It now takes a few layers of clothing to make us feel comfortable walking through the forest. Where just a few days ago we made an especial effort to avoid direct contact with the sun in the unseasonably hot and humid few weeks we'd been experiencing from a large, unmoving weather system that reached from Southern Ontario to New York State and for all we know beyond, we now appreciate that orb's warmth, standing directly under it in areas where the forest canopy briefly opens.

Irrespective of the ambient temperature, however, it's always a treat to be there, walking on the trails, our boots softly moving among the crisping fallen leaves. The sun slanting through branches still full of green leaves and needles reflecting the mixed forest of deciduous and conifers, paints its own colour landscape for our eyes, engraving them briefly in memory.

We never know what we'll see there, new changes reveal themselves every day, sometimes expected sometimes not. And when we come across people we haven't seen in ages that too is a pleasure as we stand about together chatting and bringing ourselves up to date while Jackie and Jillie patiently await the first opportunity for moving on.

Not that they don't have their own opportunity to re-acquaint with other dogs they've become familiar with. Today on our woodland hike we came across Max yet again, having seen him yesterday as well, an encounter that on both occasions translated to a good romp for all three. Jackie and Jillie are smaller, slighter than Max but an almost-match in physical exuberance. Jillie has a tendency to run in the opposite direction, attempting to evade Max when he becomes too physically boisterous and bowls her over, while Jackie prefers to confront and challenge while taking evasive steps to avoid being physically battered.

And unlike their usual reaction of barking it is Max who barks and growls while they chase one another, not Jackie and Jillie. Max is just a year-and-a-half, while our two are now three years old; moving into the area of maturity that marks experienced dogs that have seen more of the world. These encounters are positive for the mental adjustment of all, young and old of both species. For us it's the entertainment value and the opportunity to note how the three distinct personalities interact.

For them, it's another socializing, learning opportunity; all of us come away with some added element to the impressions we gain in such encounters; experiencing and witnessing them, both .

Confession, I am far more comfortable performing domestic tasks than I am negotiating a computer's various functions and its associated applications, so integral to today's communications systems and lifestyles. My lifestyle was set long before computers became widely available and useful to today's society.

I'm able to casually and without too much contemplation, imagine a recipe and set about performing the simple and satisfying tasks of creating meals, and baked goods with no lack of enthusiasm. Planning seems unnecessary; immediately I decide what I want to accomplish; as an example this morning, to bake chocolate cupcakes for this evening's dessert, the ingredients are set out upon my baking island and I just put everything together in no time.

True, I became accustomed to using a computer while I was still in the paid workforce, but I've been retired for exactly twenty years, now. And computers and their software have advanced tremendously since then. The neural networks in my brain have experienced a bit of a challenge attempting to keep up with all those advances.

And now, I find, that despite my familiarity and comfort with using the Internet and software enabling users to communicate I've been jolted out of that comfort zone. I appear to have trapped myself involuntarily into a really irritating and upsetting position. It all started a week ago when I began programming a new computer. I bookmarked all the sites of importance to me.

And I realized that Outlook Express was no longer available, since Microsoft no longer makes it a tool available free of charge, but instead charges a monthly fee for its use. So I decided to open an email account with Google, using GMail. And while setting it up thought it would be a good idea to import my settings and contacts and emails I'd saved on my Outlook account. My Internet provider is Bell Canada.

I set everything in motion then watched, horrified, as tens of thousands of emails I had deleted over the years landed in my new GMail account. Why the server with Bell Sympatico keeps these ancient, deleted items is beyond me. Why it would release them in one fell swoop to a new email account is mystifying. When I set about deleting them from the GMail account, since I was advised that over half of my available space was now being used, I could only delete 50 at a time, a Herculean task when dealing with 52,000 unwanted emails, some of which I had marked years ago as junk, other blocked and the remainder deleted day by day.

When I contacted Bell customer service and spoke to an (overseas) technician he, acting on behalf of Bell, was less than sympatico. Informing me he could do nothing, but Bell would be happy to provide me with the unlimited services of a technician on call who would take charge of my email problems for a monthly charge of only $6. Strange, since it's their server that ran amok. Service is not quite as it was years ago when what Bell is now charging for came with your service contract.

