That universal malady of spring fever is when we get a little giddy as nature moves us further away from winter and closer to spring, tempting us with premature expectations of summer's arrival. And then we become somewhat complacent when a series of beautiful sunny and warm days please us so mightily that we're certain the corner has been turned with finality and cold days are behind us for another year.

 

The gardener's mind turns to solutions to garden problems. When the blue and the pink hydrangeas fail to bloom, while the Annabelle hydrangeas thrive, blooming madly and replicating, the solution might be coffee grounds, so begin accumulating them to sprinkle over the recalcitrant roots and see what happens. Discover that even home remedies occasionally have their place. For the present, admire and cherish the earliest of the garden blooms, like the tiny starry-blue scilla, and next will come the grape hyacinths. There's new life on the roses, the lilies are shooting up, and so are the irises.

 

 

Yesterday's high wind and cold temperatures left our taste buds clamouring for body-warming comfort food for dinner. Out came the bread dough I'd prepared on Friday, to be formed into whole-wheat croissants to accompany a herb-savoury vegetable soup. There's nothing quite like luxuriating at the dinner table over warm bread and a hot and hearty soup to instill a sense of 'all's right with the world' sense, despite the startling news emanating from other parts of the world informing us that elsewhere the world is roiled by hostile threats. 

 

But nature reserves the divine right to change her mind. And suddenly the balmy days are gone, exchanged for what we were just celebrating having been banished. It's cold again, with miserably aggressive winds and unending rain. This morning there were patches of blue sky, soon inundated by rainclouds. But in that brief interval, sun eclipsed by clouds but rain holding off, we dropped everything and dashed out to the ravine for an earlier iteration of our daily woodland circuit.

 

 

We noticed that the bright red florets of maples have begun detaching and falling to the forest floor. Like the brighter plumage of male birds, it's these red florets representing the male pollen of Red Maple trees. Another of nature's rites of passage and vegetation fertilization. We also saw that the patch of Partridgeberry ground cover has finally emerged from its blanket of desiccated fall foliage, surprisingly still bearing their bright red fall berries.

 

 

Understandably, the forest floor was well and truly drenched from incessant rain events. On the ridge of the ravine in particular standing rainwater has created a pot-holed morass of muck which Jillie quite daintily skirts whenever possible, while Jackie for the most part just trudges through unless he's following as we duck through the woods on alternate options to avoid the mud.

 

 

We come across just one friend of our pups, eager to advertise his presence in the expectation that there will be rewards for being a beautiful boy with good manners, and  he is not disappointed. When conditions are wet and cold in the forest many residents in the wider community tend to put off their otherwise-frequent forays into the woods; committed woodland hikers accustom themselves to occasionally inconveniences in the greater interests of the benefits that accompany these ventures.

 

The woods are always a place of serene contemplation, a destination promising a relaxed physical jaunt, and the frequent revelations of some of nature's casual secrets meant to be enjoyed and appreciated.