Our area has broken all previous weather records substantially, not by a little, but by a lot, for example twice as much rain has fallen since March 1st of this year and for the succeeding months toward June than has normally fallen in other years. And those years, dating back to around 1939 that had whopping rainfalls, still come long short of what we've received in April and May of this year.

So little wonder, the first hill of the ravine behind the street we live on has slumped, creating landslides some of which areas have threatened the stability of homes built, in retrospect, too close to the ravine, for which building permits were given by the municipality. Now, work to remedy the situation has been ongoing for months, and the construction crews are moving ever closer to our entrance to the ravine.

Which we keep accessing despite that a number of restraining 'gates' have been put up to keep people out, for fear of danger. We slip around and beyond those restraints and access our usual trails. Entrances in other parts of the ravine, through streets in the community, quite distant from where our street is, many of them, remain accessible, but most people accustomed as we are to hiking large circuits in the ravine have found, like us, that they've had to be resourceful in accessing alternate routes.

For us, it has meant that our circuit is somewhat more complicated and certainly takes longer, but we remain grateful that we can still gain entry to our routes. As construction moves closer,  however, we will likely have to be diverted, and walk along various streets to be able to access entrances that will offer us shorter woodland walks and much longer walks on streets simply to be able to enter the ravine from places that are under no destabilizing threat.

Meanwhile, we're seeing only the diehard trail walkers from time to time. People have been discouraged by the presence of mosquitoes, thanks to standing water on the forest floor, and the muddy conditions on the trails themselves, for the same reason, as much as by the truncated trails.

Yesterday on part of the trail we now have to take we saw a sight that really excited me. Years ago we used to see small colonies of dogwood, ground dogwood, otherwise called bunchberries. But around four years ago they suddenly presented in fewer numbers until now they're not there at all any longer. But yesterday we suddenly realized there were several bunchberries in flower beside the trail. And by several I mean only two discrete plants, not the bunches we used to see. But it's nice to see them and we can only hope they'll begin to proliferate in this new location.