It was suggested by a helpful sales clerk where I'd acquired the new computer that I simply delete the GMail account I'd just set up. That would rid me of the emails junking up wasted space. And then begin anew with a new GMail account, bypassing the invitation to import everything from my Outlook email account.  Good idea! I went through all the requisite steps to delete. And then began the process to acquire a new, untainted-by-Outlook account. To no avail; my original popped right back up, though I'd given the 'new' one a different address.

And now I'm still stuck in this stupid dilemma.

After the alert issued by Environment Canada yesterday morning for an extreme weather event, we hoped we'd be able to get out for our walk in the forested ravine across from the street our house is on before the storm struck. We knew the storm was scheduled to strike in the afternoon, but delayed our foray into the ravine because there were so many other things that needed to be done.

My husband wanted to cut the grass before rain struck for one thing, and I have my usual household tasks for a Wednesday that I dislike delaying, preferring to treasure our leisure time after all is done. So, after my husband returned from running a number of errands, it was still early in the day and we set out with some degree of confidence, but not entirely convinced we'd manage to get back from our hour's trek in the woods unscathed.

The sun still shone intermittently, although clouds were gathering in what appeared to us to be an unseemly hurry, and some of them looked downright threatening. Our little dogs have their expectations and principal among them is their daily jaunt in the woods. Their eager anticipation prods us to embark on these daily rambles in the forest.

An additional incentive is the sheer pleasure we derive from being there. Not only in witnessing their antics, but enjoying the ambiance. And never without my camera, since hardly a day passes when we're in there and don't see something notable. We may know our circuit fairly intimately in all its many details, but each and every day there is something different to be seen and remarked upon between us.

The only person we saw out was a young woman walking two very large dogs, one a Newfoundland now a year old which despite its size is intimidated by Jackie and Jillie's excited barks when they come across other dogs.

We only quickened our pace on one occasion, hearing a distant thunder clap, convinced it would make haste to dump on us, given the ominous look of a now darkening sky. Still, it didn't happen. It wasn't until half-past three much later in the afternoon when we were at home that the house got completely dark and the rain came pelting down, and the puppies responded every time they heard a thunder clap.

Brianna Smith (left), along with her mother and aunt, inspect the beloved tree. Years ago, her aunt was married under it. One of Ottawa's best known trees in the city, which sits grandly in the arboretum off Prince of Wales Drive was split in half by the storm Wednesday. Julie Oliver/Postmedia.

It wasn't, in our area, a remarkable storm, just one of many, a pleasurable-to-see but not to be caught-out-in rainstorm. The local news, however, tells an entirely different story. The west end of the city received the brunt of what was, in fact, a violent storm, one accompanied by high winds destructive in their force. Sufficiently so to bring down some venerable old trees in Ottawa and in the process injuring several people.

In the forest the pines are raining needles every time the wind freshens. Dried foliage too, of course. And thank heavens there's a wind to begin with on the conclusion of two solid weeks of over-heated summer days. The summer that decided to skip us by this year changed its tardy mind and we've been sweltering in 30-C days on end. Amazingly, we've broken so many records, not only for such a late-season prolonged heat spell but also for the time that has elapsed in the past three weeks or so without rain at a season when rain normally falls.

But this spring, summer and fall have been nothing if not abnormal. Even in Toronto you have to go back before the turn of the 20th Century to find a day as hot as they suffered through yesterday alone. Southern Ontario has been affected with this large heat front that doesn't want to mosey on, and so has Eastern Ontario. And well before that the rains that refused to stop, setting yet another record rainfall season.

Everything is beginning to look parched, but come to think of it that's normal for fall. And the atmosphere, despite the heat and lack of rain isn't dry at all, it's humid. While most of the forest floor is dry as can be, there are areas where it's clear the ground remains damp; at least those areas are not at this point, steeped in rainwater hosting mosquito larvae. They have been fairly sparse of late and for that we're grateful.

On these really hot days we actually find respite from the closeness of the air, walking along in the forest, since the forest canopy offers ample cooling shade and whenever we're also exposed to breezes their cooling effect is quite wonderful. Because of the all-enveloping heat, though we've been taking along water for our two little Beelzebubs. They seldom want any, though. Vastly preferring their fall treats, when my husband daily plucks ripe red thimbleberries for them and brings down apples from the feral apple trees to share with them.

