Last night Irving called me out to the backyard while we were preparing to go up to bed, around midnight. He wanted me to have a look at the moon, closer in its current trajectory working toward a 'pink' moon, and lower in the sky, so that it appears larger and brighter. I always grab my camera for these occasions since you never know what kind of photo might come out of the sky.

We're more accustomed to seeing those rare and beautiful 'harvest' moons in the fall, a similar type of projection of the moon in its ellipse around the Earth.  When the moon seems to hang more intimately close to our planet and appears eye-googlingly huge. It's always a little exciting to see these anomalies that imbue your spirit with a fillip of pleasure.

We (involuntarily) exchanged yesterday's sun for a heavily overcast sky today. But we don't place orders on the type of weather we get, we just get it.  Still, it's almost as mild today as it was yesterday, though the absence of sun does make a difference. To yesterday's high of 15C, today's is 13C, not that much difference, quite balmy in fact.

Tulips, emerging  hostas, anemones, snakehead fritallaria

But from the early morning forward rain was imminent, and took little time in arriving. Light rain for the most part, but thunderstorms also on the horizon. After breakfast the puppies and I took a little stroll around our small backyard garden. The tulips are just on the verge of opening. Hostas are beginning to come up. Clematis vines are sending up a few sprigs of green here and there. The lilies and irises are going full blaze. And the roses are leafing out nicely. Our little Japanese maple looks pretty healthy this year. Usually there's some puzzling die-back in the spring, but there's no sign of that yet.

 The tiny blue-flowered scilla have a fairly long bloom and they've naturalized, appearing in places where they never had been before. One of the saxifrages is in bloom, up at the top of the rock garden at the side of the house, and the periwinkle growing lushly there are now beginning to flower.

Soon afterward it began to  rain and it looked as though we'd be out of a ravine hike today. At the usual time of the afternoon when we tend to prepare to take ourselves out to the ravine, the sun appeared briefly. Jackie and Jillie got a little excited and let us know they were ready to get out on the forest trails. Telepathically, of course. I'd read an article yesterday about 'dog telepathy', where people claim to be dog psychics capable of communicating with dogs, and relaying those communications to the dogs' humans ... for a fee. And here we assumed that dogs and people picked up from one another communicative signals from body language. verbal recognition and other repetitive hints, all along.

Sure enough, there was a brief lull in the rain and it looked from a cursory glance at the sky, as though we could make a break for the ravine ... wearing rain jackets of course, and taking the puppies' along with us. Each day makes such a huge difference now in the development of green in the forest; tiny leaves become larger, more appear where there hadn't been any the day before. Everything is accelerating.

We're supposed to go down to -3C, with a wind-chill factor of -13C tonight. Well, we'll put on the fireplace after dinner and get nice and cozy. This is the typical Ottawa spring; one warm day followed by a cool, rainy, windy day. 

We decided for a shorter circuit than usual given the darkening sky. About 20 minutes into our circuit I began to feel drops falling on my head, heavy enough to trickle down through my hair. Not many, though, just lazily falling now and again. We picked up our pace and soon, while on the ridge, heard thunder rolling through. Good reason to walk a little faster.

It was so pleasant being out, though. The air felt fresh and clean and striding along the trails always gives us a sensation of freedom. Someone in shorts and a tight top passed us, a runner, but we saw no one else while we were out. Another roll of thunder and then there was rain. Still light, but steady. By the time we exited the ravine and walked through to the street, the pavement was dark with rain.

When we reached our house the rain was on the cusp of becoming a serious downpour, the clouds above were darkly bruised, and yet it appeared as though the thunderstorm had bypassed us. Though there will be ample opportunity for other thunderstorms to hit their mark since they're forecast for the evening and the night time hours. More magic.