It got as close to fun as it ever might, doing the food shopping early this morning. A damp, windy morning, albeit with an unusually high temperature, heading to a daytime high of 2C. The last thing I look at when we pull out of the driveway is the garden buried deep under a season's accumulation of snow. In some places the snow is banked up to my impressive height of five feet; mostly the snow cover has attained about four feet in height. It will take awhile to go. But then it'll take a while for spring to arrive, to begin with.

I was pulled out of garden-gloom this morning at the supermarket! There were annual bulbs for sale, A quick pick-me-up for any frustrated gardener and winter-weary shoppers. Just to see the brightly coloured floral labels is enough to quicken the senses. So another peony will join our garden, a box of Asiatic lilies, (the most beautiful of all lilies), two phlox shrubs, a giant dahlia and a few seed packets. I immediately put my creative imagination to work, planting them all in just the right place awaiting their presence. And I can hardly wait. But I'll have to.

Something else I've never seen before, packaged fresh thyme from Colombia. I've tons of dried leaf thyme and in the summer it's a breeze to grow your own, but this is different. I was planning to prepare an eggplant casserole for dinner tonight, and I knew I'd use the thyme in it. The casserole is  comprised of layers of sliced, quick-olive-oil-fried eggplant layered with tomato slices, sprinkled with oregano, and covered with grated mozzarella cheese, and over that a tomato sauce; repeated twice. I haven't done an eggplant casserole in ages.

Today is our 'day off', when we just do the shopping, and the rest of the day consists of whatever we feel like doing. At some juncture we always feel like heading out to the ravine for our daily prowl through the forest trails. This day it was a little earlier than usual. We had decided that since it was such an incredibly mild day that we'd trek out a little further than usual. In the snow yet again, as it happened. The snow not quite as pervasive as yesterday's; falling lightly. Its quality between flurries and a snowfall.

The footing on the trails was perfect, a replay of yesterday. Gone the slippery conditions, enabling all of us to stride ahead with full confidence. The milder temperature is opening up the creek again. We could see that dogs that had been looking fruitlessly for open water, slithering about on the ice and puzzling over the strange transition, had been in the small portion of the creek where the ice cover had melted; their tracks deep in the snow and coloured a light mud, as they sprang up the creek bank and back onto the trails.

We miss the sun but on the other hand, the snow does wonders for the landscape, etching it beautifully in white glitter. We'll miss that wonderful winter landscape once the snow begins its long melt and the trees begin to come alive again and we hear more birds' delightful spring songs as they celebrate the seasonal alteration, treating us with the spectacle of their joyous presence.