We don't miss lunch at all. It's a meal-ritual for most people and they wouldn't think of foregoing a mid-day meal. We, on the other hand, never feel hunger pangs for lunch. The gap between breakfast and our evening meal may seem strange to many, but we don't even think about it. Jackie and Jillie eat more frequently than we do, since they have an afternoon snack of fresh vegetables as a salad, and another one following their evening meal.

We tend to eat generous breakfasts and they hold us over from morning to early evening. Always a banana and either an orange to accompany it or a quarter of a melon; we alternate. Following that either oatmeal or a dry cereal, or eggs soft-boiled. Even Jackie and Jillie get a breakfast egg; half each shared between them. That follows their own breakfast. Breakfasts do tend to be a little formulaic; on Sundays we have either pancakes or French toast.

And that happens to be our two little dogs' favourite treats as well. Whatever we happen to be eating, they get their own tiny portion, and then they're ready for a good long snooze. Instead of snoozing post-prandial, we've always got things to do. For Irving it was mowing our overgrown lawns, front and back. For me, it was the twice-weekly bathroom clean-ups and towel changes, linens laundry and deep-cleaning the kitchen.

Soon as we finished, though, it was time to get ourselves out to the ravine for an afternoon hike on a beautifully sunny and warm day where the temperature went up to 26C, with little wind. The trails remain mired in muck from all the rain, and it will likely be a month or more before any clean-up of the forest takes place, so in the interim trees and parts of trees remain strewn across many trails. Which doesn't make them impassable, just a minor irritant necessitating bending low under a fallen trunk or, if possible, sidestepping it, or clambering over.

On our return home my plan as to complete the planting of the new garden bed opened up with the removal of a sprawling yew tree and equally out-of-control holly, both of which had mysteriously expired this spring. Irving had bought a few flats of varied-foliage wax begonias and petunias and they were meant to go around the half-dozen hostas I'd planted the day before. When they grow in the result will be an architecturally pleasant little garden.

For both of us our most favourite of all standby plants in the garden, one a perennial the other annual, are hostas and begonias; a multitude of varied types to choose from. Variations in size, colour, texture, but all of them reliable additions to any garden.