Frozen pouches of fruit contain roughly three to four cups of various types of mostly berries. Some of the pouches contain a berry mixture, others focus on just one type of berries. Those I buy most frequently are blueberries, and they're usually wild blueberries. When they're on sale, and they often are, I buy several of the pouches, and then use them when the thought strikes that a blueberry pie would be nice for dinner-dessert.

As I did yesterday. When I extracted the pouch from the refrigerator-freezer section it was like a solid block of ice. I let it sit on the kitchen counter for several hours. Still a brick of ice. So I poured a half-cup of granulated sugar into a cooking pot, added two heaping tablespoons of cornstarch, a quarter cup of cranberry juice, mixed them together to a slurry, dropped the contents of the pouch over the mixture, set the pot on a low simmer, covered it, and went about other business.

Eventually, the block began to melt, and some time later did so entirely, releasing its contents to begin cooking, as was my intention. I raised the heat, stirred the pot contents until it all thickened and transformed into a semi-translucent glaze, a thick and fragrant (and colourful) mixture ready to be used as the filling for a blueberry pie. As it cooled I added a tablespoon of butter and refrained from using almond essence, because my husband asked me to.

I used one and a half cups of all-purpose flour, 1/2 tsp.salt, two-third of a cup Crisco shortening and chopped it into pea-size pieces with a pastry blender, then in went 2 tbsp. lemon juice and about 2 tablespoons of very cold water sprinkled over, and I kneaded it, to prepare the pastry dough. Divided the resulting ball in half, rolled out the bottom crust and placed it into the two-decade-old pottery pie dish our younger son had made for me, spread the filling evenly, rolled out the top crust and used a pastry-wheel to cut strips for a lattice-top pie, then inserted the pie to bake in my little counter-top convection oven at 350F for about 40 minutes.

I also prepared a bread dough and refrigerated it for use later in the week. It's handy to have around in case we want to have a pizza for dinner, or for those times when I've prepared a hearty soup and decide to bake croissants to accompany the soup -- usually cheesy croissants. Then I put a chicken soup on to cook, and finally, after a little light vacuuming, bathroom cleaning and bed-making, I was free to join my husband and our two little dogs for a ravine walk in mid-afternoon.

The panic of Christmas shopping added to the change of weather that brought us sub-zero temperatures once again, albeit under a clear blue sky, has kept us from seeing others walking along the forest trails in the ravine of late. Yesterday was also 'Black Friday', as absurd a shopping phenomenon as any I've ever heard of, so that too convinced people there were things other than hiking along in a forest that better appealed to them.

Just as well. We're trying to keep Jackie calm, not to run wildly about in the forest, so he can properly heal from his injury. Not that he doesn't, from time to time, respond to the presence of squirrels in the forest interior, and then come limping back, needing to be carried. And since on occasion we've found that we did have to carry him for the remainder of the hike, we  haven't been extending our walking circuit as far as we normally do. Having him on leash for the duration of our walks is possible, and it certainly hampers his sudden bursts of frenetic energy in a chase, but it doesn't take much for my resolve to keep him on leash to evaporate when he signals unease at the restraint.

So we release him and he joyfully goes about his usual behaviour, following his sister Jillie for the most part, and sometimes taking on the role of navigator-explorer-extraordinaire reflecting his excitement and happiness at being out in the woods. While we keep hoping that each of the walks will take place without the lure of a swift response carrying him into the forest, enhancing the opportunity for re-injury. Which admittedly results in a brief inconvenience until he shortly recovers, but we'd prefer to avoid these incidents when possible. The best solution, needless to say, is resorting to the leash. Damn!

To say that yesterday was a busy day would be an understatement. But truth is, most of our days are busy. There always seems so much to be done, and to do, routine and also entertaining. The quotidian tasks of maintaining and keeping a house in order, of course, from changing lightbulbs to taking out the trash, cleaning bathrooms and preparing meals. Not to mention attention given to the needs and wants of two little dogs.

