Once, while Irving was in China on a mission for several weeks, income tax season loomed and time was getting short. I thought what a pleasant surprise it would be for him on return to find he didn't have to apply himself to doing the returns, because I had already done them. So I sat down fully intending to polish them off and we could forget about the deadline. It seemed easy. At first. And then I got bogged down. Not once, but repeatedly. As I shoved the paperwork away finally, it occurred to me that the returns could, after all, await his return.

 

 

Now, all these years later, none of our friends and acquaintances do their own returns. They're shopped out to tax specialists. And people think nothing of having their returns done professionally for them. Not my husband. At one point, years ago, he could save the drafts he composed before doing a final copy from the year before and use it as a guide. That's no longer possible; every section of the return year after year undergoes changes.

 

 

With a population having different degrees of numeracy and literacy, you'd think the geniuses at Canada's Revenue Agency would have planned out a simple framework for people to fill out their returns readily and accessibly. The direct opposite has occurred; each year the returns are more complex and more difficult to complete. Little wonder private agencies do such a booming business at tax time.

 

 

Irving started the process late; the usual procrastination; there's always more important things to do, and he'd get around to it -- eventually. Well, eventually saw him sit down with all the paperwork and go at his return first, and then mine. We split our incomes as it were, since mine is a pittance and his is the more generous, so there's that little complication. But this morning he completed both, and took them off to a postal station and sent them off to Revenue Canada; good riddance.

 

 

While he was at it, he loaded up the car with bags that I had prepared to take over to the Salvation Army Thrift Shop. Spring cleaning wouldn't be complete without going through cupboards and making them a little leaner. Haven't worn this in ages, in it goes. Doesn't fit any longer, that too. I should have packed up baking dishes and other things in the kitchen to send over as well, but just didn't feel like it. I have a special attachment to kitchen things and tend to retain them long after I find there's no more room to store them.

 

Eventually we did get around to tagging after Jackie and Jillie in the ravine. A beautiful, bright blue sky and beaming sun, compensating for blustery wind gusts on a cool spring afternoon. We peer here and there; above at the forest canopy where we can see bright red clusters on the crowns of tall old poplars and maples. Soon, little green shoots of foliage will begin to appear. They began doing just that on the branches of the forest understory and though we've seen this same spring phenomenon for 85 years it never fails to grip us with amazed wonder.

 

Robins are happy that the forest floor is finally giving up its earthworms. On the past rainy days they've been trilling their little hearts out with expectation and happiness. They're now starting to scrub about in the underbrush, while woodpeckers are busy up above. Crows are more in evidence now, and cardinals have been celebrating the change in seasons as well, with their incomparably exquisite spring melody.

 

We crooked our necks this way and that fixing our eyes on the distant owl's nest in the crook of an old pine's past injury when it lost a limb and gained a generous nesting space. It's deeply recessed and it's not possible at that height and distance to see anything. But there was the male owl, seated on the branch of a nearby tree but too distant for me to capture his image. A friend told us he had heard the male and female with their distinct gendered voices calling to one another. He feels the female is sitting on eggs that haven't yet hatched, and not that she's there looking after owlets yer.