There's no question that fall is valued as one of those times of year when vivid colour takes over the natural landscape, bright enough in certain areas to take our breath away. The months of September and October excel in providing us with poetics-inducing rhapsodies of aesthetic beauty, exposing us to colour schemes and shades of colour that only nature's outstanding skills can coax into extravagant painted display. It is as though nature reserves this time of year to mount a play reliant on diminishing light and shorter days to extract from her landscapes reflections of abundant joy expressed in tints and shades of conceit.

And then comes November. The month which surely qualifies as the dreariest, darkest, most unpleasant in nature's calendar of events. When light continues its flight and we are left with truly shorter days before darkness follows an early dusk and nights become too long. When all colour has been drained from the landscape, and we see dark trunks and dim forest interiors and there is nothing to break the damp and cold tedium of a forest's temporary retirement from championing a verdant landscape in every direction one looks.

Now, rain is more frequent and it's a cold rain. Now, the night time temperatures flirt shamelessly with frost, and whatever vegetation has been left at this point, feeling it might yet survive the worst that fall can wreak upon living things, experiences what frost is capable of wreaking, destroying fibres and shrinking still-lively plants to limp and wretchedly-rotting discards.

There was just enough of a lull in yesterday's rain before noon to allow us to get out for a ravine walk, under a low cloud ceiling that threatened at any moment to begin leaking again. If the forest floor hadn't seemed deep enough in leaf litter the day before, it certainly did now. Touches of frost alongside voluminous rain and wind put the finishing touches to baring deciduous branches of their still-bright foliage, tumbling them all to the ground.

The atmosphere was saturated both from the endless multiple-days'-worth of rain and more that also fell consecutively overnight, including the humid atmosphere prepared at any moment to release more on the landscape. With the woods so bare that even forest undergrowth as well as all the vegetation that normally covers the forest floor has seemed somehow to disappear in a concerted abandonment of fresh green, the denuded shrubs and trees and the soaked ground leave a hint of what an underwater world might feel like.

Jackie and Jillie take it all in their stride. They just spurt along the trails, since for them there is always curiosity, entertainment and the expectant draw of what lies ahead. They too with the great clearing of undergrowth, can see squirrels busily going about their fall ritual-collecting in preparation for oncoming winter. We met up with Jago, the female Husky again and her connection with nature in the raw is far more genetically developed than Jackie and Jillie's.

For her, it's serious business to race after the squirrels and tree them. Jackie and Jillie are rank amateurs in comparison, and it's the way we prefer them to be, rather than risk a physical confrontation. Jago has been known to catch up with fleeing wild creatures and the end result has not been pleasant. That too is nature's way, since this is an expression of her breed's function. When she was younger she ran down a fox  and the fox failed to survive the encounter. Makes it hard to feel admiration for nature's rules sometimes.

The days of autumnal visual splendour are now swiftly coming to an end. Each day we venture into the ravine there is a steadily decreasing landscape of bright foliage. Wind and rain has served to separate foliage from tree branches and most of the deciduous trees in the forest are now bare, or close to it. And with each day that passes, the new-fallen leaves which colour the forest floor are beginning to fade from bright yellow, orange and red to a variety of shades of brown.

It's still beautiful to see the depth of the fallen leaves covering the ground. The browns make for a subdued blanket on the forest floor and the trails leading through the forest interior, but the overall prospect is also warm in appearance with its own special kind of visual attraction. There's one area where oaks predominate and under the steadily denuding trees the acrid fragrance of tannin is even more pronounced than it is elsewhere.

Unsurprisingly we've had a lot of rain and wind to go with the creep into late fall for it is fall, after all, and that's to be expected. But yesterday despite the wind and the humid atmosphere at 10C, it seemed mild, and since the sun kept evincing itself through the light cloud cover the landscape was also considerably brightened.

Jackie and Jillie enjoyed a few diversions, meeting up with other dogs as anxious as they are to be out and about on the trails. Timbit was there, hauling the rope that his humans have accustomed him to wear around his neck. He looked pretty spiffy, after an appointment at the groomer's. His predecessor Kira, was also a very small schnauzer just like him, but she had a spontaneously warm and friendly personality whereas Timbit tends to be standoffish.

