Just as we were exiting the ravine from our circuit there yesterday we came across Gord, with his black Lab rescue dog Molly, and two of the neighbours' dogs he regularly walks in the ravine, all good-natured, large dogs which our two little imps enjoy coming across. Gord had worked up a good sweat, literally. He was covered with perspiration, lifting his shirt front to wipe his forehead repeatedly as we talked, a heavy backpack strapped on as usual.

The dogs were excited and pleased to be where they were, clearly enough, roaming about happily in the woods, and Gord was pleased with himself and with everything about him, as well. He showed us an app on his cellphone that proved he had walked seven miles already from early morning to the time, mid-afternoon, when we came across him. He had decided to just keep on going, not to take a break, to haul the three dogs along on a really long circuit, crossing and re-crossing various pathways in his zeal to discover  how long he could manage to keep them and him busy on such a lovely day.

I recalled back when we did our own six-hour stints, but at that time we would be climbing mountains in New Hampshire, to summit briefly and return; a rough estimation of three and a half to four hours on the ascent, and perhaps a third less time on the descent. Hugely satisfying and no end of pleasure, despite the energy it took. It would never have occurred to us to cross and recross pathways in an urban forest as he had done, and wouldn't now, but to each his own.

We take huge pleasure in handily accessing the wooded ravine so close to our house, and spending an hour to an hour and a half there, daily. Some of the trail regulars come out two and three times daily with their dogs. but none of them are skirting 80, like us.

A more congenial occupation cannot be imagined. The landscape familiar yet always in flux, with little changes here and there that, when noticed, are fascinating. On today's circuit, for example, we realized that the huge old limb that had hung from one of the largest of the willow trees in one of the ravine's valleys had finally detached itself. It had hung high up on the tree since 1998, and finally, it seems, Saturday's high winds and copious rain had served to bring it down.

On Saturday we had walked through the ravine trails in a light shower throughout the hour-plus we were in the forest. At one point, just before we exited the forest, the rain picked up substantially and began to pour down, but the shelter we received from the forest canopy served to keep us reasonably dry.

Just as well we had gone out when we had, since soon after we returned home the drizzle turned to serious, pelting rain and stayed that way for the remainder of the day which was actually most of the day, and on into the night-time hours.

Throughout the night there were abrupt, short breaks in the rain before a new rain event entered the scene and the deluge continued. Needless to say the following day, Sunday, everything was utterly drenched. Which meant that Sunday's walk was through a forest that looked dark and damp, not least because it was, aided by stubbornly overcast skies. The forest landscape took on a new look, thanks to its sodden condition. The interior looked quite, quite dark. As though twilight had set in early.

There was no threat of rain on Sunday though the overcast aspect along with the complete drenching the day previously gave the atmosphere an air of expectant downpour. New fungi is cropping up, and foliage is beginning to turn its autumnal colours. A slight wind now has the effect of bringing down a shower of yellowed leaves.

Our two puppies don't mind one bit. They're happy to be out and about, delving into the underbrush and coming away with nasty little prickles that cling to their hair of which they're oblivious until they step in a patch of thistle and then the larger irritants make them supremely uncomfortable and a quick fix of immediate removal is required before they're willing to forge on. That's autumn.

This morning, dawn wasn't bright; instead there was a thick grey veil of fog that constrained vision. There's beauty in that too. And the sun soon enough burned through the fog. The inversion of night-time temperatures dipping then rising with the morning hours ensures that everything becomes lavishly covered with dew. Another fall phenomenon.

My husband had bought Northern Spy apples last time he went food shopping. Inspiration for an apple pie. He adores apple pie. I thought I'd make this one a little differently than the usual. So I set about doing just that. In the end, it isn't that much different, taste-wise; an apple pie is an apple pie. Spies are the right kind of apple for a pie, other than MacIntosh, so you can't go wrong with either.

