Once again yesterday, as we did the day before, we decided to lengthen our ravine walk. To do that on this occasion, once we were through our usual circuit of an hour, we had to emerge from the ravine, then cross a major traffic corridor to approach the opposite end of the ravine to where we had been on Friday. We hadn't been there in some time. It was where we regularly took little Riley when the bridges on our part of the ravine were being replaced and work crews with heavy machinery disrupted the trails and the peaceful tranquility of the woods.

The portion we crossed into is quite a bit different than ours. The forest there isn't as deep and lengthy. Consequently the trail is a single one and not all that long. But because it is different it is also interesting. For one thing, the tributary of the creek though considerably narrower is far more attractive; it is entirely lined with limestone toward its entrance to the forest. We don't know whether that's natural or had been done by the hand of man, as it were, well before the time we were ever introduced to the area. The approach to the forest is also very attractively parklike.

Gnarled old spruce

Many years ago when our granddaughter was young and we provided her weekday daycare, we took her regularly to a playground adjacent that part of the ravine, accessed at the foot of our street. On occasion we would take her through that part of the ravine which approached yet another, larger playground with more sophisticated playground equipment.

Beech (foreground) Cedars

Yesterday we were just enjoying a midsummer day's ramble in the woods. There are some notable old trees in that portion of the ravine; also cedars where there are few in ours where the conifers are pine, spruce and fir, and on the hillsides native yew. Where we were yesterday there are also venerable old maples and spruce, very respectably elderly, gnarled and huge. Though we have ample of the same as well as beech, birch, hawthorn, sumac, black cherry, wild apple and ironwood, which have their presence there, also.

Giant old Maple (interior) Birch (right forefront)

More sun penetrates the area there since the forest canopy is not as large. And there is a crowded corridor of thistles which at this time of year coming into blooming colour can be attractive, but in the fall nuisances when their dried flowers become the thistles that stick stubbornly to the fur and hair of dogs, and peoples' socks and pants.

There is also present there far more thimbleberry bushes than are evident where we usually ramble. And what's more surprising is that we found quite a few ripe berries. Surprising since in our part of the ravine the flowering hasn't been that long in process and it will be quite a while before they produce edible fruit. Those growing in abundance where we were yesterday are far more advanced.

A pleasant conclusion to our day's woodland walk. For us, at any event. Though we fed our puppies a few modest handfuls of berries which they love, it hardly seemed as though they enjoyed the ambiance of the unfamiliar territory. They would have forgotten our having taken them there on the rare occasion many months previously. They seemed to tug at the leash as though urging us to return to familiar places, unreasonable as that seems.

Years ago we often used to come across the sight of wild rabbits bouncing about on a large field that we once believed was part of the construction-protected ravine, and on adjacent trails when we frequented those trails as part of a longer circuit we would take in the ravined forest so close by our home. Those rabbit sightings are now extremely rare.

Caused, of course, by the fact that the large field is no longer in its natural state, but has been transformed to a residential street of bungalows, in keeping with an effort to reduce the visual impact of houses so close to a natural area, but not an effort to maintain wildlife habitat. What we took to be part of the municipally-protected forest area was obviously in private hands.

On the rare occasions we still decide to elongate our circuit and include that portion, we're always taken by the fact that some of the flora to be seen there are quite different than what we're more accustomed to enjoying in the potion of the ravine, more extensive and certainly larger and more thickly forested, than that part, far closer to our home.

There are some lovely old pine giants that hadn't evidently been striking enough in their maturity to be logged out when this part of the country was being logged and settled a hundred years ago and more, and they're to be found in their majestic presence in various parts of the geology we're so fortunate to live within.

But there are also long-established old grape vines, the common fox grape, or vitis labrusca, that grow so emphatically on that side of the ravine. The thick, woody stem with its strong twining habit grows to impressive proportions. Its fruit must have been very useful to the early settlers in the area. And it most definitely finds the clay soil in this geography amenable to its foundational biological requirements.

So it's a treat, from time to time, to go along to that area and to poke about visually to see what's new.

We did come across several clumps of tall flowering plants that I took from a distance to be milkweed in flower, but closer inspection revealed thick clusters of bright pink almost-aster-like flowers with aster-like foliage but definitely not the typical fall asters we seen coming into early bloom this year.