He's getting older though, about the same age as Jackie and Jillie, and now likes to acknowledge them and snuffle about alongside them companionably. He wasn't the only familiar dog to express quiet satisfaction in the cooling atmosphere and changed landscape that Jackie and Jillie had some interplay with on their afternoon walk. Everyone we come across and speak with as we pass one another on the trails expresses gratitude that the weather has been so relatively moderate, and that we've been able to enjoy our daily perambulations.

The very fact that it is so easy for us and for others to access this forest to add quality to our daily lives as we poke about in it and stride along, crushing the underfoot foliage and listening to the shushshushshush of our boots, feeling the sun sneaking its light-and-warmth rays through a far more open forest canopy to bliss our backs and the top of our heads with warmth reminds us of just how very fortunate we are.

Back at home again, the ritual of looking through the garden beds to assemble an inventory of tasks needing to be done preparing the garden for winter, inspires a reluctance in us to actually get serious and down to work. Bit by bit. But that so much vegetation is yet green, and so many of the flowering plants continue to sustain themselves, helped no doubt by copious rain events protecting them against night-time nips of frost, convinces us there's no hurry. Yet.

And while we were at it, the loopy hopping about of a cricket took my eye. I thought how neat it would be to get a photograph. I've tried before, and never succeeded. Just too slow at the task, and the cricket always manages to assemble itself for another giant leap, and I've lost the opportunity. Not this time. I managed the snap, and then suddenly, it was gone....

Seems that "not-so-quick" is our operative phrase of the day. As in wishful thinking won't necessarily make it so. We had assumed that little Jackie had transcended whatever it was that had made him behave so peculiarly, but it seems not, after all. When this whole thing began with him last Monday, it was as though something had alarmed him in the back yard. My husband saw him suddenly leap from a stand-still position, and race madly for the deck, to get into the house.

Once in the house he ran frantically about, was trembling, heart beating wildly and wouldn't be assured that everything was all right. He wanted to be held and comforted, but that didn't stop his wild heart palpitations and trembling. When he finally quieted down, any sound made him jump, he reacted adversely to just about anything.

From then on he tried to persuade us not to take him into the backyard and when we did, he refused to pee or to poop. It got to the point where he emitted one pee over the course of a day, and not by lifting his leg as usual, but by squatting, nervous all the while, seeming to be aware of something threatening that we weren't aware of.

The veterinarian examination revealed nothing amiss, no fever, eyes, ears and throat fine, physical exam of his legs, heart, chest, back-end, all normal. All but his panting, his extreme trepidation. Which diminished markedly over time and was not in evidence when we were at the vet's. We stopped, after three days, giving him the medication the vet prescribed for pain and to calm him down. Pain? He had no problems leaping absurd heights, several times onto the vanity in the powder room, and right into the sink. He wanted attention and he certainly got it.

We decided he was too ill to be taken for walks for several days. He would lift his back right leg and hop along with it lifted and we assumed he had somehow injured himself. He was, in fact, begging to be picked up and carried. Three days ago he suddenly decided to ask my husband on numerous occasions to go out to the backyard. Once there he sniffed about interestedly, going to all the corners including the garden beds with a seeming sense of healthy curiosity. He peed normally, he pooped. We were ecstatic.

We all went out to the ravine for a good long walk through the forest trails. In the ravine he was marking like crazy, lifting his leg everywhere. We felt like celebrating, we were so relieved. His appetite was never a problem, he ate all his meals throughout this peculiar ordeal. And the turnaround saw him playing energetically with his sister once again. But that evening he refused to go to the backyard to pee before bed, and the next morning again. So we put on his halter and leash and took him to the ravine and there he behaved normally.

Since then we've been going for our daily walks, but at first he will limp along as though asking to be picked up, so we ignore him, until he kind of 'forgets' the limp and begins to behave normally, though he seems more inclined to stay closer to us and occasionally behaves as though something has startled him, though nothing is to be seen. He will leap sideways as though to avoid something, then immediately after, trot along normally.

