Finally, we had a glorious weather day yesterday. The sun had full frontage in the sky and beamed its pleasure down upon us, and only a slight breeze moved the 14-degree temperature gently about us. We needed only very light jackets, and it felt wonderfully free. Good time, my husband thought, to aerate the grass and gather all the thatch. Trouble was he had given his de-thatcher on loan to one of our neighbours who still had it for the last week. And then, there he was, bringing it back, so the de-thatching of the lawns could proceed after all. And then the fertilizing.

While he was busy doing that I swept up some of the mess left by the wildlife coming to the feeding station. And when my husband later put out fresh black oilseed, the squirrels and the raccoon and the birds converged once again on the feast site.

Our ravine walk was peaceful and quite beautiful. Because it's been so cool, trilliums have been delayed apart from the few we saw a week ago coming up here and there, not yet ready to show their crimson flowers. I thought perhaps the trout lilies would have thrown up a few shy yellow blooms, but though the foliage has proliferated and become more aggressively present, no flowers yet. The Pileated woodpecker off somewhere in the distance treated us to its madcap cries. And we heard an owl as well, but it's difficult to tell where his call echoed from.

In the evening, after we made our pizza and relaxed enjoying it for dinner, we settled down to watch a film together. My husband had taken Hyde Park on Hudson out of the library and that was his choice though there were several others he had also checked out for good measure. I'm not a fan of Bill Murray, though my husband is. The performance he gave in that film has changed the way I regard his acting talents.

He was superb in the film portraying Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The film was excellent; restrained, sober while yet amusing in parts, and very believable. Its portrayal of people whose political and social standing showed them at the height of their dignified influence and power to be at one and the same time, insecure, maladept and hesitant like most ordinary people in some circumstances, was a masterful handling of the high and mighty seen through the lens of a probing intelligence.

Nice to know that Hollywood, despite its eye on the box office, satisfying the lowest common denominator, remains capable of producing a quality production whose serene restraint and quiet pokes to attract a small audience of discriminating taste could lead it to sacrifice the potential of profit in the greater interest of a truly artful presentation.