There it was, the old giant of a pine, still standing, just within the edge of the forest where it begins to dip into the ravine, not far from the trail we used to take many years ago in our then-regular circuit of the forested ravine. When we first discovered the forest so close to our home, when we moved into the house we're currently owners of, twenty-five years ago, that old pine had a companion a short distance away, outside the forest confines by a short distance. It had been the larger of the two back then. And twenty years ago it had been hit by a lightning strike, which felled it, to our great dismay.

Over the years since, the remaining pine gained in girth, since as softwoods, pines grow fairly quickly. Where the other tree had fallen is no longer visible, its great trunk well overgrown by other flora over the years. The entire area is much, much different than it was when we used to frequent it. At that time there were optional trails we could take that are no longer there. It's a ravined forest and over time areas erode, where promontories which used to host very narrow trails have fallen away taking the trails with them.

The linked circuitry of trails on that side of the ravine which we seldom visit anymore are nowhere near as extensive as those on 'our side'. And over the years there has been quite a bit of housing encroachment on what was once level and undeveloped land bordering the ravine. The steady influx of new homes cut off access to the animals which live there, the wildlife corridors suddenly disappearing. It's why we see far fewer animals and ground birds than we once did.

Jack and Jill were interested enough to explore new territory. They would hardly remember, we assume, the few times we've taken them on previous occasions. And since we venture there so rarely now, considerably lengthening our walking circuit when we do, there is always something different to be seen. Some of the flora grows differently there, since there are more wide open spaces than in the part we regularly tramp over. Wildflowers are more abundant.

And for another thing, as an example, the native fox grape grows there, and there are ancient vines looping over trees, always fascinating to see.  And today we saw a single flowering plant whose presence we found odd, since there was only one to be seen, and it looked quite different; a yellow flower with a decidedly pink interior. Until we looked a little closer and realized that the pink interior was actually a lovely, delicate pink moth nestled in the centre of each of the two blooms that had reached maturity. And I finally recognized that the unknown plant was an evening primrose.

Bilberry Creek ravine welcomed us handsomely this morning, well before the stifling heat of the day could set in. It may be a long-established routine that we're on the trails in the woods every day, but it's one we never tire of, nor fail to look forward to. Regardless of the season, we're out there, with rare exceptions.

And, of course, we're accompanied by our little dogs. It's a shame we can't leave them to wander free off leash, but they're still too disposed to get into trouble. They rush headlong, barking furiously, when we come close to encountering other dogs and it's easy for large dogs to misinterpret their intent, though admittedly the larger dogs tend to be patient with ours as well as far better-behaved. Besides which, Jackie sometimes becomes ferociously aggressive with dogs he doesn't know, to the extent that he'll leap at them, snarling, if given the chance.

Doesn't make much existential sense when a small dog hasn't a prudent appreciation of the imbalance between a little dog and one well muscled and very large coming into conflict with each other, so we have to be alert to this foolish predilection of his. Jillie is hardly better; she has an irritating tendency to bark shrilly and often hysterically, despite our chastising her continually, and she more or less sets Jackie off.

When we come across dogs they know it's never a problem, since then their barking is an excited greeting. Well-disciplined these little dogs are not. Today we came across a few dogs we've never before seen in the ravine, two Golden Retrievers and a small Maltese accompanying two pleasant young women. The usual initial pandemonium ensued with our two; once we freed their leashes all five dogs made each others' acquaintance, and it was a nice social opportunity for Jack and Jill.

The cherry trees are now sporting fully ripened berries and they glow in the sun. Speaking of which sunflowers are now also in full summertime glow. And surprisingly, we came across the first clump of fall asters already in bloom, and that truly is strange; a full month ahead of the usual bloom-time schedule, as far as we can recall.

We came across the young women and their three dogs twice; the first time they hadn't been long in the ravine; the second, a half-hour or so later was after their dogs had discovered the creek, and obviously revelled in its cool, muddy wetness. By the time we re-encountered them, all three were dripping and their legs well encased in mud. The women laughed and said none of them would be sleeping in their beds tonight.

It becomes evermore difficult to achieve a balancing act the way that Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain)  managed, observing the world with a half-cynical eye, recording the absurdities of human behaviour to fool ourselves into believing that we are decent and committed to the advance of civilizing humanity while at the same time practicing the deceit of mountebanks in the very act of committing atrocities. He was a folklorist, a humourist and a misanthrope, in one grand swoop of personality.

