It's a melancholy turn in the seasons, inevitable and stealthy -- but autumn is approaching. Our breakfast room where we have most of our meals, sits at the back of the house, lots of light emitted  from the sliding glass doors at one end of the room, and a view of the deck, standing above our back garden, the land partially sloped. A few days back, there was an exquisite hummingbird suspended in the warm, humid air its wings beating as frequently as its heart, intent on the potted hibiscus plant sitting high on its pedestal.

We had planted bleeding heart in another of our garden urns, sitting on its own pedestal in the front garden, for the delectation of hummingbirds, but there have been few we've been fortunate to sight this summer for some unknown reason. Our daughter, in her rural eastern Ontario home, sees many of the delightful little creature, returning year after year. And our son in his Vancouver home sees them routinely, even on occasion during the winter months, so clement can the weather be there that there is scant need for them to migrate.

But migrate they must from this region of Canada which will be plunged soon enough into colder temperatures, steeped in icy cold with the arrival of winter, and migrating birds will embark on their nighttime journeys for the songbirds, while birds like geese will be seen in their orderly formations, honking instructions as they pass overhead, to those who break ranks.

And now, Monarch butterflies have made their entrance to our area on their way south while the weather is still moderate enough for their survival, preparing to commit to the aerial passage that will bring them to various stages on their trip back to Mexico, an ambitious years'-long instinctual survival mechanism. They are a sight. And when we see them, mostly making their way through the forest, they take our breath away. Alight on a tree branch when they close their wings, they 'disappear'. When they pulsatingly open their wings it is as though a minuscule sun has suddenly appeared, the orange of their lovely wings a blaze of light.

Fascinated, our eyes follow them as they lift again into the air, lazily steering themselves in swoops to other branches, twigs, foliage, to briefly alight, opening and closing their wings, then swooping away again. How such frail and beautiful creatures, so infinitesimally small and delicate have been equipped by nature to undertake such fearsomely fraught trips is quite beyond our imagination. But certainly not beyond our most profound admiration.