This past week has given us perfectly idyllic early autumn weather, adding considerably to our enjoyment of our woodland treks. The atmosphere has been mild, lacking humidity, with good brisk winds and what more could we ask for? The atmospherics have been perfect for full enjoyment of this transition period. From time to time we hear the clamour above of Canada geese winging their disciplined formation southward.

At night we can once again hear songbirds twittering to one another as they make their yearly passage toward more clement climes in anticipation of winter. Small flocks of transitory migrants have been taking full advantage, as they are meant to do, of the bird feeder that stands aloft outside our dining room windows.

When we meander through the Bilberry Creek ravine, we are surprised to see the growing volume of foliage on the forest floor. And looking about us, the tell-tale signs of change are beginning to display themselves, from the foliage of sumacs turning their initial stages of fiery red, to the hawthorns, the first to defoliate, showing off their red haws, and the birches hosting bright yellow leaves in preparation for shedding them.

Goldenrod has lost its bright yellow, the flowers turned to the colour of straw, and the only wildflowers left are asters, hanging in there with their pale purple blooms. Some ground vegetation like dog strangulation vines have declined markedly, already being absorbed into the forest floor.

The superb weather days have changed a bit, with the previous several days being rain-filled. For yesterday's ravine perambulation we all were equipped with rainjackets, including Jack and Jill. The canopy is as yet sufficiently undisturbed to offer us a fairly reliable shelter from the rain, as long as rain isn't too heavy, and yesterday's, though steady throughout the day, alternated between lightly moderate and slightly on the heavy side. We didn't come back drenched, any of us.

And the overcast, dim conditions always surprise us by transforming colour hues to a deep brightness. The sky, through varied shades of aluminum and pewter, emits enough light so the camera captures it even though we can't take full advantage of it while we're hiking through the trails surrounded intimately by the trees, enclosing us in a twilight zone.

Originally, it was the intention of the medical team involved in his care post-surgery to have him up and out of his hospital bed briefly to begin therapy; he was to be assisted in walking for a few minutes. As it turned out, he was in too much pain and too weak for that to happen. That part of his therapy was delayed for several days. It does seem to the casual observer rather prematurely optimistic that an older man who has just undergone triple-heart-bypass surgery would be expected ti bounce back so quickly and in Mohindar's case it would not reflect his own medical history.

Yet a mere five days after his surgery he was sent home to recover, in the care of his wife and his son. And three days after he was discharged from hospital, he was sitting having lunch with his family when he suddenly fell into a deep faint. His son could feel no pulse. So Imeren gently slapped his father's face, calling to his mother to immediately dial 911, and stop screaming. There was no response to Imeren's increasingly urgent face-slapping, and the seconds ticked dangerously by, but he remained calm, doing what he felt he had to. He also had to take the telephone from his mother who was so traumatized she was unable to inform the 911 personnel what her own address was.

The ambulance arrived in less than five minutes and paramedics stabilized Mohindar, then rushed off to the nearest hospital with him, not the Heart Institute from where he had been discharged. He remains there yet. The nurses at the other hospital had no idea of the just-admitted man's history, and the doctors swiftly ascertained that his heart rate was perilously low. They estimated his heart had been beating at about 15 times per minute instead of the usual 60 to 75, and perhaps had gone even lower. He would surely have died if his son hadn't persisted in attempting to arouse him to consciousness, finally successfully.

No one had been monitoring the effects of the drugs that had been prescribed for him; in total a dazzling number of drugs for various purposes in his recovery condition. So no one was aware that the effect of the heart drug was too radical. His premature discharge from the Heart Institute was clearly inappropriate in Mohindar's case.

When I was admitted in a sudden health-collapse incident five years ago as a result of a dangerously low blood haemoglobin count due to a bleeding ulcer, itself a byproduct of the daily aspirin regimen, I was kept under observation at the Heart Institute for five days, wired up to all kinds of interpretive devices, and undergoing several exploratory procedures before discharge. The blood transfusions aside, along with the invasive procedures, it seems to me that undergoing triple-heart-bypass surgery is an infinitely far more serious situation surely meriting a more careful evaluation of the patient's condition necessitating a much longer hospital stay for assurance of stabilization post-surgery.

As we began ascending the first long hill from the street where our house sits, into the ravine yesterday afternoon, we came abreast of a couple we haven't seen in years. When my husband retired twenty years ago he would often come across this couple with their dog, when he embarked on his morning ravine walk with our Button. Their dog was an absolute character, a lovable, prankish little terrier mix to whom they were devoted.

This is a couple that decided to take in a much larger dog that had been abandoned in the ravine, many years ago. Regular ravine walkers were alerted to the presence of a good-sized, dark-haired dog that would suddenly appear in sight and then abruptly vanish. Its barking signifying to many calls of distress really disturbed us all. And no one could get close enough to discover if the dog had any identifying tags.

But eventually, in an out-of-the-way part of the ravine someone found the dog's den. Whoever had abandoned the dog that left its crate, and inside a blanket, and a food and water dish, both long empty. The dog simply kept returning to what was familiar to it, and which offered it comfort; its crate. But there was no one there to support it, to ensure it could live its life without harm coming to it. It had to forage for itself, but what is there to support a domesticated dog in a wooded area of small wildlife?

