A day like any other day. Another five cm of snow fell overnight, gently smothering yesterday night's similar snowfall, nicely rounding out contours in the landscape again. The sky is overcast, frothy with pewter-coloured clouds and the landscape billows with a fresh infusion of whipped cream. 

Whipped cream is what I plan to lather over a coconut cream pie I made for a change. Irving loves cream pies; chocolate, banana, coconut, and it's hard even for him to choose which of them he would prefer as a birthday offering. Mind, there's no placing of candles on a pie, that's the province of cakes. But he gets cakes often and it isn't often that I'll make a cream pie. They take up room in the refrigerator. But they're also his favourite, so it seems appropriate that he enjoy one this day of his birthday.

He's finally caught up with me. Sort of. My birthday was just over a month ago. I beat him to 85. He keeps following me but he'll never really catch up. It's been that way all our lives together and that's 71 years. Back then it was I who ran to catch up. In the sense of attracting his attention, because he attracted mine the moment I saw him.

Well, otherwise nothing much unusual in the day. Jackie and Jillie have been informed that it's a special day, but for them every day falls into that category. Come to think of it, for us as well. There was a mysterious parcel delivered to the front door after breakfast. Directly from a publisher, with no idea who sent it. The topic is art, and that's Irving's baileywick.

And birthday telephone calls. I'm usually pretty busy in the kitchen on Fridays, just a bit more than usual. First off I toasted the coconut, then I had to make the piecrust and let it cool after baking. Then I went about cooking the custard filling for the pie. And when everything had cooled a bit they were married, and the pie placed in the refrigerator to cool and set. It was only when we returned from our afternoon tramp through the woods that I did the whipped cream and crowned the pie fit for a king.

The temperature remains on the cool side, at -8C with some wind under cloudy skies, so it's about average for a February day. We weren't long into our hike when we were suddenly accosted by a little ball of red hair flying down the hillside into the ravine, prancing happily around Irving, squeaking furiously with delight. Joined soon after by his sister. And soon after that by a passel of other dogs, Jackie and Jillie standing by proprietarialy. 

So like a proud new father, Irving began doling out cigars, er, cookies. Eventually we were allowed to continue on our way, with a parting of company, only to be reunited a half hour later when our various hiking circuits collided again.

Again, we watched that same small flock of robins flitting about that part of the ravine's creek that has some openings where small rapids allow the water to free itself from its icy mantle and snowy headscarf. There's a large intake pipe just about at that point and someone theorized that the robins nest inside it during these harsh months.