Not much of a question how we needed to allocate priorities yesterday. Not when the temperature even at mid-morning registered a balmy 20C. True, it was windy slightly beyond normal comfort. And it was humid as well, a sticky quality to the atmosphere. And the sky -- oh the sky was fairly crowded with those bruised-looking clouds we've become so familiar with of late.

All that besides, it was an alluring day beckoning us to wend our way outdoors and remain there for as long as we could. Mondays, by habit, is my house-cleaning day, hours and hours of dusting, mopping, washing floors, vacuuming. It wasn't hard to come up with a decision favouring priorities and out we set with Jackie and Jillie for a stroll through the forest trails in the ravine.

No jackets or sweaters for anyone finally, just little light halters for Jackie and Jillie. We'd had overnight rain again the night before and it showed. The hillside trails were slippery and a little extra care had to be taken not to slide beyond control. But the rain had hastened an eruption of new growth everywhere, a riotous celebration of a wide range of fresh greens greeted our eyes in all directions.

The sere, darkly monochromatic look of the forest had changed. And the fragrance, that heavenly fragrance of wet humus, the signature of a forest after a rain, engulfed us, bringing back vivid memories of so many places we had been to over the years that exuded that same familiar smell. It made us feel like hugging one another and we didn't need much of a nudge to do just that.

Just to ensure that we fully appreciated what nature had wrought, the sun came out now and again to fully illuminate the landscape we were traversing. And we saw the first of the Serviceberry trees in bloom, their little white blossoms brilliant in the sun.

On the forest plateau the floor of the forest was well steeped in large and fairly deep pools of rain. Many dogs coming through find those pools irresistible.

While we're happy enough to see the pools there and find it amusing to see other peoples' canine companions disporting themselves in the pools, we're just as satisfied that neither of our two little siblings have any interest in doing so themselves. Which is rather odd, given that poodles were originally bred as water- and hunting-dogs.

We came across evidence that the extremely moist atmosphere is encouraging the growth of fungi that certainly look colourful and ornamental to us. And the woodland violets are opening in greater numbers, now that their time has come to command notice as lovely little woodland wildflowers. They seem shy but it's the last thing they are; they grow aggressively in our garden as 'volunteer' visitors who mean to stay, making their way past the flowerbed boundaries, insouciantly setting themselves up in the lawns as well.

When we got back from our walk, we felt little inclination to enter the house and instead decided we'd do a little more gardening in celebration of such a wonderful day. My husband continued his task of the day before; this time filling the garden pots that we maintain at the back of the house, and a large urn standing at the top of the rock garden, on a pedestal.

I complemented his activity by continuing to fill the clay, ceramic and stone pots and urns with annuals. This time with 'fillers', smaller flowering plants like trailing petunias, lobelia and nepeta, along with one large calla lily and three of the dracaena that my husband had brought home on Sunday, for the centers of a few of the very large pots.

I planted marigolds and wax begonias in the garden beds, and cut back some of the hydrangea stalks, and it was simply glorious being out there, in the garden. As long as we worked in the backyard, Jackie and Jillie could be out there with us. When we moved to the front of the house they had the choice of staying indoors or remaining out in the back, but not in the front, since they run helter-skelter onto the road if anyone goes by.

After awhile I joined them in the house. And my purpose was to clean the house. I decided that, to save time, I would dispense this week with the dusting and started right off with dry-mopping the hardwood floors, then did the vacuuming, and finally washed the floors; laundry room, powder room, foyer, kitchen and breakfast room downstairs, and our bathroom upstairs. And it took no time at all, because it's the dusting that usually takes me the longest to complete.

Then I turned my attention to dinner. I'd planned to make a quiche to be served with spinach as a side dish, and mango for dessert. It was too early to bake the quiche before dinner, so I decided to make the pastry dough, set it into the pie dish, grate cheddar cheese over it, sprinkle chopped green onion over the cheese, scatter small bits of crisp bacon I'd done in the microwave, and refrigerate it all until I was ready, an hour before dinner, to beat four eggs, a half-cup of milk, a few drops of liquid pepper, salt and ground pepper together, pour it all into the pie crust and bake it for three-quarters of an hour.

There; done.