Before its den had been discovered people had been leaving food out for it, sprinkled here and there throughout the ravine. But once it became known where the dog went to at night, a trap was set for it. The trap consisting of fresh food and water set out beside its crate. And over a short period of time the dog began to recognize who it was that was leaving it food and water. And it was this couple. Eventually trust was established and the couple took possession of the dog. It lived with them and their initial little dog for as long as its natural life sustained it, in their loving care. That was a dozen years ago. Soon after that dog died, the other did as well, both in their elderly years. They never did commit to another dog in their household.

Instead, they offered to look after other people's dogs, to give others a chance to get away, or at times when people had to look to board their dogs for one reason or another. The last time we had seen them was several winters ago, cleaning up the trails of dog dirt. And so here they were, on a rare foray into the ravine once again. And they offered to us their services should we ever require them. There is no one we would prefer to trust with our little Jack and Jill other than this pair, secure in the comfort of knowing that with them they would be safe and tenderly fulfilled.

We two find solace in nature when our emotions are depressed. At a time of heartbreak, unfamiliar to us, and placing us in a shared state of utter miserable helplessness, close contact with nature does help to restore us to a move level emotional state. The effect is undeniable. It was like that for my brother for whom nature meant life itself. Life and nature's end concluded for him yesterday.

We decided to make our way past our usual circuit within Bilberry Creek ravine and return to the 'other side' of the ravine where decades ago we were accustomed to ramble about, when we were younger, more vigorous and energetic and where we navigated barely-visible trails hemmed in by thickets of new understory bushes, closing what may once have been a little-used trail. But to get there the wider, much-used woodland trails of the community come first.

Beyond the trees one can see the playing fields attached to a primary school. A place we used to backpack our granddaughter to each morning while she was in our care as an infant and where she used to take her first uncertain steps in the natural world. She learned to make her own way about as she grew older and our daily woodland walks continued. Later, as a teen, when she was no longer in our daily care and she would visit, she chose to eschew the walks in the woods.

We had gone the old familiar routes in reverse for a change and were ascending a long hill toward the plateau above when approaching us was a man we have latterly become familiar with. We'd seen him the first time several months ago when we'd been caught out in a violent thunderstorm in the middle of one of the trails, seeking shelter under a large old pine surrounded closely by beeches, when he nonchalantly made his way by us, pausing for a brief greeting, his large golden lab hurrying ahead, and both quite drenched.

Coming across him again on a later occasion he explained with a laugh that being already drenched he saw no need to hurry at our first meeting. And he told us that he had installed several footbridges at points we no longer traversed in our daily walks. Those points were, in fact, at the very furthest reaches of where we used to tramp about all those many years ago. He had carried the lumber in for long and awkward stretches and constructed the bridges because he wanted to be able to readily access that portion of the ravine that is on our side.

So yesterday, there he was, and about to embark on a hike that would take him over the two footbridges and he offered to show us the way. We agreed, following him, and found that his route was the very same one we had ourselves regularly used decades ago, the difference being that the bridges he had installed made crossing the creek all that much easier. We recognized every step of the winding trail, where we ended up at a place that a large cement pipe fed the community storm sewers into the creek, and where beavers had, over the years, installed themselves, building a dam. From time to time the beavers would be relocated by the local wildlife authorities. Now, it appeared a pair of beavers had returned and the water level in the creek at that juncture was quite high, deep enough to partially inundate the little footbridge.

Its depth represented an opportunity for his dog, Diesel, to indulge himself in a good, vigorous swim. While we stood together and talked, the yellow Lab entertained itself by launching into the creek, paddling about, emerging to shake vigorously, stream over the bridge, run about and repeat the process until he was aware that it was time to continue their hike in a direction opposite our own.


The footbridge was sunk slightly as we traversed it but we used it anyway, and then took to a rather steep ascent, narrow and uneven, to obtain the height close to where we had taken our diversionary side-trek to mount to the opposite side of the ravine on the day's outing.

This has not been a good day. This has been a day of ineffable sadness. A day of mourning.

A day when we had need of emotional relief, and we sought it in one another's arms, weeping. And then we sought that relief together, walking through nature. We went further afield than we usually do, and discovered that the beavers have returned to their old haunts. Unlikely to be the beavers that had occupied the creek in previous years, but perhaps offspring of the originals.

Where the old dam was, once again the water is high, host to a pair that must obviously be planning to stay awhile. Our conversation with nature this morning acted as a balm, and we appreciated that. Not that anything will reverse the irreversible, when implacable death took my younger brother to its bony bosom, but he too was completely engrossed with and loved nature. And it is in the nature of humanity to return from whence we came.

Bill Freedman, our Billy, has returned to nature. As his son Jonathan remarked, the fate that awaits us all "is what it is".

Billy

Yesterday my husband visited with  an old friend who lives several houses over from ours, on our street. He had returned a day earlier from the intensive care wing of the Ottawa Heart Institute, after his triple-heart-bypass surgery last week. Mohindar has been watched over closely by his beautiful wife Rajinder, and by his son Imeren. Even their daughter Lovelyn, mother of three very young children, was at the hospital, leaving her family in Toronto to be with her mother and father and brother.

As my husband sat and talked with our friend, they clasped one another's hands. Mohindar's family has been heeding the hospital instructions carefully; yesterday taking their father for a six-minute walk, an exercise that increases by one minute daily. But this morning an ambulance came screeching up the street and the responders returned our friend to hospital.

We've been enjoying a lovely spate of early fall weather this past week. The temperature has hovered in the low 20s, it has been sunny with occasional cloudy intervals, and the humidity has lifted. A light breeze has complemented the moderate temperature and the sunshine, so what more could anyone possibly wish for to make for perfect weather to trek about in the woods?

