This has not been a moisture-deficit summer for the garden, much less our neighbourhood forest. Yesterday, yet again, shortly after we had returned from our late-morning hike through the ravine, rain began again. And there was no let-up in its cloud-emptying focus. Leaving the ground that had been inundated all summer-long newly saturated.

This has done wonders for all vegetation. We can see the results when we amble along the forest trails; tree saplings from maples to poplars to spruce and sumac, have attained remarkable growth over these past few months. Only a short while ago I was bemoaning the fact that it seemed to us the zinnias which we feature in one of the garden beds closest to the road that runs in front of our house (leading to the ravine) were meagre-looking in comparison to last year's.

I inferred from the lacklustre performance they were giving us early this summer that they were yearning to be drowned in fertilizer and water. So I set about fertilizing and watering. And then nature took over, bringing us one rain event after another in a non-stop performance of utter excess. It did work, though, those zinnias began to gain height, branch out, blossom as wonderfully as they had the year before when we opened up this new garden bed.

And finally, my husband's last venture in re-seeding our pitiful lawn has also made progress; the grass seed has taken very well (though not as well as last year's effort, which had been destroyed in the winter when a Bell Canada crew came in to dig through the snow and ice to create a vast excavation in their search for their telephone line).

But there it is, the garden took pride in itself and offered us its lavish beauty throughout summer and now that the season has peaked, so has the garden. And we see the same effects reflected in the forest where it's harvest time for wild apples and where the initial signs of winter preparations are under way. We are visited as a bit of a flyway spring and fall by bluejays and when we're hiking through the trails we can hear their bell-like calls now, but that won't last long before they continue on their way. They're not migrating, since most remain in the frozen northern clime that is Canada, overwinter.

We did meet up with an old ravine-hiking companion yesterday with her husband and her great little husky. The dog has now reached its own level of maturity with less of a tendency to run off after wildlife. Maturity and the use of an electric 'leash' that would deliver a slight signal of recall the dog learned to obey as instructed, in preference to avoiding an electric jolt.

This is the same dog, now more serene in temperament, that had once run down a red fox and tangled with the little creature, injuring it badly before it could escape into its den. It is a breed that was cultivated to react as it did, and that event was quite beyond sad. We see far fewer foxes, in the same token now, that we had previously, mostly because of the coyotes that have moved in as alpha predators.

As if to signal us that yes, fall is arriving post-haste, we came across a number of variant fungi, in shape and colour vastly differentiated and interesting to look at. Among large white toadstools that the forest floor seems to eject so suddenly there are also emerging bright orange and yellow fungi whose colour is so bright it is difficult to overlook their presence.

We once used to see large, flat-topped light purple-grey mushrooms, the only fungi that I have ever found aesthetically disquieting because their colour reminded me of death.