And then there are the out-of-house issues that must be dealt with, from shopping to doctors' appointments, banking, and any number of other things popping up continually. Yesterday, in between doing the laundry, I went through my clothes cupboard to bag items of apparel that I haven't worn in a long time and likely never will again. I put together old, post-prescription and non-prescription eyeglasses, wrapping them carefully in a towel. I set aside pieces of costume jewellery that are extraneous to my wardrobe, and packaged everything to be taken to the Salvation Army second-hand shop.

My husband had weeks ago gone through the books in our library to select those that we consider non-essential; mostly novels and crime thrillers, favoured by him. He ended up with ten boxes of books and we took them along to the Sally Ann as well, relieved to be rid of them taking up space on our bookshelves. Non-fiction, history and art books have a hallowed place on those shelves.

He'd gone out in the very early afternoon to run a number of errands. Primarily to return videos to the public library, to stop in at the bank, and to go to the Dollar Store for bungie cords. He needed to secure the large plastic bags placed over the urns in the garden in preparation for the real onset of winter. He was away quite a long time.

While he was out I prepared a Cole Slaw salad  for dinner that night, because I was also intending to do a small beef roast, for a change. Along with trying out a new idea I'd read for roasted potatoes; cut in large chunks, parboiled, dusted with flour, salt and pepper, placed on a pre-heated oiled pan in the oven and crisped all over. My husband enjoys baked apples so I stuffed an apple with raisins, cinnamon and brown sugar and baked it. And then decided to bake a batch of crisp gingerbread cookies, meaning to for awhile, but until yesterday, hadn't gotten around to it.

He still wasn't home, and the puppies were getting restless, since it was about the time we'd normally get ourselves out for a romp through the ravine trails with them. Then he called from the library, said he was just checking out some videos (we watch a video together on Saturday nights) and would be soon home, so that was relieving.

When he did get home, he sniffed the aromatic essence of baked cookies, and said how good the house smelled. Then he told me he had three books for me, bought from the Friends of the Library group that sell books the library is de-acquisitioning, as well as donated books. He knows my taste in books, and they're titles that are of huge interest to me, both historical and first-hand accounts of world events and certain geographic expeditions.

And then, sheepishly, he showed me other things he'd bought; two wool sweaters for him and two for me. I'm conflicted about woollen sweaters. They're warm and comfortable, yes, but they require special care, having to be hand-washed and laid flat to dry. There's nothing like cotton or synthetic materials that can be tossed into the washing machine and dryer. But these were beautiful sweaters, and he'd chosen them from Value Village. He likes that place and I detest it; I'd rather shop at the Sally Ann. He thinks he knows my taste in clothing, too, and often brings home really nice things for me, but just as often I can't stand the things he's selected and back they go. Sixty-four years of marriage and knowing one another beyond intimately doesn't guarantee perfect accord, but it should result in patience and appreciation, and for us, it does.

So we did get Jackie and  Jillie out to the ravine. It was a cold, very windy, heavily overcast day. Despite which, they and we enjoyed our tryst navigating the icy trails through the forest.

Early into our hike through the ravine yesterday afternoon on a dismally grey day with a roustabout wind pushing us forward, we were nearing the first of the bridges fording the stream when Jackie and Jillie began barking. Their barking at the merest hint of anything different in the landscape was not unusual. What was unusual, though, was that they were barking at a Grey Blue heron. He was stalking about in the creek and at the hullabaloo our pups  were making, lifted himself up, out and away, flying over the tree tops, to a spot, we surmised, further up the creek. Possibly looking for the very minnows we'd seen a group of children a few days back, scooping into pails.

We often see herons in the spring, passing through on their return from fall migration. This fellow should have departed already, migrating to warmer climes. What makes some birds linger is unknown to us. In the last five or six years we've seen robins out and about in the ravine during the winter months. It's a matter of great debate between us what these live-eaters can possibly find to keep them alive during our harsh winters. Berries, seeds? In competition with birds of the boreal forest that move down?

