Our region, as seen elsewhere is being given a heads-up that even before winter arrives, respiratory illnesses are on the rise. Not only have laboratory tests confirmed the earlier-than-normal presence of flu, but an increasing number of COVID infections, along with a third unusual appearance, that of respiratory syncytial virus, especially among young children. All hospitals are well over capacity, and are experiencing problems maintaining their emergency services, but our regional child-and-youth-centric hospitals are in a dire situation where they're asking general hospitals, themselves overworked and overcrowded, to admit child patients.

 

The public is being urgently urged to wait no longer in accessing flu shots and the COVID bivalent vaccine. Immunization is now available for children six months to two years in an effort to prevent the aggressive-spreading RSV virus from spreading even more. Vaccines are available through public health clinics on appointment, as well as doctors' offices and area pharmacies. We're just as glad we've taken action and updated all of our shots.

 

This afternoon, while we were in the ravine, we came across Nellie, whom we haven't seen in awhile. She was walking her dog Millie. Nellie was always kind of slightly built, but she's now rail-thin. Otherwise healthy, she assures us. Back in early spring of 1999 when COVID was beginning to have its worldwide impacts gaining its reputation as a pandemic, Nellie had just returned from a Florida trip with her husband when we came across them during one of our ravine hikes.

We wee already at that time seeing cases of COVID-19 all over North America. While Ontario wasn't doing too badly, Florida was being swamped with cases. I recall my unease as she enthusiastically told us about what an enjoyable time they'd had, how good it was to get away from winter  however briefly. I felt uncomfortable at her close physical proximity, as though she had no idea that prudent distances were being urged on people in their social interactions.

 

Her husband, I recall, was careful to stand back, courteously allowing us plenty of room between himself and where we stood. I worried for days afterward about that encounter, whether we might have been infected, waiting for symptoms to appear, but they never did. Eventually everyone gained more knowledge about best prevention strategies. 

The important one of course, was immunization, and Ontarians were pretty committed to being vaccinated, hoping to avoid infection, long before the entrance of the more infectious Omicron strain. Last winter, just entering the new year, we met up with Nellie. She was grim-faced as she told us her husband had died. A day after receiving his first vaccine, an Astra-Zeneca shot; she had been given Moderna, they had attended different clinics. Immediately that day he felt ill. It was known by then that reports were coming in that some people with heart problems were being adversely affected by some vaccines.

They called their doctor, he said rest was needed. A bad night followed and the morning hours had him so ill they called 911 and rushed him to hospital by ambulance. The attending doctor informed her later that her husband's heart had literally exploded. The team tending to him at the Heart Institute tried to save him but failed. This is not the kind of outcome that people anticipate can happen, trusting in science. But science can do only so much and people whose vital organs are compromised can be in dire straits when unusual things happen to place a burden of heavy strain on those organs.

 

A quiet conversation ensued between us. One of her sons still lives at  home and that's a support for her. She has always looked after herself; and she's doing that now, as well. What else can you do? she asks rhetorically. Millie no longer looks for the other half of her former companionship-trio. Whenever we come across her now and again, she appears to have retained her spirit of enthusiasm, even if muted. Nellie has done her best to absorb her loss but it's difficult. She smiles wanly, and we part.

After a while you become accustomed to anything, incorporate it into the reality of your life and just get on with things. Most people do. I'd have to exclude our direct neighbour to our left. The man of the household avoids social contact as though his life depends on it, and always has. We've lived next to them for the past 30 years; he's the most socially introverted person we've ever come across. We value our personal privacy, but we've never shied away from greeting people, meeting people, spending time with people.

Their daughter was just newly born when we moved into our house, next to theirs. She's an independent adult now, has long since moved away to live on her own. When, on the rare occasion she visits with her boyfriend, neither are permitted to enter the house. Winter or summer they must stand outside on the porch, raise their voices, and exchange brief greetings. His elderly sister, quite a bit older than he who lives in a care home, sat outside on a chair in front of their porch today, for she too was not permitted to enter the house after her brother picked her up for a visit.

Irving will speak jocularly to strangers, stopping the car momentarily to pass a few quips when he sees someone walking a puppy along a street. When we did the shopping today it reminded me, because we'd gone out late in the afternoon, of how we managed the food shopping in the pre-vaccination days of the pandemic. Venturing out just as the supermarket opened and shopping while it was mostly empty to avoid potential contact with COVID carriers.

