I'm forever looking for inspiration in baking new desserts. I have a memory-inventory of long standing of all manner of end-of-meal treats but occasionally I like to surprise my husband with something novel. I found something novel in the lifestyle section of our local newspaper which publishes recipes weekly, some tantalizing, but they're in the minority. This one was for a kind of coffee cake, though they didn't call it that. I'd baked a somewhat similar cake decades ago and our children really liked it, so there were frequent repeats. What differentiated it from other cakes was that you take an entire orange and pulp it for inclusion in the cake which understandably comes out flavoured with orange and beautifully moist.

I didn't actually use the recipe I cut out yesterday, other than to substitute quite a few of the ingredients and prepared the cake dough quite differently than suggested. It's the kind of cake that requires a bit of fussing about with; I crushed whole cloves in my little mortar and pestle, used an old food processor to pulp up the orange, used a grater to first grate off the peel so use along with walnuts, brown sugar, butter and cinnamon in the topping, and substituted Becel margarine for oil and left out the baking soda, just increased the baking powder. The finished product looks good, smells good, and had better taste good tonight.

With my 83rd birthday fast arriving, my husband absented himself after breakfast, foolish man, to hazard life and limb in the crush of Christmas shoppers, to look around for a birthday gift. It's useless to tell him I don't want, don't need anything, that I'm bursting with possessions; off he went. I remembered last night to prepare a birthday card for my sister; our birthdays are two days apart but four years distant.

When my husband did eventually return we prepared to take Jackie and Jillie out for a walk through the woods in the ravine up the street from our home. Earlier they had trotted after me while I did a little bit of cleaning. When I hauled out the little stick vacuum in the bedroom they were beside themselves with exuberant joy, chasing it, barking at it, threatening it, leaping onto the bed and frantically barking down at their buzzing, sucking enemy, and a jolly war was had.

The temperature had risen all the way to -9C, with barely a whisper of wind, from the overnight -17, so they were good with just boots, no socks under them this time. Truth to tell, once we went out of the house it seemed to me, despite full sun and no wind to speak of, that it felt as icy as yesterday with its high of -15C. Still, we were all out and legging it on the forest trails and that's what was important to us.

Jackie and Jillie are usually well ahead of us but always in sight-distance to be recalled when they get too far ahead. Which is fine for some areas, but somewhat complicated in the twists and turns. They shrink with dismay when we slip their sweaters on after their collars, in preparation for our trail hikes, but without their winter coats and boots they would never be able to withstand the icy cold that rises from the snowpack, much less that when they go off trail as they frequently do where the snow is looser, it packs into their bootless pads and up their legs.

This morning, after breakfast, because the sun was cornflower blue and the sun beamed down through the patio doors they clamoured to be allowed back out on their own. Jillie in particular as an inveterate and passionate sun-lover. They both stood on the deck in the sun just as tiny Riley used to do, and wallowed in its warmth. Until the prevailing cold finally seeped into their consciousness as their legs and their ears began to freeze and back in they came.