Another one of those hazy, lazy summer days when it's so hot, the sun so bright, lassitude is the order of the day, and even birds don't feel like vacating their perches in the garden trees when you venture too close inadvertently. Our wonderful old Magnolia tree is now packed tight with its huge pink blooms. And the wind is doing a fine job of sending many of the petals on a mission to cover the ground below.

When you're working outside as we were this morning, the wind is a friend, cooling and compassionate. My husband mowed the lawn for the first time this year. And our grass, as usual, leaves much to be desired. Grubs seem to favour our lawn in particular. Could be the Japanese beetles attracted to our roses and other vegetation in the garden just don't want to move too far from a good feeding source, and consequently lay their eggs in the soil to mumch on the grass roots when they're in the larvae stage. We've had a disagreement with them for years, and they always win.

Yesterday I had spent several hours on an even hotter day that soared in the afternoon into the 30C-range, so by comparison, today's 26C has been temperate. I had planted most of the annuals after my husband finished filling all the pots and urns with gardening soil. And when I was finished, I gave everything a little bath. Today they had a much more intensive bath after I completed planting what was rest of them and that should do them for a few days in the absence of rain.

The flowering plants we were able to acquire were not the usual ones that we generally select for the pots, but they'll have to do since we have few other options. We were unable to procure  many of our usual choices in pot fillers, so the usual architecture, texture and colour will be absent through a paucity of offerings. No Canna Lily, dracaena, wave petunia, bacopa, ivy, and much else that we tend to design those micro-gardens with. But we did have begonias, pansies petunias, wax begonias, impatiens, ipomoea, marigolds, and geraniums.

I've been left a little short, with several urns yet to be planted, but the opportunity will arise at some time in the next little while to acquire more annuals. And I can always cut away a piece of one of our many hostas to grow in one of the large clay pots, and plant nasturtium seeds in others. The one plant we're missing is the tall, stately zinnias with their huge, bright pink blooms that I usually feature in the very front garden bed. There is ample time to yet do everything we want to, in the garden. Meanwhile, the perennials are straining forward, lilies and irises, tree peonies and roses and clematis all beginning to fill out and produce flower buds.

Jackie and Jillie wandered about the garden behaving themselves nicely while I was distracted. And when I had finished watering everything that was planted this morning, it was time to go off to the ravine for our afternoon stroll through the forest trails. First order of business now is to run cold water and fill their water bottle that comes complete with a little drinking trough. That done, there is minimal fuss in preparations compared to the winter months, and we're off!

In the shade of the newly leafed-out tree canopy it was cool, aided and abetted by a brisk wind. The puppies were still grateful for a few shady stops to linger as long as it took to slate their thirst before we carried on. The bright green of the new foliage that filled out so amazingly quickly that it takes our breath away, has now restored the forest to its verdant graces.

We came across a few new clumps of Jack-in-the Pulpits, those delightful little secretive-single-petal flowering plants. When we saw something unusual and were inclined to briefly stop to examine them at closer range, each time a kamikaze battalion of mosquitoes would zero in to envelope us, faces and any other uncovered skin area, just too tempting for those tiny bloodthirsty monsters. So we maintained a good, steady pace, by necessity. Those pestilential creatures of a mischievious nature are detested for good reason. The true sour note in an otherwise melodious symphony of nature's devising in a forest landscape.