We haven't yet seen any signs that we will be proud possessors of a neat green lawn before this summer is out. None of the grass seed laid down less than a week ago has yet sprouted, no surprise. And this was special grass seed, a more robust variety, impregnated with fertilizer to hasten things along. The lawn still looks forlorn. Of course the state of the garden beds alongside the lawn does provide some visual assurance that all is not lost.

If I really had to choose between a well behaved lawn of weed-free grass or a mischievous but attractive garden, my choice would always come down in favour of the garden. Lawns can be very attractive, but gardens can be impressive, rendering much satisfaction to the gardener. I'm convinced that the care of lawns weigh heavily on the minds of men, not women.

And that it is women largely who cling to their gardens, even though I know that men too are avid gardeners. I don't think there's anything quite as satisfying as viewing a garden that has decided it might just as well corroborate with the ministrations of a gardener who takes the time and trouble to pamper the vegetative residents of the garden to persuade them through gentle care and attention that it would be to everyone's advantage if they responded with grace and an amplitude of blooms of size, shape and colour to delight the eye.

Their reward lies in the enrichment of the soil they grow in, to enhance their growth, in the life-affirming irrigation courtesy of a watering pail, and the admiration they elicit from the gardener, grateful in turn to see that his/her ministrations have borne fruit, so to speak.

We never tire of looking at the garden, at peering at minutely-displayed floral offerings, or at the entire landscape of the garden as a whole to gain a moment-by-moment appreciation of all the changes that take place throughout the emerging and progressing and maturing of the seasons from spring, to summer to fall.

And when we haul ourselves off along with Jackie and Jillie into the ravine to ramble along the forest trails on our daily hikes, a similar kind of appreciation of the landscape and of the minutiae of the evolving vegetation in nature's untouched garden, through the seasons takes place. We had arisen earlier than usual yesterday morning, before our visiting older son and daughter-in-law, taking a break from their daily lives in Toronto to do a bit of travelling and stopping by with us for awhile.

So we slipped out of the house with Jackie and Jillie to make for an even earlier-than-usual morning turn in the ravine. Cool, sunny and windy it was. We hadn't gone long before we came across a woman we'd known as a friend of a neighbour years ago, with her husband, and two grandchildren in tow. The boy ten, and his sister, six years old, were taken with our puppies and tried to convince them they would enjoy being tightly held and hugged to death.

Halfway through our walk another grandfather, this time with a dog of his own accompanying four grandchildren who, he explained, had arisen before six, and since  he had them for the day while their parents, visiting from Smith Falls, took a few days off from parenting, and he couldn't think of anything else to do with them to keep them occupied he brought them to the ravine. Grandfather held the had of a tot of a boy, two older girls around 7 and 8, wandered widely with energy to spare through the forest beyond the trails and the oldest girl, restrained at 12, walked staidly alongside her grandfather.

It was apparent to us that the grandfather was the age of our older son. Which places things in a thoughtful perspective, prodding our minds in all directions.