As mountain streams go, the Waterville Valley's Smarts Brook would have no trouble fitting in among its spectacular peers in North America. It is a varied landscape, a truly beautiful spot for a ramble up a mountain stream. It lacks nothing in dramatic appeal, from the clear water rushing downstream from the mountains above, splashing and roaring over the boulder-strewn raceway, to the red-and-black-striped granite outcroppings and the granite wall opposite the trail.

There are two entrances, since the trail forms a loop; entry to the left-hand side brings one directly to a gradual ascent alongside the stream. The right-hand entry represents an initially steeper ascent away from the stream and eventually to a wide bridle path that begins to move closer to the stream.

Of the two, the left-hand side wins the vote for beauty. It leads directly to a trail called the "Pine Flats", and it's just that, a logged-out, but returning flat portion of the trail full of pines, hemlocks, maples and dogwood. By then you're far from the stream, and headed down eventually into a continuation of the trail into the inner forest, that will eventually loop back around to the stream, and bring you over a bridge onto the bridle path.

The thunder of the stream where it pounds over drops in the stream bed represents a real roar of aqua-power; below those drops there are placidly lovely pools inviting a cool dip on a hot summer day. And it was hot when we were there, this year, over a month later than we usually make the trip.

And, as a result, we missed seeing the usual fabulous spring-time display of wildflowers, chief among them the glowing, perfect Ladies Slipper orchids that abound there.

Most people, going on vacation, our granddaughter observed as she helped unload our car on our arrival at the cottage we rent for a week each year in the Waterville Valley, simply pack clothing for the occasion. We, on the other hand, concentrate on utility and creature comforts.

Although the cottage comes fully equipped with linens, fresh towels provided daily, the kitchen with cleaning and paper products, dishes, pots and pans and other utensils, we prefer to bring along our own, used for that specific purpose, once or twice yearly as the mood takes us to get away. We bring our own dishes, tumblers, utility knives and flatware, cooking pans and food grater, cutting board, bakeware, and sleeping pillows.

Oh yes, the necessary clothing as well, needless to say. I did manage to forbear mentioning to her that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, given that she had packed for her use, hiking boots (as instructed), casual runners, and at least eight pair of showy sandals, along with a large suitcase full of clothing that would, we knew, be supplemented by new clothing, and new sandals, as soon as the opportunity presented to do some fashion shopping.

On the positive side of the ledger, the most popular destination for her shopping pleasure when we weren't out hiking on some mountain trail, was a well-stocked independent bookstore where she discovered the titles and authors she was hoping to find, and came away with heavy bags-full of new reading material, vital to her well-being.

We decided, the night before departure - having checked on the Internet to discover that work on the Champlain bridge through Montreal was interfering with the free flow of traffic as a result of repairs, which left drivers with two-hour transit waits - to bypass Montreal in favour of going the Cornwall-to-New York route instead. Knowing that it was not our preferred route, and would end up costing us at least an hour and a half more time in travel, we felt we had little choice.

So we drove into Cornwall, took the bridge over the St.Lawrence river over to Akwasasne, then on toward the border where we were subjected to the usual queries by a U.S. border agent, and allowed through on the New York side. We noted the passage of a bulk carrier under the bridge as we passed.

It was a hot, humid day with more heat and humidity promised for the coming days when we would be away on our week's holiday in New Hampshire.

In New York state, the sight of wind farms, with those giant arms rotating to produce energy, despite the merest whisper of a wind, struck us as bizarre, really quite fascinating. The windmills standing like great sentries marching against the landscape make for a challenging view of the area. They haven't, after all, turned out to be a great energy source, though they still remain a viable (inadequate) alternative. But their destruction of bird life is dreadful.

The drive was otherwise uneventful, and longer than it should have been since we were not on expressways throughout the drive, given the route taken. When we turned in to take advantage of a state tourism rest stop to eat a brunch we had brought along with us, we happened to strike up a conversation with two women who had driven there from Montreal. Who informed us that they had taken the Champlain bridge, and it had been wide open.

