Oppressively stifling, that's how it feels, the atmosphere hot, humid and wind-blown. At least the wind and the extreme heat keeps mosquitoes at bay; they're few and far between now, and that's something to be thankful for. We set out on our ravine walk a little earlier than is usual for us on a Friday. I always have things I like to get done first, and this morning it was preparing a bread dough for tomorrow's pizza, baking a pear pie for this evening, and putting a chicken soup on to cook for this evening as well. And tidying up the house.

It was just nudging noon and already just over 30-degrees Celsius. There is relief down in the ravine, under the canopy of the forest trees, and the wind did shift the cloyingly thick air around. We thought that we were fairly safe from extreme weather events that Environment Canada warned were on the near horizon an hour before we set out on our walk. There was still plenty of blue sky that could be seen beyond the thick white bubbles of clouds that were scudding past, bullied by the wind.

And our walk, albeit hot, was pleasant enough. The bedding grasses are still offering up their heated fragrance, and we noted the drooping clusters of bright-red cherries hanging high above on pin cherry trees, very similar to the clusters on the red baneberry plants on the forest floor. More safely edible fruits are beginning to ripen; raspberries, and soon enough will follow the thimbleberries whose large bright pink flowers are more decorative than most flowering berry plants.

The milkweed are beginning to flower as well as those lovely tall wild sunflowers, elecampagne. There is yarrow in bloom alongside Queen Anne's lace, fleabane with its perfect little pink flowerheads, yellow loosestrife, cinquefoil, purple-blue bugloss, and twining itself over all of them, cowvetch with its fetching purple bellflowers. They cluster where the trees have been set back on a height in the ravine that was once, I recall, a bit of a meadow where since trees have grown.

The extreme weather events that Environment Canada warned of did eventually reach us as the blue of the sky was overcome with tall, threatening and dark thunderheads and thunder and lightning rumbled above finally culminating in an initial heavy downpour, and an afternoon of repeating thunderstorms. The threat of tornadoes coming through this direct area hasn't yet passed, but as far as we can determine, no such events have occurred.

We saw the surprising damage such swift wind descents can provoke several years back when a number of very aged and beautiful old pines had been tossed aside like matchsticks in the path of a mini-tornado that had touched down in the ravine.