We are in early summer. The season we were so anxious to greet only a few months back. Winters in Ottawa can be harsh; this geography is not one where moderation prevails. Winters are icy-cold and snowy. We get huge accumulations of snow throughout the winter months. We shiver and we shovel. And we dream of summer. At the very least, of spring's arrival.

Well, spring arrived finally, a not entirely moderate spring as it happened, when rain ceaselessly gushed down from cloudy skies and the temperature refused to nudge itself toward a reasonable facsimile of mildness in a power show of winter's determination to hang around as long as it possibly could. In eastern Ontario it can and it does.

Now that summer is here, are we grateful? Well, yes. And no. We're chronic, incessant complainers. In spring it was too cool, too wet. We're now into a dry spell, no rain forecasted for this week at all, at all. The forest has dried out. So much so that cracks are beginning to appear on the forest floor. That same forest floor that often resembled a swamp, at the very least a wetland all through spring.

What else? It's hot, quite hot. Take away the humidity as the last few days have done, and it's still hot. Yet for the last several nights there was a lovely breeze wafting through the upstairs and into our bedroom through open windows and the thermometer registered an astonishing 12C. This, with a 28C afternoon that preceded it and a week of 30-31-32C before that.

Yesterday we waited until afternoon to get out in the ravine with Jackie and Jillie for their daily hike through the forest trails. After all, we weren't facing a 30-C day, only 28-C. Ah, with a cooling breeze. Under a sparkling, overheated sun that transformed the forest into a dappled, brilliant white-and-green world. Wherever shafts of sunlight lit up the forest, beaming through the forest canopy it was so dazzling, whatever was highlighted looked a brilliant white.

And the green? Shades of green simply glowed. Oh, of course bright spurts of colour here and there as we passed tired looking daisies, insouciant buttercups, fleabane stalks growing as tall as I am, and cinquefoil beginning its bloom in the forest. And on the forest margins, trailing lotus.

The wild apple trees are beginning to bear their apples, tiny for now, but they'll mature and put on flesh and by late summer, ready to be plucked and eaten. The sumacs are putting out their summer candles, green for the moment, but not long before they turn that dusty red colour.

Wild raspberry and blackberry canes proudly hold their treasure-trove of immature berries. The dazzling pink of the blossoms on thimbleberry shrubs light up the edges of the forest trail in the understory.

Mention 'drink' or 'water' casually while we're tripping the light fantastic through the trails and Jackie and Jillie come to a sudden alert and spurt back from wherever they are ahead of us, to nag our heels for the cooling liquid they know one of us is carrying. Ah yes, it's summer, a far cry from winter when frozen water surrounded us everywhere.