The sole sour note in our fall walks is the irritation factor to them and to us involved in removing countless burrs from their haircoats, and from the interstices of their footpads, along with sap that makes them sticky plus difficult to dislodge. Patience is exercised by them and by us and eventually the job is done, once we're back home again.

I know that bindweed is the curse of farmers for getting into crops and interfering with the mechanical integrity of farm vehicles. They have the capacity if left undisturbed to grow massively. In the last several years I've seen a mini-proliferation of bindweed in our gardens and usually pluck them out as soon as I notice them. Yet I recall once in Georgia seeing lovely little pink blooms on a bindweed plant that had curled itself around a gate. So occasionally I allow one to reach maturity. Inevitably I yank those out too, since none have ever blossomed for me. I was surprised to notice finally yesterday that I'd overlooked the presence of a bindweed vine for far too long. It had matured to the point of hosting hundreds of seeds and I was horrified. That I'd overlooked its presence, that in so doing I'd permitted it to mature to that point. My husband carefully dispatched it.

The garden has moved into its autumn presentation. Many of the annuals continue to produce flowers and that has continued to result in a colourful little landscape for our personal enjoyment. From time to time I've had to move through the garden snipping back here and there in an effort to control the exuberance of some shrubs and trees. Keeping it all neat and tidy doesn't take all that long, but it does take persistence.

Yesterday my husband wielded a long-handled, sharp tool to pry out of the cracks of the brickwork that he had built around our front gardens decades ago, quite a few too-enthusiastic heuchera that keep establishing themselves between the cracks. From time to time I do carefully remove them to transplant them into the garden and they grow to full maturity there where they belong, only to send off children and grandchildren back onto the brickwork where they thrive just as the originals did. It takes some work to keep up with them.

We don't mind -- in fact encourage -- mosses to grow in the cracks and they too sprout tiny, lovely little blooms in summer, the most delicate flowers imaginable. But weeds also sneakily make their way into the cracks along with Canterbury bells which like the heuchera enjoy liberally sprinkling their seeds and colonizing areas they aren't meant to be in. The same for California poppies. My husband removed them all. Hard work controlling the persistence of plants to  move on and out of gardens. Particularly on a day like yesterday that clocked in at a very hot 32-C degrees.

Otherwise, there's no reason for complaints. The garden pots remain flush with blooms, and the garden beds have done justice to the seasons' expectations. We're no longer receiving the plenitude of rain that we've been treated to this past summer; instead summer has finally caught up, although it's now the beginning of autumn and we've enjoyed two full weeks of hot, dry weather, and the gardens continue to hold up wonderfully well.