There is a tragic linear continuum that history records in the affairs of humankind, where religious devotion, ideological transfixion, tribal and sectarian and social customs hold those who are outside the mainstream of rigid beliefs to be inferior, heretics to the prevailing social, religious or ideological order. From Torquemada to Stalin, Hitler to Pol Pot, Islamic State and al-Qaeda to Abu Ghraib, we see dehumanization of one's perceived enemies graduate to mass murder justified by the social perception that those accused and held imprisoned, then led to their death have no justifiable reason to live.

The auto-da-fe and instruments of torture that preceded torching humans to death, were refined centuries after the Spanish Inquisition (which itself was adapted from much earlier inquisitions) and perfected into an industrialized mass annihilation machinery by the Third Reich which had succeeded in marginalizing, violating, and finally murdering millions of Jews to rid the world of what the Nazi propaganda machine named a sub-human pestilence. That sub-human species which despite their relatively slight numbers within the human population has been recognized with more Nobel prizes than any other ethnic group.

As far as ironies go the fact that a brilliant Nobel-prize-winning German-Jewish scientist, Fritz Haber, invented Zyklon B (hydrogen cyanide gas) as an pesticide that was later used by the Third Reich to destroy the lives of six million Jewish children, babies, men and women, young and old, remains a postscript to history.

What could one expect from ardent anti-Semitic fascists? Perhaps precisely what one might expect from committed anti-Semitic Communists when Stalin's Great Terror purged his one-time Jewish allies from the elite ranks of the Communist order, then proceeded to target Jews in the Soviet orbit more generally in his fit of anti-Semitic psychopathy. Both finding common cause in ridding the world as well, of Sinti, homosexuals, the mentally impaired, their political opponents and any who dared question the higher purpose of their aspirational intentions to turn the world into a finer place where their own visages would be worshipped as demi-mortal.

Now, out of Australia, news that inhumanity prospers in a Western society through its treatment of teen-age prison incarcerates where techniques favoured by the Grand Inquisitors of yore are in fashion, with mechanical restraints, hooded prisoners, hands and feet bound, kept in extended isolation; a method tried-and-true to break the human spirit of a 17-year-old whose defiance of authority ran counter to general expectations, meriting his placement in a facility for children whom the justice system views askance.

Dylan Voller's sister Kira appealed to the public when  her brother's plight was featured on an Australian television program: Her brother, she said, "deserves his life back" after having "lost everything ... lost hope. The last time I went to visit him there was no smile, there was no emotion, there was nothing. I couldn't give him anything to be positive about and that really broke me. I want him to know he's still a person and people still love him and he still has hope for a life."

Even more tragically, Dylan Voller's case is not unique. The prison's inmates, all young people, undergo the same ritualistic dystopian 'cures' for their anti-social behaviour that so enrages authority that it saw fit to mete out various forms of  'civilized' behaviour modification techniques. Not quite the cures utilized regularly by Iran and Saudi Arabia, but sufficiently notable to bring a black smudge of infamy to the reputation of the country.

Red sky at night, sailors' delight
Red sky in the morning, sailors take warning

After a day of ongoing, rolling thunderstorms with copious rainfalls, the sky last night became a fiery symphony of change, as high winds hurtled themselves against the dark clouds and ushered them elsewhere, an exchange of violent forces that lit up the sky in a bright glow of red. And when we awoke this morning, it was to blue skies entirely clear of bruised-looking clouds, the sun gleaming on wet surfaces, the garden contentedly switching its allegiance from rain to sun.

The forest glittered with drops not yet entirely evaporated because though the sun's rays were swiftly heating the atmosphere, the humidity remained fairly high. We knew the prevailing winds that kept whipping about would soon reduce the humidity and absorb the rain's excess, and the heat would eventually build toward afternoon. It was a pleasant walk, in between the extremes; being caught out on the trails yesterday morning in one of the thunderstorms' downpours and being out on the trail today, sheltered from the sun by the green glow of the forest canopy.

We noted that honeysuckle berries are present, along with ripening wild cherries for the birds to take advantage of. We heard a juvenile hawk scream as it fled through the trees; presuming as we did that its parents were high above the canopy coasting on the wind, he would soon be fed. Blackberries are beginning to ripen, hard on the heels of the tiny red raspberries that my husband has been gathering to the avaricious delight of Jack and Jill.

Goldenrod is now beginning its bloom period, early this year, and even more surprising, fall asters can be seen in the woods with their own early buds prepared to flower far sooner than most years, this peculiar wildflower-blooming season.