Sometimes, using resources available to find out the latest information turns out not to be such a good idea; had we spurned using the Internet for a traffic update for Montreal, we would have chanced upon a clear passage through the bridge, thus shortening our travel time considerably.

She's come a long way from the innocent babe-in-the-woods she once was. She's firmly in her teen years, standing a head and a half taller than her grandmother, taller even than her grandfather. She has a secure sense of humour, well-entrenched on the ironic side.

And she's a chatterbox. As are her close friends. With whom she is in constant contact. They speak on a continual basis, in fact, engaging in long, convoluted and often hilarious conversations. They do this remotely as far as physical presence is concerned, but not emotional attachment.

While she's devotedly speaking with me about any number of things that take her attention, she also continues an ongoing conversation with one of her girlfriends whose birthday is today. Her girlfriend is bemoaning the fact that she is all alone, and it's her birthday. Her parents are busy working and while her grandmother has promised to take her out for an ice cream treat, somehow she feels abandoned.

She isn't, of course, she lives on a farm and her parents are busy doing farm chores.

And her little sister, twelve years of age, is at home, with her. That doesn't count, she is definitely not thrilled with her sister's constant presence. Her sister is a troublesome pest. Not so, my granddaughter tells me in an aside; she likes the little sister, she's adorable and good fun.

But according to our granddaughter's texting companion, her sister, who knowing perfectly well this is her birthday, insists that it is also her stuffed bear's birthday, an auspicious event that deserves celebration.

"She's only doing that", she texts my granddaughter, "because she knows she's irritating me. And she knows perfectly well also that her stuffed bear's real birthday is in May! She never lets us forget that fact. Now, all of a sudden, because it's my birthday, it's her stuffed bear's as well. I'm getting really annoyed!"

After reading the texted conversation to me, we look at one another and burst with laughter.

The atmosphere yesterday was like being in a blast furnace. It was extraordinarily hot, humid at 34-degrees-Celsius and with a UV index standing at 10. The saving grace, we felt, was the wind, which gusted nicely at times, offering some relief.

Despite the sizzling heat, we went into the ravine for our usual walk in the afternoon. And it wasn't bad at all, in there. The canopy provided excellent shade, as expected, and the wind managed to gust through the woodland very nicely indeed. So it was a pleasant walk, one we didn't cut especially short, although our little dogs were feeling the heat so we proceeded slowly.

The weather was forecasted by Environment Canada to result in a thunderstorm or two by night time. With a 30% chance of pop-up storms, none of which actually transpired. That is, until dinnertime. When the sky did its change-over from mostly clear with the sun bubbling brightly, to a fairly rapid overcast condition, with dark clouds finally turning the house interior dark.

We were seated at the table, having our dinner, relaxing and enjoying the stillness of late Sunday, when we suddenly - and I mean suddenly - became aware that something had changed dramatically. The wind had come up in a way we seldom see. It was straining against the canopy that covers our deck, and we could see the trees beyond leaning perilously.

We hurried over to the front of the house to exit onto the porch and watch as the rain came tumbling down. But it was the action of the wind, bending the trees to its will, that fascinated us. Later, we were to learn that the wind that grasped a left-open garden umbrella one neighbour had forgotten, and floated it over the trees and into the ravine.

A maple tree and an ash on another two neighbours' lawns came to grief when main limbs, severing the trunk, were felled, the trees left wounded with great white gashes instead of the healthy specimens they represented just moments before. Anything that was not secured went flying about in the wind. Ornamental shrubs were flattened.

And at LeBreton Flats, downtown Ottawa, Bluesfest was summarily interrupted by a sudden, unexpected wind followed by lighting and thunder. The wind managed to collapse the huge stage which performers had only moments before exited, having from their height on the stage, viewed the oncoming storm heading down the Ottawa River. Three people sent to hospital, with broken leg, spinal injury, cuts - nothing life-threatening.

