We relived old habits yesterday after we had our ravine walk with Jackie and Jillie. Once again because of imminent rain warnings we went out after breakfast to ensure we wouldn't miss a ravine walk. More for their sake, our little twin trouble-makers actually, than for any other reason. That, and because we'd be leaving them alone in the house for an hour or so and we thought if we gave them the opportunity to chase about in the ravine they'd be a little exhausted and not so much mind being alone together.

Wrong. Always wrong. A big tragedy when they realize we're about to leave the house and they're not going with us. I had busied myself in the kitchen for an hour or so between our walk and our departure. I wanted to do a little baking as I usually do on Friday morning, and had prepared the filling for a lattice-top blueberry pie. That's when those frozen 300 gram packets of wild blueberries come in handy. I had cooked them briefly earlier with a mixture of sugar, cornstarch and cranberry juice then needed only to make the pie crust.

There is a nearby nursery that we've visited over the years before we go anywhere else for our bedding plants. They have the freshest, healthiest of the everblooming begonias and that's our focus for many of our garden pots. We saw some new cultivars that were utterly captivating. It's an enchanting time of year and nothing is more exciting for a gardener than to walk into a nursery among the aisles of annuals to select what they'd be observing maturing over the course of a summer. It's like a child entering a confectionery store, or an ice cream shop.

Our ravine walk was beyond pleasant as usual, earlier in the day. We came across a rambunctious Labradoodle a few years old that we've seen before on the trails, and that brief encounter always adds a little bit of spice to Jackie and Jillie's ramble in the woods. They recognized the dog and were interested in chatting briefly with it, as we did with the young man walking the dog, before we hauled ourselves onward.

We also came across a beautiful young woman with blond hair whom we've only lately become familiar with, along with her good-tempered Malamute. We'd noted she was pregnant, of course, but mentioned nothing of it to her not wanting to be intrusively impolite. She told us yesterday of her own volition that her due date is the coming Tuesday, and she knows her baby is a girl. A little girl, just like her sister who had given birth a month ago, she informed us, beaming.

Still on the cool side, requiring jackets, and all the more so since the chance of rain was obvious under heavily overcast skies. But nature had one of her little surprises in store for  us. I was wondering when we'd see the first of the woodland violets in bloom and in one sun-exposed area there they were, the first we'd seen; one purple-flowering clump, another yellow, and the third white.

Never does a day go by when our quotidian ramble in the woods brings us one revelation after another. Little wonder we are so devoted to these daily spins along the forest trails...