The month of August is certainly living up to its unpredictable nature. On the other hand, if there can be said of this month that anything about it is predictable it is that it is an amalgam of just about everything that nature can conjure being thrown into a general maelstrom of whatever rises to the surface being certain to dominate on any given day.

We've had a little bit of everything, from extreme heat to melting high humidity, ferocious winds including micro tornadoes, violent thunderstorms and voluminous rain events. And we've also had lots of sun, cooling breezes and days that remind us we're soon to begin approaching fall in the coolness of their day-time highs and night-time lows.

 

Last night was one of those very cool nights following afternoon thunderstorms which have become a given these days, when the bedroom window thrown wide open invited cool, fresh air to flood the bedroom to the extent that it invited us to throw a light blanket over for perfect comfort. By the time we woke this morning the temperature in the backyard read 16 degrees. And if that isn't perfect for an hour and more roaming about forest trails, nothing can be.

Mid-August, and we're beginning to see more wan leaves littering the trails. Not a lot, but it isn't yet fall and we would expect to see none. Under oak trees shattered and bitten-into-pieces by ferociously greedy little squirrels are acorn remnants littering the ground. Squirrels are obviously feasting well these days, leaving us to wonder how many of the acorns are being prudently stored away for winter. 

 

These days we've been taking another route toward the end of our circuit, where the forest briefly recedes and makes way for a clearing bisected by the creek that runs through the ravine. A slightly different landscape occasioned some years back by a hillside collapse taking with it the trees growing on the slope. And there we look about at all the wildflowers that we find there and nowhere else within the forest with the exception of goldenrod, pilotweed and fall asters.

There, we come across bittersweet vines winding about tall upright stalks of vegetation such as pilotweed, the vines now dangling with ripened bittersweet berries. Exposure to full sun makes all the difference to these and other plants. Down by the sides of the creek itself there is a well established border of tall jewelweed growing in abundance, unreachable unless you have the dexterity and confidence and balance of a mountain goat, but in the near distance we can see the bright orange orchidlike jewelweed flowers glittering in the sun.

And there, in the overgrown forested field are black-eyed Susans, some entirely yellow with their dark brown bullseye centres, others with petals half gold, half dark orange complementing the dark bulging centres. These forest gardens of nature's have us spellbound in their diversity and the brightness of their presence, from the light purple of clover flowers to those of purple loosestrife here and there among the grasses.

 

Jackie and Jillie are so accustomed to following us through those forays in search of the presence of wildflowers, it's become part of their hiking ritual as well, through default.

The robust presence of thistle also flowering discretely one bulb at a time, with the giant of the species, the bull thistles, attracting bees, butterflies and hoverflies, as do the bright, deep pink of the Himalayan orchids now profusely blooming on the ravine hillsides companionably near the yellow-headed blooms of the pilotweed that has insinuated itself thoroughly along the forest trails.

 

And then we arrive back home, where cultivated flower species await our appreciative notice. Flourishing in the garden and in the garden pots we have long been accustomed to planting in spring, in preparation for long bloom periods throughout the summer months which we derive such pleasure from.