There's a special relationship between the weather and timing, and we certainly can't complain that we haven't been advantaged by both in deep collaboration with one another. With the best of intentions Irving planned to use the new lawn mower he brought home after our old one finally broke down, but the opportunity between rain events just hasn't materialized. Until today. The morning started out fine, with a wide, blue sky, but it quickly degenerated with the arrival of rain-threatening clouds.

 

 

Still, there was enough of a window caused by a lapse in timing for Irving to get out after breakfast and mow both the backyard and the front lawn. Just as he was finishing up, rain began, and as he entered the house there were those excitingly ominous rolls of thunder.  It's the kind of weather-language that Jackie and Jillie respond to with warning growls, then having established their authority over any approaching storm, they simply re-assume anything that had taken their notice before the weather-notice. 

 

We, however, instantly 'noticed' waves of thick, heavy raindrops hurled against the back windows as the house became dark and darker yet. So that was fairly good timing, both front and back grass neatly cut and the new mower passing muster. The violent rainfall lost no time inundating the landscape which has just recently dried after yesterday's rain.

 

 

Yet before long it was over. As abruptly as it began, and we started seeing gaps of blue in the thick cloud cover signalling an  opportunity presenting itself. Jackie and Jillie must have been aware of the potential for a hike in the ravine, since they began appealing, following us about with the obvious intention of conveying to us their readiness to get out for a long hike through forest trails.

 

A cool day after all, following hard on several smotheringly-hot-and-humid days. Cool, windy and very wet. The trails about as saturated as we ever get to see them. Our puppies swaggered about on their personal trails with none but themselves to claim it their property. The forest interior was as dark as it ever gets, during wet, overcast weather conditions.

 

Nonetheless, we watched as two familiar blonde ''Doodle' mixes ran uphill to reach us on the spine of the ravine. Dutifully, once they arrived, positioning themselves in front of Irving and politely awaiting his reaction which was not long in coming, as he began doling out cookies. Usually big dogs are given three big cookies in succession, then head-patted and advised that's it for the day. And they invariably hesitate just briefly before turning and heading back to where they'd left their humans.

 

Just about then we heard an owl nearby. So near to where we stood we were certain we'd be able to spot him, but we weren't able to, after all. A responding series of hoots was heard faintly off in another direction before the one close to us spoke again and we witnessed a prolonged conversation taking place. We hadn't realized that the owls had returned.

A glance at the sky through the overhead forest canopy informed us our time without rain was being challenged, so we altered course to take  another, shorter loop to take us to eventual street level, and home. The afternoon that followed would give us several fairly light rain events, partial clearing, then the arrival of another thunder storm.

 

I took that opportunity to get busy in the kitchen pre-preparing dinner. I had half a tub of cottage cheese left from last week's shopping, and half a can of black beans left from an earlier dinner of wraps, so the menu for today turned out to be cheese blintzes (blini filled with cheese, honey, cinnamon) and to complement that, a salad incorporating the leftover beans. For dessert, sliced, cool kiwis would do.

 

August is fast wrapping up its business for 2022, courteously making way for September. It's been an unusually hot and wet month, more so than usual; certainly hard to predict. But it's given us everything that weather systems can muster. Today, hot and muggy like yesterday. Almost as hot, but no sun today, although there's a carry-over of yesterday's hot wind (dragon's breath). We've had a succession of dark clouds and finally the cloud cover was complete.

 

Earlier in the day, when we went off to do our grocery shopping the clouds were puffy-white, diaphanous and beautiful. But they moved quickly across the sky, Aeolus doing what gods of wind do best. Since the forecast was for rain and afternoon thunderstorms, we left the house early before cleaning up the kitchen post-breakfast. It was already raining, but just lightly, and we thought we'd do a short circuit at the very least.

 

It was so beautifully comfortable in the ravine with the wind hot as it was blowing away the feeling of thick humidity and Jackie and Jillie were so busy, in and off the forest trails, exploring more than usual, we thought we'd risk getting caught in a real downpour and continue on. 