I decided this time I'd snip about a quarter-cup of candied pineapple in with the sliced apple for the pie. I could have used candied ginger, which would have been a better choice. I never peel apples since much of the vitamins and minerals reside right under the skin, and the skin provides a good source of roughage. Just quarter the apples, deseed them, and proceed to slice them very thinly into a waiting bowl. Mix a quarter-cup flour with 2/3 of a cup granulated sugar and a heaping teaspoon of cinnamon into about four-and-a-half cups of thinly sliced apples and dredge the apple slices with the flour-sugar mixture, mixing gently.

As for the pie dough, easy enough. I decided for a crumble-top pie. So one-third of all-purpose flour, a scant third of a cup dark brown sugar, a quarter-cup butter and another teaspoon of cinnamon were worked together with a pastry blender. Then I grated a quarter-cup of old cheddar, mixing it into the crumb topping; last, about a half-cup of chopped walnuts. In retrospect I should have confined the crumble-top to either the cheddar or the walnuts, since I found in the baked pie that the walnuts hid the cheese flavour.

The next step was the pie pastry which called for a halving of the usual two cups of flour since I wouldn't be rolling out a top crust. For the crust then, I needed a cup of flour, a quarter-teaspoon of salt, one-third cup of Crisco shortening, crumbled together with a pastry blender. Then I added two teaspoons of lemon juice, and enough ice-cold water to bring the mixture together in a firm kneaded ball, more dry than moist.

After rolling out the bottom crust, it was filled with the prepared apple filling and topped with the crumble-crust, and baked in a 350 oven for about 50 minutes until the apples were bubbling and the edges of the bottom crust turned light brown. Good tasting, though there was no hint that we could detect of the candied pineapple, but a nice, moist, cinnamon-flavoured finished pie.

A bit warmer today, but since it's heavily overcast, even at 25 degrees, that oppressive heat of last week has dissipated. Rain held off all morning, though showers were in the forecast, with rain for the afternoon, but we were busy with plenty of things to be done, so it wasn't until noon that we set off for our ravine walk in the woods with Jackie and Jillie.

Every day does bring changes in the forest. For one thing, it is now abundantly obvious that the forest floor has absorbed quite a bit of the low-growing undergrowth of bracken, with large areas under the canopy standing free of the shrubby green that had once dominated, leaving only the carpet of decades' worth of fallen foliage and club mosses now visible.

And now, wind brings down leaves that are ready to leave their homes on deciduous twigs and branches in preparation for full fall. The litter of oak leaves and acorns brought down by squirrel predation continues; the entire atmosphere is one of expectancy, welcoming fall, bidding adieu to late summer.

As soon as we entered the ravine, light showers had begun. But since they were light, and the forest canopy yet remains in full coverage, we felt comfortable knowing we would be fairly well sheltered from the rain, and we were, throughout the course of our walk, just in excess of an hour.

We ambled along, seeing the remaining wildflowers; the pussytoes still look happily robust among the fall asters, and there was one quite notable dinner-plate-sized fungal shelf worth photographing along with the bright orange colony we'd seen earlier in the week, developing in size and fading in colour.

Which gave our puppies ample time to roam about and sniff to their hearts' content, and Jackie the opportunity to sporadically chase after squirrels, bounding over the interior forest floor in his eagerness to view up close what those little black-furred creatures (resembling himself) were all about.

At one point the rain picked up considerably and some heavy drops made their way through to fall on us, but by the time we exited the ravine toward our street at the conclusion of our walk, the rain had decreased in volume again, and we were fortunate enough not to have become drenched, particularly since our puppies would prefer not to be.

The avian migration has begun; at night the sound of the warblers calling softly to one another, presumably helpfully guiding each other and maintaining the comfort of a group, while during the daytime, it's the honking call of Canada geese, the lead navigator sternly reminding those who fail to pack into their tight, elongated arrow due south that if they stray, they're on their own.