When we came across friends on our ravine walk early this afternoon he interacted with them as though nothing was out of the ordinary. We're beyond perplexed. He's either manipulating us, playing unpleasant mind games, or there is something there genuinely disturbing him. We're hoping, needless to say, that continued routine and the reassurance that comes with it, will help.

Yesterday's all-day wind- and rain-storm certainly acted out the deciding role in how barren the forest would look post-storm. The rainfall was fiercely copious and never-ending, the wind whipping sheets of rain against the front of the house. We imagined how the force of the wind would be clacking tree tops together, how the tall tree trunks would flex, lean slightly and dance, encouraged by the wind. We waited in vain for a window of opportunity when the rain might slacken off and finally stop for a short while before resuming, as it often does, but not this time around.

We get a little restless, all of us, when the weather becomes so inclement that it isn't worthwhile going out into it. That kind of ferociously miserable weather just isn't conducive to enjoying a ramble in the woods. Rain and wind lashing our faces and creating hazardous underfoot conditions underfoot in a landscape of countless ascents and descents doesn't make for an enjoyable occasion.

There's no way of explaining that to Jackie and Jillie. Jillie, for her part, shrinks at the very absurdity of going out in the rain into the backyard. Jackie is mostly indifferent to rain, but even he risks being miserable facing down a storm. So we stayed home. Finding plenty to do to keep us occupied of course. And the puppies slept for the most part, just occasionally challenging one another to a duel of paw-cuffs or a mad dash-about in the house.

When we woke this morning it was once again to a dark house. No sun to blaze cheerfully through the windows of the house, lighting the rooms at the front of the house to the extent that I always do a double-check that we haven't mistakenly left a light on. Dismal. The good thing was that though the backyard was utterly drenched for our puppies' first foray of the morning, it wasn't raining.

The morning temperature was 9C, and seemed much kinder because the air was so moisture-saturated. The forecast was for a sunny afternoon and a high of 14C, but we decided to forge ahead after breakfast and have a morning walk through the forest trails. A coverlet of bright new leaves on the forest floor spoke volumes about the role of the wind and rain of the day before.

The landscape was slick with rain, the trails slippery with sodden foliage, and though the sky remained darkly overcast, the forest interior seemed bright enough, subdued light managing to filter through the canopy to the bright leaves illuminating their colour in reflection of their rain-inundated state. The creek was running wide and full, burbling over the little cascades produced by fallen detritus that tends to gather at certain points as it winds its way through the forest.

We took our time, enjoying the atmosphere and the feeling of lightness and freedom that accompanies these daily forays. A companionable solitude tends to settle over us. We watch the puppies as they pad along in front of us, alert to the possible presence of as-yet-unseen intruders, though we are the intruders, not the squirrels whose presence occasions a spurt of action now and again on their part.

Whenever we become too complacent about the weather, nature has her way of reminding us of her less-than-benevolent moods and it never fails to surprise us that a perfectly temperature-modulated day with full sun exposure can suddenly morph in a matter of hours into a perfectly miserable day.
Yesterday was one of those idyllic days of mid-fall, the temperature 'soared' to 10C, under a lovely clear blue sky flawlessly could-free, mounted by a warming sun, and the wind was extraordinarily well behaved.

It was a kind of day of celebration for us since our little Jackie appeared, also suddenly, to have surmounted a bout of illness that had worried us for days, with no discernible cause. He and his sister were excited about the prospect of heading out to the ravine to lope along the forest trails they're so familiar with, and so were we. All the more so, as it became immediately apparent that his behaviour had  reverted from distressingly peculiar and unhappy to his old carefree self.

We noted that in our brief absence, areas in the forest that had seen their deciduous trees bidding adieu to their foliage earlier than others, to steep the forest floor deep in layers of bright discarded leaves with their warm, overall tones of yellows, reds, orange and burnt umber, had in the mere space of the few days we had been unable to trek through the trails, turned that dull brown of foliage too long on the ground.

We soon discovered as we delved further into the network of trails that there were ample leaves still left on other trees -- maple, beech, birch, oak and poplar mostly -- and later to fall, they still offered up the brilliant spectacle of bright autumn hues picked up and illuminated by rays of the sun penetrating now more fully through the depleting forest canopy.

