Living in the Ottawa Valley for the past forty years of our lives we have learned to expect the unexpected as far as weather is concerned. In this area Nature loves to practise her penchant for unpredictably perverse and fickle tricks and treats.

Last week it was extraordinarily hot, the last dog days of summer. And this week the weather has suddenly turned its imperturbable face toward fall, so precipitately that though we're accustomed to such quick changes, we're still taken by surprise. This morning there was a discernible frosting of rooftops. Only once before, in the 1940s, was overnight temperatures seen to have dipped so precipitously.

We'll manage our way up to 21-degrees today under sunny skies, we're assured by weather forecasters, while yesterday struggled to get up to 17-degrees with a pervasive wind. Meaning that when we ventured out for our ravine ramble we were well advised to wear light jackets.

The flora in the ravine have responded to the change in seasons. Many of the Hawthorns have lost their foliage, their dark, slender branches with their sharp thin barbs naked to the sky above. But not quite; it has been a bumper year, it would seem, for tree fruits and the haws glow red and numerous, food for the birds if they want to take advantage of nature's offerings. And the staghorn sumachs' brilliant red candles beckon birds as well as our appreciative eyes.

Jewelweed is blooming bright orange, their tiny orchid-like flowers on tall stalks down by the creek a bit of what else, but jewel-like brightness? Red baneberry's bright red berries light up the dark green of the underbrush, but it is noticeable that many understory plants have begun to die back, their leaves turning yellow, preparing for resorption back into the the earth to enrich the forest soil.

Asters are in bloom everywhere at the edges of the woods, and alongside them bright plumes of goldenrod, nodding in the wind. There is one wild apple tree in particular that we know offers the most delicious, crisply sweet and juicy Macintosh-type apples, whose bounty has become a regular treat for us of late.

A strange contrast to the nursery-grown stock that some unknown neighbourhood homeowner strips of their apples and trundles them presumably in a wheelbarrow to the ravine entrance, dumping them in a colourful array of perfectly good fruit, consigned to waste, but for the attention of birds and furry wildlife venturing a nip of the intrusive bounty from time to time.