The Spring Equinox, the astronomical start of that wonderful season, has arrived, though we traditionally think of March 21 as the official day that ushers spring into our landscape here in the (brrr!) frozen North. We're still frozen. With a tad of spring in the air. On Tuesday, actually, spring was in the air, as it were; the sun full out, sky azure, and crows cawing their spring call. We could, it seemed to us, actually smell and taste spring. It was a lovely day.

And then Wednesday, although a smidgeon warmer on the thermometer at minus-2-degrees than the day previous, it felt as though that curmudgeonly old Winter had just sneered at timid Spring and given her a huge shove backward. It felt frigid, quite miserable, a sharp wind and a moist atmosphere. And then, the reminder that a year ago to the very day the temperature had risen to plus-24-degrees Celsius.

Today, though we'd had snow overnight, by the time dawn arrived the snow had turned to mush. And the icy surfaces we'd been carefully negotiating the previous few days had relented and were no longer icy. We could see that snow was melting off the roof of our house because it was running in the eavestroughs and down the drain.

And, when we entered the ravine the creek had been freed of ice and was swelling with that muddy-brown of melting snow and released detritus. Crows were circling high above, riding a wind that was nowhere near as piercing in the day's plus-2 temperature.

We heard and then saw a Pileated woodpecker knocking the bejesus out of an old poplar that had seen better days. And we noted again, with the same flood of disbelief that anyone could be so utterly nit-brained that a litter of plastic bags filled with dog-excrement had been tossed off the trail and, catching on tree branches, hung there like someone's disgusting idea of forest ornamentation.

The ravine trails are popular in the neighbourhood, and beyond. People drive considerable distances with their pets to take advantage of the natural setting. Why some nitwit would take the trouble to pick up their dog's leavings and then toss the bags (and it must be a deliberate aim) directly onto trees to see them hanging there until somehow nature manages to divest itself of the insult, is beyond us.

It makes us wonder what kind of malevolent attitude is at play here, making a mockery of cleaning up after one's dogs only to burden the landscape with the wretched sarcasm as though displaying some twisted mind's sense of humour.