Recalcitrant spring has no conscience. That's the impression we  can no longer evade. After all, it's May, when flowers are expected to celebrate their release from the ice-bound soil after the tedious winter months. They're doing their best. It's nature's reluctant spring that's the culprit, deigning not to cooperate.

The grape hyacinths are up, decidedly; they're doughty little warriors, taking on these cold temperatures, high winds and incessant rain. Rain, that's the major concern at the moment; far too much of it. So too the pulmonaria and the Bergenia.

It's not only the garden that's drowning, but areas all over Canada have been steeped in muddy floods calling for emergency responses and the evacuation of people from their homes.What could possibly be more wrenching for people than to have to abandon their comfortable existence, leave the houses that provide them with shelter, with the conveniences of life in the modern era, with the comfort of being in your own home. King there no longer; nature has decided that a show of Queenly sovereign entitlements is due, just to teach us our place.

We managed to get out yesterday in a break in these never-ending rain events, so of course it was extremely muddy underfoot. Water laying about in great puddles, quite transforming the normal look of the forest floor; the trees reflecting on the pools lying about them and we imagine the struggle of their roots not to drown in the excess.

On higher ground where slopes on either side of the trail lead down into the ravine it tends to be drier and that's where under these circumstances, hiking is preferable, but it's impossible to entirely avoid the drenched areas since they're everywhere.

We had slipped our puppies' raincoats into our rainjacket pockets before we set out on our daily walk. Before too long we came across light showers, turning slightly heavier before once again subsiding. Usually when there's a window between rain events and we slip out to take advantage of it, we can return back home after an hour or so before the rain begins again in earnest.

Toward the end of our circuit yesterday we looked up at the hillside behind our street that has been the cause of forcing people to evacuate their homes and could see that further erosion through large slumps has occurred. The temporary orange fencing that was put up by the municipality to keep people away from the trail behind the street has now itself slumped down the hill as additional erosion occurs in response to the unending rain.

It became even colder overnight as the temperature dipped to freezing. Consequently, light rain events on an already saturated atmosphere and landscape turned to snow flurries. And it was snow flurries that greeted us first thing this morning.

May? Spring? Flowers? Eventually.