Soon afterward we met up with a woman we've known for awhile, with her miniature Apricot poodle, Max. Max is a real gad-about, he resembled a perpetual-motion machine when he was a puppy, even more action-oriented than our little Jackie. He'd had a tussle, we were informed, with a fox last week. Our acquaintance had decided on a very early morning walk with her little dog, well before more people get out, before 7:00 a.m. Max has a tendency to run ahead quite a distance, and it doesn't take much before he's out of sight. Our friend doesn't mind when he does that; it worries us for the safety and security of Jackie and Jillie, though, and we make certain to keep them in sight.

On this occasion, she heard Max up ahead, out of sight, barking and yelping. So she hurried forward and then she saw that her little dog was grappling and rolling about on one of the hillsides with a fox. When she hove into sight, the fox disentangled itself from her little dog and ran off. She manually and visually checked Max over and found nothing amiss. Two days later she noticed a few scabs had developed from puncture holes in his skin, in all likelihood a result of Max's tangle with the fox.

It's doubtful that a single fox would prey upon an animal close to its own size. She speculated that either Max or the fox or both suspected the other of charging into a food source each considered their own. Max has a tendency to take possession of apples, still littering certain places on the forest floor. He plays with them vigorously, as though each was a ball. Eventually he ends up gnawing on the apple, so they serve a double purpose for him; entertainment and food.

We no longer allow either of our two puppies to eat whatever remains of the apples, fallen to the ground. During early fall when the apples have ripened we pluck them from the handful of wild apple trees growing in certain places in the ravine, and dole out bite=sized pieces for them. Just as they love all kinds of raw vegetables, they enjoy fruit as well and it's a treat for them to be given apple pieces during a hike. Once the weather turns and the trees shed whatever fruit remains on them to litter the ground, the apples tend to rot, to acquire a patina of mould. And it was this mould that once years ago affected Jackie's neural system making him so ill we'd had to rush him to the emergency veterinarian hospital.

Later on in our walk we noticed that someone had hauled a post-Halloween pumpkin into the ravine to dump it on the forest floor, likely thinking that it might provide some nutrition for raccoons, squirrels, foxes or coyotes....

It's a dilemma. We can exert control over Jackie's movements by keeping him on leash. Or we can allow him to roam about to his little heart's content off leash, and hope he doesn't suddenly indulge in a wild dash after a squirrel which will result in a re-injury. He still skips part of the time, hopping along effortlessly on his three long, nimble legs around fifty percent of the time when we're out in the ravine. Doing so doesn't seem to bother him. It bothers us.

We know that this kind of 'skipping' is common to poodles. Both our other little poodles, Button and Riley often indulged in it, but not for the prolonged periods that Jackie is now doing so, when he never did before. Poodles, particularly small ones are also known for slipping their hind legs at the joints and we used to give them Glucosamin for shallow knee-joints. He doesn't skip when he's at home. But on the other hand, at home he's mostly relaxing, snoozing, a lay-about on the sofas.

But there too he's becoming more like his normal self, pre-incident that caused him to react to what we imagine was a painful event. He has always been sensitive to being touched, since the time we brought him home to live with us, along with his sister, when they were three months old. We guessed that though the breeder advertised for months (we'd seen the advert in the papers), people wanting to bring a toy poodle into their home would reject our two because though toy they may be by breeding, they're both the size of miniature poodles.

Jackie is normally a joyful, fun-loving little fellow, anxious to be played with and petted once you get by his initial shrinking back from an extended  hand. He is far more agile than his sister who is slightly shorter and notably heavier than he is. She has a normal physical conformation while her brother is lean and muscular with a metabolism rate twice hers, so he eats twice what she does. They both at the best of times tend to be a little neurotic as very small dogs often are.

Since the incident (which remains a mystery to us) when he suddenly reacted in the strangest way, heart beating furiously, trembling, heavy panting and leaping to the highest point he could attain as though to remove himself from ground level where something occurred to give him pain and/or frighten him, it's been a long, slow process trying to understand what occurred and how to go about rehabilitation.

He's on medication to relieve pain and reduce emotional stress and his veterinarian believes he has located the nexus of the problem -- Jackie's nervous temperament complicated by an acting-up sciatic nerve -- we've seen steady improvement. He's more willing to play with Jillie now, more assertive about getting about and definitely excited when he sees we're preparing to take him and his sister out for a ravine trudge through the forest trails we're all so familiar with.

