The third wave of COVID-19 in Ontario began with a prescient warning from some scientists that it could turn out to be the worst yet. And they were right. Case numbers are skyrocketing, they've vastly surpassed the numbers of the first wave and perhaps it was more predictable than merely guesswork. The emergence of the variants out of the U.K., South Africa and Brazil have had their effect and continue to affect numbers since they're all considerably more infectious than the original, which was bad enough.

Toronto's hospital situation is so critical it has asked other hospitals not struck as badly to take some of their cases, so patients have been transferred accordingly out of necessity, including to Ottawa hospitals. Not that hospitals in Ottawa have been spared an overabundance of cases; they too are struggling to accommodate the increased hospitalization numbers and they're well over 100 percent capacity, the ICUs beyond crowded. There are simply not enough medical personnel available to care for all the new patients.

Given this situation and the cancelling of 'elective' surgeries, my old school chum was fortunate to have her heart valve replacement surgery proceed a month ago. She was in an ICU for a week, then transferred for another three weeks of medical care to the Baycrest Centre in north Toronto. Now she's home, has been for several weeks, but unable to really do anything physical. She was using a walker to get about, no longer anywhere near mobile for the past year or two. 

She is signed up to receive personal health worker care for one hour twice weekly. She is now 86, anything but robust to begin with, and now a semi-invalid while she's in recovery mode. She had tried to persuade the woman she employs to clean her apartment to come in weekly instead of monthly, but she had also asked the woman to sleep over and to help care for her. Little wonder the poor woman handed in a notice to my friend that she could no longer work for her.

My friend's daughter who lives in an apartment nearby offered to sleep over with her mother for one night only. Her son and her son's girlfriend, both now unemployed, live with my friend's daughter in an apartment smaller than my friend's. I asked my friend why they couldn't live with her for a short period and help her while she gains strength, but evidently such is not to be. 

People live lives fraught with complications, not the least of them emotional dissonances with members of their families, and everyone has their own singular problems to deal with. I sometimes feel as though we're living on a small disconnected island of comfort and unconcern when I hear about, see or read of the problems that some people face. Life, though, visits episode of life-challenges to all of us from time to time.

Another quiet, dark and very wet day for us, the third in a row, and more to come. And nor can we complain since up to the present, April has given us wide-open, sunny and warm days, one after another and we've taken full advantage of them. Yesterday afternoon we managed to get out with Jackie and Jillie wearing their raincoats just like us, in a brief lull in the rain. And lucky for us the rain held off until we returned home. This afternoon we carried their little jackets in our pockets just in case the rain started up again while we were out. It did, but not until we were heading back home again.

I decided to bake something fairly simple for dessert, thinking of date squares. Then it occurred to me to use oatmeal. not oat flakes in the crust, so I whirred large-flake oat flakes through a coffee grinder I keep for use other than for grinding coffee beans, until I had 2 cups of oatmeal. I added a tsp. of cinnamon, a 1/4 c. dark brown sugar, and a 1/3 c. of Becel margarine to the oatmeal and so, had the crust prepared. I cooked the 2 cups of dates in water until they were soft enough to mash, added 1/4 c. of butter, 1 tsp.vanilla and then a cup of raisins, so there was the filling. Before I put the squares into my little convection oven for a half-hour at 350 F, I sprinkled the top crust liberally with chopped pecans. Done!

It was cool enough at 6C and a light wind, to wear light jackets. I stuffed the puppies' rainjackets into the pocket of mine, and off we went to the ravine. The sky brooding grey, we saw the sun at several intervals wanly attempting to penetrate the cloud cover, but with little effect. The creek is once again full of rainwater and rushing downstream. The trails are muddy as was expected, and in some places puddles have formed over the saturated soil.

The rain and the wind have brought down scads of red maple blossoms to litter the forest floor. This is something we see every spring; first the spectacle of bright red little clusters of flowers high in the branches of the maples, then gradually, the flowers drop, their bright red punctuating the drab sameness of the early spring ground. These are the 'male' flowers, the 'female' flowers aren't red, but white or green, and cross-pollination results in clusters of seedlings taking the place of the fallen flowers, on the branches.

Concluding our hike, and just before the rain began again, we crossed the creek for the last time in our circuit,and saw the Mallard drake still cruising about, up and down the creek close to where we assume his busy mate has been sitting on eggs where they've nested. Life goes on.