Il padrone spotted in the wild

[jags]

lovely day here bit windy but warm gray skys but no snow.
there is a god.

anto.

[rafiki]

Spring comes early here. We've cold nights still 6C but brilliant sunny days up to 21C. Wildflowers in the hedgerows and deep blue skies. It's bringing out the rocket boys on their bikes. I am often alone on the roads November to Jan, they don't like the cold mornings.

[John Saxby]

Wildflowers in the hedgerows and deep blue skies.

Lovely stuff, eh?  Enough to make me envious, for sure.  But, my passport's from someplace else, and we still have serious winters here -- erratically so, mind, but still serious, and that's why I moved to Ottawa in the late 1970s.  The flip side is the glory of an Ontario summer, with unparalleled canoeing right at hand, for example, and cycling with lotsa hills but not much rain.

The wonderful thing is that, in the four months or so between early February and early June, the landscape is  transformed -- and not just a cyclical change of colours and foliage, though there is that, but everything is changed, changed utterly (with a thank-you nod to Mr. Yeats.)

I have a couple of photos from a ski trail in Feb and the same with my Raven in June, which I'll dig out and post -- they're probably under a pile of snow just now...

[John Saxby]

Found some of those February-and-June photos, Brian.

Attached, two pairs from the same trail, traversed by cross-country skis in Feb 2015, and on my Raven in June of the same year.  This trail is an old settlement road along a ridge in the Gatineau Hills in West Qué., across the river from Ottawa.

Then, as a sorta-throwaway image, there's an additional snowy scene on the next post.

[John Saxby]

More snowy stuff below, this time the Stuff of Mythology...

[rafiki]

Lovely countryside, John, in both seasons. I love the snowman kit too! It's very flat around here. Lots of marshes, and a thriving agri/horticultural scene. Rice, cotton, citrus, soft fruits and potatoes. New innovations are basil and the US company Fall Creek has built a big, new blueberry plant nursery close to our village. As an agriculturist by training my daily rides are interesting throughout the year. I even plan my route to catch up on a particular crop event I want to see progressing. As a biurdwatcher I skirt the famous Doñana national park, a world heritage site for birders. We get some spectacular cloud formations at times over the marshes. I'll dig out a few pics at the weekend.

[John Saxby]

Ah, now I know where you are, Brian -- just south of Almonte.  Splendid sweep of coastline on the famous bay.

(Interesting PS:  There's an Almonte in the Ottawa Valley, just west of Ottawa. Here's the story - https://almonte.com/our-history/)

My first-hand knowledge of Spain is very limited, just a ten-day hike in the Pyrenees near Ordesa NP, and another ten days' stay in Madrid and Córdoba.  Both were enough to whet my appetite for cycling, tho', maybe in March or September.

[Mike Ayling]

. Mary was leaving the doctors' waiting room yesterday and she met a woman parking her bike outside. Mary said oooh that's a Rohloff, we have one on our Thorn tandem. Anyway durinig the conversation it turned out that she was talking to Mrs il padrone.

Mike