On the first official day of autumn's arrival we decided to lengthen our usual hour-or-so hike in the ravine. When we first moved to our present home a quarter-century ago, we were utterly delighted to find ourselves next door to an extended green ravine, forested with a running creek and littered with old pines, and a wide assortment of deciduous and conifer trees. The location offered us immediate access to an area where we could walk about enclosed in living green with no sight in any direction of the streets and homes that bordered it.

Within the forest there were always surprises of one kind or another, from wildlife to wildflowers in their seasons. Over the years we've seen a wide assortment of birds, some passing through, some making their homes in the ravine; birds like pileated woodpeckers, the giant of the species. We've seen ducks temporarily housing themselves in the creek, and once a large snapping turtle. We've seen great blue herons, barred owls, generations of hawks, rooks on occasion, and a wide variety of songbirds.

We've had the friendly acquaintances of squirrels who came to recognize us. some of whom would approach us directly for peanut handouts. We've come across families of raccoons perched in the boughs of old pines. And at one time, before the woodland corridors were disrupted we would often come across unafraid red foxes; now their sightings are far rarer for us, though they still live in the ravine.

And in those early years here while we were both still employed, we would come out for daily walks after work, in the evenings, and when we did that in winter, the sky would be brightly illuminated, reflecting back the lights of the city, particularly on cloudy days, to give us clear, peach-coloured light in the ravine. And in those earlier years we had a tendency to go much further than the circuit we now perambulate.

Several days ago we decided to return to our old familiar haunts, further along in the ravine. And we did that again yesterday. There are a lot of open areas there, of meadow beside the forested areas and we don't find that particularly attractive, but there are compensations. There are very old wild grapevines growing in some areas over there, and at this time of year the grapes, in small dark clusters (vitis labrusca) hang, inviting plucking, but they are of course, sour. Also over there the Hawthorns are different; there they produce large round bright red haws, whereas on our side of the ravine haws if they can be found, are mean and unattractive.

When we had the daily care of our granddaughter, and took her each day along with us to the ravine, she learned swiftly to identify edible fruits, hers for the picking, from wild strawberries, to thimbleberries and raspberries and the occasional blackberry bush.


Englemans ivy grows over understory shrubbery and trees; there are far fewer ferns growing there and a lot more of the red-stemmed dogwood. There are also, over there, if one ventures down little-used-now trails, fairly large copses of mature cedar trees. It is a nice alternative to our side of the ravine, nowhere near as extensive, but interesting.

My mother gave birth to her fourth and last child when her eldest was thirteen. There had been a four-year gap between the first child and the second, two years between the second and the third. First came two girls, then two boys. Because I was thirteen it made sense that I would be relied upon to help with the new baby, and so I did. Which, I always thought, helped equip me with the ensuing common sense capability in the care of newborns when my own children were born, beginning a decade later.

When my husband and I married, my brother was five years old. Several years later when we took possession of our first house, a modest, semi-detached bungalow located in the far outskirts of Toronto, my little brother would come to stay with us occasionally for weekends, and busy himself happily searching in the ditches across from our house in a newly-developed suburb, ecstatic to find tadpoles and frogs within easy reach.

Baby Billy, up close and in a personal encounter with a pony

When he was in high school, his interest in the natural world by then well developed, he kept a veritable menagerie of caged reptiles in my mother's basement. Eventually, he adopted for a while, a raccoon that lived in the house, free to roam within reasonable parameters as long as my brother was present. My mother by then owned a cottage in an enclave near Brampton, Ontario and my brother one summer, with his raccoon, located there; I don't recall what ever happened to the raccoon after that.

One summer when our three children were toddlers, Bill came with us to spend a week at a relative's cottage, on a lake in north-western Ontario. We had paddled a boat toward a bit of a swampy area and he was determined to exit the boat close to the water's edge to search for a rare/endangered (Blandings) turtle. He found the turtles, and when he returned to the boat where we were awaiting him he was covered with leeches.

Over the years my brother became a committed birder, going to great lengths to see various species passing through at the spring and autumn equinox, eventually travelling the globe for that very purpose. There was one memorable time when he was attacked by a large goose outraged at his probing presence. In the meantime, he had obtained his science doctorate and taken a position as a professor of botany at Dalhousie University, where he remained his entire academic career. Now 65, he is retired, and he is at the end stage of an inoperable liver cancer.

His years of association with and support of the Nature Conservancy has gained him recognition from them; A coastal reserve not far from Halifax has been named in his honour, the Dr. Bill Freedman Nature Reserve.

Dr. Bill Freedman Nature Reserve includes 150 hectares southwest of Halifax

Bill Freedman has a long history of involvement with the Nature Conservancy of Canada, and served as its national board chairman and its Atlantic board chairman. (MIKE DEMBECK)

Almost coincidentally, his daughter Rachel, living in Vancouver, gave birth to a bouncy baby girl several days ago. My brother Billy is at the end of palliative care, his devoted wife George-Ann continuing to look to his comfort and his needs. His son Jonathan has flown down again to Halifax from his own home in California to be with his father to the end, and the end is not far.

My brother's bout with cancer very closely resembles our father's, though the cancer is a different one. Each was lethal, however, and ended with each of them bed-ridden and swiftly wasting as the cancer spread and consumed them. Bill's cancer, when discovered, was already in an inoperable stage and it had metasticized. From diagnosis to end-of-life it has been a swift transition for him. He never experienced any warning symptoms before diagnosis. He has always been a healthy, vibrant and active person. Throughout chemotherapy he experienced little discomfort, but the drugs, though prolonging his life somewhat, were unable to diminish the size and number of primary tumours, only the secondary ones, and only temporarily.

