Days like these are irresistible. The weather is so influential in our lives, no matter where you live. Following winter's departure, spring is the most heralded season of all, our eyes hunger for colour, our ears for birdsong, our sensory perceptions of the feel of the sun on our faces, the wind caressing our heads, the fragrance of new growth exciting us, the growing warmth comforting us.

Oh, yes, the growing warmth. Change of bed covers. You don't need that winter duvet anymore, cancel it until next winter. Replace it with one that's far more suitable for warm days and cool nights. I did that today. It's a little complicated. I did take away the winter duvet, but we've got a much lighter spring duvet and that's the replacement. Irving grumbles when the light, airy and warm winter duvet is gone. It's the effect of being in our mid-80s and being more sensitive to the affect of extreme temperatures.

Flannel sheets and pillow cases now in transition toward cotton. And that heavy bedspread over everything, that too no longer needed. Oh, and the mattress cover, that changed too. Also the under-pillowslips changed as well. Many years ago we'd bought a Battenburg-style bedspread, and I haven't used it in at least twenty years. It looks just fine. Jillie has already given it her stamp of approval.

Earlier, in the morning, when I went out to the backyard with Jackie and Jillie I was loathe to return into the house. It was just so warm and inviting to stay out there. Already there are signs of persistent little weeds returning to life, even as the tulips are beginning to stir, the miniature irises in bloom and so too the crocuses. The gardens look starved of form, texture and colour, emptied visually of all their inhabitants still sheltering below the surface of the soil.

Then I decided to have a look at the compost bins. Sure enough they've been cooking away for quite a long time. The interiors are not yet entirely thawed. But I hauled the wheelbarrow out of the small garden shed and the garden spade with the handle especially for my height, and while Jackie and Jillie were poking about here and there, alert to the swift entry-and-exit of neighbourhood squirrels, I gradually shovelled out half a wheelbarrow-full of compost. Then I left it to resume my indoor activities. Today is laundry day.

In the early afternoon when Irving came back upstairs from his workshop where he is finishing up the last of the stained glass windows he had assigned for himself, we prepared to get ourselves out to the ravine on this glorious midspring day. Not much preparation any longer. After all, it was 18C, downright tropical-balmy. Still, boots for all of us.

There remain stubborn areas of the forest trails that have not yet shed their ice which makes the footing fairly tricky there until such time as the iced trails narrow sufficiently that we can bypass them safely. We're seeing more squirrels busy on the forest floor, though vegetation is absent. We were on the lookout for the presence of Mourning Cloaks, the earliest of the butterflies that we see, but none yet. Mostly chickadees, although we've now heard Song Sparrows and Goldfinches singing and twittering away.

 

The sky was completely blue but for double contrails streaking across it. There was the loud rumble of a helicopter overhead, and then quickly out of sight and sound. We saw one tree full of nascent leaf buds, I thought it was an ash and Irving was certain it was an elm; in either case it was one of either, which escaped either the ravages of the Dutch Elm or Emerald ash borer.

Although there were not many people about, there was a handful of bicyclists, and of young women walking singly through the trails, unlike yesterday when it was mostly younger children that we came across playing down by the creek. The city has transitioned from red-phase lockdown, to graver grey-phase, and is finally now in a four-week stay-at-home order. Sobering, at the very least.