Yesterday we experienced the lull after the storm.  Despite continual warning of the possibility of dire weather resulting in our area from Hurricane Sandy, we were spared.  Unlike Toronto, which itself suffered extreme weather consequences, but nothing like the U.S. And we consider ourselves extremely fortunate to have been spared the extreme weather conditions that became a fact of life for so many people on the U.S. eastern seaboard.

THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette Toronto hydro workers overlook the damage in Toronto on Tuesday after power lines were down from the remnants of Hurricane Sandy.

 

For us, yesterday was not full of the anguish of viewing the devastation, loss of life, wholesale property damage, ineffectual infrastructure and ongoing inclement weather conditions, but a day of Indian Summer quality.  We hardly needed light jackets going through our daily ravine walk.  The brisk wind moved the warm atmosphere around, without being the least bit unaccommodating to our enjoyment of the day.  The temperature rose to a balmy 19-degrees Celsius, quite unusual for this time of year, but heartily welcome.

We drove along the Eastern Parkway later, to Byward Market and walked along there a bit, enjoying the lively ambiance, noting that another through street leading to the market had been closed off by the medium of installing a wide, bright piazza where people could stroll uninterrupted by the passage of vehicles.  There we dropped in to our favourite magazine shop for the latest issues of art and antiques publications.

Driving along the parkway we saw, just as reflected in the ravine, that almost all deciduous trees had released their foliage to the overnight insistence of the prevailing winds.  Those trees now stand starkly naked of green, but for the towering old weeping willows still proudly bearing their crown of leaves, many of them barely turned yellow, still bright green.

On the way home we dropped by the Beacon Hill Salvation Army thrift shop and browsed about there.  Selecting from among their always-reliable offerings of books, a number of notables.  A recently-published unabridged tome of a copy of Les Miserables by Victor Hugo, an abridged copy of Bulfinch's Mythology by Edmund Fuller, Tears of the Desert; A Memoir of Survival in Darfur by Halima Bashir, Ann-Marie MacDonald's Fall on Your Knees; Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, and finally the new Joys of Yiddish by Leo Rosten.

We are impressed that there are so many discriminating readers of excellent books.  Willing to part with them.  As our home library grows and grows.  And we aspire to read each and every one of our books, in due time.