I sometimes wonder that people who take walks in nature fail to observe the minutiae of nature unfolding before their very eyes. It is constant and daily, likely it can be reduced even further, but our senses fail to register changes and the appearances of new things on such a small time-scale. From day to day, though, we can manage to notice new things appearing before us.

But that's the thing: how many people take the few seconds to stop and peer more closely if needed to realize that changes have taken place? What's more to the point how many actually care? For most people it's the actions they take that are important to them, thinking in terms of expending energy by doing certain things (running and bicycling as examples) and in the process exercising muscle, not mind. There are no calories to be dropped by exercising the mind.

On the other hand, exposing the mind to new circumstances and happenings tends to broaden the mind in the sense that new experiences and realizations expand one's knowledge and sometimes spurs keener interest in what is 'unseen' because it goes unnoticed. And if it isn't noticed then it isn't worthwhile focusing on since it just doesn't exist. We tend to look for fungi on the forest floor, because they can be colourful and fascinatingly shaped.

Today there were several revelations open to our notice, when we entered the ravine with our puppies, Jackie and Jillie. Much of our time hiking through the forested trails is spent watching them, in actual fact. For various reasons; to see that they behave, which they often do not in their frequently-practised hostile attitude to other dogs, designed to get them into trouble, and to guide them and protect them and attempt, fruitless as it is, to teach them better modes of manner.

But we also look around us, at the trees, the bugs and the birds, smelling the fragrance of wildflowers, hearing the buzz of insects and the bright lilt of birdsong, the wind soughing through the forest canopy. Today on one of the rails of one of the bridges -- of all places -- we saw an owl pellet. It isn't often we see those expelled rejects of feather, bone, and other inedible parts of creatures consumed by owls, and it's more likely to see them lying on a path, not a bridge rail.

We noted dangling red cherries are now ripening on the wild cherry trees in the ravine. They're much smaller of course than cultivated cherries and undoubtedly lack the sweetness, but they will serve birds well and they're beautiful to look at. In some places alongside the forest trails there are wildflowers that grow nowhere else in the forest. Among them wild sunflowers, growing to a good height and producing flowerheads very similar to cultivated sunflowers. We saw the first of them beginning their bloom today. These sightings tend to give  us quite a bit of pleasure. They may be repeated year after year, but each time they occur, they delight us anew.

There was ample opportunity to pick ripe raspberries for Jackie and Jillie's consumption, on this heavily overcast day. It was sprinkling, but not heavily, when we set out, so we dressed all of us in rainjackets. Jackie and Jillie didn't seem to mind, and it was just as well that the ambient temperature didn't rise above 23C, though the moisture level was thick enough to cut with a knife, as the colloquial saying goes.

After our return back home, I put together a potato salad for dinner. I thought to substitute part of the mayonnaise I'd be using with sour cream. My potato salads are always shot through with green onion, bell pepper, snow peas over shredded lettuce and topped with sliced tomatoes and peeled baby cucumbers. 

We had gone out early in the morning to do our grocery shopping, and when we prepared to leave again in the afternoon, Jackie and Jillie pleaded to go with us. So they did. I took along water for them, and a section of the newspaper for me to read in the car while waiting for Irving to conduct his downtown business. We just didn't want to leave them home alone again to enable me to do that special shopping together with Irving, so we three sat in the parked car while he went to the special cheese shop at Byward Market where he can buy specialty cheeses, and to the magazine shop where his art and antique magazines are to be found.

On the drive, which takes no more than a half-hour from our house to downtown Ottawa, we saw on a traffic roundabout an equestrian statue with Queen Elizabeth that I don't recall having seen before. Also, on our way along the Eastern Parkway, we saw that the RCMP 'musical ride' horses were out of their stable and in their paddock for a change. They have a large area of grassy meadow to roam about on, yet the horses, some 30 or so in number, seemed to be comfortable standing together in a crowd along a fence.