I decided to bake a raspberry pie yesterday morning for evening dessert, using a package of frozen whole raspberries, thawed, and partially cooked to a thick mass with sugar and a little cornstarch before filling the pie crust. I added brandy flavouring to the raspberries as the mass cooled, then prepared the pie crust. And since I had decided to make a lattice crust, I decided also to sprinkle the interstices atop the revealed raspberries with chopped pecans for a little crunch.  It baked in my little counter-top convection oven to a crust-crisp brown, with a wonderful fragrance. After dinner my husband used whipped cream to top his portion, while I preferred it unadorned and delicious.

After the pie had baked we went out for a ravine walk, delighted that the morning's snow had sifted a white layer over the trees, covering up as well the detritus now being revealed on the melting snowpack. The creek was running full and muddy with the run-off, and crows were mobbing overhead, cawing wildly. The temperature, which had been forecasted to be almost as cold as the day before, was nothing of the kind; it turned out to be a springlike, relatively mild and beautiful day with the sky clearing occasionally to allow the sun to warm things up further.

We chanced to come across a young man who lives on the street behind ours, whom we've been acquainted with since he was about eight years old, a friend of a neighbour who lives at the top of our own street. We'd seen him through a succession of three dogs over the period of our acquaintanceship, usually his mother out walking them in their turn, and occasionally he whooping it up with his friend, running through the ravine trails -- with the dog in ecstatic freedom before them.

They now have a small and overweight little Jack Russell, the third of the succession. The young man was out walking with his girlfriend, a sweetly lovely young blonde woman accompanied by her own little dog. And that dog, dustmite-sized, was busy leaping around our feet, eager to be greeted, full of life and joy, completely captivating in its diminutive charm.  It wore a little jacquard-grey woolen sweater against the snow and the cold, its tiny hood flopping about as it leaped at our feet.

A teacup-sized Yorkie; when I lifted it briefly before it insisted on being allowed to regain its own four feet firmly on terra firma, it weighed next-to-nothing. And when, as we spoke, we saw another dog coming toward us - a very large boxer-hound mix with brindled coat, the tiny Yorkie leaped in delight toward the giant that loomed over it, unafraid, curious, delighted to greet another dog.

This two-year-old Yorkie came into the young woman's life when her 18-year-old Jack Russell whom she had loved since she was herself five years of age, finally left her.