No more cooling cotton sheets on our bed for quite a while into the future for now, at least until spring returns. On the positive side, I won't have to iron sheet sets weekly until they return to our bed. Well, there's no negative side to the flannel sheets that now comfort us when we get into bed at night. And they'll be used until winter itself arrives, when we will switch over yet again to snugger sheet sets made of fleecy material. When we slide into bed there's isn't a cool sensation, then a wait to warm up; with the flannel and then the fleecy in its turn, it feels instantly warm and comfortable.

Jackie and Jillie too are becoming comfortable with being covered with a blanket at night. The house furnace is automatically set to go down to a cooler temperature at night during our sleeping hours. And like most two-story houses, the upstairs tends to be cooler than the downstairs. We can feel the difference when we walk up the stairs at night transitioning from the first floor, where the fireplace has been warming us in the evening hours, to the upstairs where it feels eerily as though a window has been opened. 

We're flirting with frost-weather now. The temperature at night falls just a tad under freezing. And if the day has been without sun, the house hasn't warmed up as it does on those days when there is an absence of clouds thanks to the sun sending its warmth through our large two-story windows. It makes an enormous difference. The stained glass over all the windows also conveys the heat of the sun. We've had lots of rainy days, not so many sunny ones lately, although that will change once November has passed.

So thoughts turn to meals that are a little more substantial and weather-comforting as well. Ontario fruit is now available in abundance. We're no longer focusing on berries other than those from the U.S. and Mexico and at this time of year they're pretty iffy. Peaches and nectarines from Niagara are done with, their season over. But there's pears and there's plums aplenty. So I decided to bake a walnut-crumble-top plum pie for dinner tonight. And of course we'll have chicken soup and rice. The main course will feature the same; chicken drumsticks in gravy with chopped bell pepper and sliced carrots served over rice.

At a high temperature today of 6C, and icy wind under cloudy skies we thought it best to haul out little woolly sweaters for Jackie and Jillie when we headed off to the ravine later in the day. They're so accustomed now over the years, to wearing various kinds of clothing they don't mind. Jackie was once adamantly opposed to anything constraining him; he still doesn't care for his collar and dangling tags, so they never wear them in the house. Their harnesses are a necessary part of our outdoor trips because we wouldn't hear of leashing them to their collars.

As for us, under those weather conditions intermediate-weight jackets were definitely called for. And lots of facial tissues because cold and wind make for tearing eyes and runny noses. And we're out there in the forest for a considerable length of time. It had rained through the night again last night and so there was ample evidence of it through the forest. Including rain puddles festooned with floating fallen leaves.

In some areas where trees already present a bare appearance, their leaves long fallen, those leaves on the trail are no longer that enchanting mixture of yellows and reds. They've turned dark grey, utterly unappealing. But for the most part there is ample foliage left on trees, and time yet for the green leaves to turn colour before falling. The acrid fragrance of the drying leaves is beyond nostalgic. By the time November rolls around, however, much of the colour will have gone and with it the delight of autumn.

Nature has so many surprises in store for us, though; we never know what we'll come across, aside from the many trail-walking acquaintances we've made over the years. One of our friends showed up with a chocolate-lab/poodle hybrid, a year old, large and feistily intelligent. He called the dog a 'COVID-dog'  and what he meant was that the person who brought it home during COVID isolation mandating work-from-home, a friend of his daughter's, found that now he's returning to work in person, it is no longer suitable for him to care for a dog. For one thing, he left the dog kenneled 12 hours a day. Unthinkable. So his daughter bought the dog from her friend and our friend was introducing it to the forest.

As for nature's surprises, today they came in the sight of fungi catching our eyes. One, a group of small mushrooms blooming out of the side of a tree, nestling on its bark. Another, a number of fungal colonies occupying space on an old decaying birch trunk on the forest floor. Each representing the most exquisite of aesthetic designs. We do, after all, look to nature's handiwork to inform and instruct the human version of artistic endeavours. But nature's is the more authentic for obvious reasons. So overwhelming in our lives that our admiration for her beauty inspires in us that most sincere form of appreciative flattery; copying the original and flaunting it as our very own creation.

When we returned back home again I decided to stay out for awhile. With the thought in mind of  continuing my extended fall-clean-up in the garden beds and borders. There is just so much to be done. And it's also, strangely enough, when I turn a critical eye to the perennial plants and admire them before lopping, snipping and cutting them away for the winter. Filling up those giant compost bags for weekly pick-up by our local compost collection where the city maintains huge compost piles. Doing that kind of work is in a sense, sad, since we're preparing the garden for its burial under four feet and more of snow. On the other hand, it's an invigorating ritual, one I don't mind one bit.