Weather forecasts keep leaving us in the dark. Both figuratively and literally. After days of freezing rain, yesterday afternoon was to have brought us plain rain, but what did eventuate was snow. Wet snow to be sure, but snow all the same. When we returned from yesterday afternoon's ravine walk with our two little dogs, it was clear enough that snow was falling.

The tempo increased as the afternoon wore on, but since the temperature also rose slightly above freezing, the snow swiftly melted, so it was awfully damp out. By the time we awoke this morning and came down for breakfast a light layer of snow replaced the ice-cover of the morning before. It too soon melted, and we took heart that the forecast for this day was for afternoon sun.

It seemed hardly probable that there would be clearing, observing the low, dark cloud cover, but the professional weather-forecasters were telling us the sun would be returning, so who are we to dispute that? And, in fact, by late afternoon there was the sun, burning through the cloud cover, lighting up our world and promising improved weather conditions before long....

We ventured out late morning today, with Jackie and Jillie into the forest. The trails that were still frozen and slippery yesterday, covered with knocked-down ice from the trees thanks to the wind, today were in melt-formation. The creek far below as we descended into the forest was swiftly running from the collected moisture of days in the form of freezing rain, ordinary rain, melting snow and the now-vanishing snowpack.

So, finally, the snow everywhere packed solid interspersed with layers of ice is seriously in melt-mode. Great swathes of the forest floor are being released. Ferns and mosses poking through, bright green now that they're freed from the snowpack. Tree seedlings that had been buried are now released from their prison and prepared to put on some girth over the succeeding spring and summer months.

The trees that had fallen the day before, thanks to the hurtling force of the wind and the weight of the accumulated ice, had been pulled aside off the trails and/or sliced through by someone's handy enterprise with a saw. Even more detritus has landed on the forest floor, the result of wind gusts that continue to blast through some corridors of the forest trails.

Now, finally, it's clear that despite the lingering cold, snow, sleet and wind, spring is finally exerting her right to be present and assertive against the reluctance of winter to say its final adieus this winter of 2017/18, but it is, and we're grateful!