Yesterday was the temperature-mildest day we've had in a month, about 9C, heavily overcast and humid. We met up with four dogs being walked by two young women, none of whom we'd ever before seen. There were two Goldens and two Bernese Mountain dogs loping along one of the ridges as we hauled ourselves up a long slope of one of the many hills in the ravine. The Goldens were silent and friendly as Goldens tend to be, while the other two, though also friendly, emitted constant deep-bellied, gruff woofs that Jackie and Jillie were happy to echo.

It's a truth beyond denial; we are inveterate, congenital complainers. About the vagaries of the weather, that is. We complain incessantly, to the point where we no longer realize that's what we're doing. But it would seem that our complaints do not go unnoticed, after all. Some entity, some powerful force, it seems, overhears us. And so, we swoop unexpectedly from bitterly cold, unseasonable temperatures and scads of snow, to the reverse.

We're in a surprising spate of suddenly-temperate weather conditions. With or without the sun, with and without wind, the cold has turned in on itself, scolded by some source, and has decided to return next month, which is a mere five days into the near, very near future. Suddenly, we've got 6C days, and instead of snow, rain is falling.

Mind, it's making an awful mess of the snow that had fallen previously when we were complaining the loudest, while at the same time enjoying the look of a frozen, white landscape, and disporting ourselves through the forest paths with glee at the presence of the snow -- particularly area dogs fortunate enough to be walked through the forest transformed into a thing of absolute eye-popping beauty.

Those mild days and the warming sun filtering through a foliage-absent forest canopy, interspersed with rain events have done a fairly thorough job on that sparkling, fluffy white snow. What hasn't melted has been turned to ice. Slippery as all-get-out, requiring cleats firmly strapped over boots as a guarantee of stability on a treacherous surface. And the ground that had established a good, deep freeze, has begun to thaw, turning the now-absent-snow portions of the trails into gloppy dark messes.

But the milder weather has also brought out hikers whom we haven't seen for awhile, tantalized by more moderate weather. Most have remembered to strap on their icers or cleats. Most are somewhat aged like us, and cannot afford a fall for the wreckage it guarantees on stiffer aged bodies. And so we met up with an old hiking friend and his somewhat more limber canine companion, a Rottweiler of very temperate disposition.

While he ambled along companionably with Jackie and Jillie, we and our friend walked alongside one another and discussed all manner of items from the stresses some of our friends are under, the complications of aging and how it affects one's (resigned) mood and ability to do things physically never given a second thought to when we were young, to the desirability of getting another set of tire rims for the ice tires you'd be foolish not to manage to afford, driving in this place where we live, during the cold and icy winter months.

When we finally parted company, he going off in one direction, and we in another, both headed for home, we were surprised to see a young girl negotiating her way down through the rock-strewn shoulders of the creek as we descended a hill. Soon we came abreast of the girl, to note that she was accompanied by three other children, around eight or nine years of age, we guessed. She appeared to be their leader, a few years or so older than they.

They were all equipped with buckets and pails, scooping up creek water and dabbling about in it, sometimes pouring what they had scooped up into their pails. One of the little boys left the scooping to his companions. He was busy himself under the archway of the giant pipe that now funnels the creek along the bottom of the ravine floor, merrily shouting incomprehensible phrases, for the gleeful pleasure of hearing the sound boom and return like an echo chamber.

They were looking for fish, they informed us. And no, they didn't find the water too cold to dabble in at all, they assured us, though two of the little boys had taken off their boots and their socks, rolled up their pant legs and were ensconced in the stream itself, giving serious attention to the task at hand, filling their pails with little minnows.

We haven't seen our old ravine friends Barry and Sheila for ages. But we knew where they were. Late last summer, they had bought a rustic cottage on a remote lake in Quebec, a fixer-upper that Barry intended to spend time working on. They have three border collies, and we knew from the stories they told us about their three charges before summer's arrival and their absence that the three dogs would be enjoying their summer there, and reluctantly return in late October.

