Once, many years ago, we had come across a group of odd-looking plants at the verge of the forest. In just that particular spot these tall plants had beautiful little pink orchid-like flowers, and we had no idea what they might be. The flowers were small, the plants themselves very tall. We thought the flowers exquisite, the plant itself far too leggy for the size of the flowers it flaunted. Still, we were intrigued. The following year we looked for those same plants but they weren't there. We discovered them to have moved on; they were present, just not where we'd originally seen them.

Coincidentally, just about at the same time, we were introduced to a neighbour's sister who was visiting from her home in Calgary. She was in a wheelchair, a paraplegic that had resulted from a motor vehicle accident, a few years earlier. She had been the driver, the only passenger in the vehicle which she crashed because she'd suffered a blackout, was her eight-year-old daughter, who died in the accident.

Being confined to a wheelchair hadn't interfered with her love of gardening, she informed me. She got around in her garden and it comforted her to tend to it. Had I ever heard of Himalayan orchids? she asked. I hadn't. She described them as perfect for any garden, they needed no tending-to. I was intrigued. She returned home, and some time afterward I received an envelope in the mail. In it were seeds, and a brief note: these were seeds for Himalayan orchids, to enhance my garden. A few others received seeds too.

And we soon discovered the intrusive nature of the plant and its rather ungainly presence sweetened by the pretty pink little orchids that topped it. It was a pushy plant, rather an intruder, feeling entitled to the space of other plants. They were a bit of a botanical joke that nature seems so to love. And we recognized the mystery plant we had seen in the ravine. We, and others, carefully removed the plants we'd grown from the seeds, and uprooted any that spontaneously seeded the following spring.

Yesterday morning we set out with Jackie and Jillie for our daily hike through the forest. We'd had quite a few thunderstorms roll through the landscape the day before, and the forest was well soaked. Everything glistened and glittered in the bright morning sun where it penetrated the forest canopy. We came across a couple walking a rambunctious young Labradoodle, and that gave Jackie and Jillie the opportunity to romp about a bit.

It was a decidedly warm and humid morning heading toward yet another searingly hot afternoon, and we were glad we'd gone out early to take advantage of the night's cooling off period that lingered in the morning. There were more ripe raspberries to pick growing beside the trail, and we're quite aware that in several weeks' time the thimbleberry crop will be ready for picking, and it's a bumper crop of lovely pink flowers we're still seeing popping up on the shrubs.

The Staghorn Sumacs have matured their candles and they're gradually turning that bright red so characteristic of that variety of the species; yet another instance of succession ripening of seasonal fruits and flowers, be they wild or cultivated.

And there too was the first of the bright yellow flowers to bloom this summer of the ubiquitous Pilot weed, a rival of sorts of the sunflower plants that also grow in parts of the ravine, distinctive on the forest floor for their very large, elongated strap-like foliage. It too is now on the verge of flowering, but the Pilot weed beat it to the golden punch.

And then, just before we exited the last of the network of forest trails that takes us on our daily ravine circuit, there it was. I had forgotten what they looked like. And mused to my husband what it might be. He knew, recalling its original sighting so many years ago when we were bemused at its peripatetic habit. Sure enough, a modest grouping of Himalayan orchids, just going into bloom, their bright insouciant little flowers atop tall stalks, the foliage almost reminiscent of those of milkweed.