Yesterday was one of those truly morose weather days, so bleak and overcast that the interior of the house was dark all day, necessitating the use of household interior lights during broad daylight that was in fact, broadly twilight. Rain just didn't stop but for brief and occasional cessation and then it would start up again.

Last night I wasn't certain whether it was thunder, an airplane flying low and close by and simply not moving, or high winds blasting through the sky. From what greeted us today, when even the microclimate of our backyard which is usually sheltered from extremes, was being blasted by wind. Even though the temperature was moderate, just hovering on freezing, the wind whipping the air about made it seem infinitely colder.

In the ravine, pooled water on the forest floor had overnight attained a glazing of ice. And the trees were being shoved around by roaring wind ripping through the atmosphere. When that happens and trees are close together, they clack as the wind moves the trunks closer, to briefly touch whenever a gust thrusts them against one another.

Still, this morning's sky was clear blue with occasional wisps of clouds, the sun brightening the landscape below as we forged our way through the forest trails. Mostly the trails still retain the stiff depth of frost they had obtained weeks ago when we had snow, not rain day after day. The snow is now disappeared but it shouldn't be long before it's back for good and the winter's accumulation begins.

The wind kept roaring and moaning through the canopy, not quite locomotive-loud, but bellowing sufficiently that you couldn't ignore it. It was the wind that had knocked branches down off trees where they were still hanging on though they were long dead. And we stopped to regard the sight of a small birdsnest that had been dislodged from its perch on a tree.

We'd gone out a little early for our walk because we had several errands to run, one of which was a bone density test at a nearby laboratory, and the other was to renew our passports for another five years. Jackie and Jillie know when we intend to leave them at home alone. Yesterday when we left them to do the grocery shopping they begged to be taken with. Today they only reacted on our return, and then it was as though ten years had passed since we last saw one another.