The garden beds and borders look pretty dismal now. They were becoming fairly bleak in appearance in any event, after all the cut-backs and trimming they've undergone over the past few weeks, but yesterday's work really finished them off. Sad, so sad to see everything go. In particular those flowers that were still bravely carrying on. But I knew that the -5 forecasted for last night would turn them into mush, so out they came.

One thing was left to carry on, the little carpet rose in the garden bed closest to the road, furthest from the house. There are new buds waiting to burst into blossom, and join those stalwarts already in fine bloom. I cut back the other roses, but not this one. It will truly be left for the last. 

And I decided a gustatory reward would be in order Saturday evening, so since I already had bread dough made the day before, and refrigerated, I'd use half of it for a crust for a pizza. And on went tomato paste, herbs and spices we mix up to always have on hand, then mozzarella, Parmesan, mushrooms, bell pepper, tomatoes and pepperoni. Our microwave oven has a pizza oven underneath the microwave and it does pizza to perfection, a nice crisp crust and well-done top. We enjoyed it.

Today, yet another very cold fall day, with a  high of 6C, and a brisk wind. Earlier in the day when I had Jackie and Jillie out in the backyard, it was sunny, mitigating the wind. Jackie found a grape tomato that had fallen off the tomato plant when I was gathering them and then composted the plant and he had a fabulous bit of fun with it, tossing it about, chasing it, running away when I 'threatened' to grab it away from him. Tomatoes are one of his beloved vegetables. Eventually he ate it, and that was that.

When we were out in the ravine later, Jillie had a few treats more to her liking when we met up with an old friend we hadn't seen in ages and her Boston bull terrier, a beautiful dog. We'd dressed Jackie and Jillie just as we had yesterday, in their woolly warm sweaters. By then the sun was on its way to retiring. On our walk up to the ravine entrance it was still in evidence, with skeins of white clouds beginning to occlude the blue sky.

It has been a truly icy day. Not only the temperature, but the wind probing icy fingers trying to invade our outerwear. Even a brisk pace through the connecting trails failed to work us up to a semi-warm state against the  cool insistence of the wind. But it was a beautiful day regardless, and a great time to be out and about, revelling in the landscape, now almost fully denuded of foliage.

There are still some bright yellow and red -flagged leaves holding out on immature trees, but the bulk of the more mature deciduous have released their foliage for good now. And the leaves that litter the forest floor that were just a few days ago flaming red, green, yellow and orange, have lost their brilliant hues, and are now turning into an integrated brown flecked with yellow. 

Back home again, we checked on the status of the little rose shrub. It had survived last night's hard frost really well; hardly any difference between how it looked in the summer blooming months and how it now appears. The blossoms are cheerfully defiant and beautiful. If they can view the imminent arrival of winter with such equanimity, then so can we...!