Today is Saturday, a relaxed and relaxing day, no chores for me, though my husband is out at the back of the house on a strangely steamy day of unanticipated warmth and full sunlight, painting the sills of the house windows. Taking advantage, he tells me, of the warmth when it's best to tackle outdoor painting. I was busy yesterday in the kitchen primarily, baking and cooking. Decided to bake carrot cupcakes for a change, and they were spectacularly good. Funny thing, along with the grated carrot, raisins and walnuts I had snipped quite a bit of candied ginger into the batter, and its presence was not very noticeable.

As for dinner, early on in the day I started a chicken soup took cook, its aroma filling the house with promise, to be served with rice, as a preface to the main course. I'd breaded chicken breasts, mixed up a potato pudding and prepared cauliflower to be baked in the oven alongside the former two, and everything was nicely timed; the chicken moist and tender and flavourful, the potato pudding well baked and crusty (it had twice the baking time of the chicken, along with the cauliflower), and we quite enjoyed a robust dinner on a cool evening, that amazingly gave way to the summer-like day that was destined to follow.

And we were set to enjoy as much of this day as possible along with Jackie and Jillie, themselves more than ready to jaunt off into the ravine to see what another day would bring in discoveries in the forest enclave. Because it's Saturday we anticipated coming across a more-than-usual number of other hikers, but despite that this has been an extraordinarily warm day for the season, we weren't disappointed that scarce few others were out on the trails.

Yet, it's amazing how many people over the years you get to know and become familiar with, introduced to one another through exposure on the forest trails, regular hikers like yourselves. You may not see them for a long period of time, but when you do come across one another again, the greeting-old-friends syndrome kicks in and you find yourself standing about chatting for much longer than you would imagine possible, until your canine companions find it beyond irritating and communicate to the inattentive humans that it's time to be off...

The forest undergrowth has begun its fall retreat; bracken is beginning to shrivel and disappear, foliage is turning yellow to match what we're starting to see above in the leaf mass surrounding the trails winding through the forest. Every day now does bring a new edge of colour to the landscape, the march toward fall, weather aside, clearly visible in glowing colours of gold and red. It's mostly the effect of the maples and poplars, but birches and now beeches too are joining the colour brigade.

And while the underbrush is shrivelling, fall asters are in their glory. Even the more nondescript types with the uneven petal arrangements and pale colours of washed-out mauve and ivory have come into their own. Though they can't compare in size and colour to the large pink-blossoming asters, they still make an impressive show.

At one juncture as we reached the top of one of the hills we clamber up on our circuit, Jackie made a side-trip into a rarely-used side-trail and began barking. We soon discovered that he was nonplussed, absolutely perplexed by a peculiar aberration in the landscape. Two bicycles neatly parked together while, presumably, their riders went on afoot down the steep gradient below to do a little bit of adventuring. They'll certainly see more on foot than they ever would speeding through the trails on their bicycles.

Down below other trails lead off to further stretches of the forest and the creek that runs through it. It's where beaver from time to time establish their presence and begin industriously to fell some of the many poplars that grow in the forest. Occasionally wildlife authorities will respond to someone's complaint at their presence and take them off elsewhere, likely to nearby Gatineau Park's vast wilderness areas. We'd prefer they be left to the landscape they migrated to, there's ample fuel for their lodges, dams and appetites right here.

We meandered off to one of the trails latterly less travelled, a bit deeper into the ravine to stretch out our time out in the forest a bit longer. Like seeing old friends, re-acquainting ourselves with other areas of the ravine and forest is always pleasurable, and there's always something different to see. On this occasion it was a colony of tiny orange 'pills' of fungi on a decaying tree trunk long fallen over onto the forest floor.