No doubt about it, summer is a magical time of year. It's sheer exhilaration to just step outside the house any time without having to bother with extra clothing against the weather. There's nothing quite like surrendering to whims and behaving extemporaneously any time the mood strikes. Our lives are scripted enough, as it is. Routine helps us to maintain ourselves without too much inner conversation as we go through motions by rote and dispense with the necessary to actually think and just react autonomically as it were, performing dutiful trivia that make up part of each day.

For us, the outdoors is an extension of the comfort we feel at home. And walking into the backyard or the gardens at the front of the house is sheer relaxed pleasure. Of course part of that drop-everything-and-out-you-go freedom is also associated with habit since the frequency has much to do with requests on the part of Jackie and Jillie to be taken outdoors.

Hold the door open to their anxious little faces and encouragingly say, 'out-you-go!' doesn't cut it with them. They're not fond of emerging from the house unescorted. Whether they have to use the premises as their bathroom, or they have an urge to race after a chipmunk, harass a squirrel, inform birds that they're on the property by sufferance, they must have us present.

On occasion they may be impetuous enough to forge ahead outdoors on their own, forgetting their reliance/dependence on our presence, but that doesn't happen often. And when we're out without them that's another story altogether; it's punishment for some misdeed though they can't imagine what they might have done to have elicited from us such cruelty as to sequester them indoors on their pitiful own recognizance.

Today turned out yet another perfect day for a hike through the forest trails in the ravine. Usually, when they sense that we're preparing to embark on a forest foray, they trot after us excitedly as we pull out harnesses and collars, and any paraphernalia we mean to take with. Great enthusiasm ensues when we replenish our take-with store of doggy treats. There's no spontaneity involved in our preparations for a hike. 

Off we set this afternoon on a quite cool, quite windy, occasionally-sunny afternoon. We walk up the street with Jackie and Jillie on leash, and the minute we turn into the entrance trail toward the forest, off come the leashes and off go our two little guardians. The bright green atmosphere of the forest envelopes us and we descend from street level into the ravined forest. The creek is running high from recent rain events, and it's muddy from even more recent dog romps through the water to cool overheated paws.

Jackie and Jillie have no interest whatever in cooling their paws in the creek; they mount each of the bridges in turn in a businesslike manner to traverse the stream in its winding meandering along the forest floor. It's summer and there is so much to see there now. Baneberry shrubs now boast brightening-red berry clusters that no one should ever eat, since they're poisonous.

Daisies have been in bloom for quite some time now, flourishing wherever the sun penetrates, and now, amazingly to my way of thinking, Black-eyed Susans are also beginning their bloom time; much earlier than usual, in my opinion. And joining them along the banks of the creek and forest pathways are ragweed  plants. Everything this year seems to be earlier than normal, and in the same token, far greater in numbers, their presence not only more abundant but healthier and more attractive  in appearance.

Never before have we seen fleabane in such broad colonies standing tall and bright with flowering heads. Most years we see random bits of the pretty little flowers here and there along the trails in the forest; this year they've proliferated, grown much taller and numerous. We're also seeing vegetation that is completely  unknown to us, some quite beautiful. Apart from which we can see that alien invasive species like the balsam Himalayan orchids are aggressively claiming new territory. That this is turning out to be a bumper year for wildflowers and other vegetation is an understatement.