It's been a perfectly lovely day. Another sunny day, but without yesterday's humidity, and plus gusting winds to move air about, and the temperature rising to 25C rather than yesterday's 30C. But we decided this morning to head out to the ravine for an early hike through the forest regardless and Jackie and Jillie were in complete agreement.

 

 

For comfort the atmosphere couldn't have been more benignly pleasant. Yesterday there was a sharp fragrance of vegetation in distress; the downed trees sending out their message of misery, enhanced by humid conditions. Today there's a lighter fragrance typical of white blossoms; regardless whether they're flowering apple trees or dogwood, white blossoms always seem to have the same aroma. Not my favourite.

 

 

We saw a dragonfly for the first time this spring, and also a Mourning Cloak. And flying about the banks of the creek were little packs of juvenile robins. This is the time of year they also seem to run about on the forest floor in their comical little runs. It's a delight to see them. They'll disport themselves like this for a few weeks, then they seem to disappear.

 

 

Along with the dogwood understory now reaching full flower, the privet that have made a home for themselves among other trees albeit low-growing and never attaining a great size as an introduced 'pest' species, is also beginning to bloom. They'll produce clusters of black berries which no one is advised to attempt to eat. The forest has more than its share of toxic fruit.

 

 

We peered into the canopy after crossing the second of the four bridges that interconnect the main trail system over the creek and its tributaries to see if we could spot the male owl, and there he was, head kind of tucked in, sleeping...for after all they're nocturnal in nature. He was also on guard duty, close to the tree containing his mate, where she is nesting with their owlets. This time I was able to get a shot of the 'nest', with Mama owl's back in evidence.

 

In the early afternoon we had an appointment for Jackie and Jillie at the groomer's, and delivered them to the warm and loving arms of the young women there. Then we went off on a number of errands, among which was to get a few new batteries for my cameras; one a Nikon, the other a Cannon. Oops, though the electronic-gear shops sell cameras, they don't stock the batteries and we were informed they're no longer even produced. The cameras are only five years old! I'll have to check online.

 

Then the garden and the garden pots needed watering, and I seeded some dianthus, shasta daisies and asters, cleaned out the birdbath in the backyard, and filled it with clean water. Jackie and Jillie were happy to be back home, happy to trot about after us. I mixed up some baking soda with sugar and sprinkled it lightly at the doorway thresholds to the house as an anti-ant measure. The baking soda works well, but with sugar mixed into it ants will be more likely to be interested in it.

We once returned home from a week away and found the house suddenly colonized by ants. We don't relish a repeat. Then attention was turned to packing for our trip. Which will continue big-time-seriously tomorrow.

Today brought us a heavily humid, sunny day. It's also house-cleaning day. So we had the option of waiting as usual until the house-cleaning was done and then venturing out with Jackie and Jillie to the ravine in the afternoon heat, or to immediately on waking launch us all into the ravine for a long and leisurely trot through the forest trails. A morning hike won out, as it likely will tomorrow, too.

So off we went, the sun already hot, the temperature on its way to 30C, and the humidity dripping all around us. A cursory look at the garden before leaving, to do a quick assessment of its watering needs, reaching the conclusion it can wait until tomorrow. Only the urn on the front porch will need a drink before then, since the portico protects it from rain, unless a rainfall is on a slant toward the front of the house.

The petunias and wax begonias planted yesterday among and around the earlier-planted hostas will have to put on a lot more weight before they make the statement that they own the new garden bed. With this kind of weather, hot, sunny and humid they'll make a prodigious effort. 

In the forest some of the trails have dried nicely and others remain mired in mud, the forest floor still unable soak up the last several rains-worth of moisture in an already sodden landscape. But these are conditions that the forest thrives under. The understory of dogwood and honeysuckle are so appreciative they're both heavily into their spring flowering stage.

We also came across the delightful sight of pink spring-blooming phlox, several stands of them, erect and proud to offer the sight of their bright little heads to any passersby. Halfway through our circuit we stopped to reconnoiter the area, certain we were right where a pair of owls had nested, before the storm. Irving saw the owl before I did, guided by its soft hooo, and he pointed out to me where the bird sat, not far from the nest its mate was on, with their nestlings. 

