When they were out first thing yesterday morning in the backyard, Jackie and Jillie were suddenly surprised to hear a dog barking at them from behind the side-fence of our next door neighbours who have never in the 27 years we've known them, had companion pets. The paterfamilias of the household would never permit his two children when they were young to have a household pet. Now that they're grown and away from the house on their own, it's their choice. Our neighbour, averse for as long as we've known him, to any kind of neighbourly contact with any of his neighbours has since his retirement become even more of a hermit. He is congenitally social-averse.

His wife, on the other hand, is the personality-reverse, an outgoing, friendly woman who has, over the years, obediently done her husband's bidding, fearful of angering him. For the past three years we've seen the gradual disintegration of their backyard fence behind which is a cedar hedge planted by his back-yard neighbour on the street behind ours. The fence has fallen into decay, kept in place only by the steadying effect of the cedar hedge. It's an eyesore, but one that doesn't appear to bother our neighbour whose wife, before his retirement, made a credible stab at maintaining a garden, which he took pains to destroy, and it is now abandoned.

It was through that wreck of a fence that the little Sheltie that lives on the street behind ours whose house backs onto our neighbour's, made its way through boredom or curiosity or both into our neighbour's backyard. After conveying his barking story to our two, the lovely little Sheltie vacated our neighbour's backyard to make her way back into her own -- just as well, since the sight of her contaminating his backyard would have made our neighbour furious.

Just another little neighbourhood adventure. Glad to say, an unusual one, certainly not reflective of the neighbourly attitude of most of the people who inhabit the street we live on.

After which episode of no great moment, we made our way up the street to access the ravined forest for our daily walk with our two little dogs. This most unusual February has taken a decided turn toward spring -- possibly short-lived, but while we're exposed to it, we're also enjoying its rarity. The temperature above freezing under a vast blue sky with the sun pouring its warmth and light through the atmosphere.

As though Jackie and Jillie require any enticement to cavort off the trails onto the snow-packed forest floor, activities their young years and mischievous temperament lend themselves to nicely. The top layer of snow has undergone its usual transformation on the cusp of early spring, by becoming pearly on top, giving in readily to our boot steps, but not to an uncomfortable depth.

Chickadees and nuthatches, woodpeckers and cardinals, and squirrels are all out, busily preparing themselves for spring.

At the culmination of winter it always seems, looking back at the previous few months, that it's been a difficult winter to get through. Made all the more passable for us, however, with our good fortune in living adjacent to our beloved wooded ravine.

Still, it's precipitate to think that spring is definitely close to introducing itself at this juncture. We have yet a good solid month of snowfall potential throughout the coming month of March, always an uncertain transition month.