Thousands panicked and sought shelter within the nearby War Museum. Electricity was cut to tens of thousands of households in the Ottawa Valley. Throughout the night sheet electricity lit up the sky as thunder rolled and rain continued pelting the area.

I fear it will take more than the newly-acquired digital camera with the very large viewing screen to help me distinguish the subject of my photographs from the surrounding landscape. When we embark on one of our daily jaunts into the woodland of the ravine adjacent our home, I'm on the lookout for anything unusual and if I'm able to, like to snap a photo of whatever it happens to be.

Yesterday I took out, for the first time, the new Kodak camera that my husband bought for me, a Kodak-reconditioned camera that came at an affordable price. Alas, while I'm able to enjoy the larger screen and can see as a result a larger landscape in its view, it still cannot enable me to distinguish details. So I point and shoot, hoping that what I'm aiming at will be in the near vicinity of the shot.

As it happened, I spotted a hare, and it was nicely posed. It simply stayed where it was, on the trail adjacent to the one we happened to be on. Our little dogs are securely harnessed and leashed and they didn't alarm the little beast. Their odour no doubt did, still it stayed its ground, patiently awaiting our departure for whatever reason. I hauled out my new little camera to give it its initiation into usefulness. And took what I hoped would be usable photos.

I did use the zoom function, but I'll certainly have to become far more familiar with the new camera to enable me to use it for its ultimate technical value. And the sad truth is, if I really want to get the most out of the camera, I'll have to carry along with me a pair of eyeglasses, and this is something I hadn't bargained on, just yet.

There is deliberate built-in obsolescence in all manufactured goods today, almost without exception. Nothing is manufactured to last the presumed length of its constituent parts made of quality materials. Quality has been abandoned for cheap quantity and quick turn-over. In the field of electronics and ever-evolving technologies this can be understood to a degree.

But consumers are led down the garden path by unscrupulous corporations who specialize in unveiling the very latest in the always-competitive, always-emerging field of cutting-edge technology, with cut-throat tactics to ensure that one always has a leg up on competitors anxious to shove the leaders off the top ledge of 'superior products', beloved by a consuming public.

Little wonder we've become such mindless consumers. We should demand more and better, however; not more products, but higher expectations of what we take to be durable products, which turn out to be nothing but. Take, for example, standards in house construction. While in some ways these have advanced, in many others they have turned a retrograde step.

People seem to think there is nothing amiss when a relatively new house presents with the problem of deteriorating window frames. Window frames now passing muster - and have done so for a generation - meeting required standards made not from solid, aged wood, but finger-jointed wood. Which may sound all right, but isn't. Because finger-jointed frames are vulnerable to deterioration; they haven't the fundamental characteristics of sold wood which can withstand moisture infiltration.

Which explains why so many of our neighbours have, over the past ten years, been paying tens of thousands of dollars to have their windows replaced by companies cheerily accomplishing that for them, in recognition of the inadequacy of building code standards for new housing. Old homes whose window frames were built of solid wood, are not decomposing at the rate the new homes are.

Which explains why, despite looking after the windows of our twenty-year-old house, by regular inspections, cleaning and painting, we have discovered yet another window where the wood has turned to pulp and requires replacing.

This marks the second time we have been awakened from early morning sleep by the definite sound of something amiss within the house. The first time occurred a year previous to this one. A year separates the events, yet they are clones. Apart from the sound.

On the first occasion the sound was remarkably loud, a true shattering sound. On the second, the sound was that of something shuddering, slipping, scraping against a wall. On each occasion the cause was the same.

Over the past fifty years we have amassed a collection of paintings. We share a passion for paintings, and always have, indulging ourselves whenever we could manage it, coming across a work of art that truly appealed to us, until now we have mostly 19th Century North American and European art, not immensely valuable, but of great value to us aesthetically.

