Every day brings a welcome new surprise in the ravine. No big surprise, but thanks to the warming temperatures we were able to get out today with no sweater, no jacket, enjoying a good brisk breeze wafting the warmer air about.                 

It is clearly not only we enjoying this weather. It has impressed the more timid of the woodland wildflowers to finally meet their obligation to begin showing themselves. Far greater numbers of trilliums are now about on the forest floor, some of them wagging their flower buds, but few yet in flower. Yet several days ago we saw the first of the purple trillium blooms.

Unlike their more common cousins, the white trilliums, the heads of the purple flowers are shy, uncertain about their presence, unwilling to seem ostentatious in their existence, so while the white flowers proudly hold themselves aloft, the purple ones nod their heads, waving them in the slightest breeze.

Banberry

The sun is warming everything, even tree trunks that are no longer erect and proudly holding the branches and the needles they once gloried in. We saw a large old pine that had split last fall and been cut down, emitting translucent pearls of sap still. And another, far younger tree, a mere stripling that had somehow fallen perpendicularly to the ground yet its roots still firmly entrenched in the earth sprouting new foliage, and that is just about the saddest sight imaginable.

We also now have seen the first of the baneberries sprouting out of the forest floor, preparing soon to flower and bear those bright red berries that no one should ever try eating.