He has suffered no physical pain, just the intolerable agony of knowing that life is swiftly slipping away.

My Brother Billy

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Dr. Bill Freedman Nature Reserve includes 150 hectares southwest of Halifax

Bill Freedman has a long history of involvement with the Nature Conservancy of Canada, and served as its national board chairman and its Atlantic board chairman. (MIKE DEMBECK)

A popular coastal reserve will be renamed to honour a man who has spent more than 25 years working on conservation projects in Nova Scotia and across the country.
The Dr. Bill Freedman Nature Reserve includes 150 hectares of cliffs, shoreline, granite barren, tidal marsh, coastal forest and bog at what’s known as Prospect High Head, about 23 kilometres southwest of Halifax.
Hikers and bird watchers can glimpse harlequin ducks, black scooters and long-tailed ducks there, a place that is also the home of rare arctic-alpine plants.
“The viewscape is incredible, in addition to the very significant ecological features,” said Linda Stephenson, the Nature Conservancy of Canada’s Atlantic regional vice-president.

The Dr. Bill Freedman Nature Reserve includes 150 hectares of cliffs, shoreline, granite barren, tidal marsh, coastal forest and bog near Halifax.
(NATURE CONSERVANCY OF CANADA)

“It’s just a perfect (reserve) to recognize Dr. Bill because he often led tours for donors and potential donors in that area.”
Freedman, who has been diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer, recently retired as an ecologist and former chairman of the biology department at Dalhousie University.
The Halifax scientist volunteered with the Nature Conservancy of Canada, and served as its national board chairman and its Atlantic board chairman. He wrote a book on the 50-year-history of the organization, which has protected 1.1 million hectares of land across the county.
Freedman was involved when the conservancy began acquiring sites in the area, often searching out properties to make certain of their ecological value, Stephenson said.
“And it’s always such a treat to go on a walk with him because it seems as if there isn’t a plant or animal or bird that he doesn’t know, in both English and Latin.”
On one tour for donors accompanied by their children, Freedman, a parent and recent grandparent, “was right down on the ground, explaining things, so six- and seven-year-olds could fully understand and become enthusiastic about them,” Stephenson said.
The organization will also create a science-in-conservation internship in Freedman’s name that will be awarded annually to a Dalhousie student to work with nature conservancy senior staff.
It’s a natural fit for a man who has been passionate about research and instrumental in helping the conservancy grow its conservation science program over the years, from when the organization relied almost solely on volunteer scientists, Stephenson said.
“Now, we employ some of the best and brightest conservation scientists in the country. And who knows? Maybe some of these interns will end up working for us.”
Stephenson said the decision to rename the reserve and offer the internship was made to acknowledge Freedman’s contributions.
“He’s just a tremendously respected member of the organization. ... We want him to know how much he is appreciated.”

Casting about for variety in meal plans I sometimes fall back on old tried-and-true recipes stored in my head, filed away for future use. One recipe that rises on the rare occasion to remind me that its flavourful taste is well worthwhile repeating from time to time is an onion-tomato-cheese pie.

So that's just what we had for dinner yesterday, a bright, sunny but cool day when we needed light jackets for our morning walk in the woods. Cooler night time temperatures that come with early Fall make for more comfortable sleep. We might as well enjoy this moderation as long as we can before late fall and winter erupt.

And meals such as this one make good use of the abundance of fresh fruits and vegetables that come our way at this time of year.

I sliced three medium-sized onions, a chopped garlic clove and sliced a green bell pepper and sauteed them together in a little bit of olive oil until they were soft and slightly browned; grated peppercorns over, then allowed them to cool while I made a pie-crust dough of flour, salt, shortening and lemon-water. I roughly grated old cheddar, about a loose cup-full, and sliced six small tomatoes, and gathered fresh basil leaves from the garden.

Into the prepared pie shell went half of the grated cheese, topped with the onion-pepper combination, and over that a layer of tomato with the basil sprinkled over. Then came the second half of the grated cheese, and the top crust of the pie. The pie was baked until done, and served hot (and remains hot for quite some time) for dinner.

We had a small salad consisting of balled avocado along with sliced cucumber, baby carrots and cherry tomatoes harvested from the garden as an appetizer. The onion-tomato pie was followed by fresh sliced Ontario peaches for dessert.

Bountiful harvest!

Several days ago my husband took a bag of mixed seeds and nuts out to the ravine and sprinkled them in extended piles on the top rails of several bridges. We've noted that the birds and likely squirrels as well are taking advantage of them; most of the seeds have been opened and what is largely left is husks, appropriately. Some of the birds passing through on their fall migration back south need the extra energy, and we've seen that the squirrels and chipmunks have been busy gathering up stores in preparation for fall.

We came across Henry and tiny Taz on our ravine walk this morning. Henry has rheumatoid arthritis and walks with the aid of a cane, but he's in the ravine daily with Taz, his rescue Chihuahua (why would anyone abandon a Chihuahua for heaven's sake? On the other hand, something happened to traumatize the tiny dog, only three or four years old, since whenever he sees anyone he doesn't know, dog or man, he barks furiously. He adores Henry, and is fiercely protective of him, looking at him constantly to interpret his cues. He may be minuscule, but he's independent and more than capable of looking after himself; he allows Jack and Jill to get close, but not too close; he's the boss!) for their long ravine jaunts, always choosing the most physically challenging routes.