Today, though most people are vaccinated and the daily case numbers have plunged, case numbers fluctuate back and forth, and it is mostly the unvaccinated who feature in large numbers among the infected. But we've returned to our normal pattern of shopping, going out when it's more convenient, shopping amongst other masked and distance-respecting people gathering their food for the week.

We had earlier gone out with Jackie and Jillie for a circuit of the forest trails on a beautiful, warmish-cool late summer Tuesday. Gentle breeze, blue sky, a bright day in contrast to the heavily overcast day yesterday turned out to be for Labour Day, with plenty of rain. No sign of yesterday's on-and-off-again rain in the forest today, however. The trails were dry, and the screen of the leaf mass was a vibrant green. 

We've noted for a while the spectacle of growing piles of sawdust under certain trees and fallen trunks alongside the forest trails. Symptoms of carpenter ants busy doing what carpenter ants do. Nature's unerring blueprint of death and renewal. Hollow trees that are ailing, hosting nests of ants who take their job seriously. Others nesting in or nearby dead trees, equally devoted to the task nature set out for them; the growing sawdust piles testament to their gradual and inexorable helping hand in decay whose end-matter becomes the nursing base for new growth.

When we're passing along the forest trails, we train our eyes everywhere; on the ground, straight ahead, and above the tree line. Looking at the forest floor you don't tend to miss seasonal flowering wildflowers, small creatures, from beetles and bugs to bustling chipmunks and squirrels. Straight ahead, the dragonflies and bees that veer here and there among the vegetation. Raising eyes higher, the looping flight of warblers, and the upended creep of nuthatches on tree trunks. Higher still, and you note the presence of wasp nests and wind-cracked tree trunks.

We saw one today, a large old poplar that had split about fifteen feet from the ground, the upper, longer portion of the trunk fallen on the supportive trunks and branches of surrounding trees, stopping the broken trunk from falling to the ground. It sits there now, perched directly over the trail. When and if it falls it will create quite the impact, with sound to match. Because of the height at which the tree cracked it would take an experienced arborist to remove the threat it represents.

 

Just a Few Questions We'd Like Answered, Beijing...?

This aerial view shows the P4 laboratory on the campus of the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan in China's central Hubei province on May 27, 2020. Photo by Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images

Even though the World Health Organization sent an investigative team to Wuhan, China, to look into allegations that the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 might have been initiated as the result of a viral 'escape' from research being carried on at one of two laboratories in the city, the investigative team reached no conclusion. Their intention was to interview the Chinese scientists at the laboratory, and to visit both the high-security (P4) laboratory and the wild food market that the laboratory insisted was the source of the outbreak.

The WHO team was never permitted any independence, always accompanied by both Chinese authorities and members of the high-security laboratory. Their findings were 'guided' by Chinese authorities who strenuously denied any possibility that the virus could have escaped from the laboratory confines. This, though it was known and reported by visiting scientists that conditions at the laboratory were not as strictly controlled as they should be for such a high-security laboratory working with deadly bacterium and coronaviruses.

Beijing has been criticized from day one for its lapse in immediately notifying the WHO that a new virus was wreaking havoc on Wuhan. Initial reports played down the serious nature of a strange new type of pneumonia arising in Wuhan hospitals that was not responding to usual treatment, and causing deaths. Soon enough the world became aware of a young eye doctor who alerted his colleagues through social media of a peculiar and dangerous new virus, and who was brought before authorities for 'spreading false news'. He contracted COVID himself and died of it.

Now The Wall Street Journal has revealed that three employees of the Wuhan Institute of Virology had been taken to hospital as a result of symptoms now familiarly associated with serious bouts of COVID-19, a full month before the authorities in Beijing alerted the world of the presence of a new and extremely disturbing virus that had somehow leaped the species barrier from animals to humans. Beijing is well known to have kept possession of critical, sensitive information  the investigators were interested in studying.

What swiftly took place since December of 2019 across the globe as SARS-CoV-2 swept through the world is well enough known; a coronavirus pandemic we're still struggling with over a year-and-a-half on. But with the misfortune of the global pandemic came a ray of light, as soon afterward highly effective vaccines emerged out of other laboratories to throw a lifeline to humanity. 

 

Once China had got its outbreaks under control after screaming 'racism!' when it was offended that closed-border recommendations took effect, it focused on producing a number of vaccines. While denying it was responsible for the global outbreak of a dangerous new zoonotic, Beijing saw an opportunity to ingratiate itself to the world, as the manufacturer of anti-COVID vaccines which it would generously share with an ailing world. 

