Capricious as she is, in one of her kinder spurts of second-thoughts, nature has permitted the unseasonable frosty nights of late to recede, replacing them with early-fall temperatures. But it's too late, unfortunately, for the garden. It was already exhausted from summer efforts to maintain a perky, colourful front, and we experienced one or two frosty nights too far for total recovery.

Viewed from a distance, colours look bright and cheerful, lending the garden an overall appearance of late summer, a domestic landscape that makes me think every time I see it, how much different it will appear in another month hence, when I've completed putting it to sleep for another year, disassembling everything to bring some order to what is fast becoming a disheveled riot of vegetation long past its prime.

Not that this is anything different from one year to another, but these good-byes and au revoirs don't get any easier, while the winter months seem to get colder and longer. And, come to think of it, disassembling the garden too gets more difficult. More time-consuming and physically demanding, work that was onerous when I was 50 and all the more so now at 80-plus. But not yet completely daunting.

A perfect fall day, today. The sun dropped by briefly but had an appointment elsewhere, leaving us with heavily overcast skies, wind and an overall dark atmosphere. But reasonably mild at 16C, so no need to complain. As we approached the forest environs walking up the street with Jackie and Jillie, there's the little shock of realization that the inevitable occurs with amazing speed.

The colour changes that we had noted yesterday had definitely changed overnight; greater patches of colour and deeper shades of autumn are steadily appearing. The sight of the landscape in its transformative appearance can be breathtaking. Not only for the beauty it manifests, but the speed of the transition, since we're not quite yet prepared psychologically for winter's arrival. That plaintive inner voice asks of us "where did summer go?"

True, we'll have ample time left before it does arrive, and the transition leads to the intervening months of October and November when we go from the height of the display of brilliant foliage  falling to the forest floor, and the sight of leaves blown from their treetop heights by a demanding wind, appearing like early confetti-like snowfalls in October -- to the dismal cold and wet picture of bare branches in November and tree trunks reaching to the sky like black skeletal forms in mourning for the life they've lost, preparing to settle into the deep sleep of winter.

Today, though, we ambled along the forest trails with Jackie and Jillie, sharing the landscape with squirrels rushing about everywhere busy with the vast abundance of pine and spruce cones promising plenty of cache-food over the cold months to come. Little groups of robins fly around the trees close to the stilled creek, and overhead the occasional sound of migrating geese.

Maples have already turned brilliant red, a Christmas-colour contrast to the still-predominantly-green mass of the forest foliage, though poplars have begun to change to the bright, soft yellow they attain in full fall flush. Earlier, poplars discharge leaves that turn blush peach and pink. The forest's large pink fall asters, the last of the various types of asters to bloom, are now proudly displaying themselves;  unlike the appearance of the earlier-blooming asters, these are dazzling in colour, perfectly symmetrical and conceitedly showy.