The forest was alight with green iridescence, glowing like a magic landscape, the rays of the sun turning foliage into a bright transparency, enveloping us in a bright cathedral of green. There are few other places we'd prefer to be for serene relaxation while at the same time freely exercising our limbs, than this forest. One of those few other places will welcome us mid-week when we drive a days-worth distance to arrive at a favourite forest in the Waterville Valley.

Tomorrow Jackie and Jillie have their appointment at the groomers' and tomorrow is packing day to ensure we have another day where we can make certain we've packed along everything we need for the week away. In our good old tradition of taking too much with us; the redundancy is ridiculous.

 

We don't miss lunch at all. It's a meal-ritual for most people and they wouldn't think of foregoing a mid-day meal. We, on the other hand, never feel hunger pangs for lunch. The gap between breakfast and our evening meal may seem strange to many, but we don't even think about it. Jackie and Jillie eat more frequently than we do, since they have an afternoon snack of fresh vegetables as a salad, and another one following their evening meal.

We tend to eat generous breakfasts and they hold us over from morning to early evening. Always a banana and either an orange to accompany it or a quarter of a melon; we alternate. Following that either oatmeal or a dry cereal, or eggs soft-boiled. Even Jackie and Jillie get a breakfast egg; half each shared between them. That follows their own breakfast. Breakfasts do tend to be a little formulaic; on Sundays we have either pancakes or French toast.

And that happens to be our two little dogs' favourite treats as well. Whatever we happen to be eating, they get their own tiny portion, and then they're ready for a good long snooze. Instead of snoozing post-prandial, we've always got things to do. For Irving it was mowing our overgrown lawns, front and back. For me, it was the twice-weekly bathroom clean-ups and towel changes, linens laundry and deep-cleaning the kitchen.

Soon as we finished, though, it was time to get ourselves out to the ravine for an afternoon hike on a beautifully sunny and warm day where the temperature went up to 26C, with little wind. The trails remain mired in muck from all the rain, and it will likely be a month or more before any clean-up of the forest takes place, so in the interim trees and parts of trees remain strewn across many trails. Which doesn't make them impassable, just a minor irritant necessitating bending low under a fallen trunk or, if possible, sidestepping it, or clambering over.

On our return home my plan as to complete the planting of the new garden bed opened up with the removal of a sprawling yew tree and equally out-of-control holly, both of which had mysteriously expired this spring. Irving had bought a few flats of varied-foliage wax begonias and petunias and they were meant to go around the half-dozen hostas I'd planted the day before. When they grow in the result will be an architecturally pleasant little garden.

For both of us our most favourite of all standby plants in the garden, one a perennial the other annual, are hostas and begonias; a multitude of varied types to choose from. Variations in size, colour, texture, but all of them reliable additions to any garden.

 

 

Nature reserved a treat for us today and it has been much appreciated. A nocturnal visit to the bathroom in the wee hours, say around five in the morning gave us reason to believe that we would be facing yet another day of rain, because it was pouring, heavily. You don't mind rain when it occurs at night; it just makes you feel comfortable and sleepy as you creep back into bed to sleep off the illusion that bright sunny weather awaits in the wings of an incipient day.

Lo and behold, out came the sun by morning wake-up, the house fully illuminated, the outside beckoning. Mind, it kept withdrawing every now and again in a colossal tease show, but eventually that golden orb of life decided to stop playing its game of suspense, to sit firmly on its throne.

 

 

We took our time over breakfast, though Jackie and Jillie never take their time over their meals. We've made a wan effort at teaching them some civil manners but they're quite immune to our efforts. They chomp down, wait for more, and when they're fully satiated, sleep it off. This morning they had their kibble, tiny bits of old cheddar, breakfast melon and chopped chicken left from yesterday's chicken soup. That was topped with an egg scrambled and divided between them.

 

 

While they slept it off, we enjoyed our own breakfast, taking our sweet time, reading the newspapers, talking about some issues in the news and generally relaxing after a hard night's sleep. Who says retirement is boring? After breakfast Irving went out to prepare our new garden bed, topping it off with a mixture of fresh soil, peat moss and sheep manure. 

