In these late-summer days the garden seems anxious to over-reach itself. So many of the plants are either preparing for a long winter rest, like the lilies, or stretching their growth patterns like the hydrangeas, crowding out less assertive plants. The garden beds and borders that looked so pathetically sparse in mid-spring but whose every manifestation of new life delighted us like long-lost relatives come home at last, are now groaning under the impressive presence of late-summer blooms.

There's a type of heuchera (the red-leafed coral bells) that have always thrived in our garden, a lovely counterpoint to the great variety of hostas that we so favour for the graceful presence of their architecture, their foliage shape and colouration, complemented by heuchera that are as hardy and resistant to pests as the hostas.

Hostas are amenable to being split, to having portions of their root system especially in spring, severed in pieces around the edges, then transplanted to new locations. One hosta over a number of years can have 'mothered' countless other hostas. Similarly, heucheras too can be split and separated and planted elsewhere. I've given pieces of both to some of our neighbours and they thrive.

Heucheras of the red-leaf type are also, on the other hand, extremely prolific. They will send little 'pups' into the most surprising places. The garden beds closest to the house were enclosed years ago when my husband built retaining 'walls' of stone where the beds are higher than the walkways. The walkways were put in place according to a pattern my husband designed, comprised of paving bricks at the same time, quite a time- and energy-consuming task he set himself to.

He designed the garden in a manner he felt would be most complementary to the elevation of the house to give us an inner, very private courtyard, with a patio surrounded by garden beds, and another further down the pathway where it meets with the driveway. Over time red heucheras that had been planted at the edges of the beds dropped their pups into the wedge between the retaining walls and the walkways.

At first I would carefully remove the pups when they attained enough of a size that convinced me they would survive the extraction and replanting. As the years passed so many of these pups presented themselves I just left them where they were finally, and now there are red heucheras albeit limited in individual size, lining the notch between wall and path. They're extremely ornamental and I've left them there.

From time to time I've found that lobelia will also send down seedlings to take root elsewhere in the garden than the garden pots they've been planted in, and so will petunias, so they too grow happily and flower in the interstices. And then there are the mosses, some of which are the common type we're familiar with, and other dainty, lacy networks of infinitesimally small moss with the tiniest of tiny flowers coming to bloom upon maturity.

Moss, in fact, has made itself quite at home between the bricks, thickly bright green, happily ensconced and resistant to evacuation. Because our gardens are so crowded and consist of mature ornamental fruit trees and various types of conifers from Mugo pine to weeping caragena and mulberry, flowering crab and false cypress there is always foliage or fruiting bodies or spent rose petals that fall onto the walkways and they have to be swept regularly.

The moss doesn't mind. I can feel the broom when it hits the soft moistness of the moss but the moss is confident in its ability to remain in place and it does. Of course the fact is that we're hemmed in with vegetation from trees to shrubs and flowering seasonal plants although sun does penetrate at certain times of the day, yet there is enough shade to encourage the moss to continue insinuating itself uninterrupted. And it does.

All of this gardening preoccupation takes second place to our daily outings with Jackie and Jillie. We tend to the garden after we've tended to the priority of getting out into the ravine for a brisk and lengthy cruise around the forest trails. Yesterday morning Jackie and Jillie were introduced to a giant of their species when they met up with a Labradoodle as curious about them as they were at its presence.

The morning, as has become routine at this stage of summer, began with a temperature cool enough for light jackets to be worn but by the time we exited the ravine an hour or so later the sun had reached a higher point in the sky and accessing street level, walking down the street toward our house felt good and  hot. So much so that when we sat out on the deck at the back of the house later in the afternoon we baked under an atmosphere that had gone from 14C to 26C in a matter of hours.

With a good robust breeze, however, shielded from the sun by the full summer leafy canopy of the forest we were extremely comfortable while out hiking. No need these days to bother taking water with for Jackie and Jillie, they're simply disinterested under these conditions. But not disinterested in eating the berries my husband picks, nor pieces of wild apple proffered them as we stroll along areas beside the trails hosting wild apples, some of them casting off their bright red fruit, others holding them tight until someone enterprising enough to recognize their value picks them.