We're well and truly entrenched in another heat wave. Where not a day has gone by for the past week under 30C, most edging up to 32C and beyond. Up to 35C on Friday, with high humidity, we're informed, as the province has issued a heat warning. So humid and overheated last night that at midnight the temperature had fallen only to 26C. But then, rain rolled in, with one heavy wave after another consuming the night-time hours.

When we woke at half-past six, it was to an utterly drenched world. The rain had finally stopped but rain filled every minuscule loop in the screen of the sliding glass doors. The sky was clearing, but still looked unsettled, though a few rays of sun began sparking up the droplets lingering everywhere. We decided to get back in bed to snooze for another hour, and Jackie and Jillie were all for it.

There are many people living without air conditioning and in this weather with these temperatures it's difficult. Truth to tell before we had air conditioning ourselves we just did a mental shrug over the heat, as part of summer, which it is. Our daughter wouldn't thank you for air conditioning, preferring to enjoy her summers as is, as we did for most of our lives. Our granddaughter has a different opinion altogether. The city has opened a number of cooling centres where people can go to cool off, as well as a few outdoor area pools.

It is now official in Ottawa as it is in Toronto and soon Montreal, that people are expected to wear protective face masks when entering public interiors. Most people have been doing so on their own initiative in any event. Commercial, retail establishments and social centres are expected to post signage, suggest people unmasked wear a mask, and the public transportation system requires mask-wearing, going to the trouble of handing out disposable masks for people who enter the system unmasked.

When we finally set out for the ravine at eight, walking up the street to access the ravine entrance felt as though we were making our way through a tropical forest, our bodies rebelling against the moistly cloistered effect. We could see nor feel no movement of wind either on our skin, our lifting our eyes to the forest canopy as we approached.

And then the somewhat cooler confines of the ravine welcomed us. My husband tarried briefly to pluck a few ripe raspberries for Jackie and Jillie and then we descended into the ravine. The creek was running full and muddy, the faintest curtain of mist rising over it. A song sparrow was singing somewhere nearby, and otherwise there was an eerie stillness over the landscape, as though the heat that had descended despite last night's rain, had clamped a damp lid tightly over everything.

Jackie and Jillie, so eager normally to rush ahead, when it's hot and humid like this, tend to lag behind. Which doesn't stop them from sniffing here and there, and Jackie from regularly lifting his leg to leave his calling card in response to the many others they detect when they sniff enquiringly at the vegetation beside the trail or for that matter any height-prominent object that seems to welcome the attention of passing male dogs.

It's a good year for much of the vegetation growing throughout the forest. The perfect combination of sun, warmth and rain, after a cooler-than-normal spring. Last winter's snowpack left just the right amount of snowmelt to irrigate the forest, giving it a good start, albeit a late one given the winter cold reticent to leave as spring arrived.

We've never in other years, seen so many sumacs popping up everywhere. And thimbleberry bushes. And ashes struggling to reassert their presence after losing out to the emerald ash borer. We noticed a rare elm looking in pretty good shape; young and vigorous, and had to look twice to make certain we weren't mistaking it for a hackberry in view of the fact that Dutch elm disease had devastated the stately old elms of this region.

Roaming about the trails through the forest we were quite aware of the heat, but not devastated by it, thanks to the deep shade of the overhanging trees. When we offered water to Jackie and Jillie neither was interested. And when we arrived back home they performed their usual little patrol through the garden at the front of the porch, before we hauled ourselves indoors for breakfast.