The garden these past few days in 30C temperature and clear skies is virtually baking in the sun. A week ago while I was tidying up the garden at the front of the house close to the road, a woman stopped to ask me what the emerging flowers right at the very front surrounding a large blue spruce were. She and a friend, she told me, stopped often to look at the garden in their neighbourhood walks. She took out her i-phone and showed me photographs she had taken last summer of the plants. They were just now setting their buds. Our daughter had planted them about 30 years ago, and I couldn't recall their names. Only afterward, did it remember; Foxglove, perennial Digitalis of a kind that keeps repeating itself and spreading recklessly out of its assigned plot.

 

Robust enough to return year after year and to continue cloning itself without interruption. Unlike the Foxglove biennials I'd had from time to time in the garden that would bloom for a year, return another and then forget to come back a following year. In my daughter's garden, they drop their seeds and renew themselves freely. I've nothing to complain about, delighted that wild geraniums have found a home for themselves in another of the garden beds, comfortable and spreading their tiny pink blossoms under yet another spruce, so I assume it's the acidic soil they respond to. The vagaries of the conceit of gardening.

The garden pots and urns, cooking in the heat of the sun, need watering despite our having had days of relentless rain, but everything is thriving, maturing nicely and pleasing us with vibrant colours. We had decided, once again given the forecast for another day of 30C heat and clear skies that the best course of action would be to set aside breakfast and showers after rising, and just to head out to the ravine before the day's heat set in seriously.

 

As usual, Jackie and Jillie were happy with the decision. Irving has accustomed them to expect a treat as soon as we enter the trails, and another a short while distant from the ravine ingress, and they know precisely where those points are, fully expectant, stopping to make certain he remembers. The light that falls through the forest canopy from the overhead sun is eye-dazzling. The green of the forest interior almost palpates with heat and light, in its luminous reflection of the sun's rays.

 

Halfway through our circuit this morning, we encountered two women we'd never before seen. With them was a very large, complacent Afghan whose paws alone seemed almost as large as the head of one our pups. And that large dog's companions were two little black poodles. Both were miniature poodles, with one notably larger than the other, a little shrimp even smaller than ours. The five dogs milled about together, amicable in one another's presence. And the four poodles so much resembled one another even we were confused identifying Jackie and Jillie, all the more so since none of them stood still for a moment.

 

The smallest of the four had mannerisms so much akin to Jackie's I could see him in her. She was ultra-high-strung, continually looking up toward one of the women for reassurance and emotional support. In that vein somewhat like Jackie with me, but far more emphatically dependent. As result of which, the woman told me, she kept the little creature medicated to assuage the level of its anxieties.

 

On we went our separate, opposite directions. Only to come across one another yet again a half-hour later as our paths crossed again, and the four poodles greeted one another like long-lost relatives. Which, perhaps they were in a sense. The heat of the day hadn't yet set in, though the sun's glare promised it soon would, and we decided to lengthen our usual circuit. 

This was an exceptionally beautiful morning, the sky a light azure, no clouds interrupting the sun's royal arc across the sky and a bare whisper of a breeze. All of which led an extraordinary number of people with their companion dogs to jog themselves out of routine mode and head for the forest trails. We saw people out we hadn't seen in ages, and others we had never seen before. The large, extended community taking advantage of a forest landscape that meanders through these outer reaches of the country's capital city.