 

There was that dusky atmosphere in the ravine with dark skies overhead and the closed-in feeling of the forest canopy that oddly enough makes colours more vibrant when you'd expect them to be dull. Although light rain fell, none of it reached us; the canopy absorbed it all. 

On one familiar part of a side trail I noticed a very small form squirreling its way up a tree and stopped briefly to try to identify it. It was tiny, and turned out to be a baby grey squirrel. We don't usually see really  young squirrels out and about. And there's been a paucity of squirrels resulting from the presence of the owls a few months back, now departed.

 

The little fellow changed its mind, altered direction and came down the tree trunk, and without any apparent hesitation quickly moved along the forest floor to where we were standing. We two and our two puppies. Jackie and Jillie were alert and interested. We were more interested in moving them away from the tiny creature, but they persisted. Jillie sniffing, Jackie minimally suspiciously hostile.

 

 

If either moved too close to the baby squirrel, it defended itself by charging at them. Small as they are for dogs, they loomed over the tiny thing like giants. But it wasn't our pups the squirrel was interested in, it was us. More precisely, Irving. The squirrel mounted Irving's boot and made to clamber up his leg. Irving picked it up and it snuggled against his chest; the idea was he meant to mount it on a tree branch. That done, he turned away and the squirrel ran back down and followed him.

 

 

We were both attracted to the beautiful little creature and fearful for its safety. Squirrels are wild animals with (usually) a well-developed suspicion of humans and a strong sense of self-preservation around dogs. This little guy defied all those survival conventions, he just kept running after us. We thought if we ignored it, it would lose interest, but no such thing. We had to keep ordering our pups to leave the squirrel alone.

Finally, Irving picked it up again and told me to move on quickly with Jackie and Jillie, as he entered an animal side-trail making his way through to a few yards' depth and once again placed the baby squirrel on a high branch of a thick trunk, and speedily departed. Looking back, he saw the squirrel descending again, preparing to continue following him, so he picked up speed.

 

It's not the happiest of thoughts, that a vulnerable young animal has somehow missed its master lessons on self-preservation. Taking him with us, out of the question; removing a wild animal from its most familiar surroundings is disorienting and potentially harmful. And how could we instill in the tiny creature the kind of caution that its DNA required of it and its mother would have demonstrated?

An unsought dilemma. The little squirrel's pelt was beautiful, it was in obviously good physical health, so that if he was indeed on his own he knew how to forage for food, and how to live in his natural environment. Why he would become fixated on humans is a biological mystery. In a sense, heart-breaking.

 

We woke hot and slightly disgruntled this morning. One of those nights. A fly had got into the house, and as always happens when there's one about, it followed us upstairs to bed last night. Big deal you say? For Jillie it is. When she and her brother see a fly at the sliding doors in the breakfast room they become beyond agitated, both trying to catch the fly, neither succeeding. For some reason that escapes us our two pups simply hate flies.

 

So when they hear a fly buzzing around in the bedroom and dive-bombing back and forth wondering why it had ever entered the house to begin with finding itself in a strange new world it really doesn't much care for, they're disturbed. Jackie will watch the thing as it flies back and forth, then resign himself and fall to sleep. His sister is so alarmed at the presence of a fly she leaps off the bed to escape its presence and leaves the bedroom.

 

From time to time she'll return back to bed and snuggle comfortably, but as soon as the fly manifests its presence again, off she goes. Usually when we decide to shut off our bedside lamps and put aside the books we're reading, she finds it more comforting. It's dark and if the fly is there she can't see it, and if she can't see it, it can't see her...? Didn't matter last night, dark or light, the fly was there and she wasn't going to put up with it.

 

Her back-and-forth was more than a little distracting. Her distress despite our assurances, disconcerts us. Eventually we fell asleep and the next thing I knew she was beside me, sleeping soundly and morning had dawned. A hot, really hot morning. It's the heat that seems to drive flies inside. They're so fast before you know it -- or don't know it -- a fly has entered the house.

