We read the newspapers every morning at the breakfast table, a ritual to ensure that anything of note that occurs we'll be aware of. Old habit. Sometimes enjoyable, more often there's an absence of enjoyment in a crucible of bad news. There's no issue of any newspaper and hasn't been for a year and a half that doesn't include a barrage of articles featuring the SARS-CoV-2 virus. And of those there's not much good to report other than the rising numbers of people vaccinated against COVID-19.

Today there was other news as well, a long energy pipeline the victim of a cyberattack causing great consternation, as such it should for these events will affect everyone. Another symptom of governments accessorizing themselves with clever Internet computer specialists to design software capable of infiltrating other governments' security efforts with destructive malware. There is no government department, no civil infrastructure, from universities to hospitals immune from these malignant attacks.

The plight of India, one of the two world's most populous countries, in trying to regain some control over their second wave of the pandemic is beyond alarming. The statistics just boggle the mind. The circumstances of a virus with the capacity to spread widely and efficiently and while it's doing that also mutating into more threatening variants is beyond worrying. Beijing has much to answer for, in its delaying of the responsibility to alert other countries, while it was busy enacting internal lockdowns and accusing other countries of racism for wanting to close their borders to potential carriers of the virus. Its malice evident in the way an official CCP tweet ridiculed India's plight while celebrating China's success in sending a space module into orbit.

On these occasions there's balm for the soul in looking out the front door at the flowering trees in the garden. The glory of the magnificent blossoms of the magnolia bearing hundreds of exotic flowers each spring is now accompanied by the blossoming of two Sargentii flowering crabs planted close to the magnolia. The flowers bursting all over those three trees in a blaze of identical pink.

We've had another day of sun, wind and cloud, but it's slightly milder in temperature. Once again the forecast warned of afternoon rain, so we went off for our usual afternoon walk in late morning. All the rain we've been exposed to, and the forest still hasn't fully absorbed has incited ferns to pop through the forest floor. Some of them unfurl as they begin to take shape, looking like the traditional 'fiddlehead'.

I had been wondering where all the red baneberry were this year, amongst the bracken coming up here and there in the forest, and today found some fine specimens in bloom. The floral head comprising a dozen and more tiny flowers will in months to come turn into glossy bright-red berry clusters. There are also white baneberries and in their case, the berries are ivory in colour, not nearly as attractive as the more numerous red, while both, I'm sure, are equally poisonous.

At one juncture while we were trekking alone an upper trail, there was a sound that couldn't be ignored. And there, beside us virtually, was a small hairy woodpecker industriously pecking at the bark of a tree, moving steadily up and down, flitting to another tree to assess its prospects. No red cap, so it was obviously a female, and quite undisturbed by our close presence and rapt attention.

Another day, another revelation. Of the kind that you involuntarily wince at. But some investigative reporters are on the track and diligently discovering new and incriminating evidence that government leaders have fallen comfortably into the trap of power investing the holder with opportunities some simply cannot resist. Cue nepotism and ethics violations and entitlements galore.

In Canada it's ongoing revelations that the current prime minister of this country cannot stop engaging in questionable activities, circumventing moral judgement and blundering into behaviours more reminiscent of an autocrat than that of a leader of a democratic nation. Under cover of COVID-19 as an emergency, Parliament has been effectively suspended, the prime minister held to little democratic account.

So far, the Parliamentary ethics commissioner has investigated two occasions when Justin Trudeau overstepped the boundaries of permissible behavior to get his knuckles rapped for ethics violations.
He's working currently on the third such occasion with ample evidence that once again Canada's prime minister has overstepped the boundaries of ethical behaviour in favouring a group with which his entire family has close and remunerative contacts with a sole-sourced billion-dollar contract, once again leading to a scandal of mismanagement and ethical skulduggery.

It is not only regimes such as Robert Mugabe's in Zimbabwe where decisions were made to forge ahead with destructive policies reflecting tainted judgement that ruin a country. And then there is the emerging story in the U.S. of President Trump's daughter who is directly involved in his administration deciding to enrich herself even further than beyond her clothing-and-lifestyle line, to publicly endorse a corporation's food line. One that the president himself seems happy to re-endorse.

All this headache-inducing news of human frailty, ego and misplaced judgement needs a solution and beyond the ballot box in which citizens of each country can have a hoped-for effect. For us there is the additional solace given by a morning round through the tranquility of a forest. And so once again we gathered up our two little pups -- or perchance they prevailed upon us -- and made our way over to the awaiting green ravine, a landscape guaranteed to wash away the sour taste left by sordid tales of greed and entitlement.

Another chance encounter today with someone we haven't seen in a great while, with his beautifully conformed and behaved pointer, a hunting breed of great distinction. Jackie and Jillie enjoyed a reunion and we had reason to stand in the shade of the forest canopy making up for absent time with a cheerful fellow trail addict.

