Spring succession is fast underway in the forest of the Bilberry Creek ravine. Yesterday was hot and windy. The glory that was the wild apple trees in full bloom is no more, the flower petals scattered by the high, dry winds that permeated the day, falling like snow in May.

Hawthorne

But there are other blossoms sending their fragrance on the wind. The dogwood are just beginning to send up what will soon become blossoms. And the cherry trees are dangling their blossom clusters.

Cherry

The Hawthorne trees first to lose their leaves in the fall and the last to gain them once again in the spring, have begun their blossom time. And the honeysuckle bushes are blushing their blooms once again, in pale pink and bright white.

Honeysuckle

While the trilliums that first paraded themselves on the forest floor are beginning to fade, others are still coming up. Now is the time for Jack-in-the-Pulpits to strut their stuff, those blossom-shy beauties that people tend not to recognize unless they have been taught to do so, and many have not. The foamflower are in full display, a head start on the heuchera we grow in our gardens, cultivated versions of the foamflower.

Foamflower

No bells yet on the lilies-of-the-valley in the forest, though those in our garden have now opened and prepare to sweeten the atmosphere with their divine fragrance. It is all so lovely, and all so fleeting. We've yet to come across blue-eyed grasses this year, rarely seeing them but for one spot in the ravine, but they're absent this year, so far.

Because it's spring, and we've had a number of encouraging spring rainfalls, mushrooms and shelf fungi are making their appearance, those strange and fascinating botanical specimens that thrive on the remains of deadwood.

Shelf Fungi

People can always surprise you; what you see is not necessarily what you get in the sense that initial observation can be quite at odds with what results from interaction with a stranger. In this instance it was inviting someone into our house whom we didn't know. And certainly our two puppies didn't know the man.

But he was there for a reason. He was a technician who works for the alarm company that looks after the security of our house. We'd had two false alarms within a month for each of which police were called out to ensure that nothing was awry, and nothing was. In each of these false alarms we had followed procedure; set the house alarm as usual then departed the house.

So he was there to determine what might be wrong with the equipment. It was installed over twenty years earlier and represented pretty stale technology, one might imagine. He did find one little thing that he replaced, but said that if another such alarm does occasion our equipment should be updated; since we have a service contract and it isn't a very big job, it's of little moment.

He was a nice man and clearly competent, though in checking over our system, he stayed long enough for me to prepare a potato salad for dinner, cook rhubarb for dessert, clean up the kitchen from breakfast, and a few other odd little chores. During his stay at our house Jack and Jill, those ferocious guard dogs, had to be kept outside on the deck. The man, a huge hulking individual who fit the description of morbidly obese quite nicely, was frightened of dogs.

When he left, I was free to embark on a hair-cutting spree with the two little monsters. With an array of several-sized scissors I set about grooming the little black devils, and by the time I was finished, they looked almost presentable. Trim, cute even. I'd done this out on the deck, and although it was a hot morning, there was also a very brisk wind. I didn't even bother trying to collect the hair trimmings but let them fly everywhere the wind would take them.

And then sat back to admire my handiwork. My word, they're adorable little rascals. That state of aesthetic appreciation will last a day, perhaps even two days, before they begin to look untidily scruffy again.

There is never any shortage of work to be done around the house; regular maintenance and seasonal upkeep, the jobs are myriad and call out to be performed. My husband has never hesitated to respond to that call, and it keeps him busy.

We're waiting for new grass to sprout after he spread the lawn in the front with composted soil and sprinkled new grass seed over. He has been watering it faithfully, and never loses hope that what will eventually result will be a presentable green-grass lawn. Nature is actually working against his aspirations. The large pine tree on the front lawn sends up its roots close to the surface, disrupting his plans. The shade it casts over the lawn seals the compact. Last year he sowed shade-tolerant grass seed; it made little difference. But hope springs eternal, just like our expectations of spring renewal.

Yesterday he did some painting at the front of the house, completing the paint job he had begun, with an emphasis on dark green against the red brick, and the light shade of ivory on the woodwork. It complements the screen door we'd bought years ago which is that same dark green shade painted over the aluminum. It was hot and dry, but he painted in the late morning shade, which encouraged mosquitoes to satisfy their curiosity over the human flesh made so temptingly available to them.

The gardens are beginning to fill out; trees gradually leafing and perennials shooting through the spring-warmed soil. It looks so good! I can't get my fill of appreciating nature's bounty. And ahead of us is the rest of spring, then summer and early fall with its succession of flowering plants glorifying each season and exciting our aesthetic....

Just as the forest astonishes us by its headlong rush to fully leaf out its canopy, and the forest floor is no longer just the precinct of generations of leaf mould and twigs, our garden has been urging itself to surprise us daily with new offerings.

The magnolias are now beyond the bud stage and well into full flowering mode. Clematis vines are steadily clambering upward. Roses are pushing out new growth on the cusp of producing rosebuds. Some of the peonies have already produced their buds in infant form, prepared to coddle them for the brief time it takes for them to reach maturity.

The early annual bleeding hearts are in bloom. Ladies Mantle has seeded itself annoyingly all over the rockery, and so has our favourite spring flowering plant, columbine. Whereas the columbine is neat and tidy and not given to sprawl, politely taking a back seat once it has flowered, the Ladies Mantle has a sense of arrogance, feeling itself fully entitled to take far more room than it should. The hostas, however, are fighting back and it is their presence throughout the summer months that we rely hugely upon for architecture and colour.

The corkscrew hazel hasn't yet leafed out, though a disparate few bright green leaves have appeared. It is at this time of year that its astonishing networked contortion of branches come to attention, a unique tree indeed.