 

The prospect of heading out for the ravine in the afternoon heat and humidity on a 30C day, just didn't appeal. So we thought breakfast could wait and went off with the puppies for a morning hike through the woods. The forest confines were well shielded from the sun, and the underlying heat warning of a hot, humid day was evident, but not yet fully set in, so we enjoyed a leisurely hike in relatively cool and breezy conditions.

 

 

We were not the only people in the community adjoining the ravine to take advantage of cooler morning hours to get a hike through the forest trails in before the onset of stifling afternoon heat. And with them invariably was their doggy companions, all of whom make a beeline directly for Irving the Cookie Man who generally takes great care before we leave the house to ensure he has enough cookies in his bag to meet the inevitable polite invitations from other pups of their willingness to take the burden of cookies off Irving's hands. 

Yesterday afternoon we had noted that the ground under the wasp nest we'd spotted a few weeks back was littered with thick sticks and deduced that teens had seen the wasp nest and the litter was evidence of their having lobbed the sticks in a failed effort to dislodge the nest. Today, the sticks were still there and we noticed, for the first time, a regular stream of wasps entering and exiting the nest, so obviously it wasn't abandoned at all as we had conjectured.

To our surprise, an old acquaintance passing by, pointed out to us yet another wasp nest, a short distance from the first, equal in size, in another small grove of poplar trees. Seemed strange that two such nests would be in close proximity to each other. But before we left the ravine, in an entirely different area, closer to the creek, another friend we came across led us to see a third wasp nest, this one even larger than the first two, of considerable size.

Irving has decided to haul me, kicking and screaming, back to New Hampshire for another week of hiking forest trails in the White Mountain National Forest, forcing me to enjoy myself with him and Jackie and Jillie, exploring those long-familiar trails that always delight us with their seasonal changes. I knew it was coming, he has the soul of a restless adventurer. When we were a young family, he always had trips planned for us. Guess we were just born 'outdoor people'.

Some of my earliest memories as a child were of feeling right at home in green spaces, and though I wouldn't as an infant know them as city parks, something within always drew me to them. Not entirely unusual for any child. When Irving and I were just into our teens, our idea of enjoying a perfect day together would be to wander through a park. At that time, the park of our choice was the distance to travel to Toronto's High Park.

Smaller, neighbourhood parks would do in a pinch. And when we became parents to a brood of three young children, no weekend would be complete without venturing off to the then-newly established nature preserves that Toronto inherited when it bought out surrounding farmland, transforming them into what was then called conservation areas. Often, bringing the children there for an afternoon of sun and picnics, we'd be the only people there.

Well, that was then, this is now, 60 years and a lifetime later. Now, we have the great good fortune to have a comfortable home in another city that values its green spaces. And even more fortunate to be able to leave our house, walk up the street of a populous city suburb and enter a forested ravine where we have easy access to miles of hiking trails running through the larger community.

There too, we enjoy the fascination of witnessing seasonal changes in the forest. There's much to be said for exploring different places with some basic similarities, but a different terrain. Even Jackie and Jillie respond to such changes, becoming more energetic and curious and anxious to look around at new, unfamiliar places offering the same kind of green comfort they look forward to being treated to on a daily basis closer to home.

 

Being close to and within nature for periods of time is an enriching experience, personally valuable as a temporary reprieve from the pressures and sameness of urban life. We know this because Jackie and Jillie have patiently explained it to us time and again; our two little mentors in quality living.

Irving was busy again this morning, tending once again to the physically taxing job of clearing away detritus that has gathered over the years and vegetation that has grown in close proximity to the fence and behind the two garden sheds in our backyard. So for him it was relief to break off and leave more of the same for another day, and get ourselves off into the ravine.

