The hot, dry weather has departed. Mind, it has been hot enough to turn the air conditioner on, and everything has become parched in the environment. So when cooler weather moved in yesterday along with rain, it was welcomed. We need rain, and plenty of it and it looks as though the remainder of the week, beginning with today, will offer us ample moisture.

As it is, the combination of heat, sun and last Monday's rain served to exert its influence on the environment. We're astonished at the speed with which the ravine is greening up. It was a mere few days ago that we saw a slight green flush over the trees in the ravine and suddenly that modest flush has been transformed to a full-on green foliage cover dressing up the forest.

Yesterday, when we set off for our ravine ramble, I realized as we entered the trail leading to Bilberry Creek that I was wearing my reading glasses. I'd been very busy up to then with housework and tending to Jack and Jill; any number of little things, and forgotten to take them off before we left the house. Because rain was threatening, I'd tied a rainjacket around my waist, so I tucked the eyeglasses into one of the zippered pockets. In so doing, I must have done it awkwardly enough for the glasses to tip out of the pocket before I'd completely zippered it.  With a retractable leash in one hand, manipulating the zipper, I recalled later, was awkward.  So that, later, when I checked the pocket to remove my camera, the glasses which should have been there, weren't.

I thought that perhaps a little excitement we'd experienced earlier in the walk -- when we had come across a lively, rambunctious little boxer, a puppy only a month older than Jack and Jill, and eager to play whose antics had frightened Jack, but not Jill, yet caused them both in a frantic effort to escape from the other puppy's physical exuberance caused them to slip entirely out of their halters so they were free to run from the much larger dog -- might have somehow caused the glasses to fall out, yet I knew that with the zipper closed they couldn't have.

Little did I realize they had slipped out much earlier, as I was closing the zipper. We retraced our hike, hoping to see the glasses lying on the trail, but found nothing. As we began to emerge from the ravine we came across neighbours coming back up the first long hill we had already risen above. Their dog wasn't with them, a 13-year-old cross-breed rescue. He'd been faring poorly of late, and now he was gone. We stopped and talked together awhile, and that likely had my lost glasses slip from my mind.

This morning my husband went back on his own to have another look. He actually retraced the entire walk we'd done yesterday and found nothing. That is, until he reached the ravine entry point where I had felt certain I'd find the glasses yesterday. They were half-buried in muck; tiny bits of gravel and mud, the night-time rain completely drenching them, but there was enough of the glass visible for the faint light of the overcast sky to cause a glint that caught his eye. They were intact; miraculously though they were centered on the trail, no one had stepped on them, crushed them.