My husband remains concerned that area birds and squirrels not be bereft of food they can forage in this spring that refuses to insist that winter truly depart. So he keeps putting out fresh food for them regularly, ensuring they have no shortage of seeds and nuts, and we continue to be entertained by their antics, our very own private showcase of wildlife running amok.

Because of the occasional night-time visits by a rabbit which has been kind enough all winter long to fertilize my various flowerbeds, we got into the habit of peering out the front door through its floor-length window, to see who or what might have come around. The rabbit, since the snow finally melted, no longer does.

We know it isn't really necessary to feed them all any longer, that they will be able to find enough to keep them going on nature's seasonal provisions, but it's become a habit hard to break. But break it we shall, and then resume putting out seeds and nuts once again when winter comes knocking again for 2014-15.

We are now enjoying the occasional day when winter is convinced its time has passed for the winter of 2013-14, and spring presents a reasonable facsimile of glorious warmth and magnificent sun. That combination, along with the frequent rains of April has coaxed the peonies and hostas in our garden to begin their tentative early appearance thrusting through the soil released from its formerly frozen state.

In the woods, trout lilies have begun to appear on the forest floor, under the trees; not yet in bloom, but it won't be long; just as the trees begin to leaf out.

And last night we enjoyed some right royal entertainment. There, as we were heading up to bed for the night, was the raccoon that faithfully visits our backyard composters. It feasted two nights ago on the fresh product of the compost pail, and last night the raccoon decided there was no advantage in ignoring the tidbits of seeds and nuts put out for the other habitues, diurnal not nocturnal.

Aware of our gawking presence the raccoon was not the least bit perturbed that two  humans were agog at his appearance on their porch. Their porch is his porch, after all. His movements so strangely languorous, he simply sat there, hunkered down amid the seeds and nuts and delicately chose those that most appealed, and we watched, fascinated, as he jawed them placidly, eating his fill.

Few of my peer-age relatives are comfortable with a computer. The result being that they don't know what they're missing. Among other issues, that of communication and the ease of contacting those they care about through the Internet. I do have at least one old friend of my childhood years capable of interacting through email, and occasionally we send one another updates. Like me, she's a grandmother, though her children took the old adage of fruitfully multiplying their own issue far more seriously than mine.

She's had three partners in life; the boy we used to know who she married while young wasn't held particularly high in my personal estimation, though as a young couple newly married we spent quite a lot of time with them socially. He ended up leaving her and their three children for the greener pastures he saw in a younger woman. When she married for the second time it was only to nurse a good man through an illness that proved fatal. Now, closing in on 80 her boyfriend is in his mid-90s; a Holocaust survivor determined to live life to its fullest potential. They see one another often in a shared social milieu and just recently returned, in fact, from a four-month over-wintering sojourn in Florida, something that has become a ritual with them over the years.

I had responded to one of her emails on her return to Toronto with the information that we would be driving down there some time in the summer months to introduce our granddaughter to the city, to the environment around the University of Toronto, and to enable our granddaughter to take a tour of the university and meet with a course adviser to aid in her course selection.

Last fall when my friend informed me that she and her boyfriend were planning a trip to Ottawa to attend some kind of Holocaust memorial taking place in the city, I was quick to offer them a place to stay, with us. Assuring her we have ample room and would be delighted to have them stay with us. As things turned out, they didn't stay with us; if memory serves she informed me at that time that they had cancelled their trip or something like that.

So I was surprised when in responding to my email she offered us hospitality on our Toronto trip. It's been at least fifty years since we've actually seen one another in person, though we've exchanged photographs along with our messages. We wouldn't think of imposing on anyone the presence of two adults, a young woman and a very small dog, for we also wouldn't think of going anywhere without Riley.

It was a lovely gesture, much appreciated. Now I will have to explain to her why it isn't quite practical, though we will look forward to seeing one another after such a long hiatus. Now, if my sister extends the same kind of invitation, that'll be another story altogether....