They hang, of course, on our walls. Multiple paintings on each wall. Including paintings hung within the stairwell leading to the basement of our house. And for some strange reason, it has been the paintings hung there, on the wall of the stairwell going down the stairs from the first floor below, where these events have taken place.

We had no idea, in the first moments after being startled awake by the sounds what had caused them. And discovered on a subsequent search of the house what had occurred.

On the first occasion it was a glass-fronted etching, a large one, and the glass had shattered causing the sharp commotion of breakage. On the second, a few mornings ago, it was an old oil painting on canvass that had slid off the wall, causing far less sound, but leaving us no less puzzled.

We thought we could beat out the rain yesterday, but it was not to be. When we left the house the sun was still shining, although the sky was full of gathering thunderheads warning us amply of what lay ahead. The morning's Environment Canada forecast had given warning of severe thunderstorms in the offing.

And sure enough, down it came, sparsely at first but by that time we were well into our daily jaunt in the ravine, and sheltered quite adequately by the green canopy of the trees in the forest, bowering the trails.

There was the sound of a large woodpecker ahead, a loud hammering, telling us it was the Pileated woodpecker at work. But underlying that sound was another, much more difficult to interpret. In fact, we couldn't imagine what it might be; a truly peculiar sound and it was echoing, being repeated. A flock of birds, I thought, but not he. And it didn't take all that long for him to identify the sounds, emanating from an owl chick, with its parent responding in kind.

And there they were, in the thick of the leaves, each sitting on a branch opposite one another. Pity that, since they were too distant, over the creek, and high up in the branches, for a good, clear view. Even the zoom lens of my little camera was unable to do them justice. But it was a special treat to see them nonetheless. As we craned to look up at them, they seemed to be peering down at us.

The normal, readily-identifiable sound of the owl often comes floating over and through the dense tree tops toward us as we daily make our way through the woods. We do our best to locate the owls, but seldom are able to. This time we did.

The mature garden looks after itself. The backbone of the garden, the trees, shrubs and above all the perennials, staged for bloom and colour fairly well takes care of itself. The amount of labour involved in tending, trimming, plucking weeds and tying up floral stalks is fairly minimal in such a garden.

In spring there is plenty of activity with the basic clean-up required from the winter season just passed, along with the planting of annuals, particularly when, as we have, there are plenty of garden pots to be filled for additional, ongoing summer form, texture, fragrance and colour.

It helps considerably that the major garden clean-up takes place in the fall, when perennials are cut back, the garden pots emptied of their soil, the flowering annuals like begonias are stored in the basement to overwinter and be re-potted the following spring, and everything is ship-shape to go through the winter.

But at this time of year, as the various plants evolve into brilliant form and colour, brightening the garden landscape, for the most part all that is required is relaxed appreciation of the bounty that previous dedication has produced.

They're a young family, new on the street. Both adults are comfortably friendly, very open to greetings and conversation. They're from a small town a few hours' drive from this city. They bought their house from a family that had owned it when it first went on the market, as a newly-built dwelling. That family originally too had two young children and we watched them grow to young adults. Now the new family has two children as young as the original occupants were when we moved to our current home.

Oddly enough, the young man discovered, when talking to the home seller, that they had something quite original in common. The seller is a lawyer, now divorced, his wife living elsewhere, his children, though living with him currently, prepared to move on with their lives independently. He had bought his official court gown when he was setting up his practise from another lawyer who was then preparing to retire. And that retiring lawyer lived in the very town that the young prospective buyer was from.

When the name was revealed the coincidence became odder; the retiring lawyer was the young man's father. When the young man agreed that he would like to purchase the house he was given a gift from the house seller; his father's old court gown, which he has carefully put away in memory of his father, now deceased.

The people on the street will miss their old neighbour who has purchased a townhome closer to the downtown area, more convenient in location to the workplace of his new wife. They have, in exchange, a friendly young family who appreciate the quiet comfort of a street close to any amenities that a modern family might wish for.