We came across a trailwalker we know, a genial, pleasant man, with his equally mild-mannered German Pointer, an elegant canine if ever there was any question that such a breed existed. The Pointer had his own ideas of how best to enjoy a walk in the woods; apart from his natural colouration, and markings, he was sporting dark 'socks' he'd picked up racing through the muddy creek bottom.

There are some mornings when the will and urgency to emerge from the comfort of bed is simply absent. The conditions have to be just so, to elicit that willingness to remain under the light weight of a bedsheet, sprawled on a nice firm mattress, companion by your side, and this was one of those mornings. At seven, our puppies emoted their concern over rolling thunder penetrating the bedroom. Their barking is more of a challenge than an obvious emotion of fear and/or distress.

They're not as appreciative as we are of the feelings that can overcome one under those circumstances; abed early morning in the muted morning light of a cloud-crowded sky with thunder and lightning roiling the atmosphere. To them the sounds and the sensations evoked are simply unusual enough at their tender age that they are suspicious, unlike we two who have experienced the phenomenon over a lifetime.

With the day certain to progress to one of extreme heat to accompany the high humidity, we planned as usual to embark on our day's ravine walk as early as possible. When we did exit the house it was still relatively cool, though the sun was trying to evade the cloud cover and it did emerge briefly, though its presence didn't fool us. We wore light rainjackets and pocketed the same for Jack and Jill, and set off.

Annoyingly, the sun did shine briefly, transferring heat at a time when it wasn't appreciated, but even as the sun managed to mount its perch in the sky, the clearing was brief and rolling thunder accompanied us as we proceeded through the forested trails. We knew we wouldn't get through our walk in a dry state. The trees were dripping from a series of previous inundations. At one juncture we passed two men, obviously father and mature son walking five hounds and a bull mastiff. Which caused a bit of excitement for our two black furry gnomes. Who seem in fits of foolhardiness to subscribe to the death wish: 'bring them on!'

Wishing one another luck in out-treading the storm whose reverberations we could feel as the thunder pealed out, it didn't take much longer for the sky to unleash what it was promising, and down it came. We fitted Jack and Jill out with their raincoats and moved under the paltry shelter of a few trees; when you're in a forest you are surrounded by trees of different girths; lightning has ample choice in those circumstances, why would it select a particular tree you're sheltering under?

At this point we were holding the two puppies as rain pelted down in huge gobs. But thunderstorms are typically brief, and this one didn't last all that long, so soon enough we were on our way again, none the worse for wear. And as we proceeded, new prolonged rolls of thunder proceeded to pass overhead, promising more to come. We suspect that this will be the pattern for the day.

Because of the location of our winter bird-and-wildlife feeding stations at the front of the house, it's inevitable that when the season is over, when spring arrives and the necessity to feed wildlife is no longer there, we will find sprouting seeds everywhere in the surrounding gardens.

And the spread is wide, not only in the immediate garden presence, but in the rock garden at the opposite side of the house, in the backyard garden beds, and even in neighbours' gardens adjacent their houses. None have yet complained Last year we had corn growing to maturity (because we felt the stalks were admirably ornamental and left them to mature) in the garden, and one grew on our neighbour's property as well.

This spring, although I pulled out hundreds of sprouted seedlings I decided to keep quite a few of the sunflowers, for their July showy presence. I had stripped the spring garden of multitudes of seedlings and more kept erupting, but finally I felt that the numbers I had left intact would be fine, producing a nice crop of large, colourfully attractive sunflowers. In fact, I'd left in far too many. But even knowing that I left them in place.

And now that they're all mature they're asserting themselves to the point of bullying other plants. The garden beds and borders are crowded with sunflowers in bloom. I intend, as I did last year and the year before, to carefully haul them out of the soil once their flowering phase has concluded, when I will harvest the heads and leave them out for wildlife to feast on. Meanwhile, a few days ago I noticed that one of the flowers, closer to the house, had already some of its seeds missing. I wondered who had been at work, squirrels or birds.

And today I had my answer. Glancing out the glazed front door of the house I saw a goldfinch fly into the garden, perch on the crab tree opposite the very sunflower I'd noticed, then loop over to it to begin pecking at the centre. There's no way of telling whether this very goldfinch was among the many that we fed during the winter, but it's a fair possibility. Its beautifully coloured plumage is a perfect aesthetic foil to the bright yellow of the sunflowers, reflecting the glow of the sun itself.