Finally, I kicked myself out the door and got started with the door-to-door canvass I had pledged to do once again this year for the Canadian Cancer Society. It took long enough. I kept telling myself as the days in April clicked by, there's no hurry, plenty of time yet, just relax about it, you've got other things you have to tend to, and lo and behold the end of the month loomed and I'd yet to convince myself it was time to get at it.

Well, I've done at least that; got at it, for one evening's canvass, and more to go if I'm to do a decent job of what I've committed to. The thought of actually propelling myself out the door with canvass kit in hand is always worse than the actual doing of it. A little bit of psychological bullying does it, and the concern that I wouldn't be fulfilling an obligation that I had responded to. In any event, off I went, not early but not at all that late, either, after dinner.

I had a half-hour of daylight left, so I knew the much longer balance of the canvass would be during dark hours. But was intrigued to see as dark descended, that many people of the neighbourhood, ambling along the street in pairs, singly, with and without companion pets were out for a post-prandial stroll. The streets always seem deserted during the day, but in the evening, the call of a relaxing fresh-air walkabout seems to attract people. Sedentary in their jobs most of the day at least that offers a bit of exercise.

By the time I reached the top of the street beyond the entrance to the ravine, I was speaking to a householder holding a bichon frise to answer the door. A fairly new resident, I had no idea a dog lived at that address; the ravine directly behind him, I suppose it never occurred to the fellow to walk his frisky little dog in the ravine. He did tell me something interesting, however; that he regularly sees a red fox on a route within the ravine, taking a short-cut through his backyard.

Others have also informed us they've seen foxes close to their homes adjacent the ravine; we live on the side opposite the ravine, and though we used to see foxes often in our ravine rambles a decade and more ago, we no longer do; good to know they're still around. They've simply become more secretive as the urban build-up has closed them in; wary of the prevalence of large dogs who may pose a challenge to them.

On my return trip on the opposite side of the street in the portion I had decided to canvass, the young parents of three very young boys were not at home. But the parents of the mother of the children were there. And this was the very first time I can recall in my experience in neighbourhood canvassing that someone was eager to make a charitable donation in someone else's home. That's the thing about the neighbourhood canvass; it's specific to a street, to the very home where the canvasser knocks and when others are about in lieu of the homeowner no one sees the need to respond affirmatively.

We've rarely seen the mother of those children. She has a full-time job that keeps her travelling. We're more accustomed to seeing the children's father about. At one time they had employed a full-time nanny from the Philippines, but we haven't seen her in the past year and hope she managed to obtain the immigrant status she had often discussed with us. Whenever I knock at that door with a canvass kit I know I'll be turned away. Not this time. The grandmother was openly gregarious as was the grandfather, welcoming, and anxious to donate.

Since we were age peers, there was much to chat about because that's what the grandmother wanted to do; mostly about her pride in her busy daughter who despite, the demands of her job, was a wonderful mother. And she spoke as well of her love of her grandchildren. I should return, the grandmother said enthusiastically, for her daughter would want to make a donation of her own. Someone close to them is fighting for their life against the cancer that is consuming his body.

Far be it for me to dash a sweet woman's cherished beliefs.

Reckoning by the calendar we're over a full month into spring. Sometimes you'd hardly know it here, where for the past week the daytime high temperature has been struggling to rise above ten degrees. With a gusting wind and the occasional fully overcast day it seems like late winter re-visited.

Progress has been made, however. There's very little snow left on our street's front lawns. There's copious amounts of it within the ravine adjacent to our street, but that's another matter; it is melting there slowly but surely.

The proof of milder days is the very fact that we're no longer wrapped in winter gear when we venture to the outside areas of this community. Gone are the dense mittens and the cold-protective headgear. Gone too are the winter jackets, to have their place taken by light spring/fall wear. And it feels downright liberating.

