This early summer weather is continuing very nicely. All our early spring complaints about cold, drizzly, windy and nasty conditions were heard by Mother Nature after all. And here we keep saying she doesn't care one whit about how her weather servants gleefully serve up conditions inimical to man and beast without admonition from their mistress.

Nature obviously went out of her way to convene a meeting where she repeated parameters just in case climate messengers mistakenly placed them high up in some inaccessible corner of their agendas, and here we are, finally steeped deep in weather that is pleasurable beyond description.

Yesterday was not quite as hot as the day before. However exposed to the sun it certainly seemed just as heated, but that dependable cooling breeze kept things under control. We'd gone out to one plant nursery on a relaxed country drive to see if there were ornamental trees miniaturized for an area of our front lawn that is being converted from grass to extended garden and it was packed with consumers. The prices made us blanch but obviously didn't bother people exiting with cartloads full of lovely little trees and perennials and hanging baskets of exotics.

We took ourselves elsewhere, to a more familiar setting where prices were less than half and the lovely green growing things we had a mind to acquire more of were in optimum health, selection variety and condition and came away more than satisfied. After which off we went with our two little four-legged rascals to the woods for a leisurely and pleasurable walk through the forest.

It was one of those times when we came across no one else, despite the length of our circuit, so we did, literally, have it all to ourselves bipedally. There were dragonflies and bees flitting about, the shadows they cast overhead alerting us to their presence in places where the sun penetrated the now-full-to-bursting forest canopy.

We moseyed along in Jackie and Jillie's wake; they set the place, more or less, none of us in a hurry, all of us intent on absorbing as much of the familiar landscape, its fragrance and its brimming colour lulling us into a sense of both luxury and satisfaction that we have the privilege of taking advantage of natural surroundings so close to our home.

Some of the ferns have attained great heights, their plumes graceful and tall, their colour and conformation ornamentally spectacular. And we came across a lively patch of ajuga (bugleweed) which I don't recall ever seeing in our area of the Bilberry Creek Ravine forest before, though my husband begs to differ.