Like all invasive species of foreign derivation, the Japanese beetle, an omnivorous vegetation forager, is an absolute curse. Its attractive carapace aside, it gathers in vast, hungry hordes to eat garden favourites like roses, but isn't averse to gorging itself and in the process, destroying most flowering plants. It seems impervious to being sprayed, either with water in hopes of dislodging them from their perches, or permanently with a home-made concoction of vinegar, salt, soap, baking soda and pepper. Nothing seems to faze them.

They lay their eggs under the grass in the soil to overwinter, and when the big fat grubs hatch in early spring they set about destroying the lawn, greedily eating the grass roots, leaving dark, dead patches where the grass should be thriving. Damp landscapes make them even more vigorous. And when they progress from grubs to their beetle stage in mid-summer the entire cycle repeats itself.

Yesterday on the cusp of descending into the ravine, just before the forest environs, we stopped briefly to look at the gigantic thistles that have grown on the verge of the forest. Their flowers are now in bloom and they host benign, useful and industrious bees, busily gathering pollen from them to take back to the hive for honey-production. Agriculture depends on the bees' activities for their fertilizing effect. It's a fascinating albeit routine in a sense enterprise everyone is familiar with. While watching the scene before us it became obvious that one bee kept itself busy 'bombing' a flower on which another bee was already hard at work.

Until closer inspection revealed that the busy bee was no bee at all but a Japanese beetle. The question then is, since there were other unoccupied flowers for the aggressive bee to land on to collect pollen why was it concentrating on the one the beetle was consuming? One set on destroying, the other on gathering and conserving. Might the bee recognize the beetle as a threat? Was that what its harassing of the beetle was all about? So not only is the beetle if so, hated by gardeners but by the bee world as well, and little wonder!

There were other things to note; the upcropping of fungi here and there as a result of the pop-up rain events of the last week and the more emphatic thunderstorms. One grouping in particular caught our eye, oyster shaded and scalloped at the edges, quite beautiful.

It was yet another hot day, no prospect of rain, but a nice stiff wind ensured we were kept fairly cool. Jackie and Jillie ambling about, off trail, on trail, on the lookout for squirrels to briefly enliven their tramp through the woodland trails with us on yet another lovely summer day.