We took the opportunity in an otherwise too-busy day, to enjoy our small urban backyard on a windy, sometimes-sunny day, cooler than its predecessors. Our little dogs sniffed and snuffled about, while we sat and contemplated life being brought back to all the growing things in our garden.

The garden pots, freshly filled with potting soil and the begonia corms over-wintered in our basement, are beginning to gently flesh out. The grape hyacinths are in bloom, and the Siberian irises are already putting out their flower heads.

The weeping caragena is full of its tiny, yellow spring flowers which will become pea pods in summer, with tiny seedlings springing up as a result, having to be pulled up lest we have a backyard full of flowering peas. The smaller of our two magnolia trees is in the flush of its floral displays, like the much larger, older one in the front garden. And the apple trees are in full flush, with their pink-white floral display.

A sudden movement alerts us to the presence of a bumble bee among the caragena flowers. And the bee is not the only one taking advantage of the pollen in those tiny yellow blooms, for there too is a hummingbird, resplendent in iridescent green, hovering and sipping and then zipping away.

Is that not perfection?