All the signs of summer past are here. Dusk creeping in long before it should and in one fell swoop, night follows, and it's dark. Where did the day go? On the forest floor vegetation is blanching, curling up, disappearing into the soil. We see maple, hackberry, birch and poplar leaves scattered on the ground in intensely vibrant colours of fall. The calendar tells us it's late summer. Getting awfully hard to credit that.

Nights are cool and breezy, so much more comfortable than they were only two weeks ago when we were mired in a spate of 30C days, day on end. Sleeping is far more comfortably achieved on these cooler nights. Today the temperature struggled to make its way up to 19C, with a good stiff breeze and mostly sunny skies. Perfect for a few hours of hiking through forest trails.

 Mealtime menus are changing, too. Light meals to counteract the heat of the day no longer appeal, leading my mind to riffle through its archives of alternate meal preparations. We need more comforting and filling foods. After we returned from our ravine hike yesterday late afternoon I prepared a flat bread to put into the oven. We'd have a vegetable salad and the bread was meant to accompany a fish chowder.

This morning I decided coconut-lime cupcakes were in order for dinner dessert tonight. I changed the ingredients slightly, adding a third of a cup of cream cheese. And when I prepared a bread dough, to refrigerate it for use later in the week I gave it a milk and egg base and shredded a half-cup of old cheddar into it. It's interesting experimenting with ingredients to slightly alter familiar prepared foods.

Jackie and Jillie scrambled about when they sensed we were ready to leave the house with them, all excited that we'd finally reached that point. So on with their collars and their halters. A little liquid soap in the warm water we left in the laundry/mud/room sink to wash off their little feet on our return, and off we went.

Cooler than yesterday and the day before. But the sun compensated until we entered the ravine and the sun remained above but shielded by the forest canopy from entry to the forest alongside us. We didn't mind, just seeing the sun illuminate the landscape in discrete fingers of light ascending through the leaf mass in slender shafts of warmth and blinding light, lent an illusion of warmth.

Walking along briskly also makes a difference; energy expended is warmth-inducing, difficult to take on hot and humid days, but made-to-order on days like today. The afternoon that turned out so perfect for our foray through the trail system in the ravine failed to impress the extended neighbourhood. Children are back to school, working-age people are returning to their workplaces in person finally, and those who like us are retired, have obviously found other leisure-time distractions.

Decisions we're completely in accord with. We meandered down through a narrow, grassy pathway well overgrown with spent wildflowers and grasses to reach the meadow. Once so colourful with a plethora of flowering plants, it is now a bouquet of shades of green. Mere notional dried-up remnants of daisies, black-eyed Susans, purple loosestrife and fleabane left among the vetch and grasses, a rueful reminder of summer past.

We took another narrow path this time through t he meadow, to attain the bank of the creek and there we saw several of the goldfish swimming languidly about the cool, sun glistening water and stayed awhile to watch them. There's something about colourful fish and sparkling water that's mesmerizing and serene.

Jackie and Jillie romped about chasing after alluring odours and one another before we finally began wending our way upward to join the main trail and attain street level, where we made for home. And where preparations for tonight's dinner awaited me; mushroom-smothered chicken breasts, roasted cauliflower and potato pudding. Chicken soup was already on the stove, bubbling away. I only had to put rice on to cook and everything was done.