In the confines of the ravine, we're hearing the lunatic call of the Pileated woodpecker more frequently, and bluejays who are scarce in attendance throughout the summer months have temporarily returned, with their unmistakably high-pitched call. In the absence of rain with a spate of clear skies and sun to warm up what has turned out to be much cooler days and nights, the creek has begun to shrink again in width, its current considerably slowed.

Wherever stands of oak grow in the ravine, the trail and the forest floor below them has ample evidence that squirrels have been busy laying away foodstuffs for the coming winter. Acorns, whole and absent the nut, along with plenty of foliage, lie as though discarded, they haven't made the grade, it seems.

Because of the different position of the sun in the sky the light that penetrates the forest canopy is different, as well. All of which has stimulated the growth of fungi, some of it quite interesting in shape and colouration.

The presence of goldenrod and asters side by side make for a nice effect along the forest trails. The occasional sighting of late-flowering fleabane, long past its season, flaunting its perfect, tiny floral heads among the far more numerous asters, please the eye.

There are so many different types, sizes and colours of asters, from the sloppy flowerheads of the middling-sized white and pale mauve, to the generous-sized gorgeously-coloured purple-pink aristocracy of the aster family.

We've taken lately to ambling along, taking our time on the trails, walking side by side, and recalling times past and the pleasures we have always taken throughout our lives to fully enjoy life, integrating ourselves with nature, whenever opportunities present themselves.

For the present, it's a pleasure to watch our two puppy siblings Jack and Jill enjoy their ravine rambles, poking about here and there, becoming excited when they're aware of others approaching, making brief re-acquaintance with other dogs they've already been introduced to, or meeting new ones, enlarging on their experience with life.

Today, the prelude to a larger, unwanted challenge.

Breakfast, as usual. Nights have been sleepless at times.

Ravine walk earlier than usual to get our two puppies out and exercised. And to remind ourselves, lest we need reminding that nature is there, as always, awaiting our return.

We left our house at eleven and returned at four-thirty. Would have been earlier getting home except for heavy traffic, stop-and-go because of a traffic accident on the 417.

The time in between? Difficult. We were in a quite crowded venue. The Ottawa Heart Institute.

For us, it was a routine that many have gone through, but an entirely new one for us, there, for that purpose.

Pre-admission for open-heart surgery. Where a skilled nurse interviewed us, checked vitals, explained matters even further, building upon what two weeks earlier the heart surgeon had described as he showed us videos of the heart he was set to operate on, explaining process and procedure and hypotheticals.

When she was almost finished with her questioning and note-taking, she introduced us to a doctor, who was assigned to this particular part of the process of familiarization and building of trust. And he went over some of the same items we'd already been introduced to, inviting questions of us. Instilling, as was his purpose, a degree of confidence.

If confidence can find a home within the mind of someone facing such radical and life-extending surgery.

Each day brings its little challenges. Today's was having to use brute force to prepare our bed for the changing seasons. To beat the challenge of morning rain my husband went out after breakfast to cut the grass. When he was finished with that we had a date; to turn over the mattress in our bed. We bought that mattress fifteen years ago. It is a Queen-sized pillow-top set with as many springs as the stars in the Milky Way. It's cumbersome, awkward, heavy to negotiate. But there's a 'spring' side and a 'winter' side and every year the mattress is meant to be turned over. So it was our job to turn the thing over to its winter side (wool) from its spring side (silk).

All mattresses should be turned over routinely winter/spring gimmick aside, to make certain they wear evenly.

We tackled it together as we always do, but truth to tell, it's my husband who does all the work. Usually we manage quickly and without any trouble, this time it went not-so-quick and was a downright pain. But it did get done, and I changed the bed coverings as well from spring/summer mode to fall/winter.

Since we've been having light meals often during the hot days of summer we decided to match the cool day with a barbecue dinner, so I put together lean ground beef, grated onion, an egg, salt, pepper, garlic powder and rough-grain mustard along with bread crumbs  into sizeable hamburgers. And prepared as well a cole-slaw salad for dinner tonight as a match for the hamburgers.