We each identify what has value and priority with us, and then there is the grudging time given over to matters that must be looked after which are time-consuming and irritating when they erupt, demanding a sacrifice of our time.

This has been one of those days. But first things always come first, and after breakfast we set out for a bit of a moody walk in the ravine. High humidity again, with ample sun, but a strange tension in the air as the clear blue begins to be occluded by definite deeply-banked dark clouds auguring storms in the very, very near future. Just as yesterday was hot and humid with a good breeze blowing through, so too today has its share of a nice, fresh wind, to relieve the closeness.

In the ravine, the wind ruffled the foliage, and the sun lit up the verdant shield of the canopy that screens us from the sun as we make our way through the trails. Noting as we pass that someone, perhaps a large dog, had toppled the large mullein that just kept on developing a taller and taller flower stem. Now it lies broken, its head tipping toward the creek, a yawning empty space where it had stood so erect and proud.

From the aspect of the woods, it is almost as though a sullen mood prevails. Perhaps it's just me, knowing that I've got to do a few errands that will invariably take me to busy places, and I quite detest shopping for anything. First off, to a local jewellery store to have two rings, one on each hand, which I've worn for years on my two index fingers, cut away. I've been lax in realizing that I should long since have removed them while I still could. Now I no longer could and they were each cutting into my fingers

.

It took the gentle ministration of a professional jeweller no time at all to snip through the gold and pry the ring away from my finger; one, then the other, relieving those digits of the pressures that have too long been building. Now each has to heal. And the jeweller will restore the rings, but sizing them more appropriately. Each of those rings has value to me, as gifts from my husband for one birthday or another, away back when. When I was younger, my fingers more slender. I've a habit of not removing jewellery and just wearing them more or less forever.

Then on to a local eyeglass franchise where earlier in the week an optometrist had examined my eyes and produced a prescription for lenses that reflect the current marginally reduced level of my eyesight. My right eye has perfect vision, my left eye considerably less so, given that the vitrectomy I'd had years back hadn't succeeded in its mission. I chose two frames for two sets of glasses, and they're progressive, since that works fine for me. But the process of selection and the resulting discussion of additional details seemed to take forever, even longer by a considerable amount of time than the examination itself took, and it had been precise and time-consuming.

Now it's all done, though, I'll have new eyeglasses in a week or two, and my sentimental old rings will be returned to me, intact, comfortable once again to wear - on entirely different fingers.

Environment Canada issued another heat warning for today. Last night's temperature didn't drop much, and it got up to 33 degrees by late afternoon yesterday, so there was no overnight cooling down, and with the level of moisture in the air, it feels even hotter. People are advised to stay indoors, to seek shelter from the hot sun and the burning atmosphere.

We were in the ravine for our woodland walk right after our leisurely breakfast. As soon as we entered from the street into the woods with its protective green canopy and felt the breeze that was wafting through, there was immediate relief from the oppressive closeness.

We came across an older man we occasionally see, who always remarks what a relief it is to be there rather out on the street. He has a regular route in the ravine, although it's always on the upper level where he can do a short circuit without actually challenging himself too physically, avoiding the ascents and descents. He simply stays on the level portion and completes four circuits, feeling that this is all he really needs. He is, after all, exposing himself to a certain level of physical action and for him it's the right formula.

We're often out in the afternoon and see no one else. Today was different. We came across Jasper, a five-year-old pleasant pitbull mix, always glad to see us, but he was already feeling the heat of the day and looked exhausted. His owner, a lovely young man, wasn't with him this time, but his mother whom we also know, was. She told us her son was now working two part-time jobs. We know he's hoping to be hired by the Ottawa Police Services, but he hasn't heard anything yet from his application and they've had it quite a long time; a year ago he told us of his ambition. He would be a credit  and an asset to any police force.

Then we met Oliver for the first time. And what a pleasure that was. Oliver's a tiny toy apricot poodle, lighter than Riley in colour and an absolute character. Our two towered over Oliver who was eager to challenge them both to a good runabout, obviously more than capable of looking after himself, a tremendous bundle of energy at four years of age. He was just visiting from Comox, British Columbia.

Then, before we finished our circuit, we came across a group of four young people walking three dogs, two hounds and a mastiff, all three beautiful dogs and well behaved. They were curious about our two, who returned the compliment. But where the three large dogs behaved impeccably, our two still had plenty of social niceties to pick up before we could ever say the same about them.