It's a kind of social event, in some ways, encountering others in the same mindframe, seeking serenity in nature, treating their companion dogs to the carefree opportunity to wander about the woods, take a cooling dip into the creek, indulge in a temporary absence when discovering the Cookie Man's presence, and racing over to quietly await the ritual of fumbling for the cookie bag and doling out the cookies.

 

It is so very much appreciated that Saturday is our day of rest and leisure. The other days of the week all have their assigned habitual places in the order of our lives. But Saturday? free and open to do with as we will. And we will so often use that freedom to actively seek out more work. There is always something that needs to be done around the house. Either within or without.

Just as well we have two very eager-to-help little dogs always at the ready to give a paw. After a long and leisurely (see, it's Saturday!) breakfast, Irving went out to the backyard to resume his cleaning-up operation to free up some room for the eventual fence-replacement scheduled some time or other when the contractor can squeeze us in to his busy schedule.

 

One of the composters behind the garden sheds was emptied, its contents of long-standing distributed over beds and borders in the backyard, the composter itself knocked down for flat storage. Now it was the turn of the second composter, the square one. Our kitchen compost pail gets emptied on average every three days. Its contents of melon husks, corn cobs, egg shells, orange peels, coffee grounds, tea bags, apple cores, peach pits, cherry stones, banana skins, and so much more pile up fairly quickly. 

It's been decades that Irving would empty one bin and leave the other to mature and break down to green gold to be shovelled out every fall onto the garden soil, enriching it for the coming summer. But with the advent of municipal compost greenbin pick-ups we've added fish and meat waste as well to the vegetable waste. And our backyard composters have been neglected for  years, as a result. Ensuring that whatever was in them was really well aged. I'd shovelled several wheelbarrows-full of the compost out of the bins last spring, but there was plenty left to continue composting.

 

We've had melons seeding themselves in garden in the past, ending up summer with ripe, mature melons we hadn't planted, but had planted themselves in the compost. And any number of tomato plants, volunteers from the compost bin. The tomatoes have always been cherry tomatoes. The mystery is I don't ever recall composting tomatoes; we eat them all, there's no 'waste' from them.

When Irving was finished, although not quite finished, we set off on a beautiful cool, sunny August day with Jackie and Jillie for a ravine hike through the forest trails. The elderberry trees are crying out for their elderberries, ripe and beautifully red, to be picked. The few apples on the wild apple trees this year chose to grow at heights we cannot reach. But there's still options for blackberries and thimbleberries.

 

When we returned after our hike, it was my turn to stay outside and do some garden work. Tidying up, for the most part. the ornamental crab apple trees are shedding their tiny fruit, along with leaves, and that needed sweeping up. The hosta flower wands asked to be cut back. There is always something to be trimmed and tidied, and another two large compost bags were filled between the backyard gardens and the front of the house.

 

 

That, in actual fact, is the way we tend to spend our Saturdays during the summer months, especially in the fall, when it's time to cut back perennials in preparation for the final clean-up in October. The garden is still colourful, but it is so obviously nearing exhaustion from its hard work over so many months of giving us pleasure. When's the last time you hugged your garden?

 

We had refreshing, fresh and sweet fresh blueberries for dessert last night. They were the largest we'd ever seen, and certainly the best-tasting. I decided to hold some back and use them today for a glaze over a cheesecake. When Irving saw the cheesecake cooling on the counter, he remarked that the cherry-topped cheesecake looked really inviting. That's how large the blueberries were. 

We woke late this morning. We tend to 'sleep in' quite often. And we have a tendency to go up to bed too late. It's all a matter of perspective; guess we've become night owls. It seems to be what suits us best. It was a cool night, last night, so I was glad that I had thought ahead and when I changed the bed linen, put a light cotton coverlet on. We needed it last night. We'd gone from extreme heat and humidity, to cool humidity, if that makes any sense.

There was a good breeze coming through the bedroom window, but the window had to be closed repeatedly whenever yet another rain squall came through the area, one after another. To inundate our already-saturated environment. And to think that severe drought is creating desperate conditions elsewhere in the world...

