Foiled. Again and again. It's perplexing and somewhat irritating, but it seems that Jackie and Jillie have no wish to be exploited by me in my quest to make exhibitionists of them. Every time, each and every time they hear the camera 'click' as I turn it on, they stop whatever they're doing. In this case as in so many others, I've tried again and again to capture them on a short video while they're tussling with one another.

Their rambunctious ploys, as they contest one another for agility, endurance, perseverance in their physical bouts are hilarious, and we love to watch them. But tape them in action? Forget it. We think they're so deeply invested in what they're doing they'll fail to notice our attempts to record their acrobatic exploits, and we're wrong, every time. Sometimes it's as though they feel 'guilty' about taking such pleasure in physically challenging one another to these duels, and stop lest they be chastised, but that has never happened; we feel giddily appreciative of these shows.

Guess as much as they like to be around us and to interfere and intervene whenever we're up to anything, they guard their privacy, or at least their right to permit us to be entertained as long as they agree themselves. But we are winning the battle on another front. The raccoons -- and we think now that there are about four different ones, perhaps of the same family -- come around any time now during the day and night, and Jackie and Jillie are so accustomed to seeing them on the porch they simply watch now, foregoing all the sturm and drung of their previous dramatic opposition.

In the ravine yesterday they indulged in a little more exploration than the steep banks of snow in the winter permitted them. They roamed about happily in the newly-released forest floor, following up scents and rambling here and there. Because it was such a beautiful day we spent longer than usual on an elongated circuit, choosing another trail we have been neglecting for a while. It's quite deep in that part of the ravine and tends to be colder and hold the cold longer than elsewhere.

It is also where, in our first spring going through the ravine we first saw a surprise eruption of Jack-in-the-Pulpits.  For many years this was the only area in the ravine that we found the Jacks. But just as the preponderance of trilliums bloom carmine in the ravine on its clay soil bed, we now know where to look on certain hillsides for random white-blooming trillium patches. And the Jacks have, in the last ten years, begun appearing elsewhere astride the forest trails in the ravine.

Much, much too soon for any of our favourite spring flowers to appear, however. There is one elusive spring-time flower that we saw on several successive years -- only one of the species and only in one particular spot -- a blue-eyed grass with its exquisite, delicate tiny flowerhead resembling an iris, but it has since failed to reappear and we've not found another one yet.

I did find one once about twenty years ago in the backyard, and foolishly dug it up to transplant it to a garden bed rather than leave it among the ordinary grass, but it seems they don't appreciate being interfered with and I never saw it again, either. I'll be on tenterhooks to see whether the trout lilies that I had transplanted from the ravine last spring return to flower in a certain part of our backyard at the foot of the rock garden where I felt the terrain was similar to where we find them in great wide swathes in the ravine.

The forest floor is now being revealed at an accelerated rate, so it won't be long before we recognize the appearance of quite a few woodland plants. The first of which always seem to be patches of coltsfoot. That's one plant I never did transplant to our garden; too alike dandelion. Despite which some unsolicited 'volunteers' turned up regardless in several places, so I just let them be.

Now that the snow is so quickly receding, it continues to uncover little surprises, like old fallen branches that have nurtured interesting crops of fungi appearing fresh and perky despite their long winter under a blanket of snow and ice.