 

After I'd cleared away the kitchen, all of us went out to join him and suddenly I found myself digging up dandelions on the lawn, when I had been under the impression I'd already done that and there were no more to be done. Then we hauled ourselves off to the ravine for an early afternoon tramp, prepared to enjoy the sun, the warmth and the breeze that counterbalanced the sun.

 

Although for the most part in our two-hour hike, we had the trails we chose to ourselves, at the outset a group of young girls came through and quickly passed us, and Jackie and Jillie, without missing a beat escorted them over to the first bridge that crosses the forest creek. By the time we reached the bridge, speeding helter-skelter toward us was two familiar hounds, who immediately squatted mid-bridge to await Irving's notice.

 

After they had been satisfied that civility earns treats, they plunged into the creek to cool off from their exertions. Jackie and Jillie were keen to share cookies with them, not so interested in sharing the creek with them. We're just as happy to keep them out of the creek though we've never had to tell them they can't dive into it since they've never been interested. Since it serves as a storm system outlet for the municipality and no doubt has its share of farm runoff, we're just as happy they not venture into it.

 

On the upper ridge of the forest as we swung about to the main trail system we could see that the forest floor was more heavily impacted by the latest  rain event than it had been by previous ones; logical, since it had long since reached the point of saturation. The trails were not only soaked and muddy, but full of the detritus that last week's storm had brought down from the canopy.

 

Large pools of water sitting on the forest floor simply became larger and deeper to the delight of seasonal mosquitoes.  We actually had to wade through some of the trails, and in some areas the forest floor resembled a swamp. Our long and leisurely hike through the trails is a must for us, to make the quality of the day complete and assuring us that our two little dependants have been adequately exercised. Of course what exercises them does the same for us.

 

Last Saturday's storm seems to have precipitated a deleterious compounding situation at area hospitals, both rural and urban, whose emergency departments are seeing unprecedented numbers of emergency admissions partially a result of the electrical grid failure during that ferocious storm. There is an existing shortage of nursing staff in all hospitals. People are feeling burnt-out because of the special demands of the pandemic plus the fact that so many health professionals have had their own very personal bouts with COVID-19.

 

The province has capped wage increases for nurses who are stressed and fed up with the demands of their profession and many have left their positions leading to an extreme shortage. Now, with inadequate staff on hand hospital emergency departments are under deep duress to the point where they have issued an alert that they're barely managing to cope and should the situation continue, that coping will come to a screeching halt.

 

Some people whose health conditions required the use of equipment operating through the electrical grid realized an interruption in their coping therapies leading to a steep dip in their health balance. Things most people could never imagine. The ER MDs are sounding the alarm now, and it isn't a pleasant sound to anticipate since no one knows when an accident or an unforeseen event could lead to an emergency visit, only to be turned away.

 

 

We're so fortunate that all we have to cope with at this point are insignificant little annoyances; that's what the storm last Saturday and its aftermath meant as far as we were inconvenienced; no power for less than 24 hours. Other people in the city are still awaiting the return of their power. Thousands of homes sustained damage to their hydro stacks and lines and the equipment linking them to the grid must be repaired before their power is restored. Our distress as nature lovers over the loss of so many trees in our forest will be remedied in time by nature. And we go about our daily routines, thankful that we have those routines.

Irving is still struggling to remove the stump of the Yew tree that he finally had to cut down last week. Yesterday he used an electrical saw, then a precipitating saw, and finally today, an old fashioned tough hand saw with a handle shaped like a bow, and of all the saws, it worked the best. I wanted him to just leave the damn thing; I would plant around it and eventually the hostas he brought home yesterday would mature and cover the presence of the stubborn old hard-as-nails trunk whose protruding height was only about a foot. He took a break now and again to cross the street to talk with Melanie, looking after her precocious little grandson.

 

 

I baked a cheesecake and put on a chicken soup to simmer for dinner, made some bread dough, and did some light general clean-up, though Irving had done the vacuuming earlier. And then we were prepared to take Jackie and Jillie out to the ravine. From early morning, last night's heavy rain just carried on until early afternoon. It was at that point, a pause in what looked to be an ongoing all-day event, that we felt it was now or never.

