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.