As seems to happen so often in the Ottawa Valley we have been thrust suddenly from winter to spring, and now spring to summer. We've been enjoying a week of extremely warm weather, so warm it feels more like mid-summer than mid-spring. The air conditioner has been uncovered, not yet turned on, since the saving grace is the evening cool-downs, which doesn't happen in the dog days of summer.

In the ravine trilliums are up and blooming, as are the colonies of trout lilies. Everything is leafing out, the deciduous trees themselves appearing to have leaped into leaf, so that now there is a soft green hazy screen throughout the forest. The birds are delirious with ecstatic celebration, sending their voices trilling throughout the area; cardinals, robins, chickadees and song sparrows vying with one another for notice, the woodpeckers occasional laughing maniacally, thumping insects out from under infested bark.

In our gardens the magnolias have begun their protracted, gorgeous blossom. This year we've had to brutally cut back some of the ornamental tree growth in the rock garden, since over the years they've assumed an unanticipated mass, despite their supposed dwarf size, crowding out other growing things that we've given priority status to. That work was done even while it's been so hot, with the sun beating down mercilessly, and now the rock garden is more accessible, running alongside one side of the house, ready for additional renewal ministrations.

Tulips are beginning their bloom, the tree peonies are shooting out their presence, the Japanese quince their lovely little orange blossoms, and even the honeysuckle is making a late appearance, while we're still awaiting some vigorous life to appear from the clematis vines.

Those dreadful lilly-beetle pests that love to infest lilies have already manifested their presence, anticipating the maturity of lilies now emerging from the soil. They've been busy munching away on our snakehead fritillaries, my husband making quick work of them.

The gardens are a wonderful aesthetic resource of pleasure, but lurking within the soil enriched yearly by our kitchen waste turned into organic compost there are always those garden thugs to be aware of.

What a heritage, of a country that can claim among its symbols of the better nature of humankind, its dedication to equality, freedom, liberty.  That liberty is equated, unfortunately, with the freedom guaranteed under its founding principles, the right to carry firearms. A 'right' that represents a national psychosis. Firearms, for protection from the potential harm that those who celebrate the very same values presumably, under the same flag, given to like foundational principles, represent.

"Lying in wait right now is a terrorist, a deranged school shooter, a kidnapper, a rapist, a murderer waiting and planning and plotting in every community across our country, lying in wait right now", thunders the demagogic Wayne LaPierre, executive vice-president and chief panic-monger of the National Rifle Association in the United States of America.

"We have the chance to secure our freedom for a generation or lose it forever. So we don't care if it is round one, round two or round 15, the NRA will go the distance. We will never give up or sacrifice our constitutional freedom. Not one inch. We will never surrender our guns. By the time we're finished, the NRA must and will be 10-million strong."

Spreading mass hysteria, the paranoia that is certain to see Americans flooding gun shops, snapping up their ammunition, zealously storing it all against the certainty that in their near future lies the threat that will consume that great nation, but not if they have anything to say about it.

A population that is constrained from owning weapons meant to destroy others is a population vulnerable to attacks by evil entities who loathe the freedoms that Americans enjoy as their birthright.

At the annual convention of the NRA over 70,000 members vended their way through acres of weapons displays; sniper rifles, pink assault weapons for women, air gun shooting range for children, along with swords, hunting gear and varied appealing accessories like handbags complete with handgun compartments.

Weapons-producing corporations are basking in the affection they feel emanating from the American public toward their industry.

In a way she resembles one of those sets of nesting dolls. The Russian-Ukrainian doll sets called Matryoshka dolls. Their graduated sizes nestling within one another; the largest hosting all the others within its capacious interior. They're bright and colourful, cheerful things created with painterly skill and satisfying a most attractive ethnic tradition.

Her ethnicity, if it could be called that, is purely Anglo-Saxon. And her girth has it all over the nesting dolls. She does look, in fact, as though she has been puffed out to accommodate a series of other, gradually less fulsomely filled-out women within her. But what you see is what there is, one only, there are no others nestled within her.

She is enormous. Certainly not tall, but as broad as she is height-wise.

I remarked to her a few days ago that it suits her to wear her hair pulled back in a ponytail as she presented that day, seated on her porch, enjoying the fresh springtime air, ensconced in a sturdy wicker (!) armchair, well cushioned, seat and back, but beginning to show a little wear since it was first purchased.