Henry's a long-retired member of the Canadian Armed Forces. Because he's now in his older years when he lost his Golden Retriever to age, he and his wife decided to take on a smaller dog, and when they saw Taz advertised by the Gatineau Humane Society they called up and said they'd be right over, reserve that one for us. My husband and Henry had a long discussion about weight-lifting. Henry goes to a gym every few days to use their exercise machines and he tells us about the young and super-fit men and women who hang out there, performing near-impossible feats of strength, agility and endurance.

My husband prefers his weight-lifting at home, using free weights and a routine he put together about five years ago that takes him about an hour and a tad more to get through. He's been frustrated by the fact that he has reached his limit, that he cannot seem to progress any further to putting on additional weights. I'm frustrated when I hear him say these things since for a man approaching 79 he's more fit than most men half his age, and Henry certainly agreed with my take on the matter.

Jack and Jill certainly think a whole lot about my husband's dexterity, in reaching high up into one wild apple tree in particular to select a sweet and juicy specimen that he doles out to them in little chunks. That's what they're passionate about. These last few days are leading us into the Autumnal Equinox, a little later than usual, this year. There's still goldenrod and asters around at the edges of the forest, but not much else. The latest-blooming asters are our favourites; bright purple, large and showy.

Three days ago we had rain and really high winds. There's a particular pine, a large one, standing on one of the hills adjacent the trail whose lean has always seemed quite noticeable. We noticed a day ago that the lean has been hugely emphasized, and it's now pretty lateral to the ground, held up, it seems, by the trunks of two far slighter poplars. The tree split down near the forest floor, likely because it was on such a lean and vulnerable to the force of the wind. Since it almost parallels the trail, it constitutes a potential danger. One I'm sure that someone must have reported to the municipality. Just to be certain I'm doing the same thing myself.

We viewed a film on Saturday night that I was at first reluctant about, but soon fell under its influence as a human relations tragedy, dispelling my initial doubts about its watchability. For one thing, I have an adverse reaction to Meryl Streep; I just happen to dislike the woman's physical characteristics and emoting and what to me, appears her histrionics as an actor. It's, I suppose, her thespian intensity, and I've no doubt she doesn't strike everyone in the way she does me.

I do happen to like Julia Roberts, and seeing Benedict Cumberbatch in any role always seems a treat.

In this film: August: Osage County, all of the actors outdo themselves in the intensities of their portrayals as part of a dysfunctional family, in a tragedy of human emotions outdoing themselves to create for them all an inferior quality of life. That is so given the weight in emotions that familial strings impose upon us all.



No self-flagellating North American film exploring the subconscious faults of a community could ever bypass the irresistible thorns of highlighting racial bigotry, and on that Continent, the white majority scorn for the indigenous people whom they regret wronging and hold in contempt at one and the same time, pricks the conscience.

As it turns out, the sole representative of North American nativism is the single individual whose compassion for others, and whose conscious conscience and forgivingness shows her as a whole spirit whom all the others would do well to emulate. Her appearance and role, a side issue, nonetheless gives depth to the entire panoply of faulty human interaction.

As for the others, lost souls all, their self-destructively mean compulsions and impulses do grave harm to their emotional relationships with their most significant intimate others, reaching into the network of the extended family. The main characters, mother and eldest daughter, are a classic battling duo of personalities, the younger's inherited from the older's. Their vitriolic bitterness, both inherited and adopted through circumstances, destroy the peace and comfort their lives could contain, leaving them poisonously acerbic to those they truly love, with predictable results.



Perhaps the story line is too trite and moralistic, but it does reflect what happens in too many families in an unforgiving interplay of blame, resentment and manipulation. And nor does it bypass an accurate look at generational and moral turpitude to add to the already stifling aura of nastiness.

An instructional film to a degree, and hardly what one might construe as entertaining.

All of the actors playing their character roles produced an outstanding performance.

This little household of ours, comprised of two adults on the quite age-mature side, eats a lot of fruit. When we buy bananas to last us a week, we can't come away with fewer than two robust bunches. We try, when we can, to select one bunch that's fairly ripe, and a second that has yet a way to go to ripen. A month ago one of the unripened bunches just didn't ripen in the time generally allotted. A week passed, then another week and then a third week, and still the bunch of unripe bananas stubbornly refused to budge from its hard green state to anything resembling edibility.

We'd never had that experience before, Usually, and particularly through the summer months, bananas ripen quickly, so much so that sometimes we end up eating the last of them in a truly soft and ripened state that many people would just not appreciate. We don't mind, we just enjoy bananas, one for each of us at breakfast time. Weeks went by and eventually, that bunch ripened and they too were eaten, but we were just a little suspicious of the experience; bananas have to be shipped in their green state, with the expectation that in several weeks' time they would turn yellow, ripening to edibility. What happened with that bunch? Guess we'll never know, but they turned out fine.

Now, in the garden, I'm harvesting tiny ripe, sweet tomatoes, non-stop. One of the tomato plants in particular has grown to be a gigantic specimen and is flowering crazily, the resulting tomatoes ripening constantly. The other hasn't fared as well, but the tomatoes it produces, larger yellow ones are spectacularly sweet. And then there's the third tomato plant, one we hadn't deliberately planted but which arrived as a volunteer, coming out of the composter. And it is producing the type of tomatoes that we tend to put in our salads, called 'cocktail'; smaller than plum tomatoes, firmly round and with an incomparable flavour. So it too is being harvested.