Earlier, when we were passing by the creek, now reduced from its swollen state of a few days earlier in the wake of heavy rainstorms, we welcomed back Damselflies, which we hadn't yet seen make an appearance this summer. They were flitting about on the creek banks, above, around and close to the compound flowerheads of the Elderberry trees, most of which have almost finished flowering.

The compass plants are beginning to make a lovely show, tall and stately, their yellow heads responding to the golden glow of the sun. The succession of wildflowers has slowed somewhat, though we still see fleabane here and there, daisies and yarrow on the forest floor.

An hour and a half later we were home again. The cool atmosphere of the forest overtaken by a heat buildup of the nearing afternoon. On the plus-plus side, both in the forest where cool breezes penetrated, those breezes followed us down the street, up our driveway, and politely stopped as we entered the house.

Before we did, a quick turn of the garden revealed that the patch of perennial digitalis that was mostly ivory-petalled is now featuring their pale pink counterparts. Yesterday afternoon, in a light rain, I was out in the garden tidying things up a bit, snipping here and there, and dead-heading geraniums and spent roses. It's hard to tell, actually, a day later, that the garden looks any neater; its rampant growth in these midsummer conditions of heat, humidity, sun and rain, make for ideal growing conditions.

There appears to be no news of a benign nature of late. The world is heavily over-shadowed by the sinister threat of the novel coronavirus. In Europe, Italy and Spain, France and Germany all have sobering news of new cases of COVID, along with staggering death rates. The United States is struggling to cope with a massive infection and death rate.

Last night I received an email from an old schoolmate, someone I had gone to high school with, seventy years ago. Later, when we were older, in our late teens and both married, we spent a lot of time together socially, as couples. Life happens, people move to other cities and connections are lost. But twenty years ago we re-connected remotely, and began sending emails updating one another. She's had a hard life.

Made all the more difficult now. One of her sons had re-located many years ago from Toronto when he married an American, to live in Colorado. He's now an American of long standing with dual citizenship. He informed his mother last Friday that his son, her grandson, had died. He was a physician practising in New York, and had been infected a month ago. He was in recovery and it was thought he had beaten the pathogen. Then he was discovered alone in his apartment, unconscious. Before he could be transferred to hospital, he died.

Sorrow hangs heavy on all of us, and fear haunts our every hour. And then, there are lighter moments. Today is our daughter's 58th birthday. I'm corresponding by email regularly with her daughter, our grandchild. We're comparing notes on grocery shopping, the difficulties inherent in trying to remain physically distant and intact while in an enclosed environment with others trying to do the same thing, focused on acquiring the necessities of living while avoiding the possibility of dying.

Today dawned sunny, but much colder than yesterday when it had been balmy, but given to heavy rain all throughout the day. We've been enjoying sunny intervals, some overcast, and light snow flurries. Last night's wind was ferocious, and it toppled a few immature trees in the forest. Today's wind is brisk, adding to the cold atmosphere.

We were able to leave the house in the early afternoon with Jackie and Jillie, to set out for a relaxing hike through the ravine, after yesterday's weather-enforced absence. For the first time since early winter we embarked on a hike without cleats strapped over our boots and it felt liberating. And though we had thought we were finished wearing hats and gloves and winter-weight jackets, we needed them today and so did Jackie and Jillie, out wearing thick wool sweaters.

Without the cleats, we had to avoid one section of a trail we always take to begin our circuit that always remains deep in snow and ice when all other areas have long since shed their ice. So we began the circuit in a total reverse of the usual and chose different connecting trails that kept us clear of any icy trail challenges. It was a relief to shed the cleats, almost as much as it was to hike along without keeping a sharp eye out for slippery surfaces; instead there were boggy ones.

The forest floor now has countless deep pools of melt-and-rainwater. Where deciduous trees tend to predominate in some areas of the forest, the view is stark and dark; bare tree trunks unrelieved by any hint of verdancy, awaiting the arrival of foliage. In avoiding the areas of deep ice still clasped to parts of the trail system, we take a different direction, briefly leaving the confines of the forest on our way to completing our circuit, which takes us alongside the creek where heavy remediation work was done years ago to stabilize the collapsing hillsides above.

There, a casual glance toward the creek from the improvised path we were on, free of the presence of trees because they had been logged out of necessity to enable large earth-moving and -drilling machinery access, brought a familiar sight to our notice. Among the granite rocks that had been dumped alongside the creek, and the detritus of fall, bright little yellow heads of Coltsfoot, the first of the wildflowers to make their early spring presence.

When we returned to street level, we came across one of our most dear neighbours, Mohindar, who had been out for a walk around the block to get some fresh air. As we chatted, we learned from him that the supermarket where we do our grocery shopping had suddenly become a potential threat. In that one of its employees had been diagnosed with COVID-19.

And then, when we arrived home, walked up the driveway, sauntering briefly past the driveway, onto the patio and walkway at the front of the house, another delightful surprise greeted us. A small patch of bright purple crocuses celebrating spring!