Working in the flowerbeds at the side of our house, the sunny solitude of Cedar Hollow was broken by the noise of a buzz saw.  Alas!  Two men were on an aerial platform cutting down the beloved white birch tree behind the neighbour’s house across from us.

The nursery the white birch held for baby squirrels would have been abandoned weeks earlier, but what fun it had been when we occasionally saw the black squirrel ascend or descend from its leafy abode!

The beautiful design of the birch’s bare branches was sometimes lit up by the morning sun. Frost, too, added its touch of charm to every twig.

Will we miss this elegant tree?  You bet!

Here is the modified skyline now viewed from Cedar Hollow.

Spring seemed to delay its arrival in southern Ontario this year.  However, it only took a few warm days before the buds on the magnolia tree down the crescent began to swell, and soon treated us to a magnificent display of its fragile beauty!

 John and I took pictures from different angles.

This shot is similar to a branch of magnolias in Waterloo that I saw some years back and attempted to capture its loveliness in watercolour.

Take a peek:  http://mcdonaldart.com/florals/magnolias

Here is one of the patches of trilliums in our garden that you saw in their bud stage in the previous blog.

As lovely as these are, there is nothing like seeing them blooming in their natural habitat.  After a roast chicken dinner together, John set out with us to carry on a Mother’s Day tradition, one I had enjoyed as a child.  Into the woods we headed, the Homer Watson woods, entering from a pull-off on Old Mill Drive, a few minutes from our home.

Before us, reigned the white queen of the woodlands, trilliums—our provincial floral emblem!

One never tires of beholding their pristine beauty―but―such beauty can actually be hung on a wall:

http://mcdonaldart.com/prints/florals/comelyComrades.htm

Partway down the trail, John found a chair with a back on it.

Lloyd and I also enjoyed a pause.

Of course, other spring flowers were discovered―blue, yellow and white violets, dogtooth violets, may apple umbrellas, bloodroots―and my favourite, jack-in-the-pulpit.

We didn’t try to dig up any leeks as we had transplanted some last spring into our garden.

More perfect weather, you could not have ordered.

Thanks, Mom, for starting this wondrous Mother’s Day tradition!

Last fall, I divided a clump of trilliums that was spreading toward the asparagus and started a fresh patch.  Four days ago, I checked the spot where they had been planted.  Bare ground.  Perhaps they didn’t survive the transplant.

The last day of April, the temperature struggled up to 18 degrees. May decided to make her arrival something to celebrate and cranked up the heat to 27!

Checking the same garden patch today, the trilliums had not only poked through, but were in bud!  How is this possible? Two weeks ago, our region was shivering under a 4-5” hard blanket of white stuff—bestowed during a 3-day ice storm of freezing rain, ice pellets, snow, what have you!

The day following that storm, when we were rounding a corner, driving into Cambridge, a frightening loud sound screamed overhead! The load of rock-hard snow on top of the car slid off and careened to the ground!  Thankfully, there was no vehicle to our right.

And now, here in a quiet corner of the garden, a welcome white miracle is happening—a 4-day pop-up wonder!