Another volunteer that appeared in our garden this year is the double cornstalk that has treated us to some suspenseful interest in its maturation. The two stalks seem to have grown very swiftly, and it wasn't long before tassels appeared, and not long afterward cornsilk atop emerging corn. The first corn's silk has turned a lovely shade of pink, and newly emerging corns below the originals are making fast work of their growth opportunities. It will be fascinating to watch as they continue to grow and to ripen, and perhaps even end up on our dinner table.

A recipe caught my eye on Thursday, looking through the 'Lifestyle' section of our local newspaper, so I thought I'd give it a try. A simple enough recipe, using fresh fruit in season with a cake batter. Not that the idea is entirely new, since over the years I've baked similar dishes as have most people, I suspect. But one forgets, and sometimes a little nudge of inspiration helps to produce something a little different.

This was a recipe titled "The Original Purple Plum Torte", and so I decided I'd use the recipe with a few spontaneous twists of my own for something I planned to bake on Friday morning for the evening's dessert. I did make some changes; instead of plums I used large ripe peaches since I had peaches and didn't at that time, have any plums.

The recipe is as follows:
3/4 cup sugar                           1/2 cup unsalted butter
1 cup unbleached flour           1 tsp.baking powder
pinch of salt                              2 eggs
24 halves pitted purple plums  Sugar, lemon juice and cinnamon for topping

My alterations included adding vanilla, sifting a half-tsp. cinnamon into the flour; using dark brown sugar (the recipe didn't specify white sugar), the use of two large-sized eggs (again, the recipe hadn't specified) and snipping about a quarter-cup of candied ginger into the cake batter before scooping it into the prepared baking pan.

The plum halves, skin side up, were to be scattered into the batter that had been scooped into the baking pan, and sugar, lemon juice and cinnamon sprinkled on top. After I placed the peach portions onto the batter, I scattered some halved pecans into the spaces between the fruit and the batter, and then placed the pan into a convection oven preheated to 350. Reducing the heat somewhat after 20 minutes, I sprinkled granulated sugar lightly over the peaches, then left the cake to bake for another 40 minutes.

I generally find that when the fragrance of a baked product tickles your senses, the baking is done.

When in doubt the old toothpick-piercing settles the matter.

So dessert last night was quite pleasant. Served with ice cream or whipped cream it might be even more delectable, but we enjoyed it as is, flavourful and texture-pleasing enough for our tastes.

In some cultures family is all-important. This doesn't rule out those families having friends outside their culture, but within a shared culture its members do tend to cling together long after they have migrated outside their country of origin where that culture has been established since time immemorial as far as they are concerned, establishing the patterns of their lives.

And so it is with Sikhs who migrated to Canada generations earlier, raising their own offspring with the tangible flavours of their culture. Some may have few contacts left in their country of origin and look upon Canada as their native country, one with which they completely meld in its values but the culture lives and it thrives. An inextricable part of that culture is the firm clasp of family, as the most meaningful part of life.

The kind of emotional dysfunction and petty arguments and wretched clique-ism that so often permeates families, leading to disinterest in one another and severed ties and bitterness doesn't seem to weigh down such families' firm grip on familial supportive solidarity. One can see this at times of great celebration and during sober times of grief.

One of our very closest neighbours has had a succession of health problems and often surgery related to them in an effort by medical science to restore normalcy to him. Most of those operations have been of only moderate success in their outcomes, and all of them have proven to be a burden to his body's capacity to spring back. Several days ago he underwent the most grave of all surgeries; a triple-heart bypass.

His recovery will be slow, given his body's tendency to recover slowly from all previous interventions. The medical prognosis pre-surgery was that he would be released from hospital between five to seven days post-surgery. The intention was that while he was in immediate recovery to begin physiotherapy; get him up and walking around in the days following surgery in preparation for return home.

That hasn't happened. His pain and discomfort is too great, his heart is beating too rapidly, and the cardiologists are maintaining a close watch on him. His family, wife, children, his siblings and their extended family are virtually at his bedside. He is surrounded by love and support. He is a man who needs it all and more, since he also suffers from clinical depression.

Such is life.

How foolish of me, what a short memory I have, to make such an immediate conclusion when our weather transited suddenly from hot and humid to cool and rainy, that summer had ended. That assumption was obviously premature, and there was little excuse for it, other than lamenting the passage of summer into autumn. At my age, having experienced these frequent events of weather seeming to change day by day in such huge leaps, I should have known better.

That we had been experiencing heat and humidity for a week, followed suddenly by a  spurt of subsequent days of plunging temperatures and non-stop rain should have nudged my memory for the many times this kind of weather ping-pong has occurred. It didn't, however, and after bemoaning summer's passage, here we are once again firmly plunked back into summer with all its consequent heat and humidity. Warranting a light dinner last night of a potato salad garnished with fresh vegetables. And salmon.

Our usual ravine hike was a heated affair, and we were grateful for a light breeze and the sun-shielding canopy overhead. We were also surprised at the presence of people walking dogs whom we'd never before encountered in all our years of daily ravine hikes. The ravine is a natural treasure, quite under-used, so it's always a surprise to come across those we haven't seen before. Two young woman walking large dogs indulged them with permission to cool off in the muddy creek to their hearts' content.

As for Jack and Jill, they were outfitted yesterday with new harnesses. They both agitate over having to wear harnesses, not that they're any more content to even wear their collars. We leave them collarless in the house, but once we venture outdoors, on come the collars. For identification purposes should anything ever happen and they become separated from us. Button and Riley accustomed themselves to these constraints and we hope that Jack and Jill eventually will, too. Meanwhile, they've both bitten through quite a few of them.