With the exception of Nova, the large white German Shepherd who is a long-time friend of Jackie's and Jillie's, we saw no one else out on the trails, leaving us with that good old impression that these are our personal landscapes. Certainly Jackie and Jillie feel that way, all the more so when they fail to encounter anyone else out forging through the woodland trails, and they believe they're the proud stewards of all they survey.

Yesterday's weather-perfect day, however, led to today's less-than-stellar day, with unending rain. When we awoke this morning the house interior was dark, informing our senses immediately what we could expect fully roused and on the go. But it was expected, since the weather forecast warned of a washout today. Which had made me determined yesterday afternoon to continue stripping the garden of worn perennial foliage while it was still dry and manageable.

And so I'd taken the opportunity to spend a few hours at the front of the house this time, having already tidied up most of the backyard gardens, though there's still work left to be done there. Since the garden pots and urns still look reasonably presentable, I decided to focus my attention just on the garden perennials, cutting back rose canes, peony stalks, hosta foliage and hydrangeas. Since we've so many of all of those garden staples, it took quite some time.

The compostable garden bags that the municipality picks up for recycling into their own huge compost piles hold an enormous amount of vegetable matter. And during that several-hour period of focusing on clean-up, I ended up with four full compost bags to be put out for Monday evening for Tuesday morning collection. While I was at it, I finished up by sweeping the garden pathways and patios of their accumulated garden debris, most of it falling from the ornamental crab apple trees, flowering pea (caragena) trees and magnolia.

I'm counting on the appearance of plenty more days yet to come before the snow flies to enable me to fully get the garden in order to my satisfaction. Last year I planted new tulip and allium bulbs, so I don't intend to plant any this fall. But there is an awful lot of work left to do before I can feel confident that the garden is ready to face winter.

Sometimes it seems that just a split second is all it takes to suddenly change your outlook on life. It has been depressing for us to be so anxious about our little Jackie, always so springy and cheerful to suddenly become listless, disinterested and seemingly lost in a desolate state of disequilibrium we knew nothing about the cause and effect. Witnessing his peculiar behaviour so unlike his normal self and his apparent loss of enthusiasm for anything, as he mystified us with actions we'd never before seen in him, much less his reversion to a puppy stage when in training for outdoor evacuation, we were completely baffled.

When the veterinarian checked his vital signs, his physical condition and found nothing amiss we were reassured, but then thrown back into confusion when his strange condition persisted and we didn't know how to react. My impression was that we should interact with him no differently than we always do, and somehow that would alert his consciousness to recall his normal behaviour through routine.

My husband was in favour of babying him, treating him as a very sick little dog. Truth is, my husband has far more patience and optimism than I have ever had. When our children were  young I used to call him 'doktor'. I was beyond impatient at having to take him outside to the back yard beseechingly urging him to 'pee' or 'poo', both of which he seemed determined to withhold. He became a one-pee-a-day puppy, squatting instead of lifting his leg. His stomach was upset and it showed up in wet stools that he would deposit in the most infuriating of places. I ended up washing the coverlet on our bed two consecutive days.

This morning he refused breakfast, and just seemed totally detached from everything. We called the veterinarian clinic and made an early-morning Wednesday appointment, the only opening available, with our vet. And then, suddenly, everything changed. He became alive, alert, mischievous, happy, energetic; in short his old self. Just . like . that! Teasing his sister, inviting her to a run-about. Then both looking expectantly at us as though to ask: 'when's the walk in the ravine today?'

We waited awhile, observing him to make certain that this sudden switch wasn't a brief anomaly, but it wasn't. So we suited everyone up for a lovely, sunny, windless and cool ramble through woodland trails. At first we weren't certain how far we would go, depending, we told one another, on how he reacted. Perfectly normally. Oh well, not quite. In that he seemed reborn. Interested in everything, all the intriguing odours he had missed in the days kept at home, and marking everywhere.