So my husband's most recent project is now completed. The project consisted of restoring two 19th Century oil paintings of the Scottish Highlands. We'd thought, at first, they were scenes of Wales, but we were wrong. From a copperplate inscription at the back of the most recently acquired of the two paintings by the same artist, the landscape is identified as belonging to Scotland.

First painting of two restored

The first one was in poor enough shape, but not so compromised as the second one. They were both bought from an elderly man who dabbles in many things, and selling antiques and collectible items is one of those things he engages in. He's also an artist of impressionist paintings and a sculptor who fashions art out of 'found' objects. As well, he is a master gardener, so he's a man of many parts. Apart from which he's a thoroughly engaging and likable person with energy to spare.

Painting two, the gashes backed by canvas patches

The second painting was in quite dreadful shape in that it had been punctured and torn extensively in several places whereas the first one only had a few smaller slashes. We treasure, my husband and I, 19th Century paintings, though those that were created in earlier centuries are also of absorbing interest to us. Over the span of a half-century we've seen many paintings and have been able to acquire some of what we've seen. Not paintings of great monetary value by any means by artists of repute, but representing inherent aesthetic value that to us seems beyond priceless.

Preparatory to applying gesso

My husband has also himself done some original paintings of his own. So he knows his way around canvas and oil paint. And he undertook, certainly not for the first or the last time, to restore the two paintings that he had acquired for the pittance they commanded because of the shape they were in. They were in that shape because the man who was selling them failed to adequately protect them from harm when he loaded them onto his truck which was full of other, less fragile items and a sudden stop-and-lurch had seen the unprotected paintings fall over onto sharp objects, tearing them.

Now that my husband has done as much as he could to restore the paintings and he did the same with the frames, cleaning them and patching the missing portions of the frame, then painting them and reframing the paintings, they're ready to be hung. Somewhere. Wherever we can find some spare wallspace. My husband is not completely satisfied with what he has accomplished; he  is always critical of what he does, but I'm more than impressed and full of praise for him.

All gardeners know that with the pleasure of looking after a thriving garden there are always distractions and the presence of pests that do their utmost to wreak havoc in a garden. For years we coped with powdery mildew on phlox and roses, and I used to concoct a spray of water, baking soda, vinegar and I forget what else, to use on aphids and mildew, with moderate success.

(For those who detest earwigs, here's a great combination; 1-1/2 tbsp.baking soda 1 tbsp.insecticidal soap, 1 tbsp.cooking oil, 17 cups of water and finally 1 tbsp.vinegar. Spray tops and undersides of foliage. If used on a weekly basis it can help prevent and control disease and insect predation. And good luck.)

Lilies were particularly sought out by beautiful orange-red lily beetles whose eggs and larvae made a mess of the lovely flowers. There was something else that went at the azalea blooms if they weren't caught on time. That spray got a lot of use. And my husband took to plucking off the beetles, lovely as they were, to crush them under his boot. This, from a man who, when he sees an insect in the house will gently lift it and place it outside rather than kill it.

Years ago when we were taking our usual stroll in the woods not far from our house, we came across a sight of something quite different in our experience. In a hollow of a crook in a large tree there was a mass of beetles, heaving about, clambering all over one another. They were large and round, coloured an iridescent, gleaming green. And we wondered what they were.

The following year we discovered they had invaded our backyard. Not the front gardens; they appeared to confine themselves to the back. Where they swarmed over our ornamental corkscrew Hazel tree, climbing roses and shrub roses, feasting on the flower buds, blooms and foliage to create an unattractive lacy network of desiccated foliage. We sprayed them to little avail. So my husband took to picking them off.

 They eventually flew off, after a month or so of devastating the garden. But you shrug and tell yourself this is, after all, one of nature's creations. The biological world is replete with a cornucopia of lifeforms that thrive on destroying other lifeforms, and we, as humans, are no different.

A week ago we saw the arrival of a single Japanese beetle, for that's what those beautiful beetles are. Now they've begun to hatch out in serious numbers. They hold conferences cupped in a climbing hydrangea leaf, while others below feast hungrily on the foliage.

They have taste-tested our large Calla lily cluster. And aside from those, they settle as well on the Monarda blossoms to satiate themselves at the cost of intact flowers and foliage.

The wreckage they leave behind attests to their voracious, destructive appetite. Yet another garden pest. Yet another of nature's challenges; while offering existence to a multitude of lifeforms, some will expire so that others may live.