My husband is always on the lookout for those that are soft and yielding, for maximum comfort. Maximum comfort to our two little imps is no impediments to their free movement at all. That will eventually happen as they become older and more responsive to where we want them to be at all times, but that time hasn't yet arrived.

In the 1950s of downtown Toronto the old Brunswick Hotel (it was old even back then) was a clapped-out, disreputable drinking establishment in whose near proximity it could be guaranteed one would see alcoholics publicly displaying the type of mental abyss typical of alcohol addicts. Bloor Street itself back then was fairly run-down and tired in appearance. Close by the Brunswick Hotel was where my parents' convenience store was located; about two doors over.

I'd be asked by my father when barely into my teens to fit my body into the tight space that represented his store's front-window area, to arrange displays of items sold in the store attractively in the hopes that people would be enticed to enter and make purchases. It was a dusty enclosure; the first time I was dispatched to do the job it was clear that it hadn't been done in many a year. That neglect was just one of many my father, on becoming the store's proprietor meant to change. The odd times I was tasked with manning the cash register as a kid, I was told precisely what to charge when someone might toddle over from the Brunswick to buy a single cigarette.

My parents stocked their narrow, elongated cave of a store with everything imaginable, from newspapers and magazines in languages other than English as well as more local ones, to canned foodstuffs my mother would trundle over in her buggy when they were on sale at the Dominion Supermarket a block away. With tobacco products, toys and gifts, candies and baked goods, ice cream in huge drums to be scooped up into cones, housewares and anything useful and inexpensive that could be stuffed onto the shelving along its narrow aisles.

The store in the Byward Market that my husband and I have been dropping by for many years has a similar configuration to my father's old store; it is long and deeply narrow. The cash register and counter located in the very same place where my father's was. But that store specializes in newspapers, journals and magazines of a far wider variety than my father's ever did, as well as ecigarettes, conventional cigarettes and cigars, hookahs, and marijuana and other drug paraphernalia. For the past decade it has been owned by a Somali family, its members graciously helpful and patrician in their proud bearing.

When we dropped by yesterday after discovering the week before that the September issues of the monthly art magazine and the antique digest my husband usually collects there hadn't yet arrived, we found that though the shop owner had been certain they would be coming in at the very latest last Friday, they hadn't. That wasn't the only disappointment of the day. From the Byward Market we headed up to Gatineau, Quebec, since it was such a lovely day, with a high of 26 degrees, under sunny skies.

Unfortunately, when we reached Chelsea at the point where a hundred yards' distant we would enter the road into Gatineau Park leading to our hiking destination we discovered the road closed and under construction. Searching for alternative entry points we drove to some of the old areas we'd been familiar with decades ago, but found even those areas dramatically changed. Some days are just like that.

The wondrous conveniences of technology and the constant, aberrant irritations that often attend their use. Finally it seems that Hydro One has solved the problem of the destroyed lines in our area, occasioned by the misfortune of one driver in mortal distress hitting a hydro installation. No more blackouts, thank heavens.

And my computer is now purring away obediently, no longer declining me the opportunity to make use of its multitude of connections. So, for the time being, that's behind us.

On the other hand, when our granddaughter made her daily call to us from Toronto on the first day of her university classes, we were cut off no fewer than four times. Each time in mid-sentence the line suddenly went dead. Each time she redialled and we reconnected, only to have the line go blank again. Finally, we concluded our conversation via email. At least her first day went well, and she has a good impression of the professor teaching her course; now if all the rest follow suit that'll be useful.

This morning there was a call from "Visa" with the usual call-centre background sounds as a dead giveaway that this was a crank call. The caller, identifying himself by faux Western name belying his identifying accent, asked my husband to confirm his identity, only to come up against a blank wall himself of an enquiry on my husband's part demanding to know where the call was coming from.

With the explanation that someone had sourced our account and was using it illicitly, my husband concluded the conversation and then called Visa. He was cautioned that the call received was not from Visa and urged to remain vigilant about his account, which hadn't in fact, been used by us since February. Human ingenuity related to scamming the unaware knows no bounds.

What could conceivably be more aggravatingly frustrating than to prepare to use your computer only to discover that your computer has no intention of co-operating? Yesterday afternoon my computer which I hold in the highest esteem, withheld its services. It resolutely ignored my efforts to wake it from an admittedly-deserved rest. It isn't that old, no more than four years, but it has obviously grown weary of my incessant demands of its services.

While the computer was on as it should be, the monitor was blank. And nothing I seemed to do to coax it to show some signs of [not sentient, but sentient-useful] life was to no avail. I checked the connections, the cable, the plugs. I changed the mouse, the keyboard, the monitor itself to another, and ... nothing. So last night, rather than engage in my usual blogging enterprise I read instead. It wasn't time wasted; I looked through and read most of the text of 'A Visual Dictionary of Herbs', thus adding to my knowledge of herbs with their culinary and medicinal properties.

And I also began reading Children in the Holocaust and World War II, their secret diaries; a riveting compilation of the hopes, fears and impressions of young teens writing of their Holocaust-related experiences, by Laurel Holliday. She gathered the diaries, observing that they represented courage and rebellion against the cruel fate these children faced, determined to give them the audience she felt they deserved.