When we finally did arise, it was just when yet another squall was coming down, the rain hitting the deck canopy and pouring off its edges. We awaited until it abated slightly before going out with Jackie and Jillie. A brief event, under the circumstances. Jillie stays under the four-foot-elevated deck so she doesn't get very wet, but Jackie hurtles himself right into the rain, to do his business. And they both get a good rub-down back in the house; a ritual they revel in.

When rain finally stopped, no chance the cloud cover would lift. It just sat there, unmoving, glowering down at us. But withholding rain, so we decided we'd get out for our afternoon  hike. The temperature managed to edge up to 19C, so rain jackets were needed both for the comfort of warmth they conferred and the assurance that if the skies dumped again, we'd be covered, as it were. As luck had it, no more rain.

The wild apple trees in the forest look rather the worse for wear. Some have lost at least fifty percent of their foliage. And on many there's not an apple to be seen. Others sport apples but at a height and awkwardness that makes it impossible for us to pick any apples. And others yet just drop their ripe apples; if they're growing on a ridge, the apples tumble into steep-sided gullies below. The terrain, after all, is that of a forest within a ravine.

Irving is enterprising as usual, knowing how much Jackie and Jillie enjoy those apples at this time of year, so he hunts for a freshly fallen apple, polishes its perfect surface and begins to bite off small portions that he offers to the puppies. Another wonderful fall awaits them, their favourite time of year.

So, when Irving decided to finally mow the lawn at the front of the house, and had hauled everything out, he discovered the day had other plans for him. Oh, the lawn would get cut, it badly needed mowing, it's just that the job would turn out differently than Irving had anticipated. It took a little longer and required a bit more effort. Our trusty old electric lawn mower is out of business, gave up the ghost, pooped out, refused to perform.

So, out came the push mower and it tackled the job. Made just a trifle more difficult, with more passes required because (a) the grass was too long, and (b) it was still wet from the ongoing series of rain events we'd had. Time to shop for a new mower. And that's what Irving did after breakfast today, out he went, stopping at Canadian Tire, Home Hardware and Home Depot. And came home with a mower. That will see action another day.

What demanded his more immediate attention was to continue emptying our two compost bins, shovel out that black garden gold onto the gardens, and disassemble the compost bins since we won't be needing them in the foreseeable future, given the municipality's weekly compost pick-ups. He's still engrossed in the need to make things easier for the fencers when they finally arrive to replace our three-decade-old fence. Our garden beds will be grateful for the gift of the compost before they're put to 'bed' as it were, for the winter months.

Today turned out a cool day after a series of hot, humid days. Cool enough that Jackie and Jillie wanted to lay out on the deck in the sun. Until, at least, it got too hot and then in they came, Jillie to arrange herself under the coffee table in the family room, panting and Jackie to leap onto his throne at the top-back of the sofa.

And then off we went to the ravine. By then the sun had retreated behind silvery-grey clouds that promised to behave; no more rain until tonight, they said earnestly and we believed them. There was some signage at the forest entrance, and it informed anyone who might be interested that the community-spirited man who has for years provided a waste can at all ravine entrances to collect scooped-up doggy-waste will no longer continue doing so.

His altruism has been interrupted by a cancer diagnosis. While we stood there momentarily, our neighbour who lives in the corner house adjacent the ravine entrance who has been less than thrilled that the poop collection is right next to her backyard, came out to tell us that the tall, elderly man is retiring his community-spirited practise of putting out full garbage bags of collected waste for weekly pick-up. The only thing was her description didn't match that of our experience of recognizing a much younger, robust man who has been putting himself out with that task. Mystery abounds.

When we returned back home after two hours on the trails and a very satisfied pair of pups awaiting their salad, I finished the laundry, did the ironing, and began preparations for a paella-fish dinner. Mind lingering on that sad news and mystified over the disparity of recognition of the individual involved.