You'd think, wouldn't you logically that anyone traversing a landscape for almost thirty years on a daily basis would no longer be surprised, pleased and anticipatory day by day lingering over that very same landscape, and finding something new and appealing each time they venture out. But this is not a static landscape, it changes day by day, and there is always something to be noticed and noted that hadn't been in evidence previously.

Sometimes an old tree has succumbed to wind and rain despite that to your untrained eye it seemed healthy and in your mind such a large, old tree that had seen so much in its lifetime would suddenly collapse, leaving a vacuum in the area that it dominated takes you by complete surprise, and saddens. No one could not notice its huge girth lying prostate, when it should be regally reaching as it always did, for the sky.

And then, of course, there's the small things when your eye focuses on minuscule objects that might catch your notice because of its colour, like a sturdy thistle whose flower buds have evolved and finally blaze forth in bright purple, attracting bees to collect pollen to produce honey.

Nature's inevitable, inexorable cycle of renewal; death and new life, nothing going to waste, everything repurposed, everything having a purpose in whatever guise it takes.

As for us, our purpose daily is to take along our little poodles, Jackie and Jillie to enable them to do as we do, feel free to fully exercise our limbs, our sensory perceptions, our admiration for the incalculable treasure that nature presents to us, for we are of nature, an infinitesimally minuscule portion of her grand, all-encompassing scheme.

Nature has endowed us with the senses to perceive, and to wonder, to admire and to understand that what she offers is precisely what we need, and the offer is on constant standby; we have only to determine our need to access it. Jackie and Jillie do so spontaneously, we do purposefully, and gratefully.