First Day of Spring--Espoo Finland 2006

Today we have twelve hours between sunrise and sunset. It's the first day of spring and the temperature was close to -3 for the whole day. We never had a really heavy snow, but it snowed almost every day. Of course none of it melted until recently. People sweep the snow in their walkways. They throw gravel down on top of the snow on the paths, parking lots and streets. We have seen some plows and salt thrown from time to time. Later when the snow melts (Perhaps I'm being overly optimistic.) machines will come along and scoop up the gravel for next year. These pictures are taken outside our apartment front and back. When the Finns do snow removal, they remove it. The other two pictures are taken downtown where they are starting to scrape the walks and edges of the road and remove the snow to unknown spaces--perhaps the lakes. By the way, we have heard birds chirping all winter long. What kind of birds would winter in Finland?