Although China was the first country out of the starting  gate with its vaccines, it has never produced a vaccine with a high efficacy rate. Its four different vaccines which it has trialed in a number of countries facing desperately high COVID-19 rates, like Brazil,  have been anything but successful, with an average efficacy rate hovering around 50 percent, as compared to the leading Western vaccines with rates of 85 to 95 percent efficacy.

The world deserves answers to some of its questions. China's reaction to a situation which impacted the entire world was first and foremost to protect its reputation. Any responsible government must recognize that in a situation of this magnitude that would swiftly affect the global community, it would have an obligation to act swiftly and decisively. Beijing chose not to. The long-suffering people of China deserve better from its suffocating government.

In this March 14, 2020 file photo, health officials inspect bats to be confiscated and culled in the wake of coronavirus outbreak at a live animal market in Solo, Central Java, Indonesia. The WHO on Tuesday urged countries to suspend the sale of live animals captured from the wild in food markets as an emergency measure, saying wild animals are a leading source of emerging infectious diseases like the coronavirus. (AP Photo, File)

The third wave of COVID-19 in Ontario began with a prescient warning from some scientists that it could turn out to be the worst yet. And they were right. Case numbers are skyrocketing, they've vastly surpassed the numbers of the first wave and perhaps it was more predictable than merely guesswork. The emergence of the variants out of the U.K., South Africa and Brazil have had their effect and continue to affect numbers since they're all considerably more infectious than the original, which was bad enough.

Toronto's hospital situation is so critical it has asked other hospitals not struck as badly to take some of their cases, so patients have been transferred accordingly out of necessity, including to Ottawa hospitals. Not that hospitals in Ottawa have been spared an overabundance of cases; they too are struggling to accommodate the increased hospitalization numbers and they're well over 100 percent capacity, the ICUs beyond crowded. There are simply not enough medical personnel available to care for all the new patients.

Given this situation and the cancelling of 'elective' surgeries, my old school chum was fortunate to have her heart valve replacement surgery proceed a month ago. She was in an ICU for a week, then transferred for another three weeks of medical care to the Baycrest Centre in north Toronto. Now she's home, has been for several weeks, but unable to really do anything physical. She was using a walker to get about, no longer anywhere near mobile for the past year or two. 

She is signed up to receive personal health worker care for one hour twice weekly. She is now 86, anything but robust to begin with, and now a semi-invalid while she's in recovery mode. She had tried to persuade the woman she employs to clean her apartment to come in weekly instead of monthly, but she had also asked the woman to sleep over and to help care for her. Little wonder the poor woman handed in a notice to my friend that she could no longer work for her.

My friend's daughter who lives in an apartment nearby offered to sleep over with her mother for one night only. Her son and her son's girlfriend, both now unemployed, live with my friend's daughter in an apartment smaller than my friend's. I asked my friend why they couldn't live with her for a short period and help her while she gains strength, but evidently such is not to be. 

People live lives fraught with complications, not the least of them emotional dissonances with members of their families, and everyone has their own singular problems to deal with. I sometimes feel as though we're living on a small disconnected island of comfort and unconcern when I hear about, see or read of the problems that some people face. Life, though, visits episode of life-challenges to all of us from time to time.

Another quiet, dark and very wet day for us, the third in a row, and more to come. And nor can we complain since up to the present, April has given us wide-open, sunny and warm days, one after another and we've taken full advantage of them. Yesterday afternoon we managed to get out with Jackie and Jillie wearing their raincoats just like us, in a brief lull in the rain. And lucky for us the rain held off until we returned home. This afternoon we carried their little jackets in our pockets just in case the rain started up again while we were out. It did, but not until we were heading back home again.

I decided to bake something fairly simple for dessert, thinking of date squares. Then it occurred to me to use oatmeal. not oat flakes in the crust, so I whirred large-flake oat flakes through a coffee grinder I keep for use other than for grinding coffee beans, until I had 2 cups of oatmeal. I added a tsp. of cinnamon, a 1/4 c. dark brown sugar, and a 1/3 c. of Becel margarine to the oatmeal and so, had the crust prepared. I cooked the 2 cups of dates in water until they were soft enough to mash, added 1/4 c. of butter, 1 tsp.vanilla and then a cup of raisins, so there was the filling. Before I put the squares into my little convection oven for a half-hour at 350 F, I sprinkled the top crust liberally with chopped pecans. Done!

