It was so cold and windy yesterday and overcast that the house failed to warm up as it usually does when sun streams through our windows at the west-facing back of the house. A new front was entering though overnight when the temperature remained at 13C, instead of dropping to 5C as it did the night before. But when we got up this morning it was to a cold interior and glancing out the windows we could see the trees in the backyard bending over in the force of a strong prevailing wind.

We dressed for our early morning excursion based on how we felt and what we anticipated as we left the house. And were pleasantly surprised to find, once outdoors that the wind was a benign one, and the atmosphere had warmed considerably from the day before. And though we haven't had any rain for two days, the forest floor remained saturated. A friend we had come across during yesterday's trek through the forest told us that the gravel on the trails proved dangerous to her the day before, causing her to slip and fall, injuring knees, shoulders and back. Clearly, I'm not the only one susceptible to tumbling.

Morning also brought a pleasant sight in my face not, after all, succumbing to raccoon syndrome. No black eye, though I felt certain it would be inevitable after I had bashed my forehead against the tiled corner of the bookcase top in the kitchen yesterday when I swooped down to place the puppies' breakfast bowls on the floor for them. The angry black bruise overtop the swelling bump remained where it started, on my forehead, and only a light grey colour extended downward. No uneasy laughs when coming across friends who tend to quip about my husband giving me a shiner.

When we'd been out in the ravine yesterday it was in the early afternoon. The light was different, the sun at a distinctly lower angle in the sky, turning toward its fall circumnavigation of the heavens. Partial sun and shade, like today, but different. In yesterday's prevailing light more detail was noticeable on the forest floor as a result of the different quality of the illumination. Colourful fungi clamoured to be noticed. They were quiet today, hardly noticeable unless one really searched them out.

We did, in the end, see some that were different than those we'd previously seen, however; nature always loathe to disappoint the searching human eye. And we were surprised to see bright, colourful berries dangling at the end of a False Solomon's Seal. Most summers we see quite a few of them, but not this summer. They've been in short supply, just like the red Baneberry on the forest floor, and apples on the wild apple trees, for some unknown-to-us reason.

We're still waiting for the large purple fall asters to make their full appearance. The plants have long since set their buds, but they're not too anxious to flower yet. They're never first in the lineup of the various types of asters in any event. They and the clustered sprays of the most minuscule of the asters appear in no hurry to come into flower, while the more common white and pale mauve middling-sized types are blooming in abundance up and down the hillsides.

Jackie and Jillie met up with a very shy Labrador puppy who was not quite certain whether they might be potential playmates or hostile aliens. He was half the size of a Golden Retriever that just moments earlier skipped by Jackie and Jillie focused on closely trailing after the young woman he was companioning, running through the trails as a fitness exercise.

At the top of one of the hills to ascend to the spine of the ravine where one looks down to another of the ravine's bridges, Jackie and Jillie espied some approaching prospects to be introduced to. And when they ascended the hill reaching our position as we waited their arrival, two little black Schnauzers introduced themselves, a foursome of little black dogs; two Schnauzers and two Poodles, with a lot to discuss between them until finally their human companion arrived, huffing and puffing, to pick up the trailing leashes of her little charges.

When we wound up the morning's circuit, we came abreast of a yellow-and-pink display of brightly flowering Compass plants and Himalayan orchids. One resembling the most common of all flowering vegetation, the other from a family of the most exquisite flowering plants; one indigenous, the other considered to be an insidious intruder. Both, in their own way, beautiful.

                        

I'm heading for a black eye. Working on it. Involuntarily. When I bashed my head on the corner of the kitchen bookshelf at the end of our baking island this morning -- because I was in too much of a hurry to take care, anxious to feed our puppies -- it was closer to the hairline that the smash occurred. But it's steadily working its way down to my left eye. First, of course, was the swelling bump to emphasize the pain. Then the gradual appearance of a bruise. And that bruise keeps creeping downward.

In any event, my effort was in vain. Jackie was so upset at seeing me apply a cold compress to my forehead, seated on the sofa in distress, both of them beside me on either side, consoling me with their concerned licks, that he refused his breakfast in any event. Jillie would no more refuse to eat than to eagerly set off for the moon. My fault. It's been months since I've had an accident, several years since the last disastrous fall in the house. Because, for the most part, I recognize why these things happen to me. Yes, I'm accident-prone, but mostly because I become unheeding, act in haste, forget about caution and being careful.

