We've always found August to be such a weather-unpredictable month. When we were young we thought of August as the height of summer perfection; sunny and warm and reliably pleasant, not given to hosting many rain events. But then the young can tolerate hot weather more than the elderly and what is too hot for older people is often just 'warm' for the young. Still, when we were young and we chose the month of August for our vacation time when our children were young, we were invariably surprised when the very week we chose to 'get away' from the city with the children turned out cold and rainy. The luck of the draw.

 It wasn't until they were quite a bit older and we habitually embarked on annual mountain climbing expeditions that we turned away from August and chose June for our trips. Although the weather might still have been a mixed bag, at least we weren't heat-blasted as we ascended mountain slopes, to attain alpine tree-bare summits although we soon enough discovered that we had exchanged one unpleasant happenstance with another, since June was when mosquitoes and blackflies seemed to emerge at their most ferociously bloody. 

Now we're in mid-month of an unusual August in that it's been  hotter than usual, with a spate of 30+C-degree days that we usually associate with mid-, not late-summer. Ditto with the level of humidity. Though the combined effect of heat and humidity still doesn't reach the level we experienced years ago in Tokyo, exiting our house for a summer evening stroll and immediately finding our arms and legs slick with perspiration.

It didn't take much of an evaluation of this early morning atmosphere to convince us another pre-breakfast hike was in the offing. Jackie and Jillie don't really care when they get out into the forest to snuffle along the trails. So off we went, as is fast becoming our usual course of action to avoid the afternoon's fierce heat. It's hotter today at 33C, than it was yesterday when we went up to 31C, but to balance things out, the humidity was worse yesterday than today. 

Again, my plans to do some gardening work scuppered. Just too hot to be out directly in the sun at midday, in the morning or in the later afternoon. But it wasn't the least bit too difficult to appreciate the day once we were in the ravine where deep shade ensures it's relatively cool in comparison to afternoon for a trek through the forest trails. Not advised.

The wild apple trees are beginning to shed their ripe apples. They're falling everywhere, bright little balls of green and red, inviting passersby to pick one up and enjoy it. If it's not long off the tree we do just that. As long as it hasn't been pre-tasted by wildlife. Very few apples appear blighted, unlike the apple trees we once grew in the backyard which bore excellent apples but our attempts in the spring at spraying them to avoid insect infestations were useless. One of the trees expired naturally. The other, had been gnawed by rabbits around the perimeter of the trunk one winter, and though the following summer it looked fine and bore a fine crop of fruit, a windstorm shattered it completely right at the gnaw-line, a sad sight. I couldn't believe my eyes, seeing the tree in full leaf and heavy with fruit cracked off and splayed on the ground.

Jackie and Jillie met one of their friends, a really beautiful laid-back hound, who was extremely amenable to parking alongside Irving to graciously accept several cookies. All the larger dogs we come across are well behaved and civil, quite unlike our two little brats whose behaviour often takes dogs unaccustomed to their manner, quick aback.

Rounding out the circuit as has become our regular routine now, and likely will remain so, for as long as the wildflowers are in evidence, though many of them are looking pretty tired from their hard work blooming for these past few months, we meandered about a meadow far less colourful with the presence of fresh blooms than was present a few weeks ago. The heat and lack of rain have taken their toll. We noted the presence of beetles ravishing the new buds of a large evenng primrose plant. And watched as a pair of goldfinches flew from the meadow over to the closest stand of trees in the forest beyond. 

It did