Summer is officially here!

It's May long weekend here in Canada, a holiday which traditionally marks a seasonal watershed and a safe time to plant out your garden and pack away your winter clothes.

Having only just thawed out after our weekend in Waterton, it has been blissful to see the sunshine and bask in temperatures of 30c. With the sunshine, Ralston has transformed overnight into a green oasis and trees which have been teasing us with buds for weeks have finally come into leaf.

With the arrival of summer, there are baby gophers and rabbits everywhere - sometimes in the most surprising places! I found a baby rabbit sitting in our dining room this morning, having apparently either hopped in through the open door or been brought in by one of the pets. It was apparently none the worse for wear and once we'd caught it (see photo right) we released it in the garden.

There should be some more interesting wildlife encounters lined up for me this week. I'm going out on the prairie on an escorted tour of the wildlife preservation area for a radio feature about the biologists at the base and the work they do at BATUS. Amazingly there are military exercises, wildlife preservation and gas field work taking place in the same area, it'll be interesting to see how everybody is kept happy.

Hopefully I'll have some good pictures for the blog at the end of the week, I've been told their are vast herds of antelope and deer out there and that's just the start of it!