There certainly has been a noticeable rise in food prices, particularly fresh fruit and vegetables. Correct that; not fruit, just vegetables. To be expected at this time of year. But lettuce at $5 s head? Seems a bit excessive, but I don't care for lettuce anyway; our salads wouldn't miss out without lettuce, though my husband likes it. So it was $10 for two cauliflowers, indispensable. Fruit, on the other hand, continues to be reasonably priced; soft fruit seems always to be on sale, blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, even if they're now deficient in taste. So much so that I'm bypassing them. In favour of hard fruit.

 And, of course, soft fruit can be had frozen at a much better price, but best used in baked desserts. I'd bought bananas, grapes, pears and apples and persimmons, and we've been enjoying the persimmons, my husband particularly likes them' we ate them daily for breakfast while living in Tokyo. And today I thought I'd bake a pear pie, so pear pie it was. With lots of complementary crystallized ginger in the filling, to give it a bit more oomph. For these pies I always use the pottery pie dish our  younger son made for me about twenty years ago. He's made other pie dishes but they're so elegant I hesitate to use them. This one has been well used.

Turned out to be yet another in a series of sombre-dark days. Heavily overcast, but no precipitation, though it continued to appear imminent. Yesterday, because the snow is well on its way to melting once again, awaiting a new infusion, we didn't bother putting cleats over our boots and regretted that decision once we were on the trails. Today we strapped cleats on for firm footing because the ascents and descents on the hills in the ravine have been slippery.

We weren't long into our circuit when we climbed up the second of a number of hills we meet on our way to completing the usual hour, hour-and-a-half circuit. And because Jackie and Jillie were straining at their leashes, focused on something behind us, we turned to watch as a young woman carefully took mincing steps, thinking about each foot placement before committing to it, carefully negotiating her way uphill.

We stopped and waited for her to crest the hill. Mostly because when we do climb those hills I usually stop to rest briefly before carrying on. It wasn't hard to notice she was pregnant, and we began a conversation with her. She was young, dark-haired, pretty and personable. We initiated that conversation to alert her to the fact that if she intended to continue hiking through the ravine trails she'd do best to acquire a set of cleats.

She knew that, she laughed ruefully, saying she wished she had a pair, and did we know where she could get them? Well, just about anywhere, but we recommended Mountain Equipment Co-op, and that she could just order them on line. Alternatively there are other sources, and we went on to emphasize how dangerous it could be slipping, sliding, falling, crashing in her condition. In our 'condition' of agedness as well, we laughed with her. She thanked us and continued on, promising she would acquire cleats.

 On our part, it seemed that she resembled quite a few young pregnant women we've seen lately, hiking on their own or with a companion animal, with whom we've stopped briefly to talk. Some were aware of the hazards inherent in traversing physically demanding terrain like the ravine, and took the necessary precautions, others were receptive to our advice, like this young woman. 

My mind switched to recall mode and I remembered just such a young woman we'd come across for the first time two years back. At the time she was jogging on the trails, and with her was a husky dog. We saw her on a number of occasions and realized she was in the early stages of pregnancy. We struck up a friendship with her and came across her occasionally, and then her due date came around and a month later we saw her pushing one of those overgrown-wheeled baby strollers meant for rough terrain and she introduced us to her baby girl Leonie.

After that we saw her again on a scant few occasions, once with her husband. There's a part of the ravine that isn't hilly, it's really part of the ravine forest, but not the ravine itself, and it's on that forested plateau that we tended to see her, perhaps a handful of times; once when the baby was a year old. A half-hour later, we saw the husky trotting ahead and behind the dog was our young mother and her little girl. While the young woman pushed the stroller along the trail, the toddler walked beside her mother, a stuffed toy-cum-blankie firmly grasped to her chest.An alert, precocious little girl that her mother told us has developed 'a mind of her own'.