We're long accustomed to the peculiarity of the phenomenon since we see it year after year, but it's still a gait-stopping surprise when we notice a leaf or two, brightly coloured as fall foliage tends to be, lying on the forest floor in mid-summer. And they're always Poplar leaves. Not many of them to be sure, but invariably at this time of the summer season there they'll be, hard for us to miss with their bright orange shading.

We surmise that it's reasonable to understand that when vegetation gets stressed because of too much sun, and too little moisture, it strains so hard to maintain a balance that something goes awry. So we occasionally come across immature trees with a sprinkling of yellowed leaves among the bright green, normal ones. Eventually those yellowed leaves will detach and fall.

With Poplars under stress some of the leaves will turn a patterned bright orange though retaining some green, and the leaves will fall in their scarce numbers presenting as an unusual anomaly in the summer; an unwanted peek at what we know will be around the seasonal corner soon enough. We'd had rain a day earlier, plenty of it, but it was obviously the lack of moisture that preceded that day of rain that upset the balance of some trees.

By and large as we roam through the forest trails, vegetation looks pretty good. In some places it looks downright spectacular. Particularly on the edge of the forest before we delve deeply into its depths and the forest canopy shuts out most sunlight. Where there is full sun exposure, there at this time of year, flourishes Queen Anne's Lace, Thimbleberries, Compass plant, and the jewel-like Himalayan orchid plant.

The understory of immature trees, sapling trees of a smaller size like sumac, and shrubs like dogwood and  honeysuckle offer some colour and certainly texture, but they also ensure that fruit-bearing plants don't receive the full encouragement of sun that berries require to turn into large, luscious-tasting fruit. We've just about exhausted what is available in raspberries, but yesterday there were still a few, very small berries to pick and share out to Jackie and Jillie.

We see a greater presence now of bees, butterflies, Damselflies and dragonflies but still not in the numbers that once we would come across. There's also the occasional Japanese beetle we identify winging past. There's so much in the forest for them to feast on, but they have become very urbanized as an introduced invasive-pest-species.

They're still in the garden, still ravaging some plants. They love rosebuds, and they've made lacework of the foliage of our corkscrew hazel tree. I should be grateful, I suppose that there are many flowered plants that they seem disinterested in, otherwise the havoc they wreak would be horrendous for gardeners. The potted plants we nurse on the deck seem unaffected and thank heavens for that.