I began yesterday morning with the thought that I'd bake a blueberry pie for dinner dessert. The intention was intact until I realized we had quite a lot of cherries in the refrigerator. No plans are carved of stone in this kitchen. I began de-stemming and de-stoning cherries. They're beautiful at this time of year; large, appealingly red and sweet and juicy. But you can eat a whole lot more of them baked in a pie than you can otherwise. It's boring work to stand by the sink halving cherries, extracting the stones and popping them into the compost pail. But it didn't take all that long.

I had a few strawberries left over and added them to the cherries, then cooked the lot with sugar, a tiny bit of cranberry juice and cornstarch until I had a thick, transparently shiny cherry-infused filling. To which I added butter and almond flavouring. While that cooled I gathered flour, salt, Crisco vegetable shortening, lemon juice and cold water for the crust. I used my little rolling crimper for the lattice top, filled the bottom crust and it was all baked in 28 minutes in my countertop convection oven.

And it was utterly delicious, a fitting end to a Friday-night meal of chicken soup and rice, diced roasted turkey breast in a cauliflower salad reflecting a changed menu for the hot summer months. I had also mixed together a bread flour for use later in the week. Instead of the usual bread dough I used semolina flour from Italy touted for pizza crust, and it'll be interesting to see how different that crust will turn out.

It's a bit warmer today, some sun, a low cloud cover and a blessed breeze, so kind of perfect for puttering about in the garden. Phlox is in bloom now, and the morning glory vines are beginning to put out their bright little blue trumpets to glow in the sun. There's always something to be done in the garden, puttering about, watering, trimming, pulling weeds. Weeds that uncannily have a tendency to mimic the appearance of plants they nestle up to, camouflaging their presence. 

In the early afternoon we set off with Jackie and Jillie for the ravine, the sun burning through the clouds and some clouds off in the distance approaching east that looked as though they might drop rain. In the event, through our hour-and-a-half foray through the forest trails, the sun emerged now and again though we were under the shade of the forest canopy, and we had no rain.

The bright pink blossoms of the Himalayan orchids, so plentiful this year amidst the yellow pilotweed blooming at the edge of the forest is a lovely introduction to the forest interior where not enough sun penetrates for the invasive plant to colonize the forest interior. But its display on the margins of the forest is really spectacular, as is that of the Black-eyed Susans which have spread so spectacularly this year.

It's strange how things change in the forest, subtly so that most people would barely notice. Red (and white) baneberry shrubs that were once so commonly seen on the forest floor are now in short supply. Since they're poisonous that's not exactly a tragedy, but they're also beautiful, at least the resulting red berry bunches are, and we miss them. Of the few that can be seen, we were surprised to see that despite their 'baneful' properties some animal has been finding them irresistible...