Stop and smell the roses. They’re still in bloom

We’ve been waiting for winter since the fall of 2011, and it is still missing in action, which may be disappointing to some people, but not me.

In the good ‘ol days, not so long ago, we could always count on at least one snow storm of 15 centimetres or so in December, even if we later had a thaw by Christmas and the snow disappeared.

In the fall of 1997, frigid weather and snow arrived at the start of November and didn’t recede until March; by the end of December, we’d had at least as much winter weather as we’d usually get over an entire season.

I was reminded again of the disappearance of winter in these parts by two things over the last few days, a weekend trip to Montreal and a surprising discovery in a garden tended by the city.

I went to Montreal on Friday morning with my son’s minor bantam AA hockey team, the mighty Toronto Penguins (15-1 so far in their regular season, with two ties), where winter has not gone missing.

We got there about 2.30 in the afternoon, where the temperature was a frosty minus 9, which only got colder after dark and was no better on Saturday.

It reassured me that climate change, if that’s what is going on, has not affected the rest of Canada as much as southern Ontario.

While hiking along Elizabeth street behind city hall on Monday, I noticed an elaborate garden that the city created a few years ago on a vacant lot at Elizabeth and tiny Foster Place.

It was wilted and mostly dormant, except for two marvelous rose bushes, one with pink flowers and the
other with yellow, which was still in flower and putting out new blooms.

I stopped to sniff the pink roses, which still had a faint fragrance.

The geraniums on my patio are also still flowering, evidence that a hard frost has yet to find us in Toronto.

The perpetually mild weather is more suited to the Virginia or Maryland than southern Ontario, but I’ll take flowers over snow any time.