Our neighbour whose house sits beside the trail leading into the ravine stopped us yesterday afternoon while she was out tending to her garden. She was aggrieved that another woman who takes her two large dogs regularly into the ravine tends to park her large truck right in front of our neighbour's house to access the ravine as she lives in another community, and when she starts it up, the heat from the exhaust burns the very front of her lawn in two brown patches.

She's spoken to the woman who we know well, to ask her to park a few yards further up where the grass, not on her property, can be sacrificed because it's public property, and she was taken aback by what she perceived to be the other woman's disgruntled attitude. She was complaining to us about the woman's rude manner. I explained she just happens to be brusque but once you know her you realize she isn't deliberately rude; still, our neighbour was offended and obviously held a grudge.

But our conversation soon turned much more pleasant when we noticed that somehow, and from somewhere, a lovely cultivated crabapple tree had materialized over a few years right at the edge of the forest beside her home, and it was in full, glowing pink bloom. Wind can carry the seeds of cultivated stock; they can be carried along in the fur of animals, the droppings of birds, and eventually some of them germinates. You see a plant or a tree that doesn't 'belong' in the forest in the sense that it's a cultivated variety. Directly beside this little tree proudly showing off its blooms (for the first time), stands a small wild black cherry tree whose presence we were aware of, and it too was in bloom, since both, where they stand, have the benefit of full sun.

Our neighbour's little dog, Newton, played about a bit with Jackie and Jillie, and our neighbour accompanied us for a short bit as we continued on our way, and we spoke of how surprising it was that the forest was regenerating itself with a multitude of new poplars and opportunistic thimbleberry bushes, after the disaster of the hillside slumping a few years back, taking old mature trees, both deciduous and conifers with it, down into the ravine.

Then we set off down the first long hill into the ravine on a lovely day where the temperature soared to 22C, with little wind, and a clear sky hosting a brilliant sun. It's cooler in the forest, of course, thanks to the sun-muting effect of a now-fully-leafed canopy. It seems just as the foliage began swiftly erupting from naked branches of the forest trees, the underground vegetation struggled to emerge, to match the trees in an effort to re-populate the forest floor, and it was doing a fairly good job of it.

There are still trilliums left in bloom and they're mostly the carmine-petalled trilliums. I made a little side-trip down one of the hills to see whether a small patch of white trilliums I know to grow there had matured, and they had, very nicely indeed. The patch doesn't seem to be expanding, so it remains a rare volunteer of white, hiding its presence -- whereas the infinitely more numerous red ones pop up everywhere.

As we ambled along, it was clear that overnight, as always seems to happen, the foamflower had produced its delicate flower stalks and waving in the slight breeze were the dainty white compound flowers whose appearance give this wildflower its name. Just incidentally, because I had, many years ago, transplanted a few of the foamflower as a ground cover in one part of a garden bed where they flourished beyond my expectation, those in our garden are also now in bloom.

Because it was such a beautiful day, quite a number of people appear to have found inspiration to get out into the forest for a walk along the trails. We came across large shaggy Charley walking along with her companion, beginning to pant from being overheated, unaccustomed as we all have been to warm weather after a too-long, too-cold, too-snowy winter. And as it happens when you haven't seen an acquaintance in a long time, we stood together companionably, and talked with Dan, while the three dogs patiently waited nearby for us to remember why it was that we made the ravine our destination, to begin with.

There is a very old, large wild apple tree that produces countless apples in the fall, and it too was in full bloom. The forest is alive with regeneration, its vegetation, large and small, calling out for notice and admiration and we're quick to deliver both.