I baked a chocolate cake (her favourite) for our daughter-in-law's birthday a few days ago. Not that she is not herself more than capable of baking chocolate cakes, since she's the most accomplished woman I know, able to do many things that most would never dream of attempting, her mind crowded with diverse esoteric facts as well as items of common knowledge. They took what was left of the cake back with them to Toronto.

It was pleasant to see how she and our older son take excellent care of themselves. Neither of them look anywhere like most people of their age do. I can remember how astonished I was myself when I turned fifty years of age; a half-century, I said to myself, shaking my head in wonderment. We enjoyed having them with us, sharing conversations, observations, precious time and enjoyable meals together.

There is little that is as soul-satisfying as seeing your children grow to maturity and find their place in the world. They have both distinguished themselves by their scholarship and their capability of producing usefully memorable functions in their chosen fields; she as an Anglican priest, and he as both a Medieval scholar and Astronomical researcher. And they both share a love of music, skilled musicians themselves.

They went along on Sunday morning to a downtown church to perform a Corelli concerto, which they often do, when they're visiting with us. Having left us this morning to return to Toronto our daughter-in-law is determined to take up her official duties as from tomorrow despite fighting a miserable head cold although the university year doesn't begin until mid-September. Her pastoral duties have gone beyond her position with the university, however.

They brought back local specialty cheeses for us from a small local artisanal cheese-maker just outside Halifax. Their visit with her family outside Truro included a few day-trips with her 84-year-old widowed mother, and the opportunity to construct a groundhog-proof fence around her mother's vegetable garden on the farm property.