Once the heavy morning rain had stopped, the sky semi-cleared. There were plenty of puffy grey clouds to be sure, and some that bore a very strong resemblance to even darker thunderclouds, but there were also some blue shadings up there, so off we went for our ravine perambulation with little Riley in tow. Within the forest all was still, and water kept tumbling down off foliage. The creek was running quite vigorously and underfoot there was plenty of sodden clay, but for the most part the forest detritus that gathers from season to season kept the footing fairly good, and we completed the usual circuit.

We had decided, instead of going off to far-off (relatively speaking) rural feed and seed destinations as we had accustomed ourselves to, in securing large industrial-sized 50-lb. bags of peanuts, we'd do better to stay closer to home. There is, in fact, an urban-located feed and seed source, one that we had frequented over the past 40 years quite often, but had latterly fallen out of the habit of visiting. This would be our third time to pick up peanuts from Richie's Feed and Seed, available, to be sure, only in 25-lb. pound bags or less, but good enough for our purposes.

So off we went to pop into their store, vastly expanded from when we originally used to go there for bedding plants back in an earlier time of home ownership, when the first house we owned in Ottawa was closer to that source. It took us no time at all to load the bag of peanuts onto the shopping cart that Riley also rode in, in the front infant seat, secured in his bag. And after that it took an enormous amount of time as we wandered about the store, looking at publications, at seed packets, at gardening tools, and above all, at their outdoor offerings of perennials. Last time we were there we came away with a bright pink-flowering hydrangea a, white-flowering echinacea, and yet another hosta, my very most favourite plant.

We've definitely no more room in our garden beds and borders for any more plants, none at all. Nonetheless, temptation beckoned when we saw a hosta cultivar that we don't already have plunked down all over our garden space, and we bought one, hauling it home, wondering where we could possibly put it, but pleased in any event, that yet another hosta will be joining our garden community.

As we were still moseying about through the aisles holding robust specimens of flowering perennials and shrubs, one particularly dark thundercloud positioned itself directly above us, and speaking in ominous tones warned us that rain was imminent. Not yet prepared to leave, since we hadn't exhausted the entertainment value of enjoying the sight of so many appealing growing things, we yet lingered and then came the first fat drops alongside lightning and thunder. Still, we lingered, until we felt it was no longer wise to do so, grabbed the chosen hosta, and entered the store to ring up our bill.

The rain came pelting down furiously, a lovely sight to behold, when you're able to watch it in dry comfort. My husband, wearing his hat for rainproofing his head, ran the short distance to his truck, then drove it under the store eaves, and we loaded ourselves into it, then drove off home, happy it was raining once again, hoping it hadn't been a microburst that missed our street. It hadn't.

The Western Parkway is never busy and it's always our preferred route when we're driving downtown. The scenery is surpassingly beautiful, with the sight of cornfields, forested areas where deer on occasion and foxes make themselves seen briefly, and people run and bicycle, walk their dogs, alongside the unwinding Ottawa River in its vast breadth on the landscape.

On the greensward there are always people picnicking; none this day sunbathing, however, with the low cloud ceiling of a skyward landscape of cream-and-grey clouds.

We passed the Aeronautical Museum grounds, in the distance small aircraft parked on the vast scope of surrounding airfields -- on the sideroads bicyclists increased in numbers, whizzing by at dizzying speed. We passed the dazzling-white structures of Middle East embassies, the Mint, the Peacekeepers monument, and turned down to Byward Market. Since it was a weekday we experienced little difficulty finding a parking spot handy to the market centre.

There, we ambled about alongside crowds of tourists and Ottawans all out for a few pleasant afternoon hours spent browsing among the various stalls of street vendors selling everything from African and Central American handicrafts, locally-handmade jewellery and casual clothing, and imported basketware, along with any other number of consumer-popular items. There are stalls selling straight-from-the-farm milk and butter, cuts of meat and eggs.

Others selling garden plants and still others bursting with a colourful array of cut flowers. And then, best of all, fresh fruits and vegetables arrayed in bright and inviting display, almost irresistible in their appeal, until one recalls a refrigerator-full of like products and succumbs only to those not already in hand.

Once my husband has found the latest issues of his art and antique publications at a magazine shop he has frequented for decades and which boasts with good reason to have just about every magazine, journal and newspaper anyone might possibly want to acquire covering a vast array of topics, we went on to his favourite cheese shop to browse briefly and bring back home with us Saint Paulin, Saint Honore, Provolone and Parmesan cheeses.

