Yesterday was our granddaughter's 24th birthday. It's a good many years since I hauled her on my back as an infant every morning before breakfast through the ravine trails, introducing her at an early age to the sight of squirrels and trees, the sound of birds, and the fragrance of green vegetation. She took some of her first steps on the uneven ground of the forest landscape when we'd stop to rest, haul her out of the baby backpack. Today, on our trek through those same trails we came across someone unknown to us doing the very same thing with his child.

Our daughter, living an hour-and-a-half distant from where we do, in a rural setting, has seen another infestation of tent caterpillars on the trees on her country property. Her small community is in yet another year of drought. While we, not so geographically distant, have had more than ample rain events, mostly heavy and brief downpours through thunderstorms, while she has seen none. Weather systems can be widely international and they can be narrowly local. She fears her apple tree, once hale and productive, may not last another year if these conditions continue.

Contrast that to the condition of the trees in the ravine nearby our house where we daily access forest trails, and where everything green is thriving. Including the trees on our own small urban property. Where I spent some time this afternoon on our return from our peregrinations through the forest trails, using loppers and secateurs to cut back some of the overgrown foliage.

Morning presented us with yet another uncertain weather day; heavily overcast, windy, a tad warmer than previous days with their afternoon and evening thunderstorms. We feel safe and secure during thunderstorms, although we would much prefer not to be caught out in the forest when a thunderstorm approaches. We have been caught in light rain this week, but the forest canopy served to keep us fairly dry. That wouldn't happen during a thunderstorm.

In today's newspaper, an item out of New Delhi caught my eye. It described that during the current monsoon season in India, thunderstorms are rife and violent, and yesterday the death toll for a single day of lightning strikes was amazing, killing 120 people in northern India. In one state alone, Bihar, 95 people died, hit by lightning, while working on farms, feeding livestock, in fields planting fresh crops; children among them.

We may be fixated and health-concerned over the worldwide threat that SARS-CoV-2 presents, and take due precautions the best we can, but a proliferation of deadly lightning strikes is not among our concerns; yet another reminder of just how fortunate we are in an uncertain world at a troubling time in history.

Out in the ravine with our little dogs keeping an eye out for us, making certain that dogs prevously unknown to them cannot threaten us, our two mouse-sized aggressive little bullies make life a puzzle for large, well-behaved dogs in their threatening poses; the conventional Napoleon-syndrome of small facing off against large. As they did earlier in the day when we came across a standard-size poodle new to our acquaintance.

We were treated to the random sight of bright red wild strawberries, tiny as they are and well hidden under other low-growing vegetation on the forest floor winking out to us, some ready to be plucked and shared with Jackie and Jillie, sensitive to the prospect of something sweet and juicy to eat. They know all about ripe fruit ready for picking and enjoying throughout the growing season.

Eventually, all the bright pink blossoms of the thimbleberry shrubs now decorating the landscape will also be ripe and ready to pluck with much appreciation when the flowers have turned to luscious fruit, otherwise known as purple raspberries. Among all that vegetation crowding the forest floor there is also cowvetch in bloom twining its way around other plants; attractive but not edible.

Usually Saturday isn't a day that brings many people from the larger community out into the ravine to access forest trails from entrance points on other streets throughout far-flung neighbourhoods. There were a few other people out on the trails, none we have known for years as regular trail hikers. Under lockdown conditions where parks and other community gathering places were closed people desperate for fresh air and exercise opportunities took advantage of the sprawling ravine and forest and they're still coming through, albeit in smaller numbers.

I always find it irresistible when we return home to turn my little digital camera on the garden, anticipating the colourful photographs that will result, taking huge pleasure from the recording of areas of the garden, while I'm performing a mental 'to-do' list of things needing to be done -- mostly at this point, tidying up, tying up, cutting back, dead-heading spent flowers, watering the garden pots. All functions of a well-spent day.