We continue to zig-zag between sunny days with milder temperatures and full-rain, chilly days, but that's spring! Yesterday the sky was unremittingly blue, a few scant, small clouds appearing now and again, but nothing interrupted the blaze of the sun.

And last night, a raging series of thunderstorms interrupted our sleep. Just as well we revel in the sound and fury of thunderstorms, and our two little dogs only barked tentatively once in alarm, at a very close clap.

Nature loves drama and she's delivering plenty of it to us. But aside from the really significant events, it's the small, incremental surprises that delight us. Coming across the lush, bright green, for example, of a really healthy grouping of mosses colonizing a dessicated old tree trunk.

Or the intricate scallops of shelf-fungus making its languorous home on another fallen tree trunk.

The appearance of coltsfoot in bloom and spreading amazingly. The overnight lofting of the foliage of soon-to-flower trout lilies. And my anxiety to see whether in my garden the trout lilies I had transplanted from the ravine will  flourish. Along with the rare (in our area) white trilliums which we had encountered in a sizeable patch on the slope of one of the hills where there are no trails, and of which I'd taken a small sampling.

And the woodland shrubs like honeysuckle in full robust foliage outburst, with more, much more to follow. The fuzz appearing on the stalks of sumacs. The peek-a-boo presence of slight green on dogwood. We never know, when we venture out daily for our ravine walks, what we'll next come across, but we welcome all of it.