In honour of a rare cool morning, we lingered in bed longer than usual, Jackie and Jillie behaving as though our bodies in horizontal rest are a playground, pummeling us and licking us to death until we finally roused ourselves to meet the day. No hurry this morning to get out into the ravine for our daily tramp-about, for today dawned cool and with a decided lack of humidity, so we tarried. A leisurely breakfast, a bit of tidying up, and off we went.

We'd decided between us, (failing to ask the opinion much less seek the permission of our two little co-trampers) that we'd extend our hike today, given the pleasant weather; no rain in the forecast, a high of 24C, and a sustaining breeze. When we first began our daily tramps through the ravined forest decades ago, we would venture far on many occasions from where our start was, accessed from our street entrance to the ravine.

Thirty years ago we had more energy and stamina to work off a longer circuit that took us a good distance from our home. But occasionally we venture further -- not nearly as far as once we did, but further than our usual hour-and-a-half circuit. Some of the old trails we were back then so familiar with don't exist any longer; they've slumped into the ravine. Others have become too crowded with dense spreading shrubbery. And others are still usable but don't appeal to us now, given their steep gradients.

But over on that side where a much further part of the community we live in can be accessed once out of the forest, there is also a spread-out flat portion, a meadow of modest-sized trees, shrubs and a proliferation of wildflowers and vines that need sun to thrive. So the vegetation there can be quite different than what we generally see in 'our part' of the forest, where the sun is shielded by the forest canopy.

As we swerved away from our usual circuit, a half-hour or more into our ramble this morning to descend a hill and approach an old bridge fording a low gaping fold in the forest floor, Jillie balked at crossing the bridge; she just refused to set her little paws on it. Jackie seemed  little suspicious at the unfamiliarity of this new route; obviously neither recall that they've been there before, not often but they have had the experience.

Usually they're bright and cheerful when they're introduced to different areas than what they're accustomed to, but it took them awhile today to appreciate being in a landscape their memory eluded.
Finally, they began looking about with more interest, and so did we. The greater sun exposure there results in a greater appearance of wildflowers and fruit-bearing trees with riper produce. So there was ample colour amidst the predominating green.

There were patches of yarrow, crabapples beginning to ripen. We saw chicory, Queen Anne's Lace in abundance, cowvetch, and flowering milkweed. And we also saw sunflowers robust and tall in flower whereas those in the part of the forest that we're familiar with, are nowhere as well advanced. We came across chokecherry shrubs dripping with clusters of bright red fruit.

And further along, as we made our way through the area, we came across the expected sight of large old grapevines. They've spread quite a bit from the first time we saw them so many years ago. Now, vines are stretched over a much larger area, draped over trees at the forest edge, and dangling from them unripe clusters of wild grape (vitis labrusca). There was wild raspberry in abundance everywhere, giving us the opportunity to pluck some for our greedy little pups.

After we doubled back and were once again in more familiar surroundings, we came across a young man whom we know as a dog walker. He enters the ravine regularly with his charges, all very well behaved dogs. We don't see him all that often. There is another dog walker whom  we've known for far longer and no longer see but on the rare occasion, who walks dogs that on occasion behave badly; one of whom attacked someone else's small dog necessitating costly veterinarian services.

This young man was walking, among dogs we've seen with him before, a massive Newfoundland, a mild-mannered but somewhat overwhelming presence. We passed each other several times and on the second occasion I asked whether the large-breed collar that someone had picked up off the trail and attached to a tree branch belonged to him. It did. Evidently it became lost on a stroll he took with the dogs yesterday, so he was glad to recover it.