Then off we went to the ravine for our daily ramble, taking along raincoats for our puppies, and forgetting to bring their leashes, though they were wearing their harnesses. We leave them off-leash, but if, during our trail walks we come across potential problems, we usually put them temporarily on leash. No problems today; we met up with some ravine-walking friends and Jackie and Jillie had ample opportunity to play.

And we came across some quite interesting fungal growth; a colony of bright orange, tiny fungi growing out of the downed limbs of a dead old poplar. And a white colony of small white fungi marching up the dead trunk of a cherry tree; all of them worth a photograph, I felt.

Fall is steadily approaching; not quite here yet, but knocking at the door. It's the last hurrah of the wildflowers; those most prominent the variety of asters, from tiny sprays of white asters, to larger somewhat less pretty mauve asters, to the larger yet and more elegant purple-pink asters, the queen of them all. Goldenrod too is still in evidence, and we catch the occasional sight of late-flowering fleabane and the presence of clumps of pussytoes.

Of course now that it's colder and wetter, fungi keep popping up and we keep our eye out for those that are variously shaped and coloured; more yet to come.

The presence of late-resurging mosquitoes has abated, and we're grateful for that. Our two little puppies are happy to come across other dogs on the woodland trails of the ravine running through our neighbourhood. One can see that the bracken on the forest floor is slowly beginning to withdraw; reacting to fewer daylight hours and the onset of night-time plunging temperatures.

We came across Gord yesterday walking his rescue Golden Lab, and three others that he often walks. He's turning those walks with neighbours' dogs into a living for himself. Fed up with the rigours and dangers inherent in roofing, a job he's done for most of his working life, he has decided now that his children are becoming independent, to do something he has long wanted to do.

He loves dogs and it's clear, witnessing him interact with dogs that they love him right back. He gave us a pretty snazzy copy of a flyer that he's distributing and posting in the area, advertising his availability to walk area dogs for people who haven't the time or the inclination. He's had some early responses, he told us, happily. And we certainly hope this new career works out for him. He's a tall, raw-boned man with a craggy face and a Yorkshire accent. We met him several winters ago when he moved to the neighbourhood.

We met him, of course, in the ravine and at that time he walked only one dog, his own. Now, he's habitually in charge of other peoples' companion dogs beside his own. To ensure that he's always in complete control, he never walks more than three dogs at a time, which is responsible of him.

During today's walk we came across a young couple whom we see on occasion. They walk four large dogs, which is to say the dogs are not on leash but free to wander wherever they want; a fifth dog is kept on leash because of its hard-to-control temper. Yet it's this group that a month or so back attacked a medium-sized dog innocently standing beside its owner. While the owner of the dog defended it, he had to call to the couple to call off their dogs. Which they did, then walked on with no word of apology.

We're always wary when we happen upon them, which isn't too often. We've never had a problem with them and hope never to have one.

Soon afterward we came across someone we've known for much longer, an older single mother whose grown children we occasionally see in the ravine, both of whom are a credit to her and to themselves. They always walk a calm-tempered and friendly large dog named Jasper; cream-coloured with splotches of pale brown. Jasper has a beautiful conformation and a lovely personality; he is muscular and large and looks like a cross between a Boxer and a Doberman. When our two are in his company we are completely relaxed.

I was nine years old when the Second World War ended. I was very well aware that a great evil had concluded. Well before the end of the war I had overheard my parents and their friends talking in sometimes-hushed tones about dreadful atrocities. I had a vague idea that people like me living in Europe were being systematically faced with extermination. The extent of that knowledge for a child is difficult to assimilate. But I know a dark cloud of apprehension and fear clouded my deeply inner consciousness.

From that day forward I read books about the Holocaust that left nothing whatever to the imagination. The extent of the crimes were so beyond belief, and yet there was ample proof that nothing capable of stirring disbelief in one's thoughts was beyond reality. All the days of my life the Holocaust has haunted my conscious self. To say that this horrendous event shaped the way I think, my opinion of humankind and my system of values, would be an understatement.

