Each of our rambles in the forested ravine close to our house represents another adventure in gradually teaching our two puppies how to navigate the world around them. As we walk up the street toward the ravine entrance, we carry Jack and Jill. This is to avoid their tender paws coming in contact with the salt that is liberally sprinkled on our roads during the winter. That salt combined with the icy cold plays havoc with dogs' paws.

Once into the ravine they're set down, their leashes attached to their harnesses and off we go. Until they get their final booster shot on Tuesday we've got to be alert to ensure they don't sniff the usual doggy meeting posts; the smell of urine is irresistible for the canine community messages it sends to neighbourhood dogs.

And nor are we able to allow them yet to be sociable with other dogs we come across, much as we'd like to. Until next week, that is, when they'll be able to, once their final shot has been administered. Meanwhile, we have to resort to briefly lifting them out of harm's potential way, their heads swivelling, trying to take everything in; the presence of other dogs, people, a strange, unfamiliar landscape that will eventually become very familiar to them.

When we returned from our walk yesterday there was a large cardboard rectangle left between the inner door and the storm door at the front of the house. A package from Amazon, and I had an idea who might have sent it. That idea crystallized into fact once we opened the box to reveal gifts sent to us by our older son. For our birthdays, a bare two months apart. I'm older, my husband has just caught up to me, or will in two weeks' time.

What lay within the package was a large hard-cover coffee table picture book titled Cosmigraphics - Picturing Space Through Time, by Michael Benson a lavish production with wonderful colourful plates, and absorbing text. There are several references in the book, as it happens, to the scholarship and helpfulness in the production of the book of someone we know very well, listed within its pages as a medievalist and astronomical historian; our son Randall.

He also sent along a video for our viewing pleasure, The Grand Budapest Hotel. So we'll look forward to reading the tome and viewing the film, gifted to us in honour of our 78th birthdays.