It was cool enough at 6C and a light wind, to wear light jackets. I stuffed the puppies' rainjackets into the pocket of mine, and off we went to the ravine. The sky brooding grey, we saw the sun at several intervals wanly attempting to penetrate the cloud cover, but with little effect. The creek is once again full of rainwater and rushing downstream. The trails are muddy as was expected, and in some places puddles have formed over the saturated soil.

The rain and the wind have brought down scads of red maple blossoms to litter the forest floor. This is something we see every spring; first the spectacle of bright red little clusters of flowers high in the branches of the maples, then gradually, the flowers drop, their bright red punctuating the drab sameness of the early spring ground. These are the 'male' flowers, the 'female' flowers aren't red, but white or green, and cross-pollination results in clusters of seedlings taking the place of the fallen flowers, on the branches.

Concluding our hike, and just before the rain began again, we crossed the creek for the last time in our circuit,and saw the Mallard drake still cruising about, up and down the creek close to where we assume his busy mate has been sitting on eggs where they've nested. Life goes on.

 

Some days just transform themselves into errand days. Things pile up and nag that they've got to be done and there is simply no way to avoid devoting a day to them.  When such errands demand attention and they exclude Jackie and Jillie they're indignant about it, hardly believing we could be so cruel as to leave them alone together at home while we go about duty-calling.

By some strange alchemy they know on Tuesday mornings that we'll soon be absent. As a result their behaviour is entirely different from normal. Jackie expresses his upset emotions by feeling ill and refusing to eat. Jillie will never turn down an offer to eat, but she too mopes in the knowledge we're about to leave the house and our absence will suddenly change the familiar comfortable interior of the only place they've known as home into a hostile, bleak place that holds them prisoner.

Subtle changes in our morning routine inform them of what is on the near horizon. This morning, as we prepared to leave the house, they both took themselves upstairs. We could hear their not-too-distance-muffled upset whining that soon turned into howls. They were on the bed in our bedroom and in deep mourning.

All was forgiven when we returned, shopping done with. The supermarket was busier than usual, which means at that time of the morning there might have been a dozen shoppers in a fairly large interior. From the supermarket we went to the bank, and from there to the pharmacy to pick up our ordered medication. After a breakfast that Jackie refused to eat we hauled ourselves out to the ravine for our usual hike-about.

A lovely, lightly cool, mightily windy, half-sunny day that reached 16C at its peak, Jackie and Jillie poked on ahead of us, off leash. There was a handful of other people about, but not that many that we felt they would be better off leashed, so they had the freedom to roam about here and there, always in sight. It makes for a more satisfactory leisure and adventuresome route for them, though they never complain when they're leashed.

Soon as we got back home, we prepared to go right back out again. This time, knowing we weren't heading out to do the food shopping, they pranced and leaped about us, insisting on coming with. And they were meant to, because we headed off to their appointment with the groomers. Another separation, more wailing, but they knew where they were and what they were there for. We returned an hour and a half later to pick them up, but in the interim there were other errands to take care of.

We dropped by Staples office equipment for printer ink cartridges. Not to enter the store, but to speak to one of the store clerks in the parking lot, to explain what we needed so he could get it for us and we could pay by credit card. All stores other than those deemed critical, are closed for the next three weeks under 'stay-at-home' orders resulting from ongoing spikes in coronavirus cases.

From there we drove to the pet-food store that we usually shop at. It too was not 'open' to receive the physical presence of shoppers. A long table fitted across the entrance doors kept clients outside the store and from the cash register in the interior hard by the doors, a clerk took our order then went off to fetch the large bag of Acana dog kibble we use for Jackie and Jillie, produced in Alberta.

Jillie

 We finally picked our two little rascally companions up, each handed to us outside the door of the spa by one of the attendant/groomers, both puppies perfectly groomed, their legs frantically flailing the air as they tried to leap from the groomers' arms to ours. Throughout all these transactions everyone masked and careful to maintain distancing. How our lives have been altered....! 

Jackie

Unbelievable -- for well over a year the world has been gripped in a COVID vice, squeezing the life out of people and the world-wide economy, creating desperation everywhere it strikes, and now that the miracle of a preventive vaccine is available, many people, even the most vulnerable to virus onset and death are unwilling to be inoculated against the pathogen. There is, for at least 40 percent of an entire population, little trust in science, evidently.

