What a nice surprise: yesterday two enormous street vacuum trucks came. They washed and vacuumed all the grit and debris from the street. Let's hope this was not premature, as we could still have snow. I really appreciate the dust being removed. When walking, in spring, one needs to wear eye-protection; every passing vehicle raises a blinding tornado of dust and grit.

Monday 29th March 1999

Finally, the first weekend of spring ! Totally gorgeous. Long walks with friends and the puppy, bulbs beginning to sprout. Temperatures in the sun about 28ºC. In fact I see much the same as last year. One doesn't become complacent about this lovely time of year. We easily slip back and forth between summer and winter. But people are raking the dead leaves, grass and grit from their gardens, looking for the green beneath.

The Guelph lake is way down. This doesn't look good for our water supplies for the coming seasons. The spring has been very dry.

Thursday 18th March 1999

This is a very boring and drab month in this part of Canada. Everything is beige/brown, emerging from tons of dirty snow. In town there is debris, garbage and grit spread everywhere. In time it will be cleaned away, but probably not until late April, when we know the heavy snow will not return. On the plus side: we do have day after day of sparkling sunshine. The countryside is beautiful. When there is sufficient snow one may ski. When there is not, one may walk on the frozen ground. The spring comes suddenly and we do not have the continual dull days, rain and mud of the English countryside.

I thought you might like to see this note from a friend in England. The note came with some pictures which were saved in a PaintShop Bit Mapped Picture or bmp format. This format does not appear to be transferable into a JPG or GIF image. Also it takes a long time to download.

The bmp format may be placed on the web-page, but I'm not trying it because it took so long to download. I believe bit-map images are used when one would like to change the image - as when animating or cutting? The individual pixels of the image are made available to be moved. I suppose that's why it takes so long to download?

Letter from Dorset in England

"I took these photos of Judy at the weekend with a Konica digital camera which I borrowed from work.

The top two were taken in Thorncombe Woods near Dorchester . Thomas Hardy's cottage is on the edge of the woods. It's one of our favourite places to walk, Judy's too! It's a natural ancient wood so there is a huge variety of trees there and in the Spring there are great carpets of bluebells. It was a bit early on Saturday for bluebells (they should be out next month) but there were lots of primroses. It's a very popular place but there are so many paths through the woods that once you leave the car park you can walk for ages without meeting anyone.

This week it feels as if Spring has really started at last, today it's really quite warm in the sun. This winter has been so strange, mild one day and freezing cold the next. No wonder there is so much flu around.

Weymouth is like a building site at the moment. The town centre is being redeveloped, they are building a bus lane along the front so part of the esplanade is being narrowed, and near the train station a shopping complex complete with a drive through Macdonalds is almost completed. So getting into town from the college can be a bit of a nightmare. Goodness knows what it will be like when all the summer visitors arrive !"

One person's home town is another person's travel. I certainly like to get messages like this. To know that Spring is actually happening somewhere already and to try to remember what it was like in England.