Our son in Vancouver told us he has already seen one fruit tree in the area in full bloom. And it won't be long before his backyard Japanese quince goes into full, magnificent flower. For us, in the nation's capital, winter's departure is still a long way off, although we do have days on occasion with a whiff of spring in the air, aided by full sun and what is for March, relatively balmy temperatures hovering around 3C degrees. With the gusting winds we've been having lately and unusually overcast skies, even 2C degrees can seem icy.

The interior of our house warms up comfortably with wide blue skies and the effect of the penetrating sun, but under cloudy skies there's that wintry feeling that impacts the house. Which is why on winter Sundays we usually have a hearty, thick vegetable-pulse soup accompanying dinner. I've returned to using Jalapeno peppers in soups and stews, and yesterday used an especially large one to chop up with the garlic clove and onion to simmer in olive oil before adding lentils, tomatoes, zucchini and carrots. Because I used that large pepper, I abstained from using Masala but didn't find the finished product at all hot.

Before heading off to the ravine for our daily walk on its forest trails, I put a red lentil/vegetable soup on to cook, anticipating its savoury fragrance wafting through the  house on our return. Truth to tell, I enjoy the smell emanating from the soup on such cold days just as much as sitting down to eat it at dinnertime. It's a formula: winter/cold/robust soup that I've followed for years.

The last three days trekking through the ravine has treated us to cold, and semi-overcast conditions with ample wind to amplify the effect of the cold. Add to that, the hillside trails are either ice-covered or the snowpack not yet turned to ice but denaturized to that pebbly-pearly effect that makes it a challenge to ascend and descend. But plenty yet left to admire in the contrast between the snow-packed forest floor and the trees awaiting spring's release of sap from the ground to uppermost branches in the forest canopy, and the long-awaited resulting green sheen of new foliage -- and that intermediate period when everything has melted and the ground is deep in mucky clay and we're sliding on that, not ice.