Ontario finally, to the great relief of its elderly population, has opened registration for appointments to be scheduled for vaccinations held at any number of temporary vaccine clinics. There were some initial glitches in registration but they appear to have been solved. Did the authorities think of the glitch in uptake that might eventuate? They're appealing to people to respond, to register, to receive their vaccinations because while they have thousands of open spots at the clinics for registration, they're going empty.

And furthermore, because some people have failed to show up for their appointed vaccination time, precious vaccines are going to waste. In addition, there is a problem from within the medical community itself whereby many there are loathe to, or refuse to be vaccinated. Among them personal care workers who are in daily contact with the demographic of health-compromised elderly requiring close and constant care.

A desperate situation has evolved in the last two weeks at Ottawa's Heart Institute where both patients and health workers have received their first dose of vaccine but in the interval between their first and second scheduled dose both patients and those administering to them at the hospital have contracted COVID-19. 

Under instruction from Canada's appointed National Advisory Committee on Immunization, the supply of vaccines has been 'stretched' from the manufacturer's fixed recommendation of several weeks between each dose, to an arbitrary four months in Ontario before the second dose is administered. This, in an effort to make the available vaccine doses stretch further so that many more people in the Canadian population can be inoculated than if the two-dose-two-week protocol is followed.

Interestingly, the hospital authority is calling upon the province to make an 'exception' for health workers and heart patients, to have their second dose stepped up immediately in light of the hospital's experience. Just as interesting is that two elderly retired physicians who have received their first dose, outraged at the decision to withhold the second dose for a four-month period rather than respecting the manufacturer's instructions, are suing the government presumably for a form of medical malpractise.

As for us, it will be a week Friday that we received our first dose. Our second is scheduled for mid-July; about 104 days' hence. We're grateful to have received the first dose and would be even more relaxed about the situation if we were to receive the second in another week. Everyone has aspirations of wishing to live to see another year.

It's raining again here. After yesterday's all-sun day and the full-day rain event of the day before that. The rain and more elevated temperatures have melted most of the snowpack from winter. And what's the weather forecast for the next several days? Well actually, snow, as the temperature continues to fluctuate wildly.

If that old ditty, 'Red sky in the morning, sailors take warning. Red sky at night, sailor's delight" is anything to go by, we shouldn't be having a rainy, windy and cool day today. Last evening as the sun was setting and twilight was just beginning to set in, we saw a blaze of red tinged with yellows across the sky. A nice way to cap off a sunny day to be sure, but it did not augur a fair day to follow, after all.

No ravine hike means a bit of extra time and since I've started the ritual of seasonal spring cleaning, and did half of the end-wall pantry in the kitchen yesterday, I cleaned out the second half today. That's just the beginning, there's tons more left to do. And it'll get done by-and-by. 

Ottawa health authorities and the municipal government is complaining that they're being overlooked while other parts of the province of Ontario are forging well ahead of the national capital in vaccinating their elderly residents. They point out that the average vaccination rate of those over 70 years of age in other parts of the province stands at 77 percent, while in Ottawa that number is just over 50 percent. The problem is that vaccine deliveries to Ottawa have been short-changed, they complain.

It's also the provincial health ministry that has been responsible for the software that has gone haywire to the effect that people qualified for registration appointments trying to arrange appointments online find the system disqualifying them through a glitch that won't accept their completed applications. Which is precisely what happened with us. And when Irving finally got through by telephone and made appointments for us, we discovered a week later that the software had erred in double-booking, so those who had succeeded in obtaining appointments had to go through the same process again, for new appointment dates.

Mid-week there was a report that people who showed up for their appointments should not have because of double-booking creating chaos and thousands of people had to be shuttle-bused to other locations to be inoculated. These are people in their 80s and above, who don't appreciate confusion in their lives, particularly with the stakes so high of serious complications with COVID-19, and the fact that the vast majority of deaths in the province occurred among those 80 and over.

So we, knowing our second-arranged appointment would be a few days' hence, were more than a little nervous when we set out this morning to arrive ten minutes before our appointments as instructed, to find the parking lot to the temporary injection site packed with vehicles, and people streaming toward the front of the location which just happened to be a YMCA re-purposed as an area vaccination centre.

