Just as well we spent so much time outside yesterday. Although it remained heavily overcast all day, the temperature was just right and we felt motivated to piddle about in the garden. It's actually beginning, ever so slightly, to resemble a garden. And I have great pleasure in imagining it returned to its summertime green with bright splashes of floral colour. 

 Irving related to me what happened yesterday afternoon when he went out to pick up remedial lawn soil to redo our pathetic lawn. He passed a few likely sources, but decided on the garden shop at Canadian Tire because there was hardly anyone there. He first went to the cashier kiosk to pay for what he wanted; mostly bags of garden soil, grass seed and sheep manure. As she totalled his bill and he paid, she put in a call to the station where everything is stacked waiting to be picked up, to alert them that a paid client was coming and they were to assist in packing everything into our truck.

After driving the truck up to the station, Irving waited for someone to appear, but no one did. So he began collecting everything himself, hauling over the bags and arranging them in the box of the truck. Fully 35 bags of dirt, 25 litres each, and when he had finished, he realized that he'd forgotten peat moss. So he left the truck there, walked back to the cashier's station (everything is outside, the store itself is closed under the provincial lockdown) to pay for peat moss. While he was there, the attendant who was supposed to help customers load up their purchases came over, demanding to know whose truck this was, and why was it full of bags, and had they been paid for?

The cashier told him everything was fully paid for, and the customer would be requiring several bags of peat moss. Where were you? Irving asked of the attendant. No one called me, he responded. And Irving snorted, telling the fellow he stood right beside the cashier when she called in for assistance, telling the man he was a complete idiot. He was so fed up, he forgot about the peat moss he'd paid for, got into the truck and drove back home. The cashier had looked none too pleased with the officiously querelous manner of the attendant.

Rain began after dinner, coming down heavily, and when we awoke this morning it was an absolute deluge; perhaps not of biblical proportions but trying hard. And it continued all day. Not that it kept the squirrels and our daily-visiting raccoon friend away. Rain or not -- or more particularly because it was raining, the requirement to seek solace through food, just like us, is imperative.

Under the heavy rain the garden too is being nourished. I can actually see the difference, day by day. The backyard magnolia, much smaller than its front garden cousin, is beginning to open its blooms, too. The tulips are getting a bit battered, but they'll recover as soon as the sun finds its way back to its now-abandoned trajectory in the sky.

Jackie and Jillie don't really mind that we're not going out for our usual ravine hike. They've been racing one another around the house, instead. As long as we don't overlook the dire necessity of seeing to it that their afternoon vegetable salad is duly served, all is well with their world.

I decided to bake a cheesecake for tonight's dessert. There's lots of 'comfort' in cheesecake. And though the day started out with a 11C temperature, it slowly fell during the course of the day, just like the rain. It will go down to freezing overnight, so it feels chilly. From yesterday's comfortable warmth of 16C, to 0C tonight. So I baked a lemon cheesecake, and made a lemon curd to spread over it, and the end product has all the qualifications for a comfort treat.

With the house so dark, given the heavy overcast and continual rain, our stained glass windows glow beautifully. There isn't a window now in this house that hasn't been supplemented by stained glass. Irving's creative streak got full play over the years in drawing landscape cartoons that would become the stained glass windows, shutters and doors we've lived with over the years.