Our forested ravine is drenched, as full of standing water in pools on the forest floor now as it was much earlier in the spring when snow and ice were in full melt-mode. It's the frequency and heaviness of the rain events that have visited us mostly during the night, and very welcome.

Back then, in early spring, the difference was it was cool and we wore jackets and there were no mosquitoes to pester us. Now, however, it's warm, the air is saturated with moisture and mosquitoes are prevalent.

Stop for a moment to speak with someone, to briefly pause to take a photograph, to stand still for a moment then crouch down to see at closer range something interesting erupting on the forest floor and !wham! you're a target for hordes of unseen but hovering-nearby pests.

Not only us, of course, for any warm-blooded creature, including Jackie and Jillie.

But we're also in an all-encompassing sea of green now, variant shades of the verdant forest melding into one shimmering green glow, and it's positively entrancing. Now, the density of the forest canopy is at its height. And above its height we hear the shrill whistling cry of hawks circling above, searching out prey with their laser-like vision.

We hear the nutty little rubber-ducky call of nuthatches accompanying the far more numerous chickadees flying in little loops through the trees. And we see that the flycatcher that has made its nest under one of the bridges fording Bilberry Creek has returned once again this year to nest.

The Hawthorns are joining the wild apple trees in setting out their springtime blooms. As are the Dogwood. And the rain has coaxed fungi to begin their appearance on rotting tree trunks, ornamenting them with beautifully shaped and coloured fungal growths. And the Lily-of-the-Valley is finally flowering in their colonizing habit around tree trunks, their bright little white bells catching the light.

False Solomon's Seal has begun to put out its floral spray that will become bright red berries, just as the Red Baneberry has before it, now well on its way to forming the beginning of tiny spheres from each blossom that will in mid-summer become a truly bright red berry, lovely to look at but deadly to consume.