There are fall chores in home maintenance and then again there are fall chores -- beyond cleaning up the gardens and tidying up extraneous things in the house that need to be recycled or reused and taken to the Salvation Army thrift shop. There are those heavy-duty things that don't escape the notice of my very aware husband, and that make me cringe with anticipation. That being the ascent of ladders long enough to reach the roof of this two-story house.

When we first moved to this house my husband bought a set of industrial-use scaffolding. He's used the scaffolding on countless occasions over the past twenty-five years, inside and outside to reach heights the thought of which drive me to distraction. Latterly the scaffolding has been kept in the larger of our two garden sheds, the one my husband built about ten years ago with a much more commodious capacity than the smaller, octagonal one stuffed with gardening tools and such.

So out came the bottom tier of the scaffold, to be assembled on the deck two days ago. To access our bedroom windows. A ladder wouldn't do, since the installation of a somewhat permanent awning on the deck by my husband several years ago interferes, but the scaffolding whose top comes just below the metal awning allows for access to the windows. Whose frames were scraped down, sanded and prepared for painting. On a succession of hot, sunny late-summer days. He is now in the painting stage.

In the afternoons, as usual, once our respective 'work' was done for the day, we set out for the ravine. Itself a bit of a physical test of fitness with its hills and valleys, ascents and descents. Fitness at our age is important, but more important in a sense is our enjoyment of the natural environment around us in the forested ravine and particularly in the company of our two little dogs eager to explore and happy to be out and about and given the opportunity to make social contact with other dogs.

We're seeing the presence more frequently now of interesting and colourful fungi. Also noting that some of the bracken on the forest floor is beginning to react to the shorter days and cooler nights. A nice counterpart in relaxation and the piquing of interest to the earlier portion of the day given over to 'chores'.