He stood tall, erect and happy to be out, which was exactly how we felt at that point. His tail stood up to attention, his eyes and ears focused on the landscape and everything in between and sprinted back and forth, in effect covering twice the distance that we do. At one point, ourpuppies both excitedly began barking in greeting when abruptly, before we even saw him, Nova spurted out of the forest to greet us. We've known Nova since he was a puppy and he's always ready when our timing coincides and he hears us somewhere in the woods, to come over lickety-split to say hello, in several dashes back and forth, and then he departs to rejoin Rod, whose calls are so distant we cannot even audibly detect them.

So that was a huge relief. To watch as both our puppies cavorted and enjoyed slipping in and off the trail into the woods interior, looking out for squirrels, leaping with joy at the freshness of the day and the purity of the air, the boundless smells and nature's invitation to come along, linger and appreciate.
They did, and we did.

It's unfortunate, but given little Jackie's condition at the moment, it was clear that there was no point planning to take him out to the ravine again, as we did yesterday afternoon. On that occasion, expressing walking distress, he was carried throughout a short walking circuit. If it is indeed an injured leg that is causing him to behave unusually, it needs time to heal. If his distress is being caused by something else, then we'll have to return to the veterinarian clinic to try to discover what, exactly, is happening with him.

He's eating well, and he's sleeping well. He no longer pants and shivers and there's no more rapid heart beating, but he's certainly not behaving normally. His trips out to the backyard are mostly fruitless; he seems to be withholding waste. When he does urinate, he squats instead of lifting his leg as usual. He tends normally to evacuate two, three or more times daily, and now it's just once. He seems to feel otherwise well, his usual enthusiasm for being petted and gently played with are intact.

So no walk in the ravine for Jackie today again. But there was no reason why Jillie had to be deprived. She went out with my husband early in the afternoon for a good, long jaunt in the ravine. It's a pleasant, if cool day, with a high of 11C, wind, and mostly sunny skies. After my husband left with Jillie, Jackie, sitting beside me on the sofa, strained to hear where they were, obviously wondering at their sudden absence. Seemingly certain that if he peered hard enough from his perch, they would reappear. But unwilling to stir physically to satisfy his curiosity.

For her part, once in the ravine, Jillie seemed loathe to proceed as she usually does. She kept stopping and looking back, waiting for her brother and me to 'catch up' with them. This lasted awhile, my husband continuing to encourage her to accept that they were on their own, and finally, she did. I asked my husband to take the photographs I would normally snap while we're out on our daily rambles and he did.

In fact, he returned with double the number of photographs I usually take. It's his artist's eye, for he is fundamentally artistic, able to express himself beautifully in so many mediums, from painting to stained glass, furniture making, interior design and outdoor hardscape construction. I am, by contrast, incapable of producing even the most basic of drawings.

He snapped photographs of all the areas and landscapes of the ravine we're so familiar with, but interestingly enough, from an angle different than what my own snaps reflect. And since this is the brief, transitory time of fall when the Beech trees have surrendered to autumn and with that surrender the bright green of their foliage, replaced by the warmth of a coppery orange, there were ample shots of one of the valleys where beeches proliferate.

There is another, separate discrete valley where maples have colonized themselves among large old pines. And in that area, which is an elongated copse of maples, they too have turned, not the kind of red we usually associate with sugar maples, but a dense, deep egg-yolk yellow, creating quite the colour spectacle, awash with gold. Trouble is, digital cameras seem to encounter problems in capturing yellows which manifest as green. So though the maples in reality are a blaze of yellow, in the photographs they appear as though autumn has made no impression upon them at all.

This year has seen a bumper crop of American bittersweet growing in many disparate places along the forest trails. Their bright orange or red berries have been popping up here and there, and they're hard not to notice, particularly as they remain intact while foliage all around them is steadily dropping, revealing their presence.

It's clear from our conversation afterward, that this was a hugely successful romp through the ravine. Moreover, when they finally returned, we had an enthusiastic reunion, Jillie delighted that we were reunited, leaping joyfully at, over and around her brother and me. And then hanging around me in the kitchen, patiently awaiting her reward.

Usually, when we return from our daily tramp through the forest trails they're accustomed to being rewarded, and their most favourite of all rewards is a good-sized raw cauliflower floret. Jillie's treat this afternoon was a large floret of a hybrid cross between a cauliflower and a broccoli, which she found greatly to her taste.