We've finally reached that point in spring where (we think) all chance of night-time frost has evaporated. Yes, there's a week and more to go yet before the official Ontario planting date when the all-clear arrives. But it's hard to restrain that gardening impulse. And it isn't made any easier by the sight of all those flowering trees and perennials like the roses and the clematis vines vigorously sending out their shoots and preparing their flower buds for a spectacular show.

We didn't, after all, have enough bedding plants, after I'd planted whatever we did have yesterday. So we decided after breakfast to drive back to the family-owned business nearby that supplies most of our plants annually. On the way we stopped at the bank to withdraw some cash. And happened to pass several big box stores' open garden centres. Our eyes boggled at the sight of long line-ups of people waiting to be admitted. At the bank there was a security guard standing at the entrance, to ensure that no more than the right number of people would enter at any given time.

Yesterday the province's premier announced that the lockdown's 'stay-at-home' order would be extended to June 2. To try to make certain that the descending numbers of COVID cases keep decreasing. In the hopes that the people of the province could be afforded a more 'normal' summer season when the lockdown order is finally lifted. Although non-essential businesses remain closed, garden nurseries are now in the essential-services category. Bearing in mind, one assumes, how anxious people are for a little bit of cheer. And at this time of year nothing does it quite like brightly coloured flowers.

When we arrived at our destination Irving remained in the car with Jackie and Jillie and I did a quick inventory of the greenhouses, noting that this time there were more plants on offer than on the previous occasion. It took little time for me to load up a cart again with more begonias of several varieties, lobelia, million bells, and other planter-stuffers.

It's hard not to notice the presence of severely overweight people, both at the bank coming and going, and in the crowds of people we came across at the nursery. People walking with canes, with the use of walkers, people shifting weight noticeably from one side to the other. Elderly people uncertain of their gait and balance, some walking with the assistance of others. Everyone loves flowers and will go out of their way to see them, to procure them, to plant them, to enjoy them.

On our return home I baked banana-raisin muffins for a desert treat. In warmer weather bananas ripen so much more quickly. So I had ripe, very ripe bananas to use for the muffins. We do eat a lot of bananas and when we do the grocery shopping each week bananas are never forgotten. I did a turn around the garden to assess the progress of various things; the small magnolia in the backyard has now fully opened its large blossoms.

The ornamental Jade crabapple beside the driveway at the front of the house is now in full, generous bloom. Quite amazing, when you think that each of those blossoms is destined to become a small, bright-red crabapple. Small. Very small. We depend on birds like robins to make use of them in the fall before migration and for those that decide to remain rather than migrate.

We've a small clump of Pasque flowers that bloom every spring, and there they were, in the rock garden, amongst the infinitely more numerous flowers of the ground-cover periwinkle that has colonized the rock garden. 

It was quite late in the afternoon, after three, when we set out with Jackie and Jillie to take our afternoon jaunt through the ravine. A warm, mostly sunny day with an afternoon high temperature of 24C, that we all too soon realized was not only heavenly for us, but for the mosquitoes that had hatched out of the still-standing rain puddles on the floor of the forest.

Any time I bent over for a closer look at a newly-emerged wildflower, mosquitoes rushed me, a tempting target they celebrated with their little stings. I ended up waving my arms like a perpetual-motion machine from time to time. A good number of people were out with their children and their dogs, just like us. We came across a young woman who asked about the trails telling us this was her first time in the ravine. So Irving gave her some trail direction information which I'm sure she might have found confusing. It's what verbal instructions always do to me.