We'd been keeping an eye peeled for them in late fall, expecting now and again to see Carter, the more adventurous of the three, prowling around in the forest before his litter-mates showed up, as usually occurs. And then either Barry or Sheila, and sometimes both together would come along, but hadn't seen either or any of them until today, when we left for our daily afternoon walk through the forest trails with Jackie and Jillie.

Jillie was first spotting Carter, then Jackie joined in the rousing yelps of welcome, and then the other two came along, and finally Barry. He told us he had been around to our house but we hadn't been at home. He'd tried knocking at our neighbour's door to the right of us, and again no one answered, but then knocked at our left-hand neighbour's door, and there gained the information that we were alive and well. He was, he said, really glad to see us. And we felt good seeing him as well.

Sheila, he told us, was in Florida for a few weeks, accompanying their daughter's mother-in-law, who has a condominium there. So he was in charge of the household and their three border collies. He was excited to tell us about the birthday gift Sheila had given him, a genealogy test. He showed us the results on his smartphone. Surprising him, no less than us. He'd always assumed he had a British background, even though surname connects with Eastern Europe.

When he was a year old, his biological father had left him and his mother to fend for themselves. This was in Saskatchewan, and because his mother's parents lived in the same city, she moved in with them, and he was partially raised by his grandparents, who had indeed come to Canada from Poland.
Years ago, he told us, he was curious about his father, and tried to find out details that his mother would never divulge.

What he discovered was that his father was known to be a violent man, a man with a police record, considered to be a danger to others, and who was known to use lethal weapons. His father's parents once when he was still under ten years of age, had happened to run into his mother and asked her how their grandson was. Fine, she told them, he's doing just fine. They wanted to know if they could see him, and she told them they weren't interested in seeing him when he was two, three, four or five, so she saw no utility in putting them together at that juncture.

She had remarried when her son was three, and the man she married became the real, functional and loving father that our friend had been deprived of when he was a baby, an infant, and a young boy. He had never wanted to contact  his biological father and now that he is himself in his mid-50s and knows  his father is still alive, he has no interest in seeing him at this stage of their absent relationship.

The results of his genealogy was 17% English, 55% East European, 14% Baltic and 14% Asian. He was nonplussed, but there it was. But that's not all, he started receiving communications from other people he had no idea shared any of his genealogical background. And those contacts were really intriguing, giving him more information about himself and his family background than he might ever have imagined.

We might never have imagined that Barry had an Eastern European background. Barry is the quintessential Canadian. He was a tactical unit member of the RCMP, and has always focused on strength training, running, bicycling, extremely action-oriented until a series of direly threatening medical conditions, some relating to the physical and psychological stress of his work hit him.

But now that we do know that, it seems strange in a way that we have that in common, since my father and my husband's parents also originated in Poland. The world is becoming smaller as we age.

Our beloved ravine represents a wide-ranging series of hills and valleys. To traverse the ravine is to stroll along forest trails that intersect and bring one abreast of climbing challenges, never more so than in winter when snow and ice complicate passage while producing beautiful landscapes. It is a landscape, moreover, that is geologically not only diverse but unstable. Built on Leda clay, known for its fragility and instability under certain conditions.

Such as when too much liquid is introduced into the clay base which then turns the clay into a kind of liquid itself, prone to collapse. And collapse it did, mightily, a few years back after a very wet spring that inundated the area with more snowmelt coincidental with copious rainfall alongside than the Leda clay could cope with, so its molecular structure changed, and the hillsides gave way, taking the forest trees with it, to collapse onto the creek running below through the forest at its base.

The beavers that lived upstream were delighted. They swiftly re-located themselves to make the most, in the brief time before remediation took place, of a new pond that developed when the creek was unable to forge its way onward, pooled instead and a small lake began to accumulate the dammed-up water. Eventually the beaver were relocated and heavy tracked machinery was brought in to excavate the muck that had once been a vigorous forest hillside. Stabilizers were struck down to bedrock, and a refashioning of the hillsides began.

