Barely a whisper of a breeze slipped through our open bedroom window last night to relieve the smothering heat of the last few days. But the open window also gifts us with morning birdsong, and that is not to be missed when robins, cardinals and song sparrows challenge each other to a sublime orchestration of early morning paeons to summer. The lilac perfume from our neighbour's old lilac bush completes the lavish feeling of being pampered by nature as it still continues to infiltrate our bedroom and bathroom with its divine fragrance.

No question but that we would be propelled instanter out the door and into the ravine up the street with Jackie and Jillie on this perfect morning. While the relative cool of night still lingered. And the morning breeze authoritatively moved the air about. Before the full impact of the day's glaring sun took effect. No chance of rain today, not a cloud in the sky. Until, on our return from our hike through the forest trails, there appeared on high a few wispy-white frail streamers, white-on-blue.

Our neighbours at the top of the street whose backyard abuts on the ravine entrance were already out in their backyard with their elderly little Yorkie, Newton. So that was our first, brief stop, Jackie and Jillie excited to see their little friend. Then the descent into the ravined forest. The tree canopy swiftly embracing our presence, sending out tentacles of air to settle around us the still-cool early-morning forest atmosphere.

We came across an almost-expected micro-landscape of tiny mushrooms forming a fungal colony around the almost-ground level remains of an old tree stump, long dead. Every summer those tiny mushrooms appear, are there for a day, swiftly disintegrate and by the following day are no longer to be seen. Through the course of the summer months they will re-appear and disappear a number of times. Nature's long-term plan of expiration, decay-decomposition and renewal.

Eventually, as we made our way along from major trail to interconnecting trails the heat of the broiling sun over the canopy penetrated, the air became denser, cloistering, heating our bodies with the energy of movement added to atmospheric conditions. Best to gauge one's progress to these conditions; you climb the hills a little slower, gain the height, rest a moment or so before proceeding at a slower-to-moderate pace. Still, our bodies have finally acclimated to the series of 30C+ days, and we feel fine. Also well exercised by the time we climb the last hill and emerge once again onto the street.

Then it's time to poke around the garden before breakfast. Taking inventory of what should be done later on. And later on in the early afternoon we go out to do some light gardening work, cutting back the vegetation of the Icelandic poppies after their bloom, the flower stalks of the bloom-spent irises, pulling up the now-scrawny-scraggly forget-me-nots, bleeding hearts, weeds, there's always something to do.

And watering. The peony clumps in the backyard look a little peaked, they're thirsty, no rain for over a week. The roses, flourishing with June bloom, also like to be watered, so for the first time this year, Irving put on the sprinkler for the backyard. I used a garden watering pail to mix up some flower fertilize for the hibiscus shrubs. 

Then we sat out on the deck for an hour under the awning, talking, reading, relaxing. Jackie and Jillie try to accommodate themselves to being out for a prolonged period on the deck, not their favourite occupation. They leap onto the loveseat where Irving is seated, and alternate that with the glider where I have seated myself facing Irving, but in neither place can they find comfort. It's just too hot and uncomfortable for two little black dogs, even out of the sun. We have a bowl of water out for them, but in the end they prefer going back into the air-conditioned house to relax in their own version of cool comfort.

I do another tour in the backyard before we retire eventually to the house interior ourselves. The roses and the peonies look a whole lot happier after having been watered, their colours brighter, their petals perkier, their foliage darker and slick still from the water. I drink it all in with my hungry eyes and allow my little camera to select where it will capture some of those eye-framed photographs of nature's beauty.