For reasons known only to nature herself, she has decided to suspend our slow but inevitable transition from summer to fall, temporarily. Not that we had much of a summer. We didn't ourselves mind all that much that we ended up without a succession of really hot, humid days this summer, but there are many who feel they've been cheated by a significant lack of hot days, though we've enjoyed more than ample sunny skies, not discounting the record-breaking rain events that have dampened peoples' enthusiasm for out-of-door summer recreation.

Our garden continues to thrive, as colourful and full of delightful presentations as always and we hugely appreciate that. The rain hasn't kept us from somehow finding periods of opportunity when we could slip out for daily walks along the forest trails in the ravined woods beyond our street. And we have also enjoyed being able to sleep comfortably in night-time temperatures that have been cooler than most summers. Where we were able to keep our bedroom windows open, the air conditioner on low, using floor fans when nights on the rare occasion got a little humid and sticky.

When I was out this morning watering the garden pots in the backyard it was awfully hot, but then the micro-climate in our backyard always tends toward the mild side. That same chore yesterday in the front was very warm, but breezy. Watering the many pots in the garden gives me the opportunity to take inventory, to note what needs to be done, and to enjoy the spectacle of the garden still in full flush, with fall asters yet to fully open and turtleheads, late bloomers, preparing to grow their flower heads and penstemon in bloom, finally.

This weather which is due to last to the end of the week and perhaps beyond, has everyone joking that finally, summer has decided to arrive. In the ravine, we're seeing ample signs of summer departing, making way for fall. In the slowly changing foliage, some of it withering before turning colour and spiralling to the ground, and in some of the bracken on the forest floor beginning to dry up, turn yellow, shrink in volume.

As Queen Anne's Lace has shrivelled, fall asters have come into their own, so many different types of them, alongside Goldenrod. And now too, a proliferation of fungi and carious types of mushrooms, growing as shelf fungi or softer varieties on tree stumps, and on the floor of the forest itself; an never-ending source of interest in their various manifestations, colouration, shape, size, quite fascinating to come across.