"Bey, where have all these human bones along this road come from?" Balkian asked the captain disingenuously.
"These are the bones of Armenians who were killed in August and September. The order had come from Constantinople. Even though the minister of the interior [i.e., Talat] had huge ditches dug for the corpses, the winter floods washed the dirt away, and now the bones are everywhere, as you see", Captain Shukri replied.
"Upon whose orders were the massacres of the Armenians committed?" Balakian probed.
"The orders came from the Ittihad [i.e. Unionist] Central Committee and the Interior Ministry in Constantinople", Captain Shukri explained. "This order was carried out most severely by Kemal . . . vice-governor of Yozgat. When Kemal, a native of Van, heard that the Armenians had massacred all his family members at the time of the Van revolt, he sought revenge and massacred the women and children, together with the men."
Balakian's questions did not upset the captain. He seemed to enjoy filling the long hours in conversation with the priest, inured to the evil he recounted: of the thousands of men hacked to death, of 6,400 Armenian women systematically robbed of their possessions and murdered along with their children, actions he consistently referred to as "cleansing"(paklamak in Turkish).
The mass-murdering Ottoman officer even seemed to develop an affection for the Armenian priest, offering to protect him from all harm if only he would convert to Islam.
Through conversations with Turkish officers, Balakian learned every aspect of the Armenian tragedy from the government's perspective. In his exchanges with survivors encountered along the way, the priest also deepened his knowledge of the Armenian experience of the genocide. He wove both perspectives together in his remarkable memoirs, first published in Armenian in 1922, thereby discharging his duty as a witness to what Balakian dubbed the "Armenian Golgotha".
Surviving the genocide was easier said than done. By preserving cordial relations with his captors and, in his own words, putting his trust in God, Balakian lived one day at a time, always at risk of sudden death. During the length of their forced march, the priest and his fellows confronted the magnitude of the horror that had befallen the Ottoman Armenian community: the bodies of the dead, the pleas of starving survivors, the shame of those who had converted to Islam to save their lives. He recorded the details in his diary as the caravan made its way across Anatolia to Cilicia towards the Syrian Desert. The accounts of other survivors of the Armenian genocide confirmed much of what he wrote.
Fear of violent death that might come at any moment without warning compounded the daily experience of brutality, exhaustion, and deprivation. Many Armenians chose to take their own lives rather than face the cruelty of strangers. Even Grigoria Balakian, who had vowed to survive, was driven to contemplate suicide. When accosted by an armed gang near the Halys River, Balakian and his comrades agreed to drive into the torrential waters in the event of "inescapable disaster", as many had done before them.
"Surely this deep grave of tens of thousands of Armenians would not refuse to take us too into its flowing turbid currents . . . and save us from harrowing and cruel deaths, at the hands of these Turkish criminals", he recalled. Only Balakian's presence of mind in negotiating the caravan's way past the gang spared them all on that occasion.
Manuel Kerkyasharian, who called himself M.K., was only a nine-year-old boy when he watched his mother dive from a bridge into the turbulent waters of the Euphrates. Natives of Adana, M.K.'s family had been deported to the Mesopotamian settlement of Ras al-Ayn (in modern Syria). An only child, M.K. saw his family robbed by armed gangs and beaten by the gendarmes sent to escort them. His mother's feet swelled painfully from the extensive marching, but she struggled to keep up with the caravan, knowing the fate of those who fell behind.
One night, when she knew she could walk no further, M.K.'s mother made a terrible request of her husband: "Lead me to the river's edge. I am going to throw myself into the water. If I stay, the Arabs will kill me with torture." Her husband refused, but a neighbour understood her fears and carried M.K.'s mother on his back to the banks of the swollen Euphrates. Her young son and a priest followed them to the river, but M.K. averted his eyes when she threw herself into the torrent. When he turned back, he saw his mother briefly before the current carried her away.
Within two days of his mother's death, M.K.'s father died in his sleep. The young boy was now an orphan with no one to care for him. He watched as soldiers killed a number of women and children who, like him, had been left behind by the caravan. He was robbed of his remaining clothes down to his underpants and abandoned by the roadside alone -- hungry, thirsty, and terrified.
The Armenian priest Grigoris Balakian encountered many such orphans along the way. At Islahiye, near where M.K. was orphaned, he encountered an eight-year-old boy begging with his eleven-year-old sister, both nearly naked and dying from hunger. The elder sister explained "in a schoolgirl's proper Armenian" how all the other members of their family of fourteen had died, leaving the  children to fend for themselves. "How I wish we hadn't survived". she sobbed.
Buffered by forces beyond his control, young Manuel Kerkyasharian did survive. He found himself among Arabs and Kurds, people whose languages he did not speak and whose actions he did not understand. Some gave him food and clothing; others stoned and robbed him. He witnessed acts of terrible brutality and crossed plains covered with Armenian corpses. He was rescued by four Kurdish women who found him wandering on the open road and took him back to their village as a domestic servant. He spent the remainder of the war years moving among the Kurdish villages on the Turkish-Syrian frontier, living off the kindness -- and fleeing the cruelty -- of strangers.
As he moved between the villages of south-eastern Anatolia, M.K. encountered a number of Armenian children and young women who, like him, had taken refuge among the Kurds. Many had been collected from the death marches and taken to work in the homes and farms of the Kurdish villagers. M.K. met several young Armenian women who had married into the families of their Kurdish protectors....

From: The Fall of the Ottomans -- The Great War in the Middle East, by Eugene Rogan

Unusual, strange, puzzling, all of those apply, and more. We may have arrived at the calendar-certified Autumn Equinox, but the weather conditions we've been facing have been most definitely hot, humid and totally reminiscent of the dog days of summer. This summer there were no usual long periods of hot and sunny weather. No complaints; we didn't mind the all-too-ample rainfall which also netted us from time to time alternately bright skies and mild temperatures; it was a summer that the older contingent of any population could appreciate.