We'd decided, in view of the rising numbers of COVID cases in the past several weeks in this area, to return to our spring method of grocery shopping early in the morning when it's less likely the supermarket will be full of shoppers. So we showered this morning, fed the puppies a pre-meal snack, then took ourselves off to do the shopping. The store was mostly empty of shoppers and we felt better about that. I thought it would be a small shopping but it wasn't.

When we arrived home, first order of business was placating Jackie and Jillie over our absence, and unpacking everything. My husband, cutting away the thick stalks on the two cauliflowers for economy of space in the refrigerator, cut some florets into small bowls for J&J, and soon we were finished, and I prepared their kibble, giving them canned salmon to top it off for a change. Everything was hurried; my husband always cautions me to slow down. So much for that.

A cold morning at 5C with intermittent sun. It warmed up to 13C by the time we were prepared to go off to the ravine with Jackie and Jillie but by then it was heavily clouded and windy. They were over-excited, leaping about everywhere before we left, tussling with each other and with us. Clearly in need of some outdoor exercise. So off we went, bundling ourselves up against the cold under a now-brooding sky that wouldn't see the sun again this day.

But we had plenty to look at. In fact, everywhere we looked there were new surprises erupting out of the forest floor. More, far more fungi than we've seen in any other year for decades. Some we've never seen before. And some we'd prefer not to see again. But all fascinating. 

Fly agaric

Because we had set out in the early afternoon instead of early morning since we'd gone grocery shopping at the time when we're usually coursing through the ravine's trails, we decided there was no need to take along apple treats for Jackie and Jillie. For the past little while my husband has stopped at one particular point in our circuit to dole out the apple pieces. And that's exactly where Jackie stopped this morning, waiting for his apple treats. None to be had, despite his encouragement of my husband to dig a little deeper in his jacket pocket.

Violet webcap

Not to worry, though apples growing on the wild apple trees have been a scarce commodity this fall, my husband espied one as we ventured along, made his way off trail into the forest and retrieved a nice little apple. And then, bit off little chunks of it, to satisfy his two little doggy companions. It wasn't a particularly sweet apple, slightly sour, but it was crisp and somewhat juicy and they enjoyed it.

Indigo milkcap

Mushrooms? Well, aplenty. The fly agaric we've been seeing so many of lately. And a small crop of bright purple, tiny mushrooms that were entirely new to our experience. They're called violet webcap mushrooms, and it will be interesting in coming days -- if we can remember where we saw them -- to see whether they attain a bit more of a size.

Oyster Mushrooms

Soon afterward my husband saw, glancing into the forest interior, those pale blue mushrooms that always remind me of the pallor of a corpse. They're large-capped, and a light blue with just a tinge of pale grey. There was a time when we'd see them often in the fall. But we haven't come across them in years, and now suddenly, there they are. They're there because this has been a truly unusual wet spring, summer and fall. And these mushrooms are called Indigo milkcap.

More oyster mushrooms on what is left of a decaying trunk that had fallen from its stump only a few days back, standing alongside the trail. The stump itself has a larger colony of the oyster mushrooms camping out on its thicker stalk, but the more slender trunk of a tree that must have died before it had gained much maturity, also hosted a considerable colony of hard-working fungi diligently feeding off the wood fibre to hasten its decay.

Yesterday we happened to notice the presence in the forest interior of a stack of old spruce cones. They would have been left over from last winter. The squirrels that cached them evidently failed to make use of them all, and over the succeeding months -- spring to summer -- it was obvious that the old cones were in a gradual state of decay.

Those we saw piled not far from the old ones were new, however, fallen only in the past days and weeks, meticulously assembled to provide assurance to the industrious squirrels that have collected them, that they'll have ample forage in store for the winter season yet to come. We've seen such caches previously where every single cone was perfectly lined up one against the other, in an orderly pile; obviously the work of a perfectionist.

 

Last year Vancouver was struggling with poor air quality as a result of wildfires burning through hectares of forest in the province. The year before was a dreadful wildfire season for Alberta. Both provinces did have wildfires this year, but smaller than in previous years, their size making them more controllable though there were some isolated town evacuations before the fires were brought under control.

But 2020 has so far spared those provinces, partly due evidently, to unseasonal rain events and partly as a result of COVID-19 calling for unusual measures such as restricting quad machines in forested areas and fewer people permitted to go out camping, resulting in fewer human-caused fires.

But there's still been foul atmospheric conditions in Vancouver for the past week. Dense smoke brought by high winds have disrespected the border between Canada and the U.S., bringing dense clouds of saffron-coloured smoke into British Columbia. Our son went canoe-camping for the weekend with a few of his biology grad students over at Sechelt on the Sunshine Coast and the visibility there was about a kilometre, the acrid odour of smoke prevailing.

