We knew it was coming, but that doesn't make it any easier to accept. Jackie and Jillie have been following us about with a quizzical expression, wondering why we're stuck at home when the formula always includes an afternoon hike through our nearby ravined forest trails. I keep explaining to them that because they hate getting wet, and detest even more becoming utterly soaked, we're kept at home by the weather. The forecast was for rain the entire weekend.

I can rest easy, as it were, that I was finally able to complete planting the spring bulbs that have been awaiting interment in the garden soil, before freeze-up. Now that they're buried in the garden to await the opportunity to bloom that spring promises, they can take advantage of all this rain. We can't. But it's a huge relief to me that the work was done.

Late yesterday afternoon on our return home from our meandering, pleasant tramp through the colourful forest shedding

leaves while the wind blew on a cold but sunny day, Irving went off to do a bit of shopping and after I had finished preparing dinner to slip into the oven, I ventured outside to plant the last of the tulip and daffodil bulbs. While I was at it, pulling out the sad-looking droops of potato vines and petunias while leaving the begonias in place.

There were a few more hostas to cut back so another compost bag was on its way to being filled. Some time during the coming week I'll finally have to empty all the garden urns and pots of their still-blooming flowers. The backyard pots have already been done, all the colour that captured and enraptured our eyes this summer, gone there. It'll be a bit of a chore to dig out the Canna lilies, they've grown so robust and tall over the summer. Then I'll argue with myself over whether to overwinter their roots.

I had decided yesterday to prepare chicken breasts with garlic, onion, bell pepper and tomatoes to make a nicely roasted tomato sauce alongside the chicken. And with that kind of meal it's inevitable for a Friday-night dinner that it be accompanied by a potato pudding. Along with roasted cauliflower. Makes for a sturdy meal that is typical of a Jewish-culture-cuisine for Friday night.

Instead of rice for the chicken soup I thought that matzo-meal dumplings (knaidlich in the vernacular) would go well, for a change. All of which, including the dessert of Chelsea buns baked earlier in the day makes for one hefty meal. Walking off part of the excess today would have been appreciated, but it was not to be. So Jackie and Jillie have been snoozing a bit more than would otherwise be the case....