We were anxious to get out for a ravine walk this morning and so were our two puppies. We were all skunked out of our usual daily woodland ramble for the past several days. Days of nothing but incessant, penetrating rain. And of course it occurred to us, if not to the puppies, that further inundation of the forest floor already completely more than flush with an unusual amount of rain we've had in the past weeks, might be responsible for further hillside slumps.

There are trucks galore parked on the street, and workers from the municipality busy doing preparatory work for remediation behind the three homes that have been evacuated, with tall construction fencing closing them in.

Emerging maple leaf foliage on maple saplings

We didn't in fact, find the ravine all that saturated on its surface. Yes, there were deep runnels in the trails running down hillsides, the creek was running high and wide, and in places the trails were deep in muck, but much evasive action wasn't required, just care in negotiating uphill and downhill clambers.  And it was good to get out. Jackie and Jillie thought so, too. They were everywhere, sniffing about and happy to be free to do so.

We were surprised to discover pink trilliums in bloom, in the very same spot, unsurprisingly, where we've spotted them for the past three years. These are three trilliums in a tight patch; one purple, the other two pink, anomalies and quite beautiful. New trilliums are erupting out of the soil on a daily basis, and those we first saw days ago are now beginning to bloom, their carmine petals opening to find no sun.

The forest floor in some places looks like a swamp. In those areas we're grateful that the trails are marginally elevated, just a tad higher than the surrounding forest floor, so while the trails are extremely wet, they don't lie within deep pools. If it stops raining long enough all the pools will eventually disappear, but we've got notice of continuing rain on the near horizon.

We also saw the first of the ubiquitous and unattractive horsetails that are now emerging. These are really primitive plants. They were used during the Medieval era in scriptoria, as an abrasive, to rub away errors in script on vellum. That reminder of their usefulness is the nicest thing about them I fear. They don't fulfill any of the parameters of aesthetic appeal in nature's botanical cornucopia, for me.

We could hear, as we closed in on completing our circuit, that municipal outdoor workers were cutting down trees on the collapsing hillsides, in preparation obviously, for some other kind of remedial work. And as we strode along a coll nearing the end of our walk, we came across three of the men reconnoitering the area. Their presence struck Jackie and Jillie as presumptuous; they hadn't, after all, asked their permission to intrude on their private Eden.