Another Stanley Park Season cache! Please be gentle with the greenery, and careful to close the log container snugly...
English being a funny language, the word 'season' must be confusing to new English speakers. It is something we do to food to ostensibly make it taste better. It's something we do to wood to make it burn better, or make it suitable for building purposes by adjusting its moisture content to that of the environment in which it will be used. (Yeah, I didn't know that either...) It's something we do with things like wit and punch lines and exclamation points to make conversation and writing more lively and exciting!! It's one way of describing the process by which something or someone becomes matured, hardened, or the like.
'Season' can refer to the time of year when a particular fruit, vegetable, or other food is plentiful and in good condition, or to a fixed time in the year when a particular sport is played. Or to a certain block of television time. It can describe a period of the year characterized by a particular climatic feature or marked by a particular activity, event, or festivity, eg a rainy season or a holiday season, or a period regulated by law, like hunting or fishing season. It can mean an indefinite or unspecified period of time, or can just mean 'a while'. Long ago it even meant a proper or suitable time, as in 'to everything there is a season'.
If you have been caching in these here parts for a while you may know I've used 'season' in some of those meanings, but I have not until recently used it in the most impactful definition for those of us living in the temperate regions of the planet. That would be the most scientific one, which delineates the four common divisions of the year - spring, summer, autumn/fall, and winter - marked by particular weather patterns and daylight hours, resulting from changing amounts of sunlight due to the tilt of the earth's axis. I doubt many will be upset if I spare you a treatise on how exactly this happens…
Apparently the word 'season' arrived in the Middle English from the Latin root ‘to sow’ via the Latin ‘sowing,’ later ‘time of sowing,’ and the Old French 'seson'. That also may be too much information for many!
Spring is the season of renewal and burgeoning growth, when the cold - and in this part of the world the endless rain - of winter gives way to sunshine and warmth. Historically in temperate climates the coming of Spring was literally a life and death matter, and its arrival was cause to celebrate having survived the hard times of winter. Nowadays thanks to fossil fuels Spring isn't quite so critical, but it's still a wonderful time of the year. The immediate area of the cache looks pretty much the same all year round - except when everything is glistening wetly - but when Winter ends, everywhere in the garden areas of the Park you can find overwhelming displays of blooming Spring bulbs and shrubs.
