It seems that this summer the forest floor will simply not have the opportunity to dry out. Every time we think that finally the incessant rains have stopped long enough to allow the leaf mass and humus that enriches the forest floor to absorb all of the downpours that keep on coming, once again thunderstorms and heavy rain events re-occur.

Not that their persistence is enough to ensure we see no sunlight. Despite the rains there are ample periods of clearing, enabling the sun to make its way between the clouds, and pleasing all growing things mightily. On yesterday's hike in the woods with our two little dogs, it was abundantly evident just how pleased all growing things are; the proliferation of seasonal wildflowers, the struggle of Ash trees stricken by an epidemic of ultimately lethal beetles, sending up new growth even in their dying throes is evidence enough.

The cycles of growing matter in the forest have been accelerated, pushed forward unseasonally, and producing abundance and thriving maturity of the like we can scarce recall. So that's on the positive side. Thickets of red baneberry shone like bright preternatural lights in the gloom of the forest, enlivened by shafts of sunlight.

Clover is flowering with great gusto, producing larger flowers than usual, amongst the proliferation of buttercups, yellow loosestrife, cinquefoil, emerging Queen Anne's lace, and ajuga. There are fleabane stalks standing taller than ever, cheerfully holding aloft their delicate pink-white flowers.

And down by the creek in one area we made a new discovery, as it were. The presence of a number of 'trees' resembling nothing so much as sumac, by their foliage and structure. They're in flower. Their flowers are widespread panicles of clusters of white flowers, somewhat resembling those of hydrangeas, minus the umbrella-shape. All species of sumacs that we know of have cone-like floral panicles. So what these are is beyond our guess, me and my husband, amateurs that we decidedly are.

And finally, at the conclusion of our circuit, we see that the construction is continuing apace, with huge cement-and-fibre storm-sewer pipes being installed along the creekbed, which has been temporarily re-directed. Since this creek, as part of a much greater watershed, is being used as a storm run-off, connected to storm ponds servicing communities some miles distant from our own, much attention and tax dollars are going into ameliorating the situation that arose when the hillsides of the creek began slumping into the creek, resulting from early spring rain deluges.