Let's hear it for days of rest. That's what today was supposed to be, our day of rest. Oh, we do things, it's just that there's no urgency to much of anything, and it's kind of a restful/lazy day for us. We can look forward to obeying a sense of spontaneity, if something comes up we feel like tackling. But not work, heavens no.

I happened to have complained about how murky-dirty our beautiful old wrought-iron garden seat looked, on the porch. Irving had painted it bright white last spring, and it sparkled. Now, after a winter of local wildlife accessing the porch for handouts and clambering all over the garden seat it was grim and grimy in appearance. So off he went after breakfast to scrub it down with a soapy pail and brush, and move it off the porch until such time as we stop inviting wildlife over.

 

And while he was out at the front of the house, I decided it might be a good opportunity for me to get out as well and do some additional cleaning up. I mant to do a little light sweeping up; the walkway, the porch. Once I got out there, though, my intention had an argument with itself and agreed to commit to a bit more tidying up.

 

And there was plenty to do. Yanking up some eunonymus roots sneaking out of their allocated space in the garden, thinking I wouldn't notice. Cutting back Yew branches in a spring that saw more sun-burn on spruces and yews and even holly than I'd ever seen before. The wind had knocked down more twigs and light branches, aided and abetted by our local squirrel population. So I began to fill compost bags with cut-back and sweepings.

 

Then Irving and I moved to the road. Yes, the road, where one each of our large spruce trees, one on either side of the driveway, had shed so many needles and cones the street itself was littered with them. We swept them up, along with winter detritus. Usually at this time of year the mechanized street sweeper/cleaner comes along, but it hasn't yet materialized.

When we were finished and put away our garden tools, Jackie and Jillie welcomed us back into the house. We can't have them outside with us at the front of the house for the simple reason that our undisciplined little urchins run barking onto the road whenever anyone might walk by with a dog. It's simply too dangerous for them, even though ours is a very quiet street with little vehicular traffic.

 

A perfect day to spend outside, whatever we were doing. A high of 11C, and occasional peeks of the sun through a high and wide cover of luminous-white clouds. The wind had declined significantly from the past week, and had become a breeze. Time to snap ourselves together and converge on the ravine for a leisurely afternoon stroll. Which includes climbing hills, then descending them, since that is the nature of a forested ravine.

 

It's got to get a little warmer, and the sun completely out before we sight any more snakes trying to warm themselves in the sun. It's the perfect time to come across the  young of the year trumbling out of their underground nests. Always a fascinating experience to see them. The mature one we saw a week or so ago was so new out of the ground his colouration hadn't yet adjusted to light and his stripes hardly to be seen.

 

We did see some of the usual dogs out with their people for their daily legs-stretch. Invariably they come leaping over, long familiar with Irving who never comes out without preparing to hand out doggy treats. This time Jackie and Jillie made a beeline for two young women who walk two Goldens, and who hand out little treats themselves ...  while the Goldens situated themselves politely before Irving, waiting for him to haul out his goodies-bag.

 

It is nothing short of astonishing, the rapidity with which nature urges her vegetation to mature once they have freed themselves from the confines of spring-thawed soil. Perennials are celebrating their freedom to flaunt their presence, filling up the garden beds and borders with form, texture and colour. On the one hand we're delighted when we see how swiftly flowering fruit trees bear their blossoms, and sad because it seems so quick that the wind disturbs the perfection of blossom clusters, breaking up their comradely togetherness, and scattering petals everywhere, carried by the same breezes that shattered their perfection.

A growing pile of confetti, pink and fragrant, now litters the ground and the walkways under the Sarjentii crabs, and the flowering Jade crab on the opposite side of the garden though it flowered later than the others, won't be long in joining them casting their petals to the wind, as the white perfection of exquisite flowers packed on every branch begin their disintegration.

On the other hand, in the beds and borders, hostas are stretching their newly-awakened limbs, so to speak, unfurling their graceful foliage, along with the hydrangeas and the lilies and the irises, the spirea, the alliums and the tree peonies. The planters we've placed here and there along the garden wall when Irving dug deep into the soil to excavate building detritus and replace it with gravel, sand and fertile soil then built the stone retaining walls and laid down the brick walkways twenty-five years ago, are themselves blooming with new life in the colourful annuals we were able to collect from an area horticultural family.

The garden gave us an enthusiastic send-off this afternoon, as we left the house with Jackie and Jillie to make our way to the forested ravine beyond the street we live on. It's been such a superlative weather day, with a high of 25C, freshening breezes and mostly intensely full sun, we couldn't resist deciding to take a longer-than-usual toddle through the woodland trails.

We hadn't seen the pair of Mallards steaming along the creek in the past several weeks, but other trail hikers assured us they were there, mostly comfortably ensconced in the area of the beaver pond, where they would be undisturbed by the presence of continual passers-by. When we saw them this afternoon, once at the start of our hike, and another time when we had doubled back on our circuit,they were serenely unperturbed at our presence, calmly going about their business, the drake's electric-green head and neck brightly shimmering in the sun.