A break from routine and a fairly entertainingly restful perambulation in a part of Ottawa that attracts those who appreciate the opportunity to do as we did. Though we did not do as so many others do, and seat ourselves in the Alfresco areas of the proliferation of Market cafes. Unlike places in Europe that welcome dogs accompanying their humans, in this city such aberrations are frowned upon.

It's a long time in canine years since he was young. As a puppy he was energetic, inquisitive, loving adventure and people, prepared to leap straight into the arms of anyone who would give him attention. And when he was young and perky and brightly appealing there was no lack of attention from people, including strangers who we would come across in the ordinary course of a day, out and about with him. His diminutive size and sweet appearance appealed enormously even to people who had no particular love of dogs. And still does.

Even back then, though, I had to patiently extend an effort to teach him not to fear heights or to leap. If I could get him to momentarily forget his extraordinary (for a dog, I would imagine) sense of caution by throwing a toy onto a heightened surface, in his eagerness to take possession of the toy he would automatically make the required leap. On his own, without trickery to disarm his fear, he would never respond just by voiced invitation. Eventually he learned that he was indeed able to jump about without dire consequences, and he ended up leaping to heights that surprised me.

In the last few years his sense of caution and fear that appears to be inborn has returned, however. A few years back he had a nasty tumble down a set of stairs, and ever since then he has been suspicious of stairs. He still mounted them, but over time more and more reluctantly, and now he won't at all approach stairs with the intention of ascending them. When we go upstairs to bed he has to be carried up with us. He will still descend, but not an entire indoor flight of stairs, only those leading from the deck to the garden and then only in stable conditions.

Now, we cater to his whims and wishes to make him comfortable, to please his notions of achieving some goal. In this summer weather our little sun-loving dog likes to venture out into the outdoors to listen to the natural sounds all around, observing the life of the creatures that inhabit our little microsystem. But that means ushering him to the backyard after breakfast and as soon as he becomes too hot, hauling him back up. And installing him in his second-most favourite spot, on the glider, sitting on the deck, its cushions enveloping and comforting him.

We placed before the glider an ottoman to reduce its height and give him confidence in leaping down off the glider when he's prepared to return to the house, since he's easily able to open the screen of the sliding doors to emit himself. But I watched once, last week, as he leaped from the ottoman and still wasn't able to secure his four little paws on the deck, tumbling over onto his side before he could scramble back to place himself four-square on the solid floor. Since then he's been averse to jumping down on his own and will stand on the ottoman, appealing for help.

Button had never been so timid. She would just charge ahead to explore any situation that appealed to her, even when she was much older than Riley's now-14-years. But, personalities are all different, and her character was quite unlike his.

People are most idiosyncratically individualistic in their values and orientations. A fact of life that is expressed about us constantly in every facet of our lives as we come in contact with people around us. A case in point as close to us in particular as our closest next-door neighbours. Take, for example the family on our right, a retired couple with their two university-age children. One is studying theatre arts the other kinesiology.The mother is a smiling, outwardly friendly person, while her husband and their children are emotionally cloistered, her husband in very particular socially withdrawn a person who assiduously avoids any contact however remote, with anyone outside his immediate household.

And then, there's the family to our immediate left, who have never integrated themselves socially in the neighbourhood, but are friendly and good-natured people. They've been neighbours for 17 years.Those to the right do the least they possibly can to ensure their property, house exterior and lawns are kept tidy and in good shape, though they certainly have the 'man-power' to do so. Seldom do we ever see any of that family outside their home other than pulling out of or into their driveway. We've lived beside them for 23 years. The years have produced a steady disintegration resulting in a slovenly atmosphere permeating the property, unattended and reduced to a miserable appearance. This does not result from a lack of funding, but an obvious disinclination to exert themselves physically and an avoidance of confronting the necessity to address adequate maintenance.

As opposed to those on the left who are constantly contracting professionals in house maintenance to conduct upgrades of one kind or another within and without the house. At the present time, there's a landscaping company with all kinds of modern heavy-duty landscaping equipment coming in to noisily deconstruct work that had been done by previous landscapers, including ripping up an incredible amount of brick and stonework in patios and walkways to eventually replace it all with newer products that have appealed to the home-owners.

Both of the children in that household have achieved their education and one works as a pediatric nurse at a nearby hospital, the other has performed a variety of jobs all pointing him toward eventual work with the RCMP. They're unself-consciously open, not gregarious by nature, but obviously comfortable in the sphere of human social interaction, reflecting their parents' example.

