Considering the atmospheric humidity and heat, along with the resurgence of vociferous mosquitoes, yesterday afternoon's trail walks through the forest in the ravine we frequent was as close to perfect as it could get. To begin with, the moment we leave street level with its suffocating heat, we've delved into another world entirely, one where shade predominates to shield from the heat of the sun. And breezes manage to penetrate the thicket of trees and foliage sufficiently to add their coolant effect.

Because of the fact that the last several weeks have diminished the effects of the previous month's steady descent into drought, the reverse occurred in response to daily rain events and heavy thunderstorm activity, returning mosquitoes to the landscape where previously they had been absent, reflecting the dry conditions, unconducive to egg-laying. They lost no time making up for that situation.

And so, when we went out on our daily ravine rambles, whatever the time of day, morning or afternoon we tended to see no one else out. And we could hardly blame them for avoiding the crushing humidity, the muck-glazed trails and the swarming mosquitoes. As well, our two little dogs, Jackie and Jillie, though they enjoy seeing other companion dogs and briefly communing with them playfully, are content enough to have the forest to their own exploratory exploits.

The thimbleberry bushes are beginning to boast their red, ripe berries, and so are the blackberries. It takes a second to pluck the berries off the bushes and their sweet, moist flavour is a jolt of summer bliss. Just ask our two little dogs, though Jackie is content to leave the blackberries to Jillie. And now, though the wild apple crop is much diminished from last year's, whatever apples are present are beginning to ripen.

My husband clambered onto the lower trunk of one of the trees adjacent a portion of the trails where apple trees tend to dominate, to come away with a beauty of an apple, reddened by the sun, sweetly moist and crisp and ready to be shared out among all four of us to enjoy its unique, timely and appreciated complexity of flavours.

Those weren't the only items of interest that took our attention yesterday. Peculiar-looking fungi had also erupted out of the forest floor; tiny, slender fingers of white reaching to the sky, dappling the ground over the presence of buried and rotting wood fibres.

And nor were they the only symbol of nature's continuous machinery of recycling and rebirth. We came across a wonderful specimen of lichens ornamenting a dead branch lying on the ground, with their distinctive shell-like shapes, in colour-shades of oyster and grey while they too were busy getting on with the business assigned to them by nature as an agent of renewal.