As long as you weren't among the not-inconsiderable number of people living in vulnerable-to-flooding areas that necessitated evacuations, awaiting floodwaters to subside and homes to be cleansed of their effects, restoring them to  habitable conditions. A shock and misery for anyone forced by circumstances to undergo such disturbing and nasty episodes in their lives.

By some strange quirk of nature, however, summer finally woke up, realized it had forgotten to arrive, and has made its tardy appearance, totally confusing fall. We've now had two weeks of hot, dry and sunny weather. Only two weeks earlier it was cool, windy and wet. We were moseying about in the ravine on the woodland trails wearing jackets against the cool temperatures. Now we're pretty hot on our treks in there. Actually no; in the forest confines it tends to be much cooler, the sun filtering through the canopy doesn't really heat up the atmosphere in there as it does once we're back out on the street again.

But because it's so hot people tend to believe that it's intolerable anywhere in the out-of-doors, the result of which is that we see few people enjoying nature, ambling along on the forest trails. Of course, the heated temperatures also mean that any extraordinary expenditure of energy takes its toll; something people would prefer, understandably, to avoid. Our forest is ravined, there are many steep and long hills to climb and descend, after all.

Yesterday, as we had only been in the woods for about fifteen minutes, just over the first of the three bridges crossing the creek  in its depths, Jackie and Jillie heard and saw someone coming in the opposite direction. Someone on a bicycle, so we hastened to restrain them, though they were barking furiously and my husband called urgently to them to return to us. As we crossed the bridge and looked up the hill we would be climbing, we realized that someone had fallen from a bicycle and was half-lying on the gravel of the hill's pathway.

Calling out, we hurried over to find a young girl nursing the heel of her palm that was well cut by the gravel she had fallen on, and bleeding, but not as profusely as her left knee which was deeply scored with wide, grated furrows weeping blood. She was a lovely child, with smooth, sunburned skin and scant clothing, wearing flip-flops. In her fall one of her flip-flops had torn. She was calm and told us that the pain was ebbing, as she gently padded her bloody knee with the tissues my husband had handed to her. We stayed with her. She told us her companions would soon be along. She was obviously cycling much faster than they, since it took awhile before two other girls came along at the crest of the hill. The girl we were with had tried to brake when she saw the bridge below, losing control of her steering so the front tire of her mountain bike had caught in a bit of a ridge, causing her bicycle to keel over and her with it, a third of the way down the hill where we'd found her.

They were such heart-achingly lovely children, all three girls twelve years of age, making the most of a lovely week-end day. My husband walked the injured girl's bicycle, a really heavy affair, down the hill, over the bridge, and up the hill on the other side, to a flat portion on top where they would continue to bicycle to what we thought would be home. They thanked us and with cautionary words from us ringing in their ears set off again as we continued our way in the opposite direction.

A half-hour later as we began to ascend yet another hill we caught a glimpse of the three girls bicycling furiously along the trail that crested and bypassed the one we were on. Obviously the discomfort of badly scraped knee and hand had subsided sufficiently to enable these three little Amazons-in-waiting to continue on their determined path on a lovely, albeit very hot afternoon, instead of aborting their intention and returning home to nurse a wound.

Just as experts in the field of science and (weightology) inform us that the insects inhabiting our globe are so many trillions of times more numerous than mammals like humans that their collective weight outdistances that of other creatures, I sometimes muse to myself that surely given the number of publications, books, magazines, new and vintage that find shelter in our house must surely challenge the furniture for weight.

We are omnivorous readers, we just are smitten with the printed word and language and stories and history and all that makes reading so eminently worthwhile in entertaining and educating ourselves and spending our time usefully engrossed in the written word. The result of that is we have become, over the years, bibliophiles and bookrats. And of course the corollary to that is the inevitable; our home is packed with books.

From time to time we resolve to make a sad and sorry effort to discard the lesser varieties of books that we've read. Not from generosity of spirit, necessarily, with the thought of 'sharing' them with others of the reading public, but for the same reason a drowning person will attempt to reach the surface of a lake, to breathe. So occasionally we make a stab at winnowing the occasional bit of printed matter and taking bags along to thrift shops to place on their shelves for sale to the public at giveaway prices. Which is, incidentally, where we also acquire a good many of our own books.