As for us, we are caught in the middle; retired, giving attention when weather permits, to growing our garden and taking huge pleasure in the results. We like to amble about in the garden in the morning after breakfast, discovering new and sometimes unexpected blooms, appreciative of the burgeoning growth and variety, texture, colours and freshness of it all. Except lately everything has been covered with a fine stonedust that mutes the colours and creates an overall drabness, draining pleasure and producing instead an aghast sadness.

When that kind of work is taking place as is being done next door, transforming the grounds so radically with the use of heavy equipment and men labouring in the heat of the day to fulfill a contract as a living wage, the inevitable result is resounding clashes and a littering of the atmosphere with insistently brash soundwaves, making relaxing out on the deck less attractive in the afternoon, and our morning garden roundabouts better avoided. It's just one of those things.

The supervisor of the men performing the work happened to see my husband scraping the detritus of piled gravel, dirt and bricks off the roadway in front our driveway and sweeping the detritus that driving over it all plasters onto the driveway, so he approached my husband and assured him that this was unneeded labour on his part. His company will always meticulously clean up after themselves, leaving any properties impacted by work they undertake as tidy as they were before they entered the picture.

My husband thanked him. We can't expect people earning a difficult living to understand fully how what they do legitimately in response to work orders that keep a company in operation, to extend Herculean efforts to ensure that nothing disturbs neighbours. Given the nature of the work it is simply not feasible. So yesterday we hoped for rain to wash away all the distressing stone-dust produced by mechanically sawing the bricks and stones that has settled on our gardens, but in the interim my husband went about watering it all, in hopes that when next I returned to the gardens my distress would be alleviated.

It is, in any event, a brief interim in the summer months to create a disturbance in leisure hours that will soon enough be done with as they complete the work and move on elsewhere.

My computer mouse has latterly gone berserk from time to time, engaging in some really peculiar antics, so I decided it was time for a replacement. Besides which, the printer cartridges needed changing, so off we went yesterday afternoon to a nearby shopping plaza. While we were at it, we decided to drop in to the JYSK store and another home decor store both of which sell fairly nice bedding. Just browsing, to see if either of them, located quite close to our original destination, Office Depot, had anything we could tell our granddaughter about.

When we were exiting the first of the shops, I noticed a cashier looking questioningly at us, as though suspecting us of attempting to abscond with something we  hadn't paid for, although an electronic security system is set up at the doors to prevent just such occurrences. I imagine then that most people who enter, exit with purchases, not given to browsing for comparison purposes.

Our very selective granddaughter is on the lookout for an attractive (to an 18-year-old) bedding set; sheets and pillowcases, and a comforter set for her University of Toronto living arrangements come September, since she'll be living in residence close by the campus she'll be attending. She wants colours and patterns that are extremely youth-feminine and that's hard to come by unless you look online and see them breathlessly advertised at inflated prices appealing to the decor-obsessed determined that when they set out for the first time to decorate some place that is nominally 'theirs' outside the family home, that new place will express their taste and personality.

I don't see what she has her heart set on as matching her personality; taste perhaps, and that will most certainly change in a short period of time. I had taken snapshots of some of the offerings and sent them along to her in case there was something that struck her fancy. As it happens, nothing did, though I sent along about 7 photos of comforter sets I thought might appeal to her, since she had sent me links of those that did, attached to an online marketing company that doesn't ship to Canada, and even if it did the price was absurd, to which would be added the differential in Canadian funds.

We left the car where we'd originally parked it and walked over to a few destinations in handy distance to conclude our other missions. When we returned to the car, prepared to head for home, there was a shopping cart from nearby HomeSense that had been left beside our car. If anything makes me disgusted about people's shopping habits, it is their laziness in not returning shopping carts to the depot caches meant to contain them, rather than leaving that little social obligation for other people to do, in fear of a loose shopping cart presenting as a missile if an unobservant driver strikes one.

I made to move the cart, then noticed something left in it, someone's cellphone. My husband waited in the parking lot with Riley while I entered the store to hand the cellphone over, with an explanation to an employee there whose manager could take charge of it, though I really felt like just depositing it in the nearest waste disposal unit.

Just as well none were handy.

