These are days of smothering, sky-high humidity, with temporary relief occasioned by heavily overcast skies that sometimes release their burdens and drench the landscape. The humidity persists, however, well into the night when daytime temperatures in the 30Cs, rise only to 24C during the night hours.

On our hike through the woods yesterday, all the signs of autumn -- despite the heat and the moisture in the air so thick that your clothing feels damp and then the vigour of your hike uphill and down in the ravine takes its toll in expended energy leaving us with moisture streaming down our faces -- were there to be seen.

From the ripening of apples and hawthorn fruits to the growing proliferation of fungi in all shapes and sizes, colours and permutations of shadings. We've managed -- and others like us reaching for ripe apples on low-hanging branches -- to exhaust the availability of ripe apples within reach. Even those that a well-aimed stick can bring down. Now, what's left is those hanging temptingly red and ripe from overburdened branches, but beyond reach.

Since the wild apple trees grow on the top edge of the ridges overlooking the ravine slopes we can see those red, ripe apples littering the forest floor below, loosed by the wind in their ripe, ready-to-pluck stages, but alas, not by us.

Jackie and Jillie are curious about everything, sticking their muzzles into thick layers of vegetation on the forest floor, ambling through the thickets of ferns and other bracken, and invariably coming away from the experience covered with tiny prickles, some of which annoy them, sticking to their nose, their pads. We extract those we can while out on our hike, but it's when we return home that the real work of pulling them free from the thistles that cling takes place. Just as well they're slated for a grooming next week; shaving their hair will make them less vulnerable to picking up those things.

There is one place on the trail where, year after year, tiny pop-up mushrooms appear only to disappear the following day. They grow around an old stump almost level to the ground, feeding on the cellulose of whatever is left of its roots, underground. The little colony we saw yesterday represents the sixth iteration of that colony, this year alone.

As though to mimic the fact that butterflies are now flitting about through the forest, we came across a newly-emerged fungus that has the strange appearance of a butterfly, even to the spots on its 'wings'. Nature is always full of capricious and entertaining surprises.