Many years ago, northern Ontario had a similar situation with fire crews battling to control fierce wildfires and the acrid, dense smoke that resulted was visible in the Ottawa Valley and over to Algonquin Park. It isn't pleasant, but it's nothing compared to the experience of people struggling to escape the wildfires and faced with the prospect of destroyed towns and burnt-down homes in Oregon, Washington State and California.

No such dramas here, thank heavens. We awoke to another cool morning, albeit sunny while also windy. And off we went to the ravine with Jackie and Jillie towing us along. The forest has been well and truly penetrated by our ongoing  rain situation. It had rained without stop yesterday but for a brief early-in-the-day window allowing us to get out for a shorter circuit, after which the rain was unrelenting. Until late afternoon when the sun surprised us by visiting and remaining, a welcomed appearance, until nightfall.

And it stuck around for today, no rain in the near prospect. Even so, the saturated ground will take a lot more than a day or two of sun and wind to dry out. But it's fall, and fall means mushrooms popping up everywhere on the forest floor. Many of them are edible, but you've got to be really confident in your ability to identify which is and which are not harmful. 

New beautifully yellow Amanita muscaria keep appearing, the latest ones with fully rounded caps glowing yellow and often with a tinge of central orange, then the patterned little delicate bumps, while the matured mushroom caps often invert, becoming bowl-like. Invariably we come across flattened caps that had been nibbled not just tentatively but with gusto, so they're serving a purpose for some animals appreciative of the psychotropic properties, indifferent to their toxins, or not suffering from the latter and simply enjoying the former.

 We saw oyster mushrooms maturing on an old tree stump. And dozens of common fungi littering the forest floor in a symbolic vision of a fall forest. Just as well that Jackie and Jillie are disinterested in mushrooms. Kind of odd for two little dogs whose favourite food happens to be a wide variety of raw and cooked vegetables and fruits.

 

This is the new world of medical care during the time of COVID. A scheduled 'appointment', aka a 'remote consultation' with my cardiologist. A man who worries far too much, and allows his concern for his patients to take a dreadful toll on his own health. The last actual physical consultation I had with him was two years ago. And two days after that in-person consultation he was himself scheduled for cardiac surgery. Now he's back in the saddle again, but the horse has bolted.

His clinic at a local hospital has been shuttered. No in-person consultations other than for very unique circumstances, and mine is neither unique nor needful of any attention. The call would be received between half-past ten and half-past eleven in the morning, which would give us ample time for our usual ravine ramble, a shower and breakfast. So we thought.

On with rainjackets for everyone. It has become a ritual of necessity. For not only has nature set a pattern for us this month of afternoon rain, evening rain, all-night rain, early morning rain, and the occasional thunderstorm in between, she also dictates when we may emerge from our social isolation on a daily basis. Not that we see many others out on the trails these days, and that's just as well. Unusual seasonal cold has set in, reminding us of October.

The rain had been reduced to light drizzle by the time we got out and then it stopped entirely. And we stopped too when we got to the top of one of the hills we mount after descending the first long hill for entry to the ravine, swooping around the trail taking us to the first bridge, to satisfy Jackie's insistence. He can smell the cut-up apple in my husband's pocket, and he wants it. Instead of having his nose to the ground, he keeps leaping up at the pocket.

So the small pieces of apple are doled out, and then we're set to continue our ramble. But though it isn't raining again and doesn't look as though it will anytime soon, we decide on a shorter hike just to be certain we don't miss the call. Along the way we note the soft shades of the colour beginning to alter the landscape. Mushrooms gleaming up at us from the forest floor. Foliage here and there changing against the greater backdrop of rain-slicked green.

Today there are lots of Fly Agaric scattered about. Some newly emerged from the sopping leaf mass covering the forest floor, some flattening out as they mature, some have been knocked over, and a surprising number have been nibbled. So we speculate that there may be some squirrels in a very good mood stumbling about, and hope that the coyotes and owls deal kindly with them.

And we begin to come across other fungi aside from the pedestrian white ones and the tiny-capped brown colonies. These are a bright orange. Not the bright red ones that we've seen previously, but bright orange. Not the bright orange splotches that appear here and there, their shape looking as though they've been poured onto the forest floor, but well-formed, arch-capped bright orange mushrooms. And when I look them up later on the Internet they appear to be of a family called Omphulotus.