All local supermarkets advertised imported sweet cherries on sale last week. I have been buying them for the past while and we've been enjoying them as fresh-fruit desserts unadorned by anything additional for dinner lately as a change from the more readily obtainable fruits in all seasons. But last week I bought a really large amount of cherries. I had intended to bake a cherry pie with a portion of what we had been enjoying.

But then my husband was out doing a little shopping of his own and he brought home a goats-milk cheese roll. He enjoys all manner of cheeses, but not the cheese he had brought home. He hadn't looked closely enough and instead of plain goats-milk cheese, it just happened to be lime-lemon enhanced cheese he had bought. I said he'd like it, just give it a try. He did and said it tasted to him very much like cheesecake and although he enjoys cheesecake, he likes his cheese unadorned by anything added if it isn't pepper or chives.

Use it, he suggested to me, to bake a cheesecake, so I agreed. And as I did I thought, oh well, there goes my cherry pie baking session. But no, I thought again, why not combine them? And so that is precisely what I did yesterday morning. I baked a cheesecake using that goats-milk lime-lemon variety; with eggs, sour cream, vanilla and sugar it turned out to be a quite creditable effort. Particularly when I prepared the cherries to spill over the cheesecake, once it was baked and sufficiently cooled out of the oven.

It presented as a very nice dessert that my husband appreciated. I did too, other than that I could still detect the sharp taste characteristic of goats-milk. Now that that experiment ended with a degree of success, we'll continue to enjoy the cheesecake for the next few days, but I don't think I'll be in too much of a hurry to bake another goats-milk cheesecake.

When we were young we were both drawn to green open spaces and enjoyed being within a treed landscape. My earliest memories as a child were of deep pleasure to be derived in such landscapes. It was certainly not that my attention was deliberately drawn by nature-loving parents to the meagre landscape of parks in a crowded city centre where my parents, struggling to get along as immigrants paid attention to bill-paying, and just surviving focused all their attention.

Now, living in another city amidst the kind of plenty that was unknown to us back then, we come counter often enough to the boredom of young people impacting the environment that is of such importance to everyone. Littering is a given, we see that in the neglect of people to pick up after themselves; with the proliferation of paper coffee cups and disposable plastic water bottles, their remnants reminding us of what an uncaring society we are.

In the wooded ravine nearby our home, we have over the years witnessed our natural surroundings being abused. There are people who regularly go through the ravine, on the other hand, picking up the litter that others leave behind in their devotion to the environment.

We've seen where young people have attempted to light fires on wood benches, bridges, tree hollows. One such blaze was successful enough for the fire department to respond. As they did several years back when we were alerted by a blaze from a tall bankside of the ravine over the main creek that sent my husband scrambling up the steep incline only to have an inebriated young man leap out of a shelter he had made of fallen branches, to protect the fire he had made. After we alerted authorities in fear of an uncontrollable blaze, he was arrested for public drunkenness and mischief and the fire department snuffed the blaze.

We've seen young men strolling along with axes, and asked them not to chop down any trees. Which does happen from time to time. Just as occasionally we will be enjoying a daily ravine circuit and become aware that someone had been there before us, snapping off the slender trunks of saplings. In the winter, particularly when school is out, young people often make ramps on the trails to make their sledding or snowboarding more exciting. The ramps, needless to say, create an impediment to people who prefer to walk, not sled or snowboard.

It was considered good sport by some young people to hurl stones at a beaver family that had settled itself several years back at another junction of the creek, where from time to time beavers tend to migrate. Although no racoons or foxes have informed us that they too have been targets, there's little doubt this is just what happens. Empathy for the wildlife that surrounds us is in miserable absence, as well.

Two days earlier when we were almost through our daily circuit I greeted a young man entering the ravine at a street junction, taking his silence for the usual morose attitude of many young people unaccustomed to civil behaviour. My husband was quicker to intuit why he was carrying long-handled garden tools with him, and suggested he not build a ramp on the trail. What would his parents say to him if they knew, he asked. To this the boy responded: They couldn't care less.

Well then, my husband responded, build a ramp in your own backyard and then see what  your parents' reaction will be. I photoed the boy, and he ducked behind a copse of trees. I had fully anticipated that the next time we'd pass that area a ramp would be there to complicate our progress, but no, although on previous occasions someone had indeed built ramps just there, this time it appears that the youth, though resentful, in the usual way that young people are when the elderly interfere with their pleasure, had had second thoughts.

For the time being, in any event.