When she stays over with us during the summer break from school her iPod is never out of reach, nor is her cellphone. She spends an incredible amount of time on her laptop, looking up things on the Internet, playing games, amusing herself. She is constantly texting in response to messages she receives from her friends. She calls this "talking" to them.

She has deigned, this time, to accompany us on three successive days to the ravine for our usual hour, hour-and-a-half walk with our two little dogs. When she was small and with us day in and day out she accompanied us each and every time we were in there; at that time she had no choice. Now she exercises her free will and if she feels like opting out, she does. Which is what she did for the remainder of the time she stayed with us.

At Chapters she peered about at all the titles, yet knowing in advance the authors she was interested in and seeking out those of their books she was not already in possession of. She often does her book 'research' on the Internet, beforehand. She treasurers her books, gives nothing up, and only on the rarest of occasions will she loan out one of her books to a friend, only to receive it back in a condition that invariably distresses her.

She has an intense and somewhat inordinate interest in food, and is constantly nibbling on something. When her grandfather went off to the bulk food store she was immediately alert to accompany him. When they returned the swag read like this: for her, a bag heavy with chocolate covered cherries, another of jellybeans; for him a bagful of coconut-centered chocolate bars; for me, a bagful of bay leaves.

It's a full hour's drive, much of it along a major local highway and the balance along back-country roads to arrive from our home within the outskirts of the city to our daughter's rural home which just happens to be on the opposite end to ours of the city outskirts. It is a pleasant enough drive, but the older we get, the more interminable it seems.

At this time of year we're always surprised to see how high and mature farmers' crops have grown, and take turns trying to guess what they are; oats, soybeans, potatoes, and of course corn which is fairly self-identifiable.

Some of the drive is spectacular, passing the rapids of the Mississippi, driving over a historic old stone bridge, famous in its time for forward-looking building technology, with its five large spans, now merely quaintly picturesque and inadequate for modern-day traffic.

And the amazing proliferation of wildflowers growing alongside the highway medians always take our attention for their colourful vigour and variety. We take turns identifying what they are; buttercups, daisies, purple loosestrife, viper's bugloss, Queen Anne's lace, lupins, clover, and all manner of tall ornamental grasses. And, of course, milkweed, beloved of Monarch butterflies, is now in bloom.

We see ducks in flight, and vultures soaring overhead, and occasionally come across wild turkeys with their large awkward shapes picking through the underbrush at the side of the forest burgeoning on either side of the back roads leading to the start of the geography known as the Canadian Shield.

Yesterday was the second time we'd come across the pair. Outdoor staff tasked with looking after the extensive area park system for the municipality. They were taking measurements, assessing the condition of the bridges located within the ravine, where we take our daily leisure activity.

The bridges are only about five years old, built to replace flimsier bridges that had been in place considerably longer, and were then in increasingly bad shape. Thanks in no small way to the anti-social activities of local teens who think it's good, clean fun to destroy public property. It's not only infrastructure like the bridges, but when the municipality had put up signage at ravine intersections, and when they had installed exercise bars for those who wanted to use them, and where good, stout benches had been put into place at various points, they had all attracted the attention of neighbourhood louts who did their best to set them on fire, or hack them up.

Our topic of conversation with the two, one a younger, amiable man of rather large proportions, the other a grizzled veteran of life, white-haired, short and stubby, was the silly nature of an elderly woman daily scattering peanuts for the wildlife, primarily squirrels and chipmunks. And the fact that she had a devoted following of local crows who knew, just as the squirrels and the chipmunks did, where those peanuts would be deposited.

About the proliferation of squirrels, crows and chipmunks, the older of the two men had much to say, that squirrels were nothing but loathsome rats, and crows were flying rats, and there was a time when both populations were held down and a whole lot scarcer in number than they are now. He should know, he said proudly, he was one of a legion of young boys who had grown up using slingshots and B-B guns to lethal effect.