Her face is very pretty. She has even, almost delicate facial features. She can be very animated when discussing matters of interest, and she has a very pleasant laugh. She's a thoroughly nice person. Moreover, a person that can be relied upon to offer support if some is needed, of an emotional, even a material quality. Our next-door neighbour depends on her as a confidante, one who lives handily directly across the street.

On that occasion, a few days back, she smiled her sweet smile at me, and remarked: "you didn't notice". I looked quizzically at her and she elaborated. "I lost 50 pounds", struggling to rise to demonstrate how her sacklike dress now had some room in it, it no longer clung so tightly to her completely rotund figure. No, I certainly hadn't noticed. And now it was brought to my attention I thought I detected that her face was no longer quite so puffed and round, perhaps it was that that brought my attention to her neat, pretty face. But her body? Not that I was wont to scrutinize it closely at any given time, but I could hardly see the difference. 50 pounds.

Her doctor, she said, threatened to give up on her if she failed finally to do something for herself. She's on a low-carbohydrate diet, now. Good for her. It's restraint that is required. And for the first time she mentioned to me that she has a medical condition, something to do with the lymphatic system that contributes to her enormous weight.

Bliss! We are basking in a lovely, luxurious, unexpected week of sunny, mild temperatures - mild? That's an understatement, we've had now three days of inordinately warm conditions, and expect, according to the Environment Canada forecast, another four days or more of plus-mid-20-degree C. daytime highs. Much above normal for this time of year.

We can see that the climbing hydrangea this year will put out its share of blooms. And our two magnolia trees, front and back, have already begun their gorgeous, gigantic magenta blooms, in competition with the cardinals, that faithful pair that serenade us morning, afternoon and evening.
The climbing roses are shooting out green wisps, turning to bright red, and the clematises are tentatively beginning to show green shoots. The lilies-of-the-valley have shot through the garden soil at the side of the house, and so have the hostas.

Yesterday my husband fitted the large canopy onto its steel frame on the deck just outside our breakfast room, and put up the surrounds, then assembled and placed the garden furniture on the deck and on our private little piazza at the front gardens. Earlier in the day before we set off for our ravine walk, he had slipped out for a few bags of peat moss, came back with them, and with three hanging baskets stuffed with stunning begonias, in orange, yellow and red, and another basket of lovely New Guinea impatiens.

And there's the bliss: anticipation of the gardens coming to life, and requiring tender administration. The satisfaction to be had in all of it, feeling the sun warm on our backs as we tend to the pleasures of attaining a certain look in our gardens, only to discover nature has her own plans, not to be deterred by our feeble ministrations.

Above all, the peace and relaxation in store sitting outside, feeling warm breezes, hearing bees at their work, watching butterflies flit past, listening to robins searching for worms and heralding rain showers while we read the newspapers, chat, and just settle into the balm of nature's perfection.

Parents -- some of them -- cannot do enough for their children. Eager and over-anxious to induct them sometimes into the world of adulthood. Sometimes children induct themselves through inadvertence on the part of parental guidance, curiosity urging children to explore areas which present as a distinct danger, a presentation whose threat simply does not exist for them as children are unaware, their experience to that date not having existed, to pre-warn them.

Things that are alluring, because they look appealing, and there is no knowledge of the danger inherent in them, like water, fire, speed, and control of mechanical devices whose outcome eludes the untried mind, beckon, and in their beckoning present irresistibly. An insufficiently guarded moment is all it takes. And those moments are there, in abundance, for no one can be super-aware all of the time, it is mentally exhausting and all-encompassing, when other urgencies sometimes seem to take priority.

A mother leaves a room where her two children are playing, and when she returns it is to discover one of them dead. There was no malevolence here, simply an accident. Yet perhaps an accident awaiting opportunity. And there was the opportunity, leaning against a corner wall, beckoning to the five-year-old for whom the special, child-sized rifle was a prized possession.

In Kentucky, the examining coroner stated, it is standard that young children have their own firearms, it is a social tradition handed down from generation to generation. The company that produced two versions of a rifle meant specifically for children, down-sized and appealingly coloured, is said to have sold 60,000 of them. One of those 60,000 was used, not by particular design, but by 'accident' to kill a two-year-old.

