Yesterday evening before nightfall, Irving told me it looked suspiciously like snow, not merely rain, looking out the front door. From my vantage point glancing out the glass doors to the backyard I was able to confirm that yes, approaching night brought colder temperatures and we were looking at very wet snow. Oh joy, a day of heavy, uninterrupted rain followed by sleet. Which would invariably turn toward replacing the rain entirely as the evening progressed and the temperature dipped for the night below freezing.

I hurriedly slipped out to the garden shed to retrieve a bag of bulbs I'd left there for later planting; no point in tempting frost to do its worst. In the morning the temperature had nudged its way back up to 3C, and the sky was clear. It felt unlikely that I would be disposed to do any planting today, however. There was a brisk wind as well as the cold, so it was fairly icy out.

Good temperature though for unloading all those bags of soil from the truck, so that's just what Irving did after breakfast, dividing it with our neighbour Daniel. Lynne came over to inspect our large blue ceramic garden pots and they were trundled over to their place next door. They have a huge lot, quite unlike ours. 

Theirs is triangular shaped, like Serge's next door to them; narrow at the front and wide enough for two backyards at the back. Both have large inground swimming pools and ample room for gardens and anything else, not like our cramped little backyard. Amusingly enough we've got two garden sheds in our postage-stamp backyard. If we had a pool instead there would be absolutely no backyard to speak of.

Nothing in the garden appears to have suffered a setback from the overnight cold and frozen rain but for a few battered tulips; the rest seem fine. Most haven't yet fully opened and no doubt that saved them. Our bleeding hearts have matured really quickly, they grow by leaps and bounds and already have started to flower.

And the Magnolia tree is blossoming, its hundreds of bright pink buds and flowers reaching to the blue, blue sky. Its moment of glory. As ornamental trees go, it's quite spectacular. When we were living in Atlanta, the magnolia trees never seemed to have one week of congregate bloom, but a few blooms here and here over the space of the summer. On our hikes in Georgia we would see wild magnolia trees but never in spectacular bloom.

The day had warmed up to 6C by the time we set off for our afternoon ramble in the ravine, the wind more or less blowing us helpfully all the way up the street. Soon as we turned the corner into the ravine our backs missed the wind and though that was some relief, it was even colder in the forest than it was out on the street. Cold enough that I wore little woolen stretch gloves.

Through the week we had the forest trails pretty much to ourselves. But we're in lockdown and the population is under orders to remain at home but for recreational purposes within reason and without the comfort for some of open gyms and golf courses, so since it's Saturday and a sunny, albeit cold day, plenty of people from the community surrounding the ravine were out on forest treks.

In some areas the forest floor was beyond drenched, so saturated from yesterday's non-stop rain that large puddles of rainwater sat stagnating. The trout lilies obviously don't much care for a return to cold and have withdrawn their blooms awaiting warm-up. More trilliums, on the other hand, have achieved their bloom, hanging their shy flowerheads toward the ground unlike their white counterparts. The rain appears to have brought fiddleheads out as well.

Just as well the feral apple trees are not yet in bloom. Once they are, they'll be vulnerable to any future freeze-ups this spring and what occurred last year will once again happen this year; the fruiting blossoms will have been destroyed by the cold, the result being very few apples produced in late summer.