From a distance off the trail into the interior of the forest my husband espies a very large mushroom protruding out of the ground and I dip and weave my way through the vegetation and low-slung branches to come to a stop before it. It somewhat resembles a potato, it is brown and large and almost oval shaped and its cap bulges here and there in smooth bumps. And it most definitely is not attractive, but it is interesting.

Later, at home, we're showering (we've a two-person shower) and though I don't hear it, the telephone rings. It's not quite ten. My husband leaps out of the shower, drips himself into the bedroom and it's the doctor. I finish rinsing away the shampoo and hurriedly cover myself with a towel and take the phone. Questions. Answers. Reassurance. I'm well, and how's he? Surely not dripping wet, standing beside his bed as he lobs questions and I bat them off. All's well. He would like an ecogram, blood tests. 

We wish one another well. Perhaps next year things will be better. As for me, I couldn't feel better if I thought I should. How to convey that? We dry ourselves off, wipe up the floor, the rugs will dry themselves. Throughout all of this Jackie and Jillie are sprawled out on our bed, snoozing. Thank heavens they didn't have a barking contest between them. 

And then it's breakfast time. Relaxation. The newspaper awaits. So do melon, banana, soft-boiled eggs, toast and tea/coffee. We're set for the day....

There's no such thing as 'same old' in nature. Nothing is ever repeated as it was before. The continuous rounds of change, subtle and nuanced makes each day, each glimpse of a landscape, varied from how it affects us and how it appears from day to day. Nature has taught her creatures to carry on, to forge ahead, to grow and to mutate, to develop and to mature, to live and to die. In all the stops between unique characteristics emerge, some recognized, some not.

The fall asters now blooming in the ravine are confined for the present to the earliest ones, mostly white, while the others of variant sizes, presentations and colours hold themselves in abeyance, awaiting their turn. The time that elapses between the first appearance of the originals and the eventual appearance of the followers seems to take forever. The later-bloomers are infinitely more attractive, boast colours and symmetry the originals lack, and are are altogether more pleasant to look at.

The crop of mushrooms now emerging from the leaf mass of the forest floor, rich and fecund, are differentiated by shape, size and colour, along with texture and placement. Those that nature designed to grow directly on the trunks of ailing trees bear little resemblance to those meant to grow their underground filaments feeding on the wood fibre buried within the soil in tree roots and around the base of tree trunks.

Each has their assigned purpose and each cry out for notice for different reason, but all of them are unique; some long-lived and others casually dropping by for a day or two, symbols of the main body that spreads its presence underground. Many are edible, others are not. The Amanita muscaria that has dominated many areas of the forest lately, are edible with a caveat that they are poisonous unless the water-soluble toxins is leached from them.

They're also psychoactive causing hallucinations. So while they're exquisitely beautiful to behold, they're also problematical for anyone looking to harvest them for the table, or to take an acid trip from which they could conceivably suffer grievous harm. We're interested neither in nibbling nor flying, so we admire them and congratulate nature on her infinite store of surprises to be confronted on a leisurely stroll through her garden.

Jackie and Jillie aren't much interested in nibbling mushrooms. Though they're reputed by some sources to be of interest to some dogs. Dogs who could conceivably fall afoul of nature and become themselves seriously ill. On the other hand, when we were out in the ravine this morning, we did come across one of the mushrooms that had obviously been part of someone's breakfast. Toxins don't behave the same in all animals, so perhaps squirrels aren't affected by the poisonous aspect of this beautiful fungus.

It was a cold, albeit sunny morning, with plenty of wind, but quite unlike the warm wind of yesterday on a humid and mild day. No raincoats required today though, given the clear blue sky. A clear blue sky when we first set out on our morning's adventure. By the time we were halfway through the circuit, however that clear blue sky had changed to an aluminum-bright overcast. Presaging afternoon rain, which latterly always seems to develop in the afternoon, the evening, overnight. Little wonder the presence of so much fungi.

Yesterday's 'red berries' developed into tiny mushrooms

Fungi filaments, by the way, are being predicted to become in food science, the next big wave of enterprise. Not only as a food source, but as material for the manufacture of clothing, and packaging. Decades and decades ago no one could believe that oil-derived products would come to dominate consumer markets in the manufacture of plastics -- all manner of oil-derived goods from car parts to panels for all manner of uses, and clothing -- either.

Remember the sage advice given Dustin Hoffman at the start of his acting career when he appeared as the naive and likeable schmuck in The Graduate? To invest in plastic, the next big thing.