Because yesterday turned out such a beautiful day, slightly warmer than the day previous, but sunny and still windy, enough so we thought, to keep the mosquitoes at bay, we decided to lengthen the usual circuit of our daily ravine walk. We thought we'd go across to the opposite side, where we used to take our grandchild daily, hoisted on my back in a carrier until she was old enough to stumble along on her own.

We were accustomed to much longer and more energetic walks back then, almost twenty years ago. We'd take trails we hadn't seen now in quite a long time since then. We did discover last year that some of those trails no longer exist, washed away in slumps of the banks overlooking the creek. But the main one is still intact, and we took it yesterday, and then onto a more seldom-used trail, and Jack and Jill found new scope for their avid sniffing about.

On the upper reaches where there's a bit of a meadow, dandelions are in their seasonal element, their bright golden heads packed into the grasses. Wild apple trees are now in full bloom. There was no sight of the wild grape vine we'd seen back then, with its hard little sour grapes; it's gone, that venerable old vine.

We wanted to see if the wild lilacs were yet in bloom. Around the time of our wedding anniversary they sometimes are, but evidently not this year. Our 60th anniversary is on the near horizon, several weeks hence.

Some teens use the upper reaches as shortcuts and we did see a handful of young people, but none of the regular ravine walkers we're accustomed to seeing until we returned to our usual side of the ravine, and came across Lily, a white German Shepherd who unusually for a mature dog, is interested in Jack and Jill, and doesn't mind their foolish antics leaping around her. Most mature dogs are fairly intolerant of the rude shenanigans that puppies are always up to.