Parking assistants were helpful. There was a doorman stationed under a rainshield prepared to admit people whose appointment times were imminent. Before you even got to the front entrance there was a man with a bullhorn circulating in the parking lot, calling out the 'next' time slots at which time people were to exit their vehicles and make for the front entrance. When we arrived at the front entrance we were informed that only those whose time slot was 9:58 could enter; ours was 10:05. So we waited.

It was a dark, dismal morning, pouring rain and cool. Inside the doors waited a young woman to direct people as they entered and channel them toward a series of desks with protective plastic shields. Another woman caught those entering to direct them to numbered kiosks where you were to present your Ontario health card and printed proof of your successful appointment application which had been emailed ahead.

Once the initial questioning was completed, health cards tucked away, we were directed to follow arrows along a corridor, there a young man directed us to a short set of stairs leading to a gymnasium. Within the gymnasium young men and women directed you to one of a number of fifteen desks, each manned by a young woman with a computer and hand sanitizer, wipes, filled syringes, and she was prepared to administer the vaccine after the series of questions repeated and health card requested.

Finally, it was done. We were both vaccinated, waited a short while on chairs set up around the perimeter of the room, then approached another set of desks with young people asking questions, finding your name on their computers and instructing that a 'receipt' of vaccination would be forwarded to you by email.

Done! At least the first dose. The rest to follow in four months' time, stretching out the vaccine numbers in Canada in a bid to inoculate as many people as possible, at least with the first dose. Because there's an acute shortage of vaccines by any pharmaceutical company.

Irving decided to stop by a local supermarket to pick up a carton of 35% cream so I could make some whipped cream as a desert to fill the cream puffs I planned to bake. Jackie and Jillie, beside themselves by our brief absence (and it was brief) were given special treats; they had already had their breakfast before we left, though we hadn't. 

So, as things turned out, it has been the great technological advances in computing, software and communications that have glitched. While the human element has surpassed expectations, everyone coached and prepared to do what they could to expedite the process. The  young people we saw discharging their duties were exemplary; in manner and performance and efficiency.

And because it's been raining heavily all day, no opportunity to get out for a ravine hike today. Jackie and Jillie have been filling in time watching a procession of squirrels visiting the front porch to stuff their little faces on a miserable weather day.

 

So, it's official; Ontario is into its third wave of COVID, much of it propelled by the UK variant. What is also official is that Canada is far, far behind other countries in its vaccination efforts. All too few people have been inoculated in this country against the SARS-CoV-2 virus. On the one  hand, a more virulent and contagious pathogen is on the hunt in Canada, and there's an acute vaccine shortage.

The result of the prime minister of this country deciding in his juvenile wisdom that cozying up to Beijing would result in Canada being awash with anti-COVID vaccines. Canada officially partnered with Cansino, signing on with the National Research Council giving the Chinese pharmaceutical company access to a Canadian-made biological platform on which to build their vaccine.

Trouble was Beijing  held up shipments of the resulting vaccine from China to Canada and nothing availed us but to finally look elsewhere to source reliable, efficient and safe vaccines. Which meant, as the mad rabbit in Alice chanted "We're late, we're late, for a very important date!". Here is the difference between Canada and Israel, for example, from the mouth of Pfizer CEO Albert Bouris: "We wanted to select one country to demonstrate the benefits and I spoke to several heads of state and Israel convinced me it had the right conditions."

"It had an extraordinary healthcare system, a relatively small population, and data-gathering capacity. He [the prime minister] would call me at three o'clock in the morning and ask me about variants and what data we had? Then he'd call me about the effect on children and pregnant women. This convinced me he was on top of it and Israel has executed beyond imagination."

 

To the extent, the world now knows, of being recognized as the globe's most successful inoculating state. And while Israel stands as Number One, Canada is somewhat down on the ladder, at Number Forty-three. Just when we're being stalked with a more contagious variant that is more lethal, and with insufficient vaccine doses to ensure that the country's most vulnerable citizens are duly vaccinated.

 

 

We, unlike others concerned over their health and the welfare of their communities, do have some relief. We have a home where we live comfortably. We can look out our front door to watch our neighbourhood squirrels pop up one after another on our porch for a visit. We can take our two little dogs out to a wooded ravine in  easy walking distance to spend an hour or two tramping through forest trails. 

It's spring, at long last, and the spring sun sends its molten sunlight through our landscape to melt away the accumulated snow and ice acquired over the winter months. That snowpack is melting on our lawns and in our backyards and we know that dreams of working in the garden and seeing trees fully leafed and flowers beginning to emerge from the soil is not too distant.