It is a tragedy. That life expectancy is so low for people suffering from the genetic disease affecting multiple body systems, lungs and digestive system so severely affected through cystic fibrosis. Very few sufferers seem to live beyond the age of 34. Those so dreadfully afflicted can hope for a lung transplantation procedure, which can stretch the survival years up to another five years of life.

For Jessica Forsyth of Ottawa, who died on Saturday at age 25, a young woman with a determined, scintillating personality, who when she was able to, acted as a spokesperson for the Cystic Fibrosis Canada Ottawa chapter, and a volunteer at Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario, raising awareness and research funding, it was a personal tragedy. For her, for her bereaved parents, for the community which knew her best.

Jessica Forsyth, dead at age 25 on Saturday, 19 July, 2014, of complications from cystic fibrosis: photograph, Facebook

Another young cystic fibrosis sufferer, also a pert and lively 21-year-old young woman by the name of Helene Campbell, had done her part in arousing awareness in the general public about what it is like to live with cystic fibrosis and the agony of impaired breathing and swallowing. She awaited a double lung transplant which finally took place at Toronto General Hospital in April 2012.




She has since been active, both in telling her own story of her battle against this dread disease, and in helping other families cope. A year after her own successful double lung transplant, she partnered with the Toronto General and Western Hospital Foundation in the creation of the Give2Live campaign, whose purpose is to aid thirty patients and their families on the transplant waiting list.


Some 200 families in Ottawa and four thousand across Canada are affected by the disease.

No cure has yet surfaced, although treatments are available. And recently an announcement came forward that a new type of drug meant for those with a specific type of cystic fibrosis has been developed and is being covered by the Province of Ontario through medicare. The drug, Kalydeco, meant to treat people with the G551D variation, a rare strain of cystic fibrosis can cost up to $300,000 annually.

Mid-summer finds the forest and understory flora in the ravine adjacent our home thriving, thanks to the copious rain, ample sunshine, and warm temperatures that have graced our environment thus far this season. The succession of wildflowers that grow in the mixed-base clay/sand soil of the ravine provide us with an endless array of beautiful presentations of nature's finest.

Thimbleberry blooms (purple raspberry)

The presence of birds; robins, cardinals, chickadees, nuthatches, warblers; butterflies, damselflies, dragonflies and the occasional visit of birds not normally associated with the ravine like great blue herons and dabbling ducks give us other seasonal perks of intrigue at the irresistible invitation to wander along the trails daily.

Queen Anne's lace

And of course the crows that tend to follow our daily progress through the ravine to make certain that they too partake of the peanut offerings we leave in accustomed cache-places for the red, black and grey squirrels who anticipate our daily rambles.

Cow vetch

At the present time, burdock dominate some areas beside the trails with massive growth thanks to prevailing conditions, and alongside them are thistles with their softly purple-glowing flowerheads, and the presence of new sumacs growing at a tremendous speed and often in areas where they are vulnerable to the robust antics of dogs in play stripping them of their new life.

Yarrow

The Hawthorns' haws are now in evidence, though it is the pin cherries' dangling ripening fruit whose notice is glowingly inescapable, along with the wild apple trees growing their fruit that are more visually evident. Seasonal thimbleberry bushes are larger than they usually are, some have reached my own height, and they're putting out their brilliant pink blooms.

Pin Cherries

The hazelnut bushes natural to the environment this year appear to be hosting fewer nuts than usual but raspberry canes are proceeding to ripen their tiny fruit.

Haws/Hawthorn

As for wildflowers, they're there in abundance, but only in areas where sufficient sun penetrates the forest canopy to encourage their bright presence, from cow vetch, to sunflowers, cinquefoil to buttercups, daisies to fleabane and of course, Queen Anne's lace and yarrow.

Daisies

A never-ending source of pleasure in new sightings that delight us day after day.

Sunflowers

He took me out of a deep reverie of contemplation in the process of writing up an opinion piece I meant to publish on one of my blog sites. Whenever my attention is taken elsewhere while I'm composing, it is by a prodigious effort required on my part to wrest my mind away from the matter at hand, and it takes a few seconds before I am able to give my full attention to the distraction.

In this instance, he had been struck a short while earlier, by an impulse-not-to-be-discarded, because it strikes so infrequently, to clear out some of his files. He had been rummaging through one such file when he came across two sheets of paper on which had been copied something that had years ago been published in the local newspaper. And it was those two sheets that he now thrust before me, a grin on his face. Of course that grin is not unusual; he usually does smile, when he's confronting me with his presence, a kind of distant hug, always comforting.

