Basically it's how our brains are wired. Or more to the point how we wire our brains over time through habituation. Yesterday, a case in point. I'd asked Irving if he felt like having pizza for dinner. I had all the ingredients at hand and had pre-made a bread dough, sitting in the refrigerator waiting to be used for something. And that something would be a pizza. 

Pizza-production is familiar to us. We've been making our own pizza for decades. And we used to make one for ourselves regularly every Saturday evening. So when, yesterday, we were in the kitchen producing that pizza (I roll out the dough, spread it with tomato paste, sprinkle over dried herbs mixed with seasonings and chopped fresh sweet basil, then grated Parmesan, and over that mozzarella. The rest is Irving's; he sprinkles over chopped mushrooms, tomatoes, bell pepper. And last, if he feels like it, anchovies and/or pepperoni.)

And I kept thinking it was Saturday, not Wednesday. My mind wandered into thinking about the following day, and Sunday follows Saturday. Then jolting myself into the realization that yesterday was really Wednesday and the following day would be Thursday. Well, the rest was up to the pizza drawer on our microwave oven, and we enjoyed that pizza.

Another beautiful day dawned today, lots of sun and it was hot, but not too hot, with accompanying breezes. All of our hikes through forest trails with our puppies are pleasurable little adventures, but on such beautiful summer days they're even more rewarding. This summer, like last summer, there've been few mosquitoes about and that's a true bonus. 

Up on the forest verge before we descend into the ravine the wildflowers are getting to the spent stage. Certainly the compass plants are by and large finished; their fluff-seed heads nowhere near as attractive as their bright yellow flowers. But the Himalayan orchids continue to bloom, their bright pink floral heads punctuating the dominating green of the bracken on the forest floor.

Irving never dares exit the house for the ravine without filling up his canine-cookie bag. And this afternoon it took no time before the first three appearances of his doggy friends materialized. Five altogether, counting our two. He doles out large cookies to the big dogs and small, treat-training sizes to our two. Three cookies apiece to our guests, one repeated at several stops to our own.

When we passed under the wasp nest hanging from a poplar in a copse of poplars on one of the trails, we peer pointedly above to try to determine whether there are any wasps entering or exiting the nest, but could see none. Yet the nest appears to be getting larger, bit by bit. It is, in fact, already fairly large. We can only guess at the numbers it is meant to accommodate.

Passing over the first of the bridges we eventually come to, beside the forest creek, we can see that greater numbers of the drift of tall feral coreopsis plants are in flower. And once again wonder who brought them there. We have those very same tall flowering coreopsis behind the backyard garden gate in bloom, and hypothesize that seeds were dropped by birds flying from garden to forest. Peoples' boots tend to pick up seeds and unheedingly scatter them as well. But that's usually beside trails; it's difficult to get down to where that drift now gracefully populates a good-sized area beside the creek.

We decide again to conclude our hike through the pollinating meadow. Lots of cabbage butterflies and bees making the most of summer's blooms, in and out, around and about blossoms. We beat a path down to the creek through the long, thickly-grown-in grasses, me to see the black-eyed Susans and the purple loosestrife, and Irving to get a better look at the fair-sized little orange goldfish swimming about in a little pool.

And then it's home again, to saunter through the garden, where we find bees galore making the most of their opportunity offered by the blooms there. Me patiently awaiting the opportunity when one settles on a flower to take a snap, but they aren't accommodating today, flitting about without end from flower to flower, and so I leave them to it.