Yesterday's ravine walk was an exercise not without considerable effort. It will take a few days yet to tramp down the trails, since the last snowfalls, but the medium-range weather report assures us we're into a warming trend. It seemed 'warm' enough yesterday at minus-6C, but there was a stiff wind. Mind, the wind created its own spectacles, blowing down curtains of snow off the overloaded evergreens. That's a beautiful sight; snow-motion in slow-motion ... or so it seems.

We're conscious that we're walking on our usual trails representing treaded-down snowpacks elevating us quite a bit higher than we would normally be, without the accumulated snow. On the street one can barely see the houses for the depth of the snow banks.

And the view of our gardens bear no resemblance whatever to what we had been enjoying in the summer months. The gardens are a sea of plush, dazzling-white monotone. It's hard emotionally to credit those areas with their seasonal gifts of green and colourful plants and flowers whose texture and shades so delight us.

But we are on the downward trend of winter. The days will become gradually milder in temperature and we may begin to have fewer snowfalls as the months progress into April, when snow can still be expected, but not necessarily. And it's hard not to appreciate that we have incrementally longer days of light before twilight sets in and night falls so quickly.