It took months for specialized remediation construction crews to fashion an alternative to the landscape chaos that had emerged, and when winter arrived they still weren't completely done with the gigantic project. Once spring returned, work resumed, though not at the intensity of pace that was formerly required to address the stabilization of a hill where private housing stood nearby, leading to fears that homes would be threatened with collapse.

Many things were changed in that localized part of the ravine. Among other things, a new entry to the ravine was devised, off a main street that intersects the ravine. The forested ravine that regular woodland hikers like ourselves thought of as our very special, and often very private getaway eventually became of interest to others who had never before  entured into this shared treasure, and we were soon joined by more casual hikers who limited their excursions onto the trails, while in their own way appreciating the opportunity to share its recreational and aesthetic natural presence.

Today when we were out in the ravine with our puppies there was a  young family with a five-month-old infant in one of those modern, rugged strollers that can go almost anywhere -- at least the flat, upper portions of the forested trains. The baby looked quite content, its bright eyes searching everywhere on the unfamiliar landscape.

And soon afterward Jackie and  Jillie were introduced to two small dogs, one their size another about double their size, but enjoying the opportunity to be out in a natural setting, and with them two little boys of around six and eight who obviously delighted in their own good fortune to be there. Bright and curious they ran about happily, asked us a few questions, then awaited the arrival of their mothers, poking along behind.

There are times when the colour emanating from the stained glass windows my husband installed decades ago throughout our home are just so entrancing I feel I must capture their essence in a photograph. Invariably, I never quite manage. They just don't appear as compelling, the colour shadings don't come out true, and it's not close to possible to capturing the effect the windows with their shifting, living colours invoke in your aesthetic when you view them directly.

We've lived with them for so long that it is sometimes easy to overlook their presence. Then suddenly we 'notice' their presence and are drawn to standing before them. We don't need a sunny day to illuminate the windows and their colours; because the glass is ever-changing its shadings, it doesn't matter if it's an overcast day, if dusk is falling, or even if the exterior is dark along with the interior; the glass seems to live and express a presence uniquely its own.

So on occasion I take photographs and examine them and try to find the living spirit of the stained glass in them and it simply cannot be done. The photographs are pleasant, but they aren't capable of reflecting the fluctuating presence of the colours, how they cast their essence into a room, the manner in which they impress upon our sight and emotions, much less the atmosphere they convey. The glass, imagined creatively, cut and shaped in jigsaw-puzzle pieces, assume their life on assemblage. They become a permanent landscape of the imagination, the permutations of light and shade enliven and intrigue, demanding our attention.

But they're not by any stretch of the imagination comparable to a true living landscape, the one we in this family escape to daily for a brief period of a tramp through our nearby woodland. The forest itself invokes in us a type of spiritual appreciation of nature's benevolence, irrespective of weather conditions or the seasons.

Our two little dogs accept the landscape in a way far different than we do, but at the core of our interior beings we are reactive to nature in a way similar to theirs. A peace descends upon our spirits, we feel comfortable and relaxed, and our minds become occupied with a type of serenity that only nature can provide to her creatures. Nature offers her landscapes for our comfort and all we have to do is be aware that the landscape is there and prepared to welcome our presence, however temporarily.

We had full sunshine today after a briefly overcast morning, and a return finally to weather conditions more consistent with the time of year than we've been experiencing the past month. The result is the steady erosion of the early snowpack. Each time we venture out into the ravine to ramble the forest trails there is less and less snow on the forest floor. Yesterday the conditions were slushy but today, though the daytime high is more moderate, and there is an absence of the high wind that swept through the forest yesterday, at ground level everything has frozen fast.

So, despite the relative moderation of temperature we would have been rash to abandon the icers we have strapped over our boots. Their utility was more than proven today as we made our way through the still-snowed and increasingly icy conditions on the trails. One young woman with a boisterous young dog she kept on leash contemplated her chances of remaining upright while her young and large and therefore muscular dog pulled her every which way in an excess of vigorous excitement, and decided after all not to risk going downhill in her boots that lacked the assurance of balance our
icers gave us.