The five-year-old will grow and mature and perhaps find fault with a societal quirk that allowed him as a four-year-old to be gifted with a rifle, to accustom him as a boy in Kentucky to the use of firearms. And perhaps he will not question that at all, and be untroubled that his younger sibling died an unfortunate death as an infant, by his hand, as it were.

Since it was an accident.

It is bulky, awkwardly large and heavy. It seems like 'only yesterday' that we turned the damn thing. But yet again it's time to turn the queen-size, pillow-top mattress on our bed over again. Winter (wool) side down, spring (silk) side up. And to remove all the winter bedclothes, replacing them with bright, cheery spring ones in turn.

Yesterday I finally finished cleaning out all the kitchen cupboards for spring, and the bathroom vanities and drawers, replacing a mild chaos with order and neatness that will last, who knows how long? Tea and spices make quite a mess, leaving bits of themselves to be perpetually wiped away.

And yesterday my husband scraped, buffed and scrubbed the floor planks on the deck, along with the rail tops, to rid them of winter mould or anything else that accumulated, and then set about applying the preservative that he always likes to use before he is able to put up the large awning that covers the deck in the summer, and retrieves the garden furniture from our garden shed to place it back on the deck, for our summer 'livingroom'.

I've yet to do the windows, and wash the sheers that cover them, and clean the screens but that will all fall into place. We're (almost) ready to face the coming planting season in our garden. My husband has gone off for more garden soil, for he used almost all of what he bought a few days earlier, for seeding that pathetic lawn of ours. This time the soil is meant to fill up all of our many garden pots and urns.

And that's another job that beckons him, withdrawing all those pots stored under the deck and covered with a tarp to keep them intact during the winter; clay becomes friable when it's exposed to freeze-and-thaw conditions. And when he uncovers them we'll see which of the hostas I'd planted in a few of them will have survived; all - likely enough, since one has been thriving in a large pot for years.

He'll use a mixture of peat moss, sheep manure and garden soil to fill the pots and then we'll set about acquiring the gorgeous fillers, flowers beloved by us in particular, demanding aesthetic care in their arrangement and giving us enormous pleasure for the spring, summer and early fall months.

Without a shadow of a doubt this house of ours, our property has the most pathetic lawn on the street. There was a time when we were really proud of that lawn, it was thick and lush and quite lovely. The superior contrast between ours, just walking on it and then treading on our neighbour's was amazing, and they paid for a gardening contract, while we've always done our own gardening. Things began to go awry about three years ago when we started noticing crows on the lawns everywhere, picking away at what we assumed were grubs feasting on the roots of grass, and we were right. They picked lawns apart in huge gaping clumps, destroying everyone's well-cared-for lawns.

People tried all kinds of remedial actions, from sprinkling nematodes or chemicals, or other remedies, and nothing quite seemed to work. Finally some replaced their lawns by removing the old grass and re-sodding, others relied on seeding, and eventually most lawns began to take on the semblance of orderly propriety as nature hadn't intended. Ours recovered as well because we re-seeded. Oddly enough it seems only the front lawns, not the backyards are affected.

The crows returned, less numerous and destructive, but they went at it again. One neighbour who had painstakingly set about picking out the grubs and destroying them fared no better than those of us who just shrugged and got on with life.

Now that spring has convincingly arrived, the lawns are all laid bare, and some look really, really good. Ours looks dreadful, quite awful. Yesterday my husband got out his thatching device and de-thatched our miserable lawn, dredging up enough detritus to fill yet another of those huge compostable bags that the municipality is so diligent about hauling off to their giant composting piles. And then he meticulously sprinkled a good layer of garden soil on all the bare patches, over fertilizer-infused grass seed he had bought. Raked it all over, and considered it a job well done, having taken him the better part of the afternoon into early evening.

Now we will wait, we will see what transpires. Just as we did last year. You'd think the crows would express some kind of gratitude to us; we're the ones they follow, ambling through the ravine, leaving peanuts for squirrels which they also take advantage of, securing them in their beaks and bashing them against any nearby surface to extract the nuts. They recognize us and what we're doing in there, but deign not to when we're in our own home environment, drat them.