Now, when we walk downstairs from our bedroom for breakfast in the morning, it's an entirely different sight that greets our hungry eyes each morning. Early spring had the garden looking utterly forlorn, pathetic in its palette of greys. What a difference a few weeks makes; there is the glowing green background of vegetation returned to life, and little splashes of bright colour everywhere from blossoming trees and annual bedding plants.

Only the weeping mulberry is late leafing in, but that's its way. The weeping flowering pea has tiny yellow flowers all over its crown, which will turn into what else? (inedible) peas! The magnolia tree on its opposite side still flaunts its gorgeous huge pink blossoms, and right next to it the two Sargenti crabapple trees are bursting with white blossoms.

And then of course, the garden urns and pots here and there as accents to delight our aesthetic view, planted with an assortment of annual flowers that we love best, starting with begonias, lobelia, wave petunias, million bells and canna lilies to name but a few. Zinnias, dahlias and marigolds and strawflowers have been planted in the garden beds, the tulips are still in bloom and the alliums have now opened their flower heads. There is much to look at and admire and we do more than our share of both.

I baked a strawberry, blueberry, blackberry raspberry-combination fruit pie in the morning, for dessert for our evening meal. Using my favourite pie dish, a pottery dish that our younger son made for me almost twenty years ago. It has been a workhorse for all of those years. And the pie? Perfect as a spring-berry combination. Not from fresh fruit, but a frozen pouch from the supermarket, mixed with 2/3 cup of granulated sugar, 2 heaping tbsp. of corn starch, a quarter-cup cranberry juice and simmered until the fruit is softened and the liquid thick and glisteningly transparent. I add two tbsp.of butter, stir and cool.

The crust is just as simple to make. One-and-a-half cups of all-purpose flour, 1/4 tsp.salt, 2/3 cup Crisco worked into the flour with a pastry blender, 2 tsp.lemon juice, and enough cold water to make a stiff dough that can be kneaded into a ball, halved, and two crusts rolled out to hold the berry filling. It bakes at 375 F for about a half-hour and voila! Dessert!

And then off we went with Jackie and Jillie to the ravine for our daily walk through the forest trails on the most perfect of spring/summer days, a high temperature of 22C, light wind, and a beaming sun casting its rays out of a blue ocean of sky. The wildflowers are still in bloom; not the trout lilies, but some trilliums are left, and to our surprise, the coltsfoot. Jack-in-the-Pulpit has spread to other areas, but the place we first saw them decades earlier is now clear of them; one of nature's little mysteries. Foamflower is in brilliant flower, both in the forest and where I transplanted bits of it into one of my garden beds years ago.

The forest floor has finally absorbed all of the standing rainwater that has steeped it in the look of a swamp for weeks. And now the bracken is making headway, ferns coming up nicely wherever we look. And all's right with our world.