So I looked. At a picture of a woman I judged to be about in her late 50s, hair going grey, a pleasant smile on her face. I thought she looked familiar. But then, I also thought she looked somewhat like so many other people I'd seen in my life. Who she was I couldn't determine, and wasn't very interested in doing so, though I must have looked quizzically at my husband. His smile became broader. He urged me to look again.

Nothing clicked until he finally relented and said, 'It's you!', and I recalled many years ago, likely at least fifteen years back, having written an opinion piece and forwarded it to the newspaper. It was about my experiences over the years embarking on annual door-to-door canvasses to elicit donations from neighbours on my street for various charities. A piece that was published after the paper had sent a photographer along to our house to take a picture of the writer.

It was hot and humid, but we were grateful for a slight, cooling breeze as we began to descend the first long slope into the ravine. On the way down we heard a long shout and assumed there were some boys down below playing war games, but soon an out-of-shape older man chugged up the hill, asking if we'd seen a young boy. We'd never seen him before, and said we'd just entered and had as yet seen no one. His grandson, he explained, had run ahead of him and he had no idea where he was. We said we'd be on the lookout for him.

I was taking photographs of maturing wildflowers in season at the side of the trail, and we'd at that point gone somewhat beyond the halfway mark of our usual circuit, when suddenly we heard Riley bark, and turned to look behind us. Surprisingly, quite a way behind us, beyond a curve in the trail. Riley has developed a habit of ambling along behind us. We usually are alert to his presence there, urging him to come forward, but he rarely agrees with us that we'd prefer him to be where we can see him constantly, arguing that his preference is to view us in front of him.

My husband turned back to see what was going on, and what was going on was that a very slight, little girl with long blond hair damp from the humidity, wearing a light summer frock, was frozen to the side of the path, fear of our small barking dog evident on the fine features of her face. My husband reassured her, picked Riley up and the little girl smiled and began immediately walking alongside my husband. And continued walking with us as we asked her where her parents were, and where she had entered the ravine. It was, in fact, clear where she had entered; when Riley became aware of her she wasn't too far from a ravine entrance point.

She and her parents were visiting her grandparents. And evidently she had become upset at some disagreement that had turned disturbingly loud between the adults. She had, she said, told her grandmother to advise her mother that she was slipping into the ravine for a walk. And then off she went, which was when and where we discovered her presence. She was eight years old, preparing to enter grade 3 and excited about the prospect. She had an older brother, an older sister and they were interested in sports. She was sometimes bullied at school and that wasn't pleasant. And other details.

She chattered brightly away, fully confident and at ease in the presence of two absolute strangers, her voice lifting regularly in a high-pitched lilt with every sentence. What were we thinking? How odd it is and how potentially dangerous to see such a young child unaccompanied in such a place where large dogs often ran about unhindered from the attention of their owners, far from the scene. Where a misstep could hurtle her down a slope onto large pieces of gravel or sharp stumps; anything could happen. Let alone coming across a stranger whose purpose might be far less benign that our own.

We walked along as usual, fully expecting the little girl to turn back, to return to the opening to the ravine through which she had come, but no, nothing seemed to deter her from our company, even though my husband repeatedly pointed out to her other trails leading to exits close to where she had entered. Until finally, we were quite far from her entry point, prepared to mount a few steep ascents that would take us far indeed from her grandparents' home.

My husband asked by chance whether her grandfather walked a large white German shepherd named Lily, and the child perked up, yes he did. We thought about taking her home with us and telephoning her grandfather's house; surely she knew the number? It would take too long to reach home with her. Then we thought: turn around, return, walk her over to the place where she had entered, and that is just what we did, aborting our usual route and retracing our steps until finally we achieved that goal.

And that's when the child heard something our ears did not; a piercing whistle, and she responded immediately, explaining, her voice growing fainter as she ran ahead: "My mother's whistling for me!"

Charlie was too hot and focused to stop on her way down the hill for her usual greet-and-pet session. She was intent on reaching the cool comfort of Bilberry Creek and that was that. She needed to soothe her overheated paws in the wet clay bottom, and let the water run beneath her body to stop that incessant panting panic of overwhelming heat.

As we climbed past her whizzing by us on our afternoon ravine ramble, we could see at the top of the hill, her companion seated in the shade of a large old pine awaiting either her return, or more likely, our completed ascension. He's an enormously talkative man. Wind him up and away he goes. Fact is, he needs no winding, no encouragement to embark on his endless not-to-be-interrupted soliloquies to which we have often felt prisoner as he regaled us with his memorable (to him) adventures.