 

Although there were some light sprinkles and times when we were certain wind-swept, fast-moving black clouds would surely release their watery burden, no such thing happened. And because thunderstorms were once again forecasted for the afternoon we decided we'd make it a shorter-than-usual hike through the trails. We only encountered one other hiker with her dog who rushed forward to greet Irving with effusive expectation. 

 

The creek was running high, wide and muddy. Everywhere, the forest was completely inundated with more rain than it could possibly retain, and it washed down the hillsides into the roiling creek. There was a heavy smell on the humid atmosphere of greenery and somehow it seemed to us there was a whiff of vegetation distress in the engulfing and not unpleasant smell; no swamp gas at all.

 

 

It's been confirmed that Uxbridge, Ontario, on Saturday -- as the storm system that tore up Ottawa's urban forest first struck there after Toronto -- experienced a tornado with winds of 195 k/h. Ottawa was right behind, with micro-bursts following one on another, with wind speeds up to 190 k/h. Little wonder we suffered such great damage. So great an assault on the electrical grid from falling trees that toppled towers and poles that tens of thousands of people in the Ottawa area can expect power back, if they're lucky, by tomorrow. And that includes businesses and schools.

We are just now beginning to fully appreciate the total impact of that unusual storm called a derocho that rocked us out of any measure of complacency we might have imagined we were feeling after two years of COVID seeing us settling down to accepting what we cannot prevent. Last night brought us more rain. And the forecast was for the potential of thunderstorms going through the area some time this afternoon. We heard thunder in the distance in the early afternoon but it seemed to have passed us by.

 

We had a busy morning, with an annual appointment for Jackie and Jillie at the veterinarian clinic whose services we've used for decades. They maintain a protocol whereby people with appointments are asked to sit in their vehicles and on arrival at the hospital to text to announce arrival in their parking lot. At which point an attendant emerges from the building to usher people and their pets inside to keep their appointment with a veterinarian.

We've seen the same vet over all these years, a part owner of the establishment, and have established a good relationship with him. Once we were in the examining room Jackie and Jillie seated beside us on a bench to await the vet's arrival, they were panting heavily, stressed by the situation. It's not their favourite place, even though the vet loves them as he does all animals.

 

The weigh-in informed us that Jackie had gained a pound and Jillie had lost almost two. Just perfect. He's always been too thin, and she the opposite. The physical examination revealed that they're in optimum health, although their vet would like them to have their teeth cleaned. Poodles in particular tend to gather plaque on their teeth. We'll think about it; we think that we don't want to voluntarily put them under anaesthetic. Irving used to brush Button's and Riley's teeth every day; they were more amenable to the practise than Jackie and Jillie.

 

A big sigh of relief all around when we left. Left with Heartworm medication and Tick and flea medication. This year our little rascals were due for their rabies and distemper shots, neither of which appeared to bother them. Our veterinarian friend cuddles with them, so could be that relaxes them somewhat. Always when the serious business is done with, it's time for a prolonged and deep conversation about all kinds of things. We were informed that everyone at the clinic, and that's a lot of people, had been infected with COVID despite their precautions.

And everyone is feeling the pinch of an increased workload, answering to the need of a multitude of new dog- and cat-owners. Everyone in the profession is stretched thin. He was unable to make an appointment for his own dog for surgery, even though, he told us, he's a shareholder in the surgical hospital downtown. Which explains why our daughter had such a hard time getting emergency service when one of their dogs injured himself.

 

Later on, in the afternoon, we set out under solidly clouded-over skies, cool and windy, toward the ravine. Rain came down in the lightest of patters. Before we'd got very far, familiar dogs presented themselves to Irving for refreshments, and Jackie and Jillie were delighted, since it meant they'd be treated as well. 

The trails are utterly sodden, soaked from ongoing rain events. We're not 'noticing' as much the fallen trees, feel less shocked about their loss with each day that passes. Despite the carnage, the forest carries on. The lilies-of-the-valley are now in full bloom, their brief period of glory before they go the way of the trilliums and the trout lilies. 

