Our Jade crabapple tree is now in full bloom. It's a week or so later than the Sarjentii crabapple trees, which are already losing their masses of pink blossoms, sprinkling them like pink dust all over the gardens, whirled by the wind. Their time of glory is so brief, it's a shame to see them dissipate. Before we know it, the white blossoms of the Jade will also be gone.

Most of the tulips in the garden have by now gone beyond maturity and are fading. There is, however, several groups that took their time flowering this year, and they still remain fresh in appearance, their colour beguiling, though perennials are beginning to push in behind them, each anxious to take their turn in the sun. 

Most of the urns and garden pots have now been planted. At least those in the front gardens. The idea is to stuff as many plants into each of the pots and urns as possible. And the number that can be accommodated, of course, relates to the size of the planter itself. Some are large, very large, and some are not. They cannot be crowded because each of those plants that complement the other will eventually reach maturity and need room to be comfortable in.

The quite large pots want a central decorative plant that achieves height, while around it can be planted others that nestle under the tall one, and if a vine can also be inserted, all the better for the maximum in architectural form, texture and variety, not to speak of colour.

 At the present time, they're not much to look at. The plants are immature, albeit promising. They will mature and spread and sprout floral offerings and continue to do so throughout the growing season, offering beauty and vivacity in their appeal. The plantings look sparse and a little pathetic, nothing like what a nursery-produced basket thick with mature flowering plants looks like.

Yet, in time these will assume their full proportions and each one will become what we meant it to, a miniature landscape that will offer pleasure in viewing them day after day throughout the summer months. They do need some tending, snipping spent flowerheads, and constant attention to irrigation, and in return the rewards are endless.

It's been a very warm day, breezy and mostly sunny. In short, yet another beautiful mid-spring day of 24C, not quite as humid as yesterday. We took Jackie and Jillie out for an afternoon hike through the forest trails after Irving mowed the lawn in the backyard, and I had finished my daily chores.

The hawthorn trees that we noted yesterday were setting out flower buds have now fully opened them, tiny white-pink blossoms, exquisitely beautiful. Some of the trilliums are now beginning to fade slightly, their bright carmine turning a gentle shade of dusty pink.

There is one area on one of the trails where we saw a trillium sharing close companionable space with a newly-emerged Jack-in-the-Pulpit, as delightful a pairing of two beautiful springtime flowers erupting out of the forest floor as any that can be imagined. Unless you see a pair of Ladies' Slippers regally posing together on the forest floor, yellow or pink or white, but they don't happen to grow in this particular forest. 

While we were out on the upper trail of the forest spine, I took a brief little side-trip down a hillside we're familiar with to have another look at a small group of white trilliums which have now matured. They're the only white trilliums we know of in the ravine's forest where all others of their genus are red, attributable, I'm sure to the Leda clay soil base. There may be other white ones somewhere; we can't possibly scrutinize the forest interior in its entirety, but it's a treat to see even this little group that is different, yet representative of most trilliums that bloom in Ontario.