I remember too how incredulous I felt at the news that Winston Churchill's post-war stay as Britain's prime minister was challenged by the very political party he represented. I recall how I felt when news came that Josef Stalin was dead; a strange satisfaction that he was no longer alive to continue to wield the malevolent ideological power that had resulted in the deaths of millions he considered disposable. Adolf Hitler's death meant little to me; Nazi Germany had been defeated, and nothing could return the six million Jews his Aryan-purity-obsessed, anti-Semitic whirlwind had made lifeless, depriving the world and humanity of its belief in the goodness of the human race.

There was Pol Pot and Cambodian massacres, Rwanda and Bosnia, and Sudan's Darfurian maelstrom of death-dealing. More latterly, the collapse of civilization and resulting mass murders in Syria. But nothing stirred the fear and dread in me to compare with the incredulity I was assailed with one morning when my husband and I were preparing our granddaughter for school, and a breathless announcer spoke of a plane hitting the World Trade Center in New York. We turned on the television news and there, in living colour was the event that would twist the world into a long, agonizing battle with another fiercely death-dealing adversary.

Our youngest son called last night to let us know he'll be away all next week. He has planned a kayaking trip at Pacific Rim National Park. He told us he has a new tent, sent to him gratis, since the original one was still under guarantee. Somehow, the moisture-proof coating had become degraded and was sticky, so he contacted the manufacturer and they replaced it. He'll use the new one to take with him, handily stored in the storage compartment of his sea-going kayak. He uses small, light-weight tents on his getaways, since they're either of this nature, or alpine camping, so the lighter weight in his backpack the better.

As we spoke last night the atmosphere here was weather-roiled. There was a tornado warning in effect in the Ottawa area. And rolling thunderstorms with violent claps and plenty of fireworks kept lighting up the house and alarming our two little dogs. Our son told us that the weather forecast for Vancouver Island for the coming week while he'll be in that vicinity is for fair weather. The first time he did one of these ocean-going trips he had rented a satellite telephone. Only to find when he was in the midst of bad weather that the phone wasn't working. He has long since acquired a telephone of his own to enable him to check weather conditions on these trips.

As for us, our 'trips' remain now of the extremely light variety, confined for the most part, to our daily hikes in our adjacent ravined forest. And yesterday morning before the rains set in we had sunny skies illuminating the forest quite beautifully. Which made for a lovely, leisurely walk. These walks still require an effort on our part, since there's plenty of uphill slogging in the ravine, and tree roots to sidestep. I've had my share of tripping falls in there, and haven't any desire for more.

As anyone knows both from experience and from witnessing others going about the business of being a householder, there is never any end of work to be done in a home that is well-ordered and comfortable but owing to wear and tear and our need to live day-by-day, requires attention to details.

Yesterday's details included the need to get out while the sun was still gathering strength, and cut the front and back lawns before the grass grew any longer. Thanks to ample sun and an excess of recent rain everything is growing extraordinarily swiftly. And when my husband finished mowing the lawns, he turned his attention to the larger of the two garden sheds in the backyard.

It's the large one that he has organized to hold the snowthrower, the mower, and the out-of-season tires; ice tires in the summer months, and all-season tires in the winter months, when they're not being used. Easy to access, not cluttering up the garage (too bulky/cumbersome/heavy) to store in the basement and trundle back and forth when changes are required.

He cleaned out and tidied up the all-purpose shed -- which is also used to store over-winter garden furniture taken up for the inclement months -- taking the opportunity to discard items no longer useful and generally tidy up the interior. Now the little garden shed which stores all of my garden tools and other decorative items stored in winter needs the same treatment but it will have to wait for another day.