It's somewhat like pulling teeth though, you'd do anything to avoid the dreaded event. So we scrutinize very, very carefully what we're (un)willing to part with. Second-take titles and authors, reconsider, and in the end cannot bear to part with some, while hardening ourselves from the wish to 'save' more of their number and end up 'sacrificing' them to the alter of tidying up and removing some of the weight their numbers impose on this poor house.

Still, there are times when our personal library comes up short, and we venture to our area public library for titles of specific authors not in our collection. As did my husband yesterday when he went along to our much-frequented branch of our fair city's public library. It's large, with ample shelving. And it's yet another source where we acquire books the library de-commissions, and there's even a separate space there, a room given over to donated books operated by 'Friends of the Library', where shelves groaning with books are sold for $1 apiece, some exciting titles and a lot of dross.

So, on yesterday's library visit my husband searched on the shelves for some of the celebrated works of Ernest Hemingway, a man whose writing altered completely the structure of modern writing, known for his outstanding novels, and in his earlier days a journalist. None on any of the shelves. Not listed in the card catalogue. Something clearly amiss. He looked to see what was available on the shelves of classic literature; sparse to completely absent. At the desk, speaking to a librarian, a confused look met his enquiry. Never heard of him; what's the name again?

A librarian unfamiliar with the Hemingway name. She obligingly checked other branches' inventories and a few disparate titles came up at several for Hemingway. She offered to order any of them in for my husband to pick up. We're still trying to digest the reality that someone who graduated from an academic library sciences course to quality for employment as a librarian had no idea whatever who Hemingway was, a total mystery to her -- and that libraries in our area are bereft of his immortal works.

Today it's official; the first calendar year of 2017 marking the entry of fall. All the signs have been there for weeks on end. We hardly needed the official recognition to convince us that autumn has arrived. Surprisingly, and contrary to expectations, however, we've been enjoying over a week of solid summertime weather.

The funny thing about it is that throughout the summer months we were exposed to weather more representative of early fall than summer. And now that fall has arrived, summer has decided to make its (temporary, alas!) appearance. Not that we aren't grateful for its presence, not at all. Warm temperatures prevailing, so warm that at night it's almost, but not quite uncomfortably close. Our bedroom windows admit whatever breezes might be passing by.

And also alert us to the sound of the visiting raccoon shunting aside the top of the composter, lightly placed so that removing it represents no effort whatever. Which is a vast improvement over locking it into place and the raccoons in their frustrated determination, taking to wrecking the composter. Besides which, why would we want to deny those clever creatures any food they want that we've discarded?

We also hear the gathering geese packs overhead as they make their way gradually toward their southern destinations in anticipation of winter. And the softer, sweeter tweets of the night-flying songbirds fleeing cold and misery to come.

In the forest, on our daily trail perambulations, fallen leaves are beginning to pile up. These are the early ones that simply dry up and fall without turning spectacular colours, for the most part. The rest will follow in good time.

Ottawa became the capital city of Canada when before Confederation Upper and Lower Canada (late 18th Century -- Ontario and Quebec essentially) couldn't agree whether Toronto or Montreal should become the capital, and they finally settled for a lumber town on the Ottawa River, halfway between each. The Ottawa River was the venue of exploration and trapping by French-Canadian voyageurs at the time, and trade with the native populations, while logging was mostly controlled by entrepreneurial Americans who speculated that the great forests represented valuable investments of their time, energy and funding.

The city where once, when the Rideau Canal was being built, labourers were susceptible to contracting malaria, the seat of the federal government, is essentially a government town, but its population has swelled enormously. It's a picturesque and lovely city with ample greenspace both within and surrounding it. The two rivers bisecting it east to west and north to south, make it all the more interesting, with the Rideau emptying into the Ottawa. While the Ottawa river separates Ontario and Quebec.

Taking the Eastern Parkway, the green space along the Ottawa River presents as parkland where people congregate to enjoy the opportunity to picnic, hike, bicycle and slip their light watercraft into its flowing waters. The National Aeronautical Museum is located there, and across from it the RCMP stables for its much-vaunted Musical Ride performances.

