There was a tornado alert for this area last evening, along with thunderstorm warnings. Earlier in the day a tornado had touched down close to Kingston, at Napanee. There have been eight tornadoes this year but nothing like the damage caused several years ago in a northwestern part of the city. Years ago a micro-tornado had ripped through the ravine, taking down a succession of elderly pine trees. The corpses, a decade on, still remind us, lying on the forest floor gradually covered over by vegetation, how grand they had once been with their great gnarly thick trunks and piercingly-green needles.

The thunderstorms struck in the wee hours of the night, leaving behind generous evidence of just how copious the rainfall had been. Augmenting the torrential rain of the afternoon. We intended to set out for the ravine before breakfast as usual, but the sky was rife with dark clouds clamping us into another rainy day, as we read the symptoms. We decided we'd wait until one particularly belligerent and bruised-looking cloud passed, to weigh our further options.

And then we just got impatient and decided we'd go out and that was that. In the meantime, the cloud drifted on, no doubt dropping its load of moisture somewhere on the trajectory of its skyborne journey but not in our direct vicinity. All the rain we've been having, soaking the landscape thoroughly, then drying surprisingly swiftly under the influence of the hot summer sun and emphatic winds have encouraged the presence of fungi.

For the past several days we've been seeing bright orange -- rather lurid in fact -- fungi appearing here and there on the forest floor. At times resembling orange rind, other times with a glistening appearance, looking quite like someone had lost their breakfast. Photographs fail to do justice to the fungi which appear to the naked eye both colour-appealing and shape-disgusting. And alongside the trails, thistles are flowering as well, with bright pink blooms, the bull thistles in particular.

The puzzle of the absence of apples on the wild apple trees as opposed to an abundance of berries on the thimbleberry and raspberry bushes baffles us. As does the absence of those bright red berry clusters typical of most summers' red baneberry shrubbery, strangely missing this year. We had seen a few intact and ripening specimens a month back, but they too are now gone. They're poisonous to humans but evidently not to all mammals, so possibly they've been eaten just as all the hazelnuts that we had seen ripening several months back are also now nowhere to be seen.

The clouds gradually dissipated, and the sun was free to begin warming the atmosphere and brightening the landscape. Although by afternoon we're supposed to be in an average summertime temperature zone, even 26C with full sun tends to be hot. So we were glad to have been able to get out with Jackie and Jillie in the morning, rather than setting out due to unsettled weather conditions, in the afternoon.

At home, the garden appeared vivaciously iridescent in the sun, all the greens vibrant and translucent in appearance, the sun seeming to set them afire with light. In the backyard I staked up a little tomato volunteer that had appeared a month ago and has since grown robustly in the garden. Where the seed came from that inspired the tomato plant to begin growing amongst the hostas, roses, clematis and Harlequin vines I'll never know. I'm awaiting some signs that it will soon begin flowering, it's certainly mature enough at this point.

More of those familiar old Tiger lilies have appeared here and there in the garden, separate and apart from our Day lily beds. I cannot ever recall planting them, but there they are, single plants, hale and beautiful in three different locations. Like the tomato plant, I consider them to represent 'volunteers' that just happened along, making themselves comfortable in the garden, not bothering anyone while adding to the general confused clutter and colour in the garden.