March Doldrums....

March is a challenging time of year.  By this point we have suffered through three months of winter and are looking forward to spring.  The winter this year, here in Edmonton, hasn't been all that bad.  It started really early, back in mid-October, when we got a heavy dump of snow.  That cost the agricultural industry millions of dollars.  There were a lot of crops still standing, and some swathed, and they ended up buried in snow.  Most of those crops are still out in the fields.  We had lots of mild spells after that initial snow, but it was too little, too late, and the crops never dried off enough for the harvest to proceed.  

We have had a really up and down season, which is mirrored in our weather conditions today.  During the winter months we had two cold snaps, one in January and a second in February.  It got really cold, with day time highs in the -20's and even into the -30's.  And... it stayed cold for an extended period of time... about 10 days during the first one.  In between it has been really mild, and we set some record high temperatures in Feburary.  I think one day it got up to around +15C.  We have had very little snow through the winter, and the ground is bare in a lot of places.

Now that we are into March, it has definitely come in like a lion.  Hopefully the old saying holds true and it goes out like a lamb.  These past couple days it has been rather cold... around -10C.  Today the sun came out, a warm front rolled through, and the temperature spiked up to +11C this afternoon.  But two hours later it had dropped down to near freezing as a cold front rolled in from the north.  The temperature is supposed to drop down to -20C by morning, and we are supposed to remain unseasaonably cold until the middle of the month.  A bunch of snow is in the forecast for the next few days as well.  I hate this roller coast ride and am getting really impatient for spring.  In the mean time I spend my evenings working in the darkroom and scanning film.  

On that note here is a recent scan from the trip to Jasper last fall.  This is some boulders on the shoreline of Medicine Lake.  This was shot on Fuji Neopan Acros film with my 4x5 view camera.  I used a 150mm lens and the film was processed in Rodinal developer, 1:50, for a slight contrast increase.  Looking at this image it makes me long for days spent out in the field hiking and photographing.  It appears that will not be in the cards for this weekend, given the forecast, but hopefully those days return soon.