The days and weeks and months pass so quickly...  Is this a factor of age? If so, I should add that the years have passed all too quickly. And though we can recall them to memory, they're gone, lived, now firmly encased in our deepest treasured memory files. So, it's Friday again. So soon! Seems it was just Friday yesterday. That's what crossed my mind yesterday when I was amazed to realize it was Thursday already. Where did Wednesday, Tuesday and Monday go? Oh yes, momentarily forgot; that deep memory bank.

So Friday calls for, among other things, a session of baking. When we came downstairs this morning after sleeping in late, the sight that greeted us glancing out the front door bore no resemblance to what startled our unready gaze yesterday morning; an inch of newfallen snow. This morning everything was green, bright green under a warm sun. There was a little black squirrel on the porch, and then another, and one chased the other away. Tch!

When I took Jackie and Jillie out to the backyard after breakfast my goal was as always to look around and see what's new. And I saw to my amazement, a snakehead fritillaria where none should have been. They were originally planted many years ago in the rock garden. And while the rock garden snakeheads haven't yet bloomed, there was one in bloom in the garden in front of the deck.

Blooming right beside a group of tulips which themselves haven't yet bloomed. And I've no idea whatever where that plant came from. But glad to see it, anyway. And then, close by it, there was an old stalwart, a tiny group of anemones that return every spring. It's wonderful to see old friends coming back to say hello.

I decided to bake cupcakes for a change. Seems I've run out of giant cupcake papers, so I had to make do with extra large ones, and they worked very well. I just popped them into the 'cups' of a cupcake tray of six, and they expanded, and turned out well. The cake batter filled the bottoms, then spread to the sides and the papers had no trouble at all containing everything. They baked just fine. Irving squeezes the lime for me, to get all the juice out of it, and I grate the peel to produce that fresh lime taste in these cupcakes. Lime-coconut; cupcakes so light they could almost float.

I've been saving coffee grounds for a few weeks, and decided since I had a full container, to pop out to the garden and tuck the grounds around the pink and the blue hydrangeas. It's too soon, of course, there's nothing yet to be seen there, but evidently the coffee grounds are recommended for the production of more colourful, larger hydrangeas in flower. 

In mid-afternoon, under a blue, blue sky and blazing sun we set off for the ravine. Warm enough, we needed only the lightest of jackets and Jackie and Jillie none. After a day of 0C followed by another of 4C, today's 13C makes quite a difference. Even with a robust wind blowing the forest canopy everywhere every time it gusted.

Such a wonderful weather day we could hardly believe the paucity of people going through the forest trails, and felt quite, quite grateful. That was halfway through our circuit; for the second half there did happen to be more people out, but then who could resist a  walk in the woods on such a perfect spring day?

We came across an older couple walking a tiny dog that was utterly adorable in its frisky liveliness. It was an apricot colour and only four months old, in love with life and curious about everything and everyone, including Jackie and Jillie. Our two little black elves were gentle with this puppy for which we were grateful, since sometimes they behave like little bullies. The people with the tiny dog told us its father was a teacup poodle and the mother a Golden Retriever. Hardly conceivable (ha!). But done through artificial insemination, they explained.

When we arrived back home we did a turn in the front garden, to take a visual inventory there. The larger of our two magnolias is on the very cusp of blooming, and it has hundreds of buds preparing to fully open. It's quite the size as a sprawling tree now, far from the little starter it once was many years ago when in the first ten to fifteen years of its life in the garden we used to carefully cover it with a garden 'blanket' to get it through the winter months.