But he's a nice person and it's worth while the time spent trying to inject a few comments of our own, in a futile manner, not to offend him. He obviously needs to vent, and often, and anyone he comes across represents a suitable wall on which to bounce his thoughts off. And so we heard about his breathless account of how his morning had gone. It started earlier than he had anticipated, his garage crowded with cast-off objects he was preparing to set out for a garage sale, when he discovered someone had arrived at almost the crack of dawn to prowl through his garage.

Not much offends him, but this certainly did, and he disliked the entitled air of the person who had entered without anyone being present, the commotion of his moving things about alerting the inmates of the house to an unanticipated early-morning presence. That's what signs alert people to: the excitement of an upcoming garage sale. When our friend emerged from the house into his garage the man's aggressive bargaining offended him further and a man not ordinarily given to be disagreeable, he found himself informing the intruder that his presence wasn't appreciated.

He had all manner of tools that he wanted to be rid of, including a router he had bought but never used. A ping-pong table, you name it, he just wanted to have them taken off his hands. Whenever anyone tells us about garage sales, the thought immediately surfaces simultaneously for both of us that instead of a garage sale those items could have been driven over to the Sally Ann for them to sell, and in the process contribute to their always-urgent need to raise operating funds to help the unfortunates in society. Because it might appear unseemly to outright state such things to others, and that we prefer to manage our affairs in this way reflective of our own philosophy, we abstain from actually saying anything, because people will always take it as a criticism. Which it most certainly is.

So on and on he went, effusive in his comments about peoples' greed in trying to impress upon him the need to lower prices he had originally kept to a mere fraction of the value of the items he was selling, but in the end triumphant because when all was said and done 75% of what he'd put out was sold and he was $105 the richer for his efforts.

That Canada's is an increasingly diverse, or "pluralistic" society as is now the preferred description is undeniable. From a time when I was young when the appearance of Caucasians vastly predominated to the present, there has been as they say, a 'seachange' of vast proportions. Now, the prevalence of readily identifiable ethnics has soared in the population. I don't refer here to people of Asian and African heritage, but people whose cultures are newly introduced and whose social and religious mores mark them as quite different in tone and depth from people who have long lived in the country and who have assimilated over the generations.

It's been a remarkable transformation as Canada has absorbed people from different continents, particularly marked by the fact that previously those admitted to the country were mostly from European backgrounds whose values and substantive cultural underpinnings were similar to that of Canada's. Unsurprisingly, since most of the original settlers to Canada came from those very backgrounds.

Now, when I shop at my supermarket close to my home, the shelves, both fresh produce and canned staples of every variety and commodity, are geared to people from the Indian sub-continent, from across Asia, east and west, from the Middle East and the Caribbean and all points between. Oddly enough, just a few months back when I was shopping at a large rural supermarket in the United States there was shelf space devoted to kosher products; but not here in this nation's capital in a large urban setting.

Yesterday, I viewed in the most cursory manner because I have become accustomed to their presence, and why not? a melange of people faithful to the ethnic garb of the countries from which they hailed, shopping alongside me. Courtesy prevails.

I also saw a youngish man presumably in his 30s, entirely garbed in a long white robe, feet in sandals, his face hirsute and darkly sharp-featured, seemingly intent on never making eye contact with anyone, going about his business. He had taken a shopping cart meant for a mother with a baby, since it came complete with a baby-bed carrier on top, and within that bed he had carefully placed some produce. Two watermelons, large ones, rolled about in the bed of the cart itself, alongside other vegetables. I had taken note because I was lined up behind him at the cash counter awaiting my turn.

He left his cart repeatedly while waiting for the line-up to shorten as those before us took their place at the cash, and each time came back with trifling items like bags of potato chips to augment the more ascetic vegetable-and-fruit selections he had previously made. From the basics to the frivolous consumables, it seems he has made the transition to familiarization with his new environment in part steered by his gustatory appetite, not yet by the fainter allure to assimilate otherwise into the prevailing culture.

My little brother is preparing to retire from academia. He has, in a sense, withdrawn partially, in that he no longer teaches many classes, preferring instead to devote more of his time to on-site research which has taken him to Labrador repeatedly and to spend time revising, updating his textbooks on environmental biology.