 

An intense visual search allowed us to discover the presence of a mature Jack-in-the-Pulpit, with its single-leafed flower arched over the centre of the plant. So I took a few blind photographs hoping that at least one might come out reasonably well, to show the inner petal of the flower that most people never see and just pass by. Its dark purple-and-green striped interior is delicately beautiful.

 

For some reason, Ottawa International Airport has re-routed some of its flight paths and from time to time we heard planes overhead, way, way above the forest tree canopy. The last few days the air-beating sound of helicopters have added to the forest's sound reception; Irving hazarded the guess they're being deployed to get a picture of the overall storm damage to the entire canopy.

 

 

This week we put off our usual Tuesday shopping for Wednesday instead of Tuesday, figuring that with the long weekend and fairly widespread loss of hydro in Saturday's storm that brought down hydro towers and poles, we'd do well to skip a day. We knew that many businesses were affected by the power outage but we were beyond surprised to hear that it was only yesterday that the supermarket we frequent was returned to power.

All of the freezer lockers were empty. Power had been off long enough to produce a situation where it was not safe to eat frozen food whose optimum freezing temperature had dropped over the past few days. So that was a massive loss of food. And then we came along to the dairy refrigerated counters and all dairy products were missing from the shelves. There was milk available, but no coffee cream, no yogurt, no cream cheese, very little cheese blocks or eggs

 

On the good news side there was plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables just brought in. The meat counter looked as though a giant hand had scooped up most of the offerings. Canned food was undisturbed. Fortunately for us it was fresh perishable food we were after, so we weren't much affected by this severely limited stock. Along one aisle of frozen food cases the products hadn't yet been cleared off their shelves. There were shopping carts lined up alongside the aisle which was closed off to the public, bursting with once-frozen food destined for destruction.

 

If that isn't a sobering sight and a more sobering reality of the effect of the violent storm on the city's electrical grid, it's hard to say what is, aside from the devastation in the forest. Although the municipality has asked people to stay off the roads to give emergency and clean-up crews clear passage to do their jobs, clearing roadways of the debris of fallen trees, no one seemed to have paid much attention. The traffic we encountered on our way to do the food shopping was dense.

It's not hard to imagine how low-income people are feeling at this point. Food prices are skyrocketing, and any food they might have had in refrigerators and freezer if they're among the tens of thousands without power, would be ready for the garbage. Little wonder people were desperate to find ice to enable them to keep food frozen. Our power was restored a day after the storm. Our daughter's yesterday afternoon. But there are households and businesses on the fifth day following the storm being told, sorry, you'll have to wait another two to three days. Beyond dismal.

Later in the afternoon when we moseyed over to the ravine with Jackie and Jillie we discovered ourselves to be the only ones coursing through the trails. It was still and tranquil in the ravine, and now we've grown accustomed to the painful sight of the  wreckage of tall old trees. We came across one really huge old poplar that had produced an enormous amount of seeds; it was all you could see, entirely covering the downed tree's leaf mass. A testament to the poplars' survival instinct to cling to life. We've seen poplars that fell in the fall, completely severed from the base of the trunk, but when spring arrived, there was the fallen poplar, putting out new foliage.

On the forest floor we're on the hunt for the presence of Jack-in-the-Pulpits but this year is shaping up to be a tough one for the Jacks. We've only seen a few small specimens, which left us wondering why. On the other hand, there were also fewer trilliums than usual in May. So something is off with the vegetation. We soon picked up the presence of Engleman's ivy returned again to life. Where the clumps tend to emerge there's no nearby trees for them to clamber upward on, a strange set of circumstances for a creeping vine.

A little more work in the garden, planting portulaca in a bright, sunny spot, and more begonias; just cannot get enough of the begonias with their bight and beautiful, everblooming flowers. We're discussing between us, Irving and me, what to do about the suddenly-released garden space with the absence of the yew and the holly that he took down yesterday. We're agreed; a host of  hostas. I have the option of separating some of our existing hostas or to go out and look about at a place nearby that specializes in cultivating endless types of hostas...