Just as well we made the most of yesterday's sunny atmosphere because that wouldn't happen today. Though the morning started out very cool yesterday, by the time afternoon rolled around the sun had done a really credible job of making us think we had been transported magically back to summer. Under the bright, hot sun we were able to shed our jackets and enjoy the warmth. And we did for hours in the backyard, Jackie and Jillie happy to be out there, as long as we were.

Several days back the light fixture at the back of the house over the deck had given up its ghost. We do have a light standard beside the deck, and another light fixture at the front of the larger of the two garden sheds, but we like to have plenty of illumination when we take Jackie and Jillie out to the back in the evening hours to enable us to keep track of them and clean up after them. So yesterday my husband went out to Home Hardware for a replacement light fixture and it took him awhile to remove the old one and install the new one. But perfect weather for it.

During that time I filled up several giant compost bags with cuttings from the back garden and the rock garden. Work that will go toward the eventual total garden clean-up before it gets too cold to want to do it all in one fell swoop in preparation for winter. It's a start. I prefer doing this in the fall and always have. In the spring there's no big early-season rush to clean up the garden, it's all been done months before, just in time for snow to begin falling. So the puppies were out following me about, getting in the way occasionally, and soaking up the sun in the process.

Today they're little shut-ins, venturing out to the backyard under duress of need while rain pours down. We woke this morning to a dark house interior and a dark exterior, rain coursing through the landscape. And then, as so often happens, there was a lull. And we prepared to get outselves out, rainjacket clad, to the ravine before breakfast. Approaching the forest entrance it's always a bit of a shock to look ahead into the tunnel of the forest trail beneath the forest canopy, which appears so forbiddingly dark and brooding.

It takes little time however, for our eyes to adjust to the dusky atmosphere and once within the forest it no longer appears dark. Yet the dim light casts a strange light of its own on the landscape and details hidden to us when it's clear and bright, even in the shadow of the forest canopy, are revealed in great detail under these heavily overcast conditions.

Rain dripped from above, foliage releasing their burden, as we sauntered through the trails, though we had chosen a briefer circuit for the morning under threat of an imminent increased downpour. The creek was well swollen with the rain that had fallen overnight and into the morning hours, spuming its way along its course, the sound roaring in the soft background of the silent forest. 

More sightings of Amaanita muscaria, nibbled  here and there, with fully intact newly-emerged versions in contrast to the aging mushrooms with their flattened caps and evidence of munching wildlife helping themselves to the psychotropic properties of the fungi. No sight of the squirrel population this morning, though, since they like to keep dry and rain began to sprinkle down lightly on us halfway through our circuit.

We did see a small toad, as dark as the oak and poplar foliage from last fall which had turned charcoal grey over the generations of accumulated leaf mass. Our curiosity impelled the tiny creature to leap away, the only giveaway of its presence those leaping movements; standing perfectly still against a backdrop the same colour as its skin, it would never be seen.