Cruel fate was what, in an individual sense, hit a man who was driving his car on a main thoroughfare nearby where we live when he suffered a heart attack, and his car hit a main hydro installation of the type placed on the ground throughout the area, knocking out power to an estimated four thousand homes, ours among them. We were suddenly plunged, around ten in the evening, into total darkness about five days ago. We groped about to make our way the short distance to pick up a flashlight apiece. Soon afterward the electricity was restored.

In the following days we experienced a series of brief power outages, irritating but what can you do? In one instance the outage began at five and lasted until six, and that evening up until two in the morning brief spurts of power breaks occurred. Since then it appears all the damage to the power lines has been amended and reliability restored. Initially despite that we have a good-quality power bar for protection against surges my desktop wasn't happy at all with these 'unauthorized' shut-downs, though my husband's mini-laptop seemed unperturbed by comparison.

We thought we'd take my computer in for a diagnostic test that might determine what was wrong with the connections, and we'd do that some time today. But soon after we came down for breakfast my husband looked over at my computer desk in the family room and there was the computer and monitor, up and ready for use.

Up to four days ago we were sweltering in high humidity and high temperatures in the 30s. Canadians indulge in speaking primarily of how the weather affects their daily lives. In the Ottawa Valley it is always humid, regardless of the temperature. It is what makes excessive summertime heat unbearable and frigid winter days no less so but for obvious differences. In Canada, exposure to inclement and cold conditions can kill; excessive heat less so, since there are always opportunities to enter cooler spaces. We shed our clothing as much as social decency will permit and go about our business. Alternately pile on more layers in the cold season to keep from utter discomfort.

We've now bid farewell to the heat and humidity of late summer as we prepare to enter the autumnal Equinox. We may before the next two months have passed, enjoy some respite from impending cold, in what we call episodes of brief relief: "Indian summer" days, but from here on in, winter will make its gradual presence an unavoidable reality. We can see all the signs of die-back responding to short light-days and the difference in the strength of the sun. Not only are perennial plants exhausted and shrubs subtly beginning to turn fall shades, but the shrinking of the green mass on the forest floor has begun in earnest and foliage on trees has begun to turn colour and descend from their perches.

Yesterday's all-day rain in a high temperature of 15 degrees was cool and miserable. There was just enough of a window around four in the afternoon to take Jack and Jill out for a ravine walk. Though the trees were steadily dripping with the weight of the rain that had fallen overnight and throughout the day, no rain descended while we were out, for which we were thankful. The dim light penetrating the canopy reminded us that in several months' time there will be far fewer daylight hours; a trend that has been impossible not to notice. Despite that dim light it always surprises us that the prevailing green after a heavy rain is so intense and bright, amidst the gloom.

Shortly after we returned from our hour's foray in the woods, the clouds once again relieved themselves of their watery burden. And then continued to rain through the evening hours into the early morning hours and beyond. Beyond of course, means that today is yet another day of constant rain and few opportunities to enjoy the out-of-doors.

We're stunned, as usual, at the rapidity with which summer faded, can't imagine how it could be possible that the summer months streamed by so swiftly. Didn't we even notice until now? Were we so busy enjoying the leisure and comfort of relying on sun and breeze and showers that we forgot the passage of the season? Or were we just so busy criticizing nature for all that she threw our way in her little surprises that we lost track?

My sister is four years younger than me. Her sight was always compromised, the result of a somewhat-botched forceps delivery 74 years ago. She is now, and has been for decades, legally blind. Some years ago, perhaps five, she fell down a full flight of steps. It wasn't a staircase in her own house, she was visiting the home of a friend, opened a door to what she thought was a solid floor beyond it, but which wasn't. She managed to save herself from hitting her head as she reached bottom, but she suffered from the pain and aches that resulted all over her body, for many months afterward. She never did see a doctor after the accident, and now it's just an unpleasant memory.

It's now been three weeks to a day since I fell down the stairs from our second floor to the first, and hit my forehead on the marble landing at the bottom of the steps. Remarkably and fortunately though my head hit with a real !crack! resulting in an immediate swelling and considerable pain, I don't appear to have sustained any real damage. I've no bodily aches and pains now, though I did have in the days immediately following; not uncomfortable enough to make things unbearable, just nudges of muscular aches.

My head was a different story. The left side of my face became rather grotesque in appearance, bruised and swollen, the left eyelid drooped over the eye and it was dreadfully irritating. Let alone painful to look at in the mirror, so I decided to avoid doing that. As the days progressed and the bruising became more noticeable, I more or less 'forgot' about what my face looked like as I went out in the public arena; brought to reality by the shocked expressions on people's faces and the necessity to explain that no, my husband hadn't brutalized me.

Noting my social discomfort, my husband who enjoys shopping for food, suggested that he do the food shopping and I could use the time for relaxation instead of rushing about the supermarket, and I agreed. He's done that for three weeks of supermarket shopping and since he's an excellent shopper it seems to work out well. People who work at the supermarket where we've shopped for many years have asked him where I am, and he has explained to them, and they've expressed concern on my behalf, which is rather sweet.

So while I busy myself doing the Friday baking and cooking my husband goes off to do the shopping and our little dogs aren't left on their own. We had taken to discard our original solution which was to confine them to a limited area since they're forever getting into some kind of mischievous trouble or another, to drive to the supermarket with them, leaving my husband to sit in the vehicle for the hour it takes me to do the shopping. In hot or cold weather that can be a real nuisance and a time-waster.

So, for the time being, until we can trust the little imps to more or less behave themselves on their own while we're both off doing the shopping without them, this temporary solution will do just fine.