The elderly woman smiled at the man, her husband said nothing additional, hearing his wife tell them both, the municipal workers, that she liked all wildlife. No point telling them that the crows and the squirrels and the chipmunks exhibited intelligence, perhaps on a par with the grizzled old fellow who so fondly recalled his childhood escapades.

Doesn't take long, just a moment's inattention, even when you're convinced you know an area well, to take you off course. Sometimes it's a trifle of an inconvenience, and on the rare occasion, should such an occurrence happen, it becomes somewhat more than that. You suddenly, at a point of attention, find yourself in unfamiliar surroundings, moreover surroundings that threaten to become far more than an inconvenience.

You've been so engrossed in something unrelated to driving and getting to where you mean to be headed that you completely overlook warning signs. Like one that reads "bus lanes only", and find yourself irretrievably headed in a direction you had no intention of pursuing, in a corridor of specialized traffic where the main highway is no longer in direct sight, that definitely excludes vehicles other than municipal buses.

You know there's a fine of $150 for such a traffic offence. And you desperately look everywhere for indications that you will soon be able to extricate yourself, but nothing appears and you keep driving forward because there's nothing else you can do. You realize that you're headed far, far from your destination. And you understand also that there's potential danger in what you're doing, even though you don't mean to be doing it.

Buses are accelerating at an incredible speed to pass you, a lone, cowering little red car on a 'buses only' corridor, with other buses seeming to be headed directly toward you on the narrow roadway. There's a very dark underpass right ahead and you think 'what if' it turns out to be a one-way set-up and buses are zooming right for you?

You make it out of the long tunnel and find yourself headed toward a kind of rendezvous-point for buses to assemble, and you finally come to the relief of a halt, as you exit your vehicle and make for a driver sitting in a bus that has a sign on the front reading 'out of commission'.

She wants to do well academically so she studies and she is emphatic about her grades, agonizing if she doesn't feel they adequately reflect her effort. She is scrupulous about performing all her homework and school assignments, meticulous about presentation and careful to hand everything in on time.

She doesn't too much care for many of her teachers, but there are those who gain her respect because she recognizes in them the capacity to teach, unlike many of the others. She has always had a streak of maturity in her, and when she was very young several of her teachers remarked on what appeared to them to be exhibitions of a natural tendency toward "justice" or fairness.

She always had a disputatious temperament, and her own sense of what was right. She has thought about what kind of career she would like to map out for herself. When she was thirteen she decided she was interested in law, and she would like to become a lawyer. A criminal lawyer, no less, and this is still what she aspires to.

She has taken, of late, to looking for particularly peculiar instances of peoples' behaviour setting them apart in public from most of society, and has conceived a fascination with the Westboro Baptist Church and its founder Fred Phelps, and his daughter. Their violent and vicious public displays of contempt for the society they live within and the values most people hold dear particularly intrigues her and she simmers with indignation over their nastiness.

Come to think of it, I had often thought myself, when I was young, of how fascinating it would be to have a profession like law, although there were no opportunities presented to me as a child to gain a higher education, let alone attend university. I'm thankful our grandchild can aspire to and attain what I could not.

What a profound alteration in the physical and psychical landscape of a Septuagenarian household with a brief summertime sojourn by a 15-year-old granddaughter invading its quiet and serene atmosphere. Chatter and emphatic sounds of one type or another from outright guffaws to girlish gigglings abound. As does clothing, strewn haphazardly over her bedroom floor adjacent suitcase, never hung inconveniently in the clothes cupboard.

That 15-year-old cannot be without the close-at-hand presence of her cellphone, for the buzz it silently emits calls to action at any time, anyplace for instant enthusiastic response. Those opposable thumbs fly at lightning speed; a glance confirms immaculate spelling.

Firmly affixed to her ears, buds attached to her indispensable iPod, with its long and ever-growing listing of popular songs.

And that computer sitting in her lap which is so essential for seeking out humorous videos, the source of some of her laughing fits, is forever entrenched as well, representing as an indispensable accompaniment to daily living.