 

In the forest, we can now see the occasional bit of forest floor relieved of its snow burden, as the leafless forest canopy allows the sun to fully infiltrate through bare boughs to the snow-packed floor below. The creek winding its way through the bottom of the ravine is running high and wide with snowmelt, carrying along with its spuming fierceness detritus that accumulated over the winter months. 

 

Another sunny day and a wide blue sky, with soaring temperatures in the double-digits, absolutely glorious. Crows are mobbing, and there are hints in their collective caws that they might be harassing an owl, likely the very owl we heard loud and sonorous two days ago from the heights of one of the upper forest trails. 

Today, we even saw the beginning of catkins on hazelnut bushes in the ravine. In another month we'll see the foliage of trout lilies beginning to emerge, and eventually the shy little heads-down yellow lilies will make their appearance. By then, we can hope that Canada will have gained a good head-start on inoculating its people. And with that, hope for a better outcome for 2021 than what was experienced in 2020.

 

 

The legend has it that those with pure hearts sleep well. Our 'hearts', these days are filled with pure terror. No man is an island and we faithfully tune in to the news to be aware of everything that is happening the world over. Knowing what is happening is not reassuring at the best of times. Hearing the daily count of COVID-19 cases is beyond dismal, each day's count greater than that of the day preceding it. And a little voice within asks: how high can it go?!

There is a general feeling of unreality, that this cannot possibly be happening to the only world we have and know, our haven in an  unknown universe. Not that we are given a choice, either where we are within the universe or the course that nature takes with a little help from its creatures. Some of those creatures find themselves in an advantageous position as they exemplify nature's creation instructions embedded in their genetic codes, to survive.

And for some of those creations survival means extinction for other creatures. In this instance, though humankind has been responsible in part for the extinction of creatures living alongside humanity, it is a lifeless virus that expands its universe by shrinking ours. A temporary condition to be sure, but in the breach between the current state of affairs and that which will surely follow once a mass global inoculation takes place, this novel coronavirus is in the ascendancy and humanity fights for its survival.

Gloomy thoughts in reflection of reality that one does well to steer one's mind away from. In thoughts of more pleasant, carefree times. When we mentally castigate ourselves over our too-casual interactions with our neighbours, other creatures that share our landscape and the manner in which we take that landscape for granted, failing to adequately appreciate its well-being, since we are mere tenants.

As tenants, we went along with our two little companion-creatures for a late-afternoon hike in the forest today. We were out and about around half-past three, and at this time of year that represents late afternoon. When we set out the sky was a gentle, pale blue and the sun rode high above. We've finally hauled out our serious winter jackets now that we've turned suddenly into freezing temperatures. 

The icy atmosphere is good news in the sense that no rain falls at these  temperatures. And the woodland trails that have lately been thick with muck are now firmly frozen, feeling solid underfoot and much more comfortable to traverse. Jackie and Jillie are so excited being out in the woods they strain at the leash, they veer here and there, looping and threading their way off-trail attracted by irresistible smells that call out to be investigated and read by them.

Halfway through our circuit dusk moved into the forest interior, and looking up to the sky toward the west we could see drifts of cloud in the otherwise darkening-blue sky that had caught fire from the setting sun. The leafless trees appeared dark and gaunt against the brighter backdrop of the sky, and all was still, the wind shifted and departed. It grew progressively darker, incredibly swiftly. By the time we exited the ravine at street level the street was dark and household lights blazed along with outdoor Christmas lights.

Before we left the house I had put on a lentil-vegetable soup to simmer, aromatic with fennel and cumin seeds and garam masala, stuffed with chopped garlic, onion, celery, carrot and tomatoes.  As we entered the house, the warm, promising fragrance of the soup enveloped us. I suggested baking a cornbread to accompany the soup and my husband agreed, and I quickly went about mixing together butter, egg, shredded cheese, half-cup sour cream, a half-cup fine cornmeal, half-cup flour, baking powder and salt.

And from that concoction emerged a companion to the soup. To which I had added chopped spinach a few minutes before serving it for dinner.  But certainly not before preparing dinner for Jackie and Jillie, their kibble and additional chicken, following which they demanded their vegetable salad. Even though when we had returned home an hour or so earlier they'd had little bowls of chopped-up fresh cauliflower since to overlook their after-hike snack would be tantamount to puppy-neglect, quite simply unforgivable.