Jack and Jill have lost their rockery privileges. They've been too ardent about picking off those little 'chicks' in the Hens-n'-chicks combo of mother plant and offspring that is so valuable as a beautiful ground cover in the rock garden. Serves them right, little blighters. The puppies, that is; their freedom sacrificed to the wish to sustain our plants. They (Jack and Jill, of course), are also quite fond of digging up spring violent roots, finding them delectable; it's one of the reasons we're keeping that temporary 'fence' up around the garden border at the back, since they're quite undiscriminating and we've got to keep them away from the lilies....

Now that summer is approaching, my husband and I have begun to collaborate on meal preparations. Which is to say that summer equals barbecue use. We've got a barbecue that we acquired over twenty years ago, a made-in-Canada piece of equipment that has paid for itself many times over. It uses a direct line to the natural gas piped into our house for winter heating, is efficient and capable of producing an excellent product for our meals.

I love salmon in particular when we're having fish, and my husband dislikes it. But when it's barbecued he tolerates it. Recently he discovered that if he uses a combination of paprika, cumin, salt and pepper carried in an olive oil wash applied thickly over the salmon the result is delicious even by his standards of taste. So that's a victory for our fish meals.

Yesterday's Friday night meal was a little different. Oh, I prepared a chicken soup with rice as usual, and I baked a gingerbread loaf; we had the gingerbread for dessert alongside fresh raspberries. And our main course was comprised of a salad made with steamed broccoflower florets, sliced cucumber, cocktail tomatoes, yellow bell pepper, lettuce and small cubes of sweet onion. Alongside the salad was barbecued chicken breast that my husband found an interesting dressing for.

He marinated the skin-on chicken breast with a combination of lemon juice, garlic powder, dried oregano and basil, salt and pepper. Then he kept the lid on the barbecue for a half-hour, off-setting the chicken so it was not directly over the briquets, and he finalized the process by opening the barbecue lid, placing the now-cooked chicken directly over the briquets and basting it repeatedly with the leftover marinade.

The chicken was toothsomely succulent, flavourful and delicious. Good grief, my husband is turning into a wonderful summer-cook.

Lately we've been doing quite a bit of bushwhacking in the ravine. To bypass trails that have been so deleteriously impacted by the tracked earth movers that they're beyond nasty, particularly when they're in an after-rain condition. The ruts are too deep for normally casual walking, and the hazards represented by large pieces of granite for ankle-turning too threatening at times. So, we bypass those areas if and when we can by clambering down into the ravine without the use of the trails.

Bushwhacking itself requires caution since the hills are fairly steep and they're covered with detritus from seasons past. We've got to weave between the trees, and keep a sharp eye out for raised roots and fallen trunks hidden in the leaf-mass on the forest floor. If it's recently rained add slippery to that. And now, there's the added bonus of bloodthirsty mosquitoes and blackflies lunging at us from every perspective. An absolute delight.

No point complaining, our daily rambles in the Bilberry Creek ravine are just too important to us not to embark on them. It does help that Jack and Jill have become much better on the leash, particularly Jill. She's an absolute little sweetheart going through the ravine, interested in everything around her, careful to stay on the trail, and not given to pulling the least bit.

Jack, on the other hand, is a little pill. Because the workers are in there now and using those large steam shovels and earth pushers the noise, when we're in close proximity is deafening, and it alarms both little dogs no end. They become quite difficult to manage, lunging toward the sound of the machines, as though they mean to attack them.

And bushwhacking during this afternoon's walk offered up a surprise for us. We came across a section of the hillsides that hosted white trilliums. In all our years of trail-walking in the ravine we've only once before come across white trilliums, two of them, and they were anomalies. Pulling ourselves uphill, I saw two white trilliums close by and when I pointed them out to my husband, he looked a little further and lo and behold there was a veritable patch of them. The gardener in me wants to return, to dig up one of the trilliums and transfer it to our garden.

My brother, a botanist, turned his entire garden in Halifax into a naturalized one, hosting only native specimens. We compete with one another, each of us boasting that our Jack-in-the-Pulpits are larger; what does he know; mine are giants, his puny by comparison. It's something I keep to myself, since I have no intention of hurting his feelings or his professional pride.

Wink-wink...

Because yesterday turned out such a beautiful day, slightly warmer than the day previous, but sunny and still windy, enough so we thought, to keep the mosquitoes at bay, we decided to lengthen the usual circuit of our daily ravine walk. We thought we'd go across to the opposite side, where we used to take our grandchild daily, hoisted on my back in a carrier until she was old enough to stumble along on her own.

We were accustomed to much longer and more energetic walks back then, almost twenty years ago. We'd take trails we hadn't seen now in quite a long time since then. We did discover last year that some of those trails no longer exist, washed away in slumps of the banks overlooking the creek. But the main one is still intact, and we took it yesterday, and then onto a more seldom-used trail, and Jack and Jill found new scope for their avid sniffing about.

On the upper reaches where there's a bit of a meadow, dandelions are in their seasonal element, their bright golden heads packed into the grasses. Wild apple trees are now in full bloom. There was no sight of the wild grape vine we'd seen back then, with its hard little sour grapes; it's gone, that venerable old vine.

We wanted to see if the wild lilacs were yet in bloom. Around the time of our wedding anniversary they sometimes are, but evidently not this year. Our 60th anniversary is on the near horizon, several weeks hence.

Some teens use the upper reaches as shortcuts and we did see a handful of young people, but none of the regular ravine walkers we're accustomed to seeing until we returned to our usual side of the ravine, and came across Lily, a white German Shepherd who unusually for a mature dog, is interested in Jack and Jill, and doesn't mind their foolish antics leaping around her. Most mature dogs are fairly intolerant of the rude shenanigans that puppies are always up to.