From her rosebud lips two phrases trip lightly, to be repeated as required, multiple times throughout the course of a day: "Where are we going now?", and "What's for lunch (breakfast, dinner)?" No sooner is mealtime done with, than she searches purposefully through food cupboards for additional satisfying tidbits.

A tall, cool tumbler of liquid refreshment is never far from her grasp. It can be seen sitting here and there on furniture, awaiting her groping hand, mind fixated on reading something of immense importance on the Internet.

Books are our salvation, and perhaps hers as well, for she has inherited the family love of literature. And when she can persuade herself, or we can urge her to settle down and continue reading the latest of her novelistic interests, it is then that we can ourselves finally relax and scan the daily newspapers.

It's just one of those irritating mornings. They happen. You know, the kind that follow a restless night. Everyone has them. That restless night? Well, for one thing it was inordinately hot, humid and misery-making, despite the fans pointed directly at us. They did their best.

And then, there was something else, a sense of disquiet, a disequilibrium of some kind, who knows why? But it seemed somehow, to have affected us both.

We murmured questions to one another during the night, conscious of those times when we were both awake, albeit hardly alert, trying to will ourselves back to sleep. It's comforting, to say the least, to be next to one another, to reach out and stroke an arm, a shoulder, to be reassured of each other's close presence.

And as dawn lit up our bedroom - later now, not the 4:30 a.m. of just a few weeks earlier when the robins and cardinals began their trilling welcome to a new day - we would awake, again, fall back to sleep, then up again. Finally, going downstairs to prepare for breakfast, taking our little dogs out to the backyard before ourselves showering.

And hearing the garbage trucks roaming up and down the street. Where they're not supposed to be. After all, trash collection is always put forward a day after a national holiday and we'd just had one, the previous week-end. But no, it was done otherwise this time around, despite that we'd checked to make certain, with the printed schedule.

And wouldn't you know it, this was the time we had bags of compostable material too large for our own two composters, to be collected by the municipality for their own. And bags containing what had been swept up and discarded in cleaning the sheds and the garage. Sigh. Big hurry to get all that out to the curb. Too late for the bi-weekly paper pick-up though, that was already picked up.

Sigh again.

It wasn't our usual veterinarian who examined her when we made a hasty appointment in a short window of opportunity on Saturday morning, but another, older veterinarian who had obviously been in practise awhile and knew his profession well. He was impressed, looking through her file, at the results of the latest bloodwork that assured him her organs were in great shape for an elderly dog.

There didn't seem to be anything physically amiss, from what he could determine, after a thorough physical examination. A stomach upset, compounded by other factors which could conceivably be a reaction, he agreed, to the "pulse" protocol of pro-active anti-biotic use. So, he said, it was good thinking to halt its administration when we did. There are alternate anti-biotics that could be prescribed, he assured us.

Home she came, and gradually over the space of the next few days began to behave more normally, whatever 'normal' is now for her; far removed from her original behaviour, but recognizable, and reassuring. She was, for one thing, now eating her meals, although they still were comprised of rice and boiled beef. I'd had to set aside her Heartworm medication for the time being, until we could be more assured it wouldn't interfere with her recovery.

And this morning, she had rice and beef, but also the meal was comprised of 50% of her usual kibble, and she ate it all extremely well, leaving nothing behind, including the Heartworm tablet that had been inserted into a piece of ground beef. She's no longer pacing quite so incessantly, seemingly unable to settle down.

Well on the road to recovery, and we're thankful for that.

No wonder Randy Quaid and his wife are in Canada seeking asylum, purportedly fearful of coming to a unfortunately violent end-of-life, pursued hotly by Hollywood "death squads". They're likely to have been negatively impressed by the film he made about a town under siege by nature through immense flooding caused by torrential rain.

The film, "Hard Rain", is one we viewed last night. Gripping, intense, but rather absurd as well in the context of the story plot of a determined gangster with a heart of gold intent on leading his gang to rob an armoured truck carrying $3-million from a recent pick-up in the flooded town.