Gatehouse to 24 Sussex Drive, PM of Canada's official residence

Approaching old north-central Ottawa, a glance across the river brings in a close-up view of the communities along the banks of the river, on the Quebec side. They present a picture-postcard view reminiscent of the late 19th Century, much as small towns in Vermont with their church steeples and white clapboard homes strike nostalgia through those postcard scenes.

We were headed for Byward Market. And though it was a weekday, it was also inordinately warm for this time of year, although the sky had succumbed to the presence of rain clouds, dark and menacing after a brighter morning. Tourism buses park everywhere and anywhere they can to debark their passengers on walking tours of the area called the Parliamentary Precinct and beyond, where many foreign embassies are located, and trendy shops, along with historical buildings.

Byward Market is a short walk from Parliament Hill, and teeming with visitors, tourists from abroad and from other venues in Canada alike. The Byward Market shops are colourful, funky and attractive. The emphasis is also on cafes and restaurants and with this late-summer weather everyone seems to want to seat themselves at outdoor terraces and patios, to enjoy meals while watching the parade of passing humanity.

Young and old, feeble or vibrating with energy, the market draws people. To shop at the various stalls selling produce, art, jewellery, clothing, and exotic goods from afar. The character types viewed there range from the oblivious-to-others, to the preening, self-conscious youth who are there to be seen so their uniqueness can be noticed and admired -- perhaps by others like themselves. It's a place where tattoo art and body piercings are so common that those without seem in the minority.

In the near distance there are views of the Parliament Buildings, now largely behind massive scaffolding as remedial work long overdue is being undertaken. Building cranes, in fact, are in evidence everywhere in downtown Ottawa and beyond. A good view can be had of the American Embassy from many streets in the Market; the original Embassy located directly across from the Parliament Buildings was a distinguished, American vernacular neo-classical building, not to be confused and never could be, with the current brutalist building resembling a huge nuclear reactor; so much of necessity have the times changed.

A more aesthetic style of post-modern architecture can be seen in the National Gallery of Art, along Sussex, and close to a war memorial dedicated in fact to peace as though wishing could make it so. The National Gallery's style is that of a crystal palace distinguished by glass dyhedrals; its emphasis lingers on Canadian art, art of First Nations, and of course its inventory of world-class European art of previous centuries. A whimsical sculpture sits on the plaza in front of the Gallery, named 'Maman'; a giant spider with eggs under her belly.

A much older historical piece of architecture is represented, leaving the area, by the Catholic Cathedral which had a central place in the religious adherence of many of the region's French-Canadian population, serving an ever-diminishing number of the faithful as the Church has seen and continues to see a steady drop in attendance and affiliation. As the world turns.

The largest of the woodpeckers, the pileated, has now returned from the boreal forest to our own nearby woods and its peal of lunatic-sounding cries can be heard reverberating through the trees. We catch glimpses of one now and again on large old tree trunks, but never as close as years ago when one of the pileated simply sat where he was despite our close, admiring presence. They're a striking looking bird, primitive in appearance, with a bright red cap, their size notable. They're so large it's doubtful any other creatures would presume bother them and consequently they have no fear of anyone.

Another sound that used to be common in the woods and now only appears in the early spring and in the fall when birds are in transit, is that of the bluejay. Unlike the pileated, which will spend the winter in our forest, the bluejay is just passing through and won't stay long, but as long as he does we enjoy hearing its sharp, shrill call ring through the woods.

That fall is upon us is now undeniable. From the forest canopy to the forest floor, all the signs are there. On the forest floor, bracken drying, some turning yellow, soon to disappear and the floor is taking on a rather naked look as a result. On the other hand the deciduous trees are beginning -- even before a general colour change takes place when the tree's sap descends to its roots, no longer maintaining foliage -- to drop desiccated leaves, some that have turned bright colours, others simply dried up.

Fungal pop-ups in various complicated shapes and surprising colours provide another source of fall entertainment as we move through the trails, coming across their presence from time to time, marvelling at the diversity of them, from shelf fungi to mushrooms.

