So, here we are. A month into the new year, resolutions skittering into nothingness like old fast-food wrappers in the gutter, my weight still unchanged, promising myself that I’ll do better in Sober September. Honest. From Februa, a Roman purification festival which usually took place around mid-month, usually the fifteenth. The Ides and all that, and we should beware, because Februalia was a month of purification and atonement. Which might be why Valentine’s Day ended up around then as well – no, perhaps not.

There’s a trend towards calling for a Dry February, which seems to be simply a sneaky way to cobble together enough days that you can say Dry January actually worked. Unless you’re in Australia, where they call it FebFast and you can keep drinking as long as you give up sugar or chocolate instead. That seems quite the deal, actually. Although there’s usually sugar in alcohol. And if you’re really twitching at personal consumption levels, there’s always Dry July to tide you over.
I’m not doing too badly, in truth. I’ve managed to avoid anything alcoholic for the whole month of January, which is about 20 days longer than I usually manage in these ‘challenges’, self-proclaimed though they are.

I’m still not sure why I do it, other than to prove to myself that I can. It’s not as though I drink myself legless every night, or even just on Fridays – those days are long gone, and my toleration level is an Nth of what it used to be. But a glass of wine would be nice, especially some of that Barolo I picked up at the Wine Festival last fall, or the 2015 Haut Medoc that’s on the rack …
Or would it? Be nice, I mean. It’s only when you stop and look at the data that things get kind of scary, full of statistics on health and economic impacts, number of impaired driving accidents, and so forth. According to Falstaff, European nations have the strongest alcohol cultures, making up 10 of the top 15. It’s not surprising that in somewhere like Canada, with its strong European heritage, over 80% of the population enjoy booze on a regular basis.

But the thing is, in Canada the average consumption of alcohol per person is 97.5 litres per year. That includes wine, spirits, beer, etc., but for the purposes of this blog I’m going to pretend it is only beer that we drink. In Canada, beer is sold in 330 ml cans, so that’s around 300 cans per person, which is less than one beer a day. Which means that for everybody I know who drinks more than seven beers a week (you know who you are), there must be someone else who doesn’t drink any. Right now, I’m that person, so enjoy yourself – next month it’s your turn to cover me.

On a serious note, though, why isn’t the message getting through that drinking and driving simply do not mix? According to RCMP reports, there have been fifteen people arrested for impaired driving on PEI in the past six weeks. Some are simply stupid, where people drive into snowbanks or fall asleep over the wheel in a parking lot, but we have had some horrendous incidents as well. These include one a couple of weeks before Christmas where four young people died and one was seriously injured, with what they now call ‘life-changing injuries’. As is often the case, the only person who walked away relatively unscathed, at least physically, was the person who was driving drunk. Allegedly. He was released from hospital pending charges. He’s 20 years old.

But enough about that. Here we are, February – ah, the cruelest month. I know that T. S. Eliot thinks of April, but he didn’t live on PEI. There are no lilacs breeding from this dead land, not for another three months at least, and the winter snow that covers the earth is not just forgetful, it is a virtual amnesiac. A rose, a rose by any other name – oh, you mean that dead twig sticking out of the permafrost? The winds howl and coat the shrubs in freezing rain, a patina of glittering protection that exacts its due when a random melt causes branches to snap and fall.

This year, so far, we have had very little snow, less than a metre since the first flakes fell in October. That’s about a third of what is ‘normal’ for Charlottetown, which is 290 cm. So, we’re either going to have one of those weird years when everything seems ‘wrong’, or else we’re going to get seriously dumped upon in February and March. I’m not sure which would be worse, the ground frozen but dry or else protected but impassible without snowshoes. The Farmer’s Almanac is of no help – it predicted above average temperature and snowfall for January.

But I’m a gardener, and so I ignore all the above and sort my seed packets and decide what needs to be planted now so it’s ready to transplant into the garden in June, what needs to be scarified so that it will germinate promptly, what I am keeping to one side to sprinkle madly once the snow has gone. Soon I’m going to go and spend a day out in the garage, oiling the secateurs and the spades, checking that the hosepipes are untangled and uncracked, sorting the plastic pots into various sizes so as to permit an easy progression of seed to seedling to plant to transplant. Soon I’m going to wander around the grape vines, pruning them back to two stems with three buds on each. Soon I’m going to … oh, so many things!

Because here we are. A month into the new year, resolutions skittering into nothingness like old fast-food wrappers in the gutter, but fantasies and dreams slowly emerging from the cold winter nights, giving a scaffolding of hope to the year ahead. In a few months we will suffer through The Dog Days of Summer, too hot and lazy to do much at all. Perhaps we should call these The Cat Days of Winter, where we all just curl up under a blanket and hope someone else will make dinner.

I might have a drink to that.