As though to match the daily news reports of steadily increasing COVID cases, we appear to be stuck again in a succession of cool, windy and rainy days. Quebec hit a new high of over a thousand cases yesterday and Ontario followed right behind with over 700. So, the sky is weeping for us. We cannot afford to weep, we must maintain vigilance and hope for better days. 

As for us, it isn't difficult to make the most of these days. October is upon us now, the month our oldest and youngest children were born. We sent off birthday cards and cheques. Our older son will be 60 this month, he was born when we were both 23, and had been married for five years. Can hardly believe so much time has passed.

Since I had quite a bit of fresh strawberries, I decided to bake a twisted-lattice-top strawberry pie. Prepared the filling first, by slicing the strawberries, and mixing four cups of them with 2/3 c.granulated sugar, 1/4 cup of cornstarch, and 1/4 cup of cranberry juice, simmering it all together in a saucepan until thick. Then I add 1/4 c.butter and 1/2 tsp.brandy flavouring. The alternate is to pile it all into a pie crust, cover it with the top crust, and then while baking the fruit mixture bubbles over, running over the rim of the pie dish. The way I do it by preparing the filling first means there isn't any wastage of the filling, and the crust doesn't get soaked.

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 It's a bit fiddling to twist the strips of dough to make the lattice top, so it's a good idea to roll the dough out a little thicker than usual. The pie dough consists of a cup and a half of never-bleached flour, 1/4 tsp.salt, 2 tsp.sugar, 1/4 c.butter, 1/2 c.Crisco shortening, 2 tbsp.lemon juice and roughly 4 tbsp.cold water. It's baked at 350F for about a half hour in my counter-top convection oven.

And then off we went to the ravine, since the rain had finally petered out, though the sky kept alternating between a light-coloured cloud cover to the threatening dark appearance that usually augers rain. So we wore our rain gear. And off we went into a totally soaked forest landscape. The creek full and muddy in appearance, rushing downstream, carrying discarded bracken and foliage.

More colour changes in the trees. The less attractive of the asters looked perky despite having been inundated by heavy rain, but the larger, beautiful pink asters looked quite devastated. At one juncture beside the trail we saw a newly-blooming pussytoe, right next to a nondescript aster on the forest floor; cousins, both of the aster family.

And then, close to one of the ravine entrances a fair distance from our own in an entirely different neighbourhood of the larger community,  we once again came across Max, the apricot poodle who was busy treeing squirrels, then barking furiously at them for evading him. It isn't clear what he would do if he ever came face to face with a squirrel but my bet is that he'd head off in the opposite direction, just as the squirrel would.

And then along came a tiny Chihuahua, trailing its leash, anxious to join the fray and curious about Jackie and Jillie. So they did a little dance of how'r-ya! together for a while becoming acquainted and the four small dogs presented quite the picture of canine friendliness in a little mob action. The tiny dog's coat was similar in colour to Max's, and like Max, it's presence too seemed to melt into the prevailing colour of the forest floor, steeped deep in fallen leaves, most of them yellow.

We felt, as we ambled along, that it was just as well we'd put on an extra sweater under our rain jackets because at 11C, with wind it tends to be fairly cool. We had stood about for a bit chatting with a few other people who happened to come along as people often tend to congregate close to the  forest entrance frequently deigning not to go any further into the forest, and everyone was talking about Thanksgiving and whether or not they might be able to share the day's events with family this year.

Truly, a world transformed.