Looks as though new prevailing weather patterns are changing plenty of things in the world. In our little corner of the world for the present at least the worst we are experiencing, and sharing to a degree with many others across the globe, is immoderate heat. Needless to say in a wealthy country like ours there are many cooling-off opportunities for people to take advantage of, for relief. The burden of heat and usage of electricity has not yet brought us to a situation where power has to be rationed.

And though we're experiencing an indefinite period of rain shortage, we're nowhere near a drought, a condition that has brought desperation to the food security through normal agriculture to many areas of the world. The most we can complain of -- and complain we do; it's part of the human condition, after all -- is day following day of high humidity and uncommon atmospheric heat.

Today is one such day, so was yesterday and the days before, seemingly ad infinitum. Yet nature isn't entirely unkind, for she has sent along cooling breezes so that even in low-to-mid 30sC conditions and high humidity we can count on wind to break the constant, enervating spell of the heat. Little episodes of temporary relief, after all, still spell relief.

Still, there are things that have to be done if you're a gardener and some basic and necessity actions call out, apart from mowing lawns which have been reduced in necessity thanks also to the paucity of rain and the overabundance of heat. A thriving garden with plenty of perennials still needs care; in cutting back, tidying up, tying up, dead-heading. In this heat, both a pleasure and a burden, but the burden brings pleasure.

We keep looking for the jewelweed to flower; it has colonized an area of the ravine with a plenitude of plants but a scarcity of flowers. We think a stray seed had someone ventured into the forest thinking it would present ideal habitat, in error. A forest that we're very well acquainted with, one that when we come across an old ghost pine recalls for us a time when it was a robust, healthy tree,  until the advent of a dreadful ice storm that laid waste through the forest, maiming and killing many mature trees.

Jackie and Jillie have no idea of any of that, it happened long before they were born. We come across wildflowers now like yarrow, growing beside ripening raspberries. Our two little dogs know all about raspberries; they're moist and sweetly delectable and occasionally they get treated with a few of those tiny berries.

We continue to enjoy our daily walks in the forest with Jackie and Jillie. Even they have now become accustomed to going out before breakfast to enjoy the morning cool before the heat of the afternoon sets in. The sun, at a different angle, gives the landscape a bit of a variant perspective and that's interesting. Not that our little dogs give that much notice. It's the tantalizing smells that beckon them all over the ravine, informing them of who has passed before us.