What adequately explains the presence of Morgan Freeman and Minnie Driver in this hard-boiled send-up is a little harder to discern. It had its moments, overshadowed mightily by Hollywood's love affair with car chases, translated in this film to motorboat chases and dangers lurking in volatile floating debris, culminating with the thrills inherent for some in watching at a remove, extremely violent action and accompanying deaths.

Topical, in a sense, given what's happening right now in a dreadfully tragic way with the swollen Souris River (funny that; the Yiddish word for trouble happens to be "tsouris") threatening towns in North Dakota, along with residents losing all their life-time material goods to the inundating floods, in Souris, Manitoba. The premier of Manitoba need make no apology for having to call in Canadian troops in a desperate attempt to shore up the town's defences against the rampaging waters.

CFB Shilo based soldiers place sandbags in Souris, Man. on Saturday July 2, 2011. (Province of Manitoba-HO / THE CANADIAN PRESS)

That's the reality of a catastrophic natural event that Hollywood has twisted into a cops-and-robbers-chase when the authorities turn out to be no more morally constrained than the law-breakers.

Yesterday seemed to bring an eruption of colour to the garden. Our usual stroll about to see what has come up, what is preparing to bloom, what has reached the apex of its bloom was as always both rewarding and reassuring that despite the voluminous sheets of rain that have drenched our landscape for months the garden and all its growing things have managed very nicely indeed, to thrive.

It is our great good fortune that we are able to enjoy such bounty of beauty. We have high hopes that the tomatoes that are flourishing now as tiny green globes will ripen eventually to taste as they should, not as they did, last year when there was insufficient sun and again, too much rain.

It's beyond lovely to be able to look out into the gardens from our house windows and see the thriving texture, form and colour that sits nestling about our home, and to catch sight, when luck is with us, of a hummingbird drawn to the nectar within the flowerheads.

The day lilies have begun their bloom, and the large, complex flowerheads of the hydrangea are beautiful in the fresh flush of colour. The fragrance of the roses, and of the trailing petunias are glorious, although not quite as prevailing as that of the lilies-of-the-valley and the lilacs, so recently faded.

Tending to the garden, now mature and capable of fending for itself due to the nature of perennials remains an incomparable leisure-time pleasure.

Great start this was, to a lovely summer day. On top of the closing hours of yesterday, with concerns about our little elderly dog. We've been administering oral antibiotic to her in a vet-recommended regimen to avoid problems with mouth infections, and it would appear that she has suffered a reaction, although she hasn't done so with previous such administrations.

She had a stomach upset to begin with and it appears to have been exacerbated, and now she has both diarrhoea and has upchucked several times. She is moderately interested in her food, eats a little, but is unable to digest it properly. Because of her advanced age she is also unable to recall that evacuations are done outside, so we've been busy cleaning up incessant messes, to exacerbate our frustrated concern for her well-being.

We spent a restless night, alert to her moving about, and woke earlier than is our habit when she leaped off her bed and I picked her up hurriedly, in my nightdress, and took her immediately downstairs and outside. In my haste in the early morning chill, to return to the house, I was clumsy and tripped on the deck stairs, sustaining a bloody big toe and a bruise and gash on the shin of the same leg.

After breakfast, while washing up the dishes, I wasn't aware that there was a broken glass in the soapy wash-up water, and gashed one of my fingers quite badly. It was difficult to stop the bleeding, and the result is a clumsy, albeit effective bandage. Which meant I wasn't able to wash my hands adequately, nor go about baking the blueberry pie I'd meant to do, nor the bread dough I wanted to produce, since the injury has temporarily left my hand out of commission.

I've always been bruise-and-injury prone, and that hasn't changed one bit.

It just happens to be a national holiday so everything of a commercial nature, and government offices that would normally be open on a Friday, are closed. This afternoon will likely see us going along to the emergency animal hospital across the other half of the city.

These things do happen, unfortunately.