The sky is darkly overcast. It's a windy day, but thankfully mild. It isn't destined to last; tonight the temperature will plunge to -9C. So we were grateful this morning that the weather has offered us a final day to finish tidying things up on our property for oncoming winter.

Although dark clouds kept sweeping across the grey sky, the rain has held off up to early afternoon. Before that, however, our first order of business was to gear ourselves up in rainjackets and get Jackie and Jillie out to the ravine for a trail hike. Jillie was willing, Jackie somewhat less so. They're both seeing the veterinarian that we now rely on to look after their health issues early tomorrow morning. Both are long overdue for cosmetic reasons, to get their hair groomed since the 'spa' where we take them that is connected to the veterinarian clinic was too booked up back in August to schedule them two months' hence as we usually arrange for them.

And we seem to have been hit with a double whammy this time; both our puppies could be feeling better. Jackie's mysterious illness is not resolving, though his symptoms are somewhat less alarming at this point. He remains far from normal behaviourwise, though his appetite remains pretty robust. Another thing we're grateful for is that they tend, both of them, to sleep soundly through the night, enabling us to do the same.

Yesterday Jillie suddenly came down with symptoms leading us to believe she may have impacted anal glands. Her rear end is suddenly very sensitive, and she has turned from an active little dog to a much more quiet one. Since they are both under the weather so to speak, we tend to pay far more attention to them, as though to reassure both them and ourselves that all will be well.

So out we went this morning. I kept Jackie on leash, and Jillie was free to wander alongside us over the sopping trail. The foliage littering the forest floor hasn't been colourful, crisp and dry for over a week, thanks to the incessant rain events. Everything is damp; the tree trunks themselves haven't had an opportunity to dry out between rain events, and appear dark and stark against the now-monotoned landscape.

We had been signalled by the weather; yesterday morning there was hard frost on all the roofs. The garden that had held out for so long was no more able to sustain life-and-bloom under such adverse weather conditions of impending winter entering in the wake of late fall.

After breakfast, my husband set out for the gardens. The annual fall emptying of the garden pots. I had earlier removed all the plants growing in the pots and urns, and now the really hard work of digging out the soil was his task. A difficult, time-consuming one, where the enriched soil that had encouraged the growth of annual flowers non-stop during spring and summer and early fall, would be excavated, piled into wheelbarrows-full and trundled over to the garden beds and borders.

The urns will be left in place where they have been permanently stationed since my husband designed and constructed the hardscaping of our garden about twenty years ago, excavating deep, replacing clay soil with gravel, then fine stone dust, and finally pavers and 'stone' blocks that he chiselled into shape to create the permanent beds and borders to be filled with garden soil, their contours faithful to our original, less formalized garden. The pots will be gathered together and covered with a protective tarp over winter, under our deck. 

I had joined him outside to complete my own tidying up, gathering up the last of the collapsed vegetation and again collecting massive amounts in compostable bags to add to the municipality's collection for their compost piles, in turn available to city residents who use the finished product for their home gardens, as well as the city's own use for compostable material for city parks. And pulling up and parking stakes and ornaments in the garden, for storage in the garden shed.

Jackie

Our ailing little puppies hunkered down on the sofa. We left the doors open so they could peer out at us from the glassed screen doors and know that we hadn't abandoned them entirely. As we worked, occasionally scrutinizing the sky in anticipation of oncoming rain, we watched one storm after another shuffle across the sky pushed by the atmospheric wind, none yet entering our zone to end our work before we were finished.

Jillie