Menus crowd the unrestrained thoughts in my mind; last thing at night first thing in the morning. What's nutritious? What's different? What've I got the ingredients handy for? Got lemons, make a lemon pie; shred lemon zest, squeeze the lemon ... eggs; check ... go for it. Conventional pie crusts tend to get kind of pasty when there's leftovers, how about a graham cracker crust with crushed almonds and butter? Irving squeezed the lemon and I set about preparing the filling while the crust was baking. When everything cooled slightly I whipped up the egg whites. When finished, the pie looked as it should. 

I'm always distracted, always in a hurry, it's just my nature. The pie was cooling on the counter and I reached to open a cupboard door to extract a container of bay leaf to put in the chicken soup I was cooking. As I did it, I thought fleetingly to myself, hmmm, what if something fell out of the cupboard (a spice cupboard) and landed on the pie? A split second later that is just what happened. Best to laugh, and I did.

Later, we were out with Jackie and Jillie in the ravine. It's a quite cool day; in absolute contrast to the heat we had a bare week ago. Not only cool at 17C, but heavily overcast and windy. We can sympathize with Jackie and Jillie telling us their sad little story about needing extra food for warmth on such a cool day. We hadn't got very far into the ravine when out poured their tale of woe, tails a'wagging, certain they had our ear.

Halfway through the ravine there suddenly appeared a little ragmop of a dog, a little fellow two-thirds the size of our two. He's 11 years old, was once disinterested until he got to understand that Irving carries around cookies. His human and his little dog companion were nowhere to be seen. And then we heard a faint, far-off appeal for him to return. Somehow, he had discerned from where he had been hiking through another trail opposite the one we were on, but not visible through the thickness of the forest trees, that the cookie man was out and about.

He's a polite little fellow, just sat patiently while Irving rummaged about for his bag and began dispensing rewards all around. Irving shouted back to the little fellow's human but it's questionable that his assurance was heard. When enough cookies had been dispensed -- and it's amazing what even a small dog our own small dogs dwarfed, can gulp down -- Irving walked part of the trail back toward the hidden one, until the little guy broke off and ran back to his own companions.

We decided we'd take the pathway to the meadow on our way completing our circuit. The path follows the stony bank of the creek and Irving is always on the lookout for fish. In the spring all the bright colourful goldfish disappeared into the hungry maws of the Great Blue Heron and the pair of Mallard ducks that remained in the forest for a month and more. But we knew there were hundreds of tiny fish most of them black, not orange.

And today we had proof that some had survived and grown to a size large enough to be identified in the water of the creek rushing downstream eventually ending up in the Ottawa River. There was a half-dozen bright orange, three-to-four-inch goldfish with black tails, and following them smaller, all-black fish swimming in a bit of a school. It's nice to see them return, that the creek isn't entirely devoid of fish life.

In the meadow, there were ample signs of approaching fall. Most of the flowering plants we grew accustomed to seeing in bright array are now in a state of depletion. Still, we came across a few remnants of flowering evening primrose, purple loosestrife, and black-eyed Susans, growing alongside the banks of the creek. And as we ascended the trail leading out of the ravine we were greeted by nodding pink heads of Himalayan orchids, the beautiful sentries of the ravined forest access route.