When he was finished with that he turned his attention to restoring one of the hood handles of the direct-gas barbecue that has been such a faithful cooking assist for the past 22 years. While he was busy doing those things I busied myself in the kitchen, to bake a plum pie. The most time-consuming part of that enterprise was slicing and stoning the plums, but they're in abundance at this time of year and what better use can be made for them than sitting colourfully within a lattice-top pie?

Then I too went outdoors to tidy up and cut back the garden a bit, acquiring in the process a full compost bagful of garden detritus. At that point our puppies informed us it was time for a ravine walk and off we went....

Didn't it pour yesterday under steel-grey skies, after a steady inundation during the night hours. There were episodes, it's true, of just light drizzle, but invariably that gave way to serious rain events, one after another. But by mid-afternoon there was a break, with only really light drizzle, so we decided we'd risk a soaker and get little Jack and Jill out to the ravine. And oh, of course, us too.

So off we set, noting on the way up the street that another two neighbours were having their mature front-lawn trees removed. One was the parent of the other, actually. The maple that had been planted 28 years earlier had sent out as they tend to do, multitudes of seeds and some of them turned into good-sized maple seedlings, one of which his next-door neighbour planted on his own lawn about fifteen years ago. Both trees, unfortunately, became infected with some kind of tree pest, and both lost limbs that would just go dead, the parent more so than the offspring. Six years ago the offspring had suffered a major bough break in a violent windstorm.

It presents as a bit of a visual shock to see wide open space where you're accustomed to seeing well-leafed mature trees. On the street we live on where the trees were planted after the builder finished with all the new housing almost 30 years ago for most houses, so many of the trees have now been removed. People had their choice of trees and many had selected ash trees, and since the Emerald Ash Borer has made its sinister inroads in this region the ashes have steadily died.

Before that it was Spruce budworm, and before that it was Dutch Elm disease which killed stately old elms, depriving the urban forest of their tree varieties. In our instance, it was a large old pine that we'd had to remove, as did our neighbour because they too had become infected with some kind of malicious tree-killer. We've got plenty of mature conifers left on the lawn, and mean to keep them.

Yesterday's walk in the ravine hard by the homes on this street rendered a landscape with rising mist, and the odour of a drenched forest floor; being surrounded by trees in this kind of landscape and environment has an enchanted quality about it that we hugely admire and feel compelled to expose ourselves to, as frequently as possible.

We find the aesthetic appeal of the out-of-doors irresistible in the rain or directly after the rain when everything is drenched and water-slicked, and texture and colour are so very different from how they appear when everything is dry and there's a sunny atmosphere. Not that we don't appreciate the texture and colour under dry conditions, but there's an especial vibrancy to growing things when they have been washed by the rain, even a sense of renewed vigour.

Though Jackie and Jillie would far prefer to remain indoors if it's raining, or even if the rain has stopped because they don't want to get their little paws wet, when we go out under those conditions they will unfailingly follow us. As they did this morning after breakfast when we ventured out with them under light showers.

They soon forgot their aversion to rain and romped about the backyard, and then the front gardens, ramping up their energy levels as they gradually became more and more wet. When they're wet they become unbelievably energized and that's just what happened this morning as they raced about, one after the other, wrestling and taunting one another to greater acrobatic excesses.

My husband always looks at the composters when he goes out in the morning, to see if the raccoons have been around during the night. Sometimes he hears them moving the lid off the composters and knows they'll have been around; he pays attention because he always replaces the lids, to cover the compost, though we don't at all mind raccoons moving them aside, when they're intent on seeing what's available for them to eat, and there usually is something.

He was surprised to see movement among the items of deteriorating kitchen waste. In this heat and humidity it doesn't take long before what is taken out to the compost begins to decompose. And there was a baby mouse -- or it could have been a baby rat. It was foraging about, and it was drenched and it was hard to tell whether it was fine or desperate to get out of the enclosed space. So my husband gently placed a board in a slant from the top of the composting material to the lip of the composter in case the tiny thing needed help extricating itself from a difficult situation.

Then we went on to admire the gardens, glistening with rain that kept gently descending.