There can be little doubt that people, comfortable in their habits gained through long familiarity and reliability, are not easily convinced to shed them. Invariably we find that when we're out in the forest on the trails intersecting a large neighbourhood of residents on its perimeters we see no one else, irrespective of the weather and the time of day if that day happens to be a Saturday.

Throughout out working lives when we're too busy during the work week to indulge in shopping excursions, invariably Saturday is the target day for shopping. People do go out to shop on Sundays as well, but the absence of people going through the woodland trails on Saturdays is acutely pronounced, whereas it is not on Sundays.

And so it was yesterday -- when we took a long circuit meandering a considerable distance with access to the trails in a wide arc of the place we call home -- that we encountered no one else on a pleasant, breezy and very warm Saturday. Although we take pleasure in coming across other people on our daily forays into the wooded ravine that bisects our larger community, we take even greater pleasure when the entire area is being temporarily occupied by only we two and our two little dogs.

For one thing, Jackie and Jillie behave better when there are no challenges to their inbred sense of canine entitlement in territorial possession, and the ambles through the trails tend to be quieter, more peaceful with that kind of solitude. We are able to uninterruptedly look about us to discover, each and every day, something new and notable about the forest.

We see that raspberries and blackberries are both  now in full bloom; the blackberries slightly behind their cousins, and now they've been joined by the thimbleberry bushes that have established a full, robust presence since early spring; unlike the previous two, thimbleberries seem to vanish into the leafmass of the forest floor over winter. They soon make up for their seeming visual impermanence, however.

Milkweed has introduced itself to this part of the ravine where we most often tread; decades ago we saw it only on another more distant portion. For the first time ever we've now come across wild columbine close to the creek and it's a welcome intruder; we dare hope many more will establish themselves and give us ongoing pleasure in their beautifully shaped and coloured flowers.

And mullein this year has appeared where we've never before seen it, large and emphatically comfortable, preparing to send up their flower stalks. Daisies, buttercups, fleabane and hawkweed, and now cowvetch are also in bloom, punctuating the vibrant green of the forest with bursts of colour. What a landscape!