Our weather patterns are beginning their seasonal shift. We've encountered a series of mild days, some sun and plenty of overcast. Yesterday morning started out with a wild rainburst and then the sky cleared, enabling us to get out into the ravine. This morning began with the house interior illuminated by a spring sun with an altered position in the sky, making it more brilliant and certainly warmer. That was followed by rainfall, so we haven't been out as yet for our daily trail walk in the forest.

The rain is helping the sun melt our snowpack, a considerable, albeit not unusually large one for this area. Snow is melting off rooftops and swishing down the eavestroughs and the sound is continual. In turn the running snowmelt contributes, when it reaches ground level, to the snow melt on the ground. Our driveway is now completely cleared of snow. In the backyard the snow that had covered sheets of ice on the pathways has melted, once again revealing those ice sheets from previous episodes this winter of freeze-and-thaws.

During yesterday's ravine walk we could see the creek in the ravine is swelling, whatever ice that had accumulated on it now gone, the water swirling downstream steadily, and woe betide any small creature caught in it.

We came across Suzanne walking little Munchkin, a long-haired miniature daschund. Munchkin isn't her dog, but she likes to walk other peoples' dogs, particularly those of close neighbours. Suzanne's own dog Della, died about fifteen years ago and since then she has taken to walking Munchkin and occasionally other dogs. She had walked Munchkin's predecessor, also now long gone.

Jackie and Jillie become effervescent with their greetings when they see a little fellow like Munchkin. They're certainly not shy, but Munchkin has a retiring personality. She's a lot more courageous now, however, than she was as a puppy, when she hid in the presence of those she wasn't completely familiar with.