He's in fairly good shape, though for a not-very-tall man he expanded quite generously in the last few decades. He looks a little like a combination of Mark Twain and Groucho Marx; Albert Einstein thrown in for good measure; a genial man given to incessant bouts of rollicking humour. And he's a passionate bird-watcher, an avocation that has taken him on bird-sighting journeys across the world.

As a botanist and a home-owner he has taken pride in growing gardens around his home completely given over to native species of flora, and in that sense one might say he has an environmentally sustainable xerographic garden. One that more or less looks after itself. My brother likes things to be simple, unadorned and maintenance-free.

Competitively, my brother boasts that his garden Jack-in-the-Pulpits are more robust than mine. He's wrong, of course.

I remember his excitement years ago when he carefully unwrapped containers he had specially designed for the purpose and revealed minuscule plant species he had brought back with him from Canada's frozen North, scraped from the barren tundra. Excited too about the Narwhal tusk he had bought from an Inuit woman far from 'civilization'. It adorns a wall in his living room, along with other exotic specimens.

When he called yesterday, he was brimming with enthusiasm over his latest adventures, signing on as resident naturalist for three Alaskan cruises. He enjoys being with people, and is happy to share his experiences and professional knowledge to further their own curiosity and interest about our natural surroundings.

He might consider using a month annually of his retirement years at the very least, to that kind of travel instruction-guidance. He had met, he said, so many interesting people. No doubt those interesting people felt some measure of gratification at having met him through the course of their Alaska adventure.

It is unusually cool and damp at a time when summer in this region is generally dry and hot. We've had incessant rain events, from sprinkles, to day-long downpours, to ongoing thunderstorms. We don't really mind the rain at all, since it is liberally interspersed with days of full sunshine and dry atmospheres. It seems wind has accompanied both types of weather systems, alleviating the heat when it's hot, lashing the landscape with rain when it's not.

Insect pests appear to hugely appreciate this weather, as well. Mosquitoes and blackflies have been luxuriating in it, and they're fairly widespread, we found them here and in New Hampshire in great abundance, so that's a wide radius. No doubt California, mired in a long succession of droughts would be grateful for some of the moisture we've been enjoying. The rainfall in copious amounts in short periods of time has been anything but a bonus for Canada's western provinces, though. There, large scale flooding has been costly in afflicting people's lives with misery, ruining crops and buildings.

For us, it has become routine this summer to embark on our daily forested ravine jaunts in preparation for downpours to 'surprise' us while hiking. The landscape really hasn't had an opportunity to dry out; ponds and puddles appear a constant now wherever we walk, breeding mosquito larvae endlessly.

There are, consequently, fewer people out walking in the ravine, as part of their daily recreation/exercise regimen in full enjoyment of life and the seasons. We did come across an older couple we haven't seen in quite awhile. We most often see people whom we're acquainted with through our daily ravine rambles far more frequently. This couple, obviously far less so.

They asked where our second companion was, having been accustomed throughout the years to see us walking the trails with two little dogs. It has been well over two years since we lost our-then 19-year-old miniature poodle, Button.

He loaded up the smaller of his two kayaks, the one he had constructed himself from a kit two years ago; packed equipment for a few days of camping out, took the ferry to Vancouver Island, met up with a friend who lives in Nanaimo who made similar kayak-camping preparations and they set off for Pacific Rim National Park together.



They decided not to take the Lady Rose in to the archipelago, to paddle the ocean there instead to reach the Broken Island Group where they stopped finally and set up camp for their stay, setting off from there to trip over to other beaches than the one where they camped for some variety in environmental view and viewing sea creatures.



There's always plenty of eagles there, he told us.



They came across seals curious about their presence. And this time they saw in the near distance a few whales, likely, our biologist-son said, grey or sperm whales. The largest living creatures he had ever seen, apart from an Alaska trip he had taken years ago.



They heard them before they actually saw them. Sound carries well over the water. The whales dived, surfaced, spouted and wheezed, sounding closer than they actually were. They took to the water in their kayaks, paddling as close as they thought was useful to observe the whales. And suddenly, there was an eruption in the water roughly 40 yards from where they sat in their kayaks, and one of the whales surfaced, noisily and complacently, allowing them to observe it from closer range.



They saw colourful starfish and other sea creatures on the shore when the water washed out, close to their camping spot.

 

A foggy mist settled wraithlike around islands they paddled close to. The ocean, blue as blue can be, seemed to swell beneath them at times.

 
Photographs courtesy of J.S. Rosenfeld