A warm, sunny, windy day, it's Irving's turn to produce dinner today. Barbecue, of course. He had bought steaks and would do them for dinner tonight. And his specialty, garlic-cheese-chives bread on the barbecue, hot and flavourful. We both love bread, any way it's presented. Before we left for our trot through the forest trails this afternoon I had shredded cabbage, Vidalia onion and carrots for a coleslaw and that will accompany the steak. Oh, and kiwi and strawberries for dessert. The day's menus are relentless, they appear to mind and once in the preparation stages, you can forget about them.

 

 

Entering the ravine the first bit of colour to greet us was the growing proliferation of cinquefoil, pilotweed, thistle, alfalfa and thimbleberry shrubs in bloom, against the backdrop of blooming Elderberry trees, sending their fragrance wafting over to us on the wind. As we passed the raspberry shrubs, Irving made a mental note on our return to accept the ripe berries' invitation to pluck and offer them to Jackie and Jillie as an enjoyable refreshment.

 

 

It still pains us when we pass the numerous sites throughout the forest where large old trees cracked and fell, their corpses littering the forest floor in the aftermath of the fierce windstorm that brought a succession of micro-tornadoes bursting through the forest a month ago. The foliage of the poplars remain green and fresh-looking, typical of poplars, even though the trunk is severed the tree no longer rooted. The smell of trees in distress lingered for quite a while after the carnage that resulted from that day's storm events.

 

 

You'd think your mind would by now -- having seen the wreckage each and every day when setting out on the trails -- be accustomed to the sad look of horizontal, broken trees. But you don't get used to the sight, it assaults you each time you come across the dramatic evidence of nature's destructive capabilities. Each venue -- and there are many -- testament that nature has her moods and is not always the gentle benefactor we conceive of her.

 

Halfway through our regular circuit there's a patch on either side of the trail of sunflowers, their huge leaves identifying them as much as the stalk carrying the emerging flowers. Exposure to the sun is elemental for these bright yellow flowers so they've established themselves where for part of the day sunlight pours through gaps in the forest canopy. 

 

We thought we'd meander down to the pollinating meadow, but because of the proliferation and height of the sawgrass that has grown tightly into the narrow pathway leading to it, had second thoughts. Bare legs and arms don't take kindly to too-close acquaintanceship with that grass. Instead we took a higher trail hoping to descend from it toward the meadow only to find that where it too previously had been tramped down, it no longer was and the sawgrass had closed in that route as well.

 

So we backtracked and half-entered the narrow trail to enable us to appreciate the growth and bloom period of daisies, fleabane, Queen Anne's lace, clover, pilotweed and black-eyed Susans. All bu the daisies and the clover grown to the height of a person. The person writing this, at any event. The earlier seasonal months of ample rain and alternate sun days having set the stage for a vigorous and robust growth of the forest vegetation.

As we neared the junction of the forest creek and the last of the bridges fording it where we clamber back up the hill to reach our street, two of the many dogs Irving is well acquainted with simultaneously came bursting out of trails adjoining the one we were on, to sit patiently at his feet while he fumbled with his cookie bag.