No more boots to haul on every time we exit the house. Except, that is, for those people few in number like us, who enter the ravine daily. Boots are still a good idea. Better yet, boots with crampons. But there are so many areas where the trails have been freed of their burden of ice and snow it doesn't seem logical or reasonable to continue clumping along like that. One of our acquaintances simply carries his strap-on crampons until he reaches one of the ice-festered descents, then he straps them back on again.

We've left ours on, permanently. That is, until yesterday. We figured we could bypass for the next several weeks the one stubbornly worst area of the trails that every year takes forever to lose its thick layer of ice. It's an area that sees almost no sun penetrating to encourage the ice to melt. And without cleats you can forget trying to negotiate that trail section.

So, out we ventured yesterday with hiking boots sans cleats and it felt great. We took alternate measures, bypassing what we consider through long experience the very worst icy challenges along the way. It was a lovely day; sunny, windy, with a high of ten degrees. The air was fresh and sharp, clear and bracing. And it felt quite wonderful to traipse along without those cleats; they're heavy and can be awkward on uneven terrain.

About two-thirds of the way through our hour-and-a-half circuit we came to another familiar descent, and I noted that though the ice covered much of the descending area there were patches of the forest floor bare of ice and I planned to access those, bypassing the ice. And I did. And then I discovered that what looked like terra firma was really terra gliding. I found myself carried along despite my efforts to recover balance, to an eventual glide that became a slide and eventually thumped down straight into the muck.

It really is uncomfortable to have your hands coated with mud and to view your garments flush with it, and to feel also the cold penetrating your nether regions as the very wet mud becomes susceptible to icy infiltration. Just as well I'm limber and bouncable. No harm done.

The balance of the jaunt through the ravine presented fewer obstacles to striding completely upright, and little Riley trotted along jauntily with us, enjoying all the elements of an excursion into the natural world. Naturally, I had to hand-wash the guck off my clothing, but it soon dried handily in the sun and wind, draped over the railing of the deck.

So far this month when the weather has been fairly decent I've soothed myself with the thought that there's no point getting ahead of myself, it was still early days. Now, the early days have fled, and we've been 'enjoying' cooler temperatures, high winds and overcast skies, alternating with cooler temperatures, high wind and clear skies. Today is one of the latter, and it's already a nearly gone-month.

I have been indulging myself in the usual procrastination. There are so many things to do, why bother? Well, poor attitude. The month is nearly spent and I haven't yet gone out even once with that Cancer Society canvass kit. But then, that's the way it usually tends to work out. Coming down to the wire I begin to panic and plan and eventually shove myself out the door. I have yet to do that. But I will. And then relief will flood over me, and the job will be done for another year. The last year actually, that I will pledge myself to yet another door-to-door canvass. I managed to turn down all the other pleading charities this year, and I'll do it with the last as well, next year.

I haven't even gotten my spring cleaning in hand, for heaven's sake. I did, finally, spur myself to some limited action this week, though. I've started on cleaning out and tidying up the kitchen cupboards. The thing of it is, this yearly exercise satisfies some level of self-flagellating guilt that I haven't been as meticulous as I might be, becoming a spring-cleaning-dervish, but on the other hand I know there isn't really much to clean up. Clearing out the cupboards and sponging them down, then replacing everything neatly does have a certain element of satisfaction but it's hardly necessary. There's nothing to clean, in actual fact, though it's true that the exercise represents an opportunity to clear some clutter.

In any event, this coming week will represent for me a flurry of activity. Out I go with that canvass kit, to face my neighbours, a surprising number of whom are new, since quite a few houses have exchanged hands in the past year.

As for the house-cleaning, the spring scrub, it'll get done, too.

Why do we burden ourselves with so many possessions that require care?

Right!

Over the past twenty years or so, we've seen a succession of surveyors from the Rideau Valley Conservation Authority come along to assess the environmental degradation that takes place in the ravine opposite our street that goes on for miles and miles throughout the community in which we live. The forested urban ravine is a natural outdoor space jewel that a very small percentage of residents appreciate, use and cherish. When, on the rare occasion, we've come across such a crew I've ventured to enquire about changes, because it seemed to us from our experience over the years that erosion has taken a toll.

