Our most frequent visitors filling up with the crackers, bread cubes and other snacks my husband still puts out religiously on our front porch, long after we used up the last of the big bag of peanuts, are the neighbourhood squirrels. The 'neighbourhood', of course, includes the nearby forest and ravine. We years ago realized that some squirrels we recognized from close proximity when we used to put out peanuts in various places throughout the forest adjacent the trails, would also saunter out of the forest and over to our porch.

Some of them we knew well many years ago, readily recognizable because they had identifying features; several had lost their tails, likely when they were still in the nest, when on occasion baby squirrels' tails become knotted together.

This morning we were greeted by the sight of a lovely, obviously very healthy grey squirrel that often comes around, though not as frequently as a number of black squirrels and red squirrels do. Later, black squirrels came around, and one in particular, rotund and small in a neat little bundle of black fur, that Jackie seems to single out for barking abuse. We see crows on occasion, cardinals and chickadees often, and sometimes song sparrows come along.

Night-time visits are reserved for rabbits, skunks and raccoons.

This morning I asked my husband if he'd like me to bake date-walnut muffins, and though he considered the offer briefly, he responded with a grin that he'd prefer butter tarts. We both have a fondness for butter tarts. So I decided that's what I would bake, and made up the pastry dough, rolled it out, cut circles, fitted them into a large-size cupcake pan that I first placed paper forms in, and then I broke walnuts into each waiting pastry shell, topped the walnuts with raisins, and mixed up the filling. So, not quite butter tarts, but raisin-walnut tarts.

When my kitchen work was finished for the time being and my husband had finished working downstairs in his workshop on completing a detailed stained glass window, we decided it was time to accompany Jackie and Jillie to the ravine. They knew it was time, too. They were excited, rushing about expectantly, and promising that we'd all enjoy a good brisk walk through the forest trails, even though it was extremely overcast and very windy today.

There's still plenty of ice and snow left to melt on the trails, but for the most part the hillsides are now free of both. So everything looks pretty drab, awaiting the fresh green of new vegetation growth on the forest floor and tender foliage bedecking deciduous trees, though that'll be a while yet in coming. Despite that it's a Friday we came across a fair number of other people out on the trails, and everyone was in good humour, happy to be there. People offered others a wide separation as they passed, and had a pleasant remark to exchange.

For the most part, though, the trails were occupied briefly as we passed, only by us. At one point my husband spotted a rubber cleat hanging from a tree branch where someone finding it on the forest floor as the melting snow revealed its presence, had hung it. I knew it wasn't one of mine, still missing, because it had a double strap at the back and mine had a single one, and besides it was too large. My husband took possession of it, because we knew whose it was.

By an odd coincidence, a woman whom we know slightly had, last week, picked one up that I had just then lost and doubled back to search for. She surrendered it to me, and as she did, mentioned she had been looking for one her husband had lost the day before. So, we took a series of trails that would bring us past their house in a neighbourhood some distance from our own. My husband briefly exited the ravine to go around to their front door, rang the bell and presented the lost cleat, to her delight.