We've seen very few acorns from the oaks this year; perhaps it hasn't been a good year for acorns, but the hazelnuts that only a month ago seemed to be plentiful in number though not yet mature enough, are no longer hanging from the shrubs that bear them. In all likelihood many of them have been put away in some squirrel's pantry for the winter months' consumption. Pine cones, on the other hand, are plentiful this year, hanging like fall ornaments from the tops of the pines. Remnants of pine cones are scattered in neat little piles on top of tree stumps, on the trails, signalling where squirrels have busied themselves deconstructing the cones to reach the seeds within.

Jackie and Jillie, our twin puppies, take little note of such things, but they do focus on the feral apple trees in the ravine where, at certain ones where we know the fruit tends to be more sweet and juicy than at others, they stand and wait, their expectation that they'll be treated, more than obvious. They're rarely disappointed; though the thimbleberries are now less numerous as treats, the apples remain a reliable source to enliven our walks in the forested ravine; we haul down one for them and another for ourselves to nibble on, as long as they last.

There are times in life (sigh) when you just have to confront necessity and task yourself to perform jobs you'd far prefer to ignore. A case in point? The agony both we and our twin devils experience now that fall has ensconced its season in the forest and the wonderful wildflowers whose fresh presence so entranced us have developed those nasty little burrs of all sizes and grasping capabilities that stick to the hair of our two little poodles.

Truth is, though it doesn't seem all that long ago since they were groomed, their hair grows so quickly it's downright overwhelming and for the last little while they've looked like small black ragamuffins. The longer the hair, we reasoned, the more they attracted burrs to fasten deep within their haircoats making it difficult to find them and remove them.

Jackie (left) -- Jillie (right)

Jackie and Jillie haven't much enjoyed the clean-up operations that follow our daily jaunts on the forest trails where they're free to poke their little heads here and there and enjoy the freedom to pick up countless burrs. Sometimes they're large ones and truly wretched, sending their sharp spurs deep enough into their legs that they're aware of their presence and try themselves to remove them only to have them re-fasten from leg to muzzle. Their ear flaps sometimes come away with a ball of thistles.

So the two little imps may have come to the conclusion that their former friends (us) have turned into their tormentors, prying and pulling and snipping and grasping, exposing the poor little mutts to a level of discomfort newly discovered and to be avoided if at all possible. Not possible.

In any event, out came the grooming equipment; scissors of all sizes and levels of sharpness, to be carefully wielded with the determination to make the little beggars aesthetically presentable and in tidying them up make them less vulnerable to picking up those burrs. An additional problem is when they happen to haplessly step on sap covering fallen cones, leaving their footpads sap-covered which then glues tiny stones and burrs deep into their pads. Removing those is a real challenge.

The reasoning went that grooming would help. At least a little? They'd come away from our woodland ramble less full of prickles. We hoped. They'd have to suffer the horrors of being groomed, a process they don't much care for, nor do I particularly, since convincing them to submit to the irritation of being 'still' for a relatively prolonged period of time to enable me to snip away at their hair is a good thing, represents a lost cause. Even when I told them in a tone I felt was rather convincing, that their suffering under my scissors-administration would prevent daily anguish over burr-removals.

Finally, it was done. They had been reduced in size by at least a half. Tubby little Jillie after her grooming quite resembled skinny Jackie. You'd think she'd be pleased. And Jackie looks so reduced in size with his hair cut that it's possible he just might disappear altogether. Actually, it's made it a little more difficult to distinguish them from one another at first glance; though there are, to us at least, physical differentials we're aware of that no one else is.

Our venture into the forest was pleasant as usual. Hotter than usual, as well. Higher humidity linked with sun and elevated temperature and an absence of wind made for a fairly warm hour or so on our usual circuit. The terrible twins are always on the lookout for squirrels, worth a short and swift spurt of energy until the squirrel disappears up a tree trunk and they're left puzzled. We did come across a tiny chipmunk, and though we saw the lovely little creature, they hadn't noticed it, though it stood a few feet away from Jackie for the longest time, each on opposite sides of a large old pine.

And did the grooming work? Like a charm. We were surprised and extremely grateful on our return home to discover, when we cleaned up their little paws that nothing was stuck in their pads today, and nor was there even one burr making its home in their haircoat. Another bonus? They look pretty spiffy.

And that nice, groomed look should least at least -- a day or two, at most.