The surveyors, based on their assessments of previous records, assure us that whatever erosion does take place it is of little significance, about average for such a natural environment, and nothing notable. We've seen micro-bursts of wind, considered to be of relatively mild tornado-like strength roar through the ravine, taking down venerable old pines, and we witnessed and experienced a week of freezing rain during one winter that burdened the ravine forest and shattered a portion of the canopy. Copious rain events, hard winters, and other such natural events have all taken their toll of the ravine.

Of course encroaching urban settlement has played its part, as well. Where many years ago we often saw foxes boldly presenting themselves on the trails and even outside the ravine proper in the urban area; often came across partridges performing a mating dance, and grouse drumming the ground in spring, often seeing families of raccoons up in the trees, we no longer do. People claim more recently to have seen coyotes deep in the recesses of the ravine very early in the morning hours and late at night in the winter months, but we never have.

We have noted, however, how ominously over time the banks of the ravine have slowly caved in, filling the creek itself with clay deposits running in the direction that the creek waters that tend to spread them, widening and shallowing the creek in the process. And threatening to wipe out parts of the trails that wind their way quite close to the bank shoulders overlooking the ravine. Trees topple into the ravine over time in the relentless but, one knows, perfectly natural maturing and degradation of such natural environments.

A few years back, a portion of the creek bank along which the trail made its way fell wholesale into the creek, requiring trail walkers to seek alternate routes until a municipal crew came along with a small set of bulldozers, razing some trees to make way for a new trail section replacing the old, collapsed one. The soil in this urban forest just happens to be comprised of leda clay and sand, a combination that is unstable, and prone to such collapses. The clay itself can become almost liquid in nature when it has been exposed to a super-abundance of rain.

The series of highway-standard bridges that were built to replace earlier ones only six years ago, last summer came to the attention of the municipality as lacking infrastructure stability, resulting from that very clay-sand instability -- inspiring them to put up warning signs alerting the ravine-centric public. In an obvious, but futile move to protect themselves from possible lawsuits should anyone come to harm as a result, municipal parks personnel proceeded to place barricades over each end of each bridge. Which, happily, most people have no difficulty negotiating, while cursing those authorities and wondering what comes next.

Yesterday, returning from our afternoon ravine walk we decided to remain outside, and gathered up rakes, shovels and giant compostable bags to finally begin the task of cleaning up the driveway, walkways and parts of the gardens of their winter-long-collection of detritus. Primarily, it consists of vagrant fall leaves along with the never-ending deposits of pine needles from the large pine on our front lawn. When we were finished our labours we ended up with three compost-bags-full of twigs, dessicated foliage, copious piles of dry needles and other bits and pieces of nature's discards.

It was pleasant and invigorating work, and we enjoyed it. The area is drying up nicely, now that most of the snow and ice is gone from the street's landscape. Not so in the ravine, not quite yet, and there are some places that traditionally will take yet weeks, despite the warming atmosphere and the gaining strength of the sun, before thick ice layers will finally relent.

There is still enough snow and ice left in the ravine to require that we continue wearing boots and crampons fitted over them for traction on the ice, particularly going up-and-downhill; without them venturing in there represents a sure formula for broken limbs; human not those of trees.

In contrast, our daughter's six acres of woodland on the Canadian Shield over an hour's drive from where we live has long since lost its snow and ice, and the wetland pond behind her house has finally abandoned its ice-sheet cap, enticing its resident creatures to cast aside their hibernation mode. There, spring peepers and bullfrogs serenade nightly, and trout lilies have already thrust their way through the frost-released soil.

This morning we heard the long-familiar sound of the municipal street sweeper as it drove slowly up and down one side of our street, and then the other. An annual working visit that informs us that winter is truly gone and all the gravel, sand, and impolite detritus that gathered on the road over the winter months has been scooped and removed.