It was so cold and windy yesterday and overcast that the house failed to warm up as it usually does when sun streams through our windows at the west-facing back of the house. A new front was entering though overnight when the temperature remained at 13C, instead of dropping to 5C as it did the night before. But when we got up this morning it was to a cold interior and glancing out the windows we could see the trees in the backyard bending over in the force of a strong prevailing wind.

We dressed for our early morning excursion based on how we felt and what we anticipated as we left the house. And were pleasantly surprised to find, once outdoors that the wind was a benign one, and the atmosphere had warmed considerably from the day before. And though we haven't had any rain for two days, the forest floor remained saturated. A friend we had come across during yesterday's trek through the forest told us that the gravel on the trails proved dangerous to her the day before, causing her to slip and fall, injuring knees, shoulders and back. Clearly, I'm not the only one susceptible to tumbling.

Morning also brought a pleasant sight in my face not, after all, succumbing to raccoon syndrome. No black eye, though I felt certain it would be inevitable after I had bashed my forehead against the tiled corner of the bookcase top in the kitchen yesterday when I swooped down to place the puppies' breakfast bowls on the floor for them. The angry black bruise overtop the swelling bump remained where it started, on my forehead, and only a light grey colour extended downward. No uneasy laughs when coming across friends who tend to quip about my husband giving me a shiner.

When we'd been out in the ravine yesterday it was in the early afternoon. The light was different, the sun at a distinctly lower angle in the sky, turning toward its fall circumnavigation of the heavens. Partial sun and shade, like today, but different. In yesterday's prevailing light more detail was noticeable on the forest floor as a result of the different quality of the illumination. Colourful fungi clamoured to be noticed. They were quiet today, hardly noticeable unless one really searched them out.

We did, in the end, see some that were different than those we'd previously seen, however; nature always loathe to disappoint the searching human eye. And we were surprised to see bright, colourful berries dangling at the end of a False Solomon's Seal. Most summers we see quite a few of them, but not this summer. They've been in short supply, just like the red Baneberry on the forest floor, and apples on the wild apple trees, for some unknown-to-us reason.

We're still waiting for the large purple fall asters to make their full appearance. The plants have long since set their buds, but they're not too anxious to flower yet. They're never first in the lineup of the various types of asters in any event. They and the clustered sprays of the most minuscule of the asters appear in no hurry to come into flower, while the more common white and pale mauve middling-sized types are blooming in abundance up and down the hillsides.

Jackie and Jillie met up with a very shy Labrador puppy who was not quite certain whether they might be potential playmates or hostile aliens. He was half the size of a Golden Retriever that just moments earlier skipped by Jackie and Jillie focused on closely trailing after the young woman he was companioning, running through the trails as a fitness exercise.

At the top of one of the hills to ascend to the spine of the ravine where one looks down to another of the ravine's bridges, Jackie and Jillie espied some approaching prospects to be introduced to. And when they ascended the hill reaching our position as we waited their arrival, two little black Schnauzers introduced themselves, a foursome of little black dogs; two Schnauzers and two Poodles, with a lot to discuss between them until finally their human companion arrived, huffing and puffing, to pick up the trailing leashes of her little charges.

When we wound up the morning's circuit, we came abreast of a yellow-and-pink display of brightly flowering Compass plants and Himalayan orchids. One resembling the most common of all flowering vegetation, the other from a family of the most exquisite flowering plants; one indigenous, the other considered to be an insidious intruder. Both, in their own way, beautiful.