What a welcome change, to find the house finally flooded with light, first thing this morning. The dull, drab weather we've had the last few days with plenty of rain, has its purpose of course; it all helps to disperse the snow still sticking around in thick icy layers in the front of the house and the backyard, though there are areas of the gardens which have been freed of their snow cap.

Amazingly -- though I've been through this countless times and am still amazed -- as soon as the snow recedes, bulbs begin to poke their green-and-red shoots out of the soil. I can see lilies and irises, bellflowers and black-eyed Susans already poking their greenery out of the newly released soil, and that impresses and gladdens me incredibly. And of course the various heucheras, wherever they're freed of snow, look fairly fresh and perky, prepared for another growing season.

Many of the rose bushes now sport tiny red buds, as well as some of the hydrangeas. The two magnolias, one in the back, the older and larger one out front, will soon begin to swell the buds that have been present all winter, as will the rhododendrons and the tree peonies. It excites me so!

Last spring I transplanted a few trout lilies and white trilliums into the gardens from the forest floor of the ravine nearby. I'm curious to see whether they'll have taken. The foamflowers that I had transplanted about fifteen years ago have grown into a substantial colony and I really appreciate their appearance; in fact, they're already in evidence, fairly fresh looking, freed from the snow cover. The purple trilliums transplanted at the same time from the ravine continue to thrive. There won't be any evidence for awhile yet of the Jack-in-the-Pulpits I'd also transplanted all those years ago, but when they do come up they're gigantic.

My late brother, a professor of botany at Dalhousie University in Halifax, used to boast that his Jacks were even larger than ours, but I didn't believe him. If ours had been his garden, though he enjoyed the colour and texture of all the different non-native decorative shrubs and plants in our garden, he would have replaced them all with native species, as he did with his own garden to his huge satisfaction.

It's much, much too early to expect any dramatic showing of anything yet, but last fall I had planted some corms with a photograph of 'blue poppies' on the container, though they weren't poppies and I just can't recall what they are. So it will be a surprise when they do pop up, once the snow cover finally disappears.