand grains: seasons turn

Yellow red leaves dancing in sunlight as they fall to the earth is enchanting; the crisp sunshine on a -14C morning as your nostrils freeze together, delightful and, the quotidian checks to see the progress of the hyacinths, and daffodils as they make their annual appearance, addictive. The change of season in southern Canada is something that many living abroad lament the loss of. And at times I commiserated. Years ago living in France, first near Lac Lemans and then in Paris, I missed the dramatic change substituted by an overabundance of grey skies. Yet now, spending the first part of 2015 in the equatorial zone, the world of “home” struck with record snowfalls and near daily whiteouts, is unimaginable and undesired. The weather here is more or less always the same. Warm, sunny, sometimes more rain, sometimes less rain. But there are differences, and they are subtler. There is the rainy season, rain that you can hear approaching from the distance like a truck rumbling as it gets closer and noisier as it gets closer until it is upon you, heavy like a shower turned on full blast, lasting sometimes for days with a few reprises of gentle sun. There is the winter wind deliciously cold enough to give you goose bumps at 20C. And of course, the dry season, where the earth cracks, temperatures raise, and things get slower. All this is changing – the regularity of the dry and wet seasons that farmers depended on is no longer dependable – climate change is the culprit blamed. As a result, there is an increased dependency on irrigation, and the development of new seed varieties tolerant to irregular water doses. There are other ways to tell the passage of time, the best way is to know what’s in season, what delights are ready to tantalize your taste buds. January was the tail end of mangos and abundance of psydium, and as February ripens so do guavas, soursop, and breadfruits.