One of the little realities of pedestrian life is that we all enjoy and crave edible treats, sweet or savoury. When children are young the cookie jar is the most exciting, exotic and pleasing object in their mother's kitchen. I still have the original cookie jar almost 60 years old that dominated our family's early-years-kitchen. I also have one that our younger son, one of whose hobbies is pottery, made for our latter-day kitchen about 15 years ago.

When our now-mid-to-late-fifties children and our 23-year-old granddaughter come visiting the cookie jars remain a favourite destination. A few weeks back I'd baked a batch of cookies in which I'd put oatmeal. I had remembered that our daughter-in-law is allergic to nuts, but hadn't realized she is also allergic to oatmeal. So this morning after I made a bread dough that we'll use later today to make a pizza, I baked a new batch of chocolate-chip cookies, no nuts, no oatmeal. They'll be returning from New Brunswick, passing through on their way from Nova Scotia visiting with her mother, to stay with us a few days before going on to Toronto.

Our daughter, of course, is adept at cookie making, and so for that matter is our younger son, though he rarely indulges. Our daughter-in-law is capable of doing anything in a kitchen that any skilled cook can produce, and more. It's habit, purely that, nothing more that generates interest on what happens to be nestling within a cookie jar at any given time.

Our two little dogs, Jackie and Jillie, have very similar habits, always willing to taste something new, and lately they've been eating ripe berries straight off the bush and vine in the ravine as we go through the forest trails. They know now where the place are that produce those tasty morsels and line patiently up as my husband does his daily search for ripe thimbleberries and blackberries, soon to be exhausted.

But the wild apple trees are at the point where their fruit is nicely ripening, and those that can be reached are plucked daily. They're fairly small, but make up for their size in the taste they pack; fresh, moist, crisp and sweet. There are different varieties, some resembling snow apples, some Mackintosh, and some we can't even guess at, but all appreciated.

Yesterday while we were ambling through the trail close by the apple trees a sudden figure materialized, Nova, the 7-month-old-and-growing-like-a-weed white German Shepherd. Happy to see Jackie and Jillie and emoting his pleasure, but curious about the ritual of providing bits of apple for them. So Nova lined up alongside Jackie and Jillie and was introduced to the taste of wild apple. She rejected the first bite but still curious, she tried a second and found it appetizing enough to keep munching on one offering after another.

It isn't just the apples that are ripening. We found to our delight yesterday, an assortment of fungi and mushrooms that aroused our own curiosity and admiration for their shapes and bright colouration. We'd seen all of them in previous years, but it still remains a treat to see their return, year after year. Sighting them is a reminder that summer will all too soon come to a close for yet another year.

And this is nature's habit, or ritual, the timeless regeneration of life as the seasons follow one another and we, like all animals and growing things, respond to those changes, habit taking over to lead us to our own changes in greeting the turnover of the seasons.