The raging torrent that dropped from the skies yesterday in a long succession of violent thunderstorms was an impressive event. In a six-hour period, 70 millimetres of rain came down. Responsible for tens of thousands of people in parts of the city being without power. Power was mostly restored, but not everywhere. There were street closures due to flooded streets, and no doubt flooded basements. People were advised not to try to drive through flooded streets, but obviously some did regardless, given the photographs of stranded cars with water reaching up to their windows.

We were among the fortunate; no power outages, no street flooding, no inconveniences whatever. In fact, when the rain finally stopped around six in the evening, we made haste to get ourselves out to the forest for an airing with Jackie and Jillie. Wearing rainjackets and carrying the same for the puppies, just in case, but no more rain materialized.

There was some overnight rain last night, and more rain came down in the early morning hours, but by midday there was an all-clear. We still had our doubts, since there were clouds scudding across the sky though the sun came out intermittently. But that's the thing about this new weather pattern we've been experiencing; everything looks fine one moment, and before we know it, the weather has turned abruptly and incoming thunderclaps inform us what's in store for us.

Yesterday, directly after the rain cessation, the forest was steadily dripping, the trails over-saturated, but it was glorious to be out. Today, we were surprised that despite the constant rain inundations, the forest betrayed little sign in the first half of our prolonged circuit that it had been under watery siege. The second half of the circuit was different; there were standing pools of water above the ravine, in the higher portions of the forest.

We had decided, given the cool, pleasant temperature and the dwindling likelihood of more rain, to go quite a bit further in our forest outing today, and Jackie and Jillie were more than willing to accompany us. At first we saw no one else out, no people, no dogs. We did see the ripe black berries on the privet trees which have been colonizing the forest the last number of years.

We also saw on the saturated forest floor in some areas, the return presence of amanita muscaria, the hallucinogenic mushrooms made famous for sending connoisseurs on mind trips. And no doubt the occasional squirrel that takes an experimental nip at the mushrooms' edges. The wild apple trees this year are bearing fruit in abundance. The one that Irving picked and shared with the puppies was crisp and sweet.

And then, on that half of our circuit, we began seeing a number of people out with their dogs, many of them familiar to us, and certainly familiar with Irving, since most trot right over with confidence that they'll be right royally greeted with cookies, much to the pleasure of our two who know from experience that cookies for other dogs means cookies for them, too.