Signs that spring has come to Ottawa

Having had the coldest winter I can ever remember in my entire life and learning that this was one of the warmest winters ever in the world, I was hoping that perhaps spring would come our way today.

The heavy white snow that is falling today though is indicative of this time of year - the snow that falls when it is 20 degrees celsius below zero is dry and fluffy and easy to move but the stuff that greeted us today is like moving cement! Fortunately we have a snow blower.

Hereis hoping that our still three feet snow piles will start to diminish a little quicker now that the temperature has warmed up to zero degrees celsius. It could be worse of course we could live in the maritimes which has been absolutely inundated with snow this past week.

But the cheery thought in all of this is that that wet heavy snow tells us that spring is definitely coming one of these days but I expect we will still have snow cover into April as usual.

Just a little break from my usual blog. I am busily working away on the parishes around Bodmin and I can see patterns which is really great. I shall share them soon enough and feel free to send me any thoughts that you have on how I have arranged this set of Blake families. It would be great to have people test their yDNA in their Blake lines. Since the Blake that came to Bodmin before 1525 was from Bretagne I suspect that the name that matches this one in France is likely Leblanc or Blancher. I was looking on ySearch to see if there are Leblanc entries and indeed there are. But if it is a characteristic surname as most believe these days then there could be several different DNA results. Or they could be, as my line in Hampshire, very ancient to the British Isles and simply acquired the surname through marriage with a Blake female or of course there is the possibility of an illegitimate birth but I wonder if there were that many illegitimate births before 1600. I do not find a lot in the parish registers.

I think that when people took on surnames their choices were probably influenced by a wife already having a fixed surname especially if there was a small piece of property that went with the marriage.