For the first nine years of her life we took our granddaughter with us for hiking forays into the forested ravine across from our street every day. During that time, when she was an infant as soon as her mother delivered her to us on her way to work, I would carry her in a child backpack downhill and up. We would set out early, around seven in the morning and then have breakfast on our return home around eight. A bit of fruit juice and perhaps a piece of fruit would do her until breakfast.

In those years she was introduced to wild grapes (not very tasty) growing on vines in the forest, to sweet berry pickings in late summer when raspberries and thimbleberries ripened. And earlier, in June, when wild strawberries were to be had. And then in the fall, there was a plenitude of apples from the various apple trees in parts of the forest that hosted them. Some of the trees bore sour, dry apples, others sweet and juicy, and we'd try them all.

Because of the extremely wet, weather-record-breaking spring and summer we've experienced so far this year some things are different; if anything we've found the season's growth accelerated, and that goes for the apples now putting on weight in the ravine's wild apple trees. In contrast, on our daughter's acreage about an hour's drive from here, the apple trees are not producing at all, this year. Fairly puzzling; perhaps an arborist would know why. They also won't know for a while yet whether their bees will have a good honey year. Bees can't fly in heavy downpours and their activity has been limited this unusual year.

The tall sunflowers in the ravine are now beginning to bloom, and so are the cornflowers, though there aren't many of them. They're certainly distinct and hard not to notice. As the season wears on we'll see far more of them. The staghorn sumac floral clusters have turned bright red, another source of startling colour in a sea of green.

We've noticed that because of extreme wet conditions, some trees have dropped leaves. They turn mostly yellow, sometimes bright pink, drop to the ground as an expression of their discontent with the weather conditions. In our gardens our two lovely magnolia trees are also losing leaves, dropping them in protest of too much rain.

We have noticed that though there were plenty of flowers a month ago on the raspberry stalks, few berries have resulted; again, no doubt the result of the rain, though it seems counter-intuitive that the rain would deter the transition of the blooms into fruit. That resulting fruit would attain size but not sweetness would seem more reasonable.

The blossoming stage of thimbleberries remains ongoing, the bright pink, good-sized flowers eye-catchingly beautiful. It will be interesting to see in a month's time whether the shrubs will produce the usual complement of berries, or whether what's happened with the raspberries will be repeated with the thimbleberries.