Friday 13th and St. Valentine's

Oh! no soul is sad alongside me. I lift up their poor little hearts with my consigne: 'Courage, tout le monde, le diable est mort.'

(Charles Reade, The Cloister and the Hearth, 1861)

As I posted on my Facebook status report just now, I have just trained my binoculars on the sunlit tops of the maple trees in the next street (visible from our kitchen window) to confirm my impression that their flower buds are opening, that the sap has begun to rise. You know what that means: the End of Winter is in sight!

Chris has gained a few more days at his post at Nortel, since Friday 13th didn't turn out to be such an unlucky day as predicted. I spent Friday morning at the home of the Swedish Ambassador and her husband with about 90 other people, many of whom (despite the windchill of -20°C) were making the most of the chance to go snowshoeing in the grounds of this residence with its panoramic view of the Ottawa River.

Encouraged by our Diplomatic Hospitality group, the Swedish couple, in the centre of my picture above right, were trying out this sport for the first time, as were other new diplomats from Turkey, Columbia, Spain, China, Japan, Brunei, Bolivia and Yemen. Here are four ladies from the Chinese Embassy making friends with Ella from Indonesia (in the bright green mittens).

Chris and I went flying over the Gatineau Park in PTN this afternoon and back to Rockcliffe Airport after a touch-and-go at Gatineau Airport on the way—beautiful. Last week's rain cleared a layer of snow off the frozen rivers so that their bare ice gleamed. In more than a couple of places below us, Canadians were revelling in the sunny day, a solitary skater gliding in slow circles on an empty rink in the afternoon sunshine, skidoos zipping through the fields. The approach to CYND was busier than Heathrow with local pilots practising their circuits. Chris' landings were "greasers" today. He said this flight was my treat for St. Valentine's Day and I said that it must have been his, too.

Even the raccoons appreciated this afternoon's sun, one of them sunbathing so luxuriously on a neighbour's fence that it fell fast asleep, oblivious to passers-by. I did not use a zoom lens to take this picture.