The first order of business for this cool and overcast day was our appointment for our second COVID booster shots. This time we made an appointment -- a month ago -- to be inoculated yet again not at an Ottawa Health site which though moderately well managed, gave the impression of chaos, and was always inconveniently located for us as well as too time-consuming. Shoppers Drug Mart kindly administered our boosters and now, for the time being in any event, that's one more thing we no longer have to be concerned about.This time there was no question about our preference for Pfizer, and we were both finished in no time at all.

 

 

Soon as we returned home we exited again, this time with Jackie and Jillie in tow, heading for the ravine. Surprisingly cool again. This was meant to be a sunny day with a warmer atmosphere, but it was not to be. In any event, we had a little treat even before we got started in the ravine, watching a bee bumbling about a clutch of dandelions. Life goes on in the forest. The little micro-scene was located directly in front of the first patch of downed trees, partially obscuring the trail leading to the ravine.

 

 

We were minus the shock felt yesterday when we saw the damage from Saturday's storm for the first time. Evidently, atmospheric-weather experts name what we experienced, a 'derecho', a series of tornado-like microbursts, one after another. And it was that violent series of bursts that created the amount of damage that we now face in the forest. In point of fact, the city is mourning the loss of too much of its urban forest canopy altogether, thanks to this freak storm.

 

 

But life does go on. As it must; the universe spins, our Earth spins around our sun in the Milky Way Galaxy, and nature continues both its nurturance and its destruction of its own creation. As though a metaphor for all the poplars that broke in mid-trunk leaving great snags behind, the forest is covered now with a thin, white coverlet of fluffy seeds resembling newfallen snow. An urgency to endure and to survive as a species; it seems more fitting than ever now, though it's a seasonal phenomenon.

 

 

And for the first time this season, we're seeing an eruption of mushrooms beginning, as well as the presence of new shelf fungi, impressive in size and colourful in design. Oddly though, when we went through the ravine yesterday morning on an equally cool and partially sunny day, there were quite a few others out and about with their dogs. Not so today. It seemed like a pall of mourning had settled over the forest.

 

 

We went along a bit further today than our usual circuit, and dipped further into the ravine where we discovered that at that level there appeared to be no tree damage at all. All of the devastation appears to have been reserved for the upper levels. Which seems to have been more vulnerable to the force of the winds gusting viciously through on Saturday, followed by Sunday's all-day rain. 

 

It steered us toward the thought of what it must have been like to actually have been in the ravine when the storm passed through. The sound must have been frightening and deafening. From the constant bass rumbles of ongoing thunder in the extraordinarily dark atmosphere of the storm, illuminated sporadically by lightning, to the moaning of the trees as they were whipped back and forth by the winds. And finally, the sound of their anguished cracks and destruction.

 

By the time we reached the creek again, the rest of the day looked a little more promising; despite the proliferation of dark clouds it seemed as though there might be some lively blue about to present in the sky, with the sun poised to appear, after all. Which was, for us, quite timely, since Irving and I had determined that there was no point waiting to see if the hemlock and the holly sitting right next to it in the garden,both of which had suffered dreadful dieback, would recover.

 

The Mallards appear unfazed by the effects of Saturday's storm

We had trimmed them both, hoping that new life would assert itself in time, and although there were some vestiges of green visible under all the dead needles and foliage that we hadn't removed, a wait for recovery seemed futile. So Irving began cutting both down, after I had cut back once again as much of the upper branches as feasible. On the positive side, they both had quite a footprint in the garden, and now that area is free, so we'll have to give some thought to what might flourish there for a future planting.