One of my hiking boots has mysteriously disappeared. We leave our hiking boots in the garage when we enter the house. There's a few steps up from the garage to the mudroom/laundry room and our boots are left on a tray beside the steps. This is another first, on par with finding a confused snake trying to exit the garage yesterday. We looked and we peered here and there; no boot. I put on an old, perfectly serviceable pair that I had put away last year in favour of the new pair. They're fine in the absence of the newer boots, but where could that missing boot be, we wonder?

Its absence didn't deter us from an early afternoon trip up the street to the ravine.  Jackie and Jillie expect no less of  us. As far as they're concerned, when we forgot the treat bag and left it at home instead of taking it with us several days ago, that was a tragedy of monumental, unaccountable proportions. Missing boot? Tough! Got the treat bag? Check!

Fairly warm today, but no rain. Lots of clouds, white and puffy in a seablue sky, but moving along at a good speed, not interfering with the sky-dominant sun. Wind up high, but scarcely a breeze at street level. No cooling breeze as we trotted through the forest trails, but the deep, cooling shade of the forest canopy gave ample relief from the sun.

For a while, leaves had stopped falling from the garden trees onto the walkways and bricked patios, but they've started up again. And we see the same thing in the forest. Not only is foliage beginning to dry up and tumble to the forest floor, some foliage is beginning to turn already; distressed outliers. It's much, much too soon for that kind of fall nonsense.

All the forest vegetation has managed to shed the heavy lacquering of rain from the past week and wild flower stalks that had leaned to the forest floor have now righted themselves. The wild coreopsis standing upright and tall again, but a lot of the compass plants and some of the Himalayan orchid stalks were permanently bent to the ground.

Irving stops briefly at every stand of thimbleberry shrubbery and blackberry canes to pluck their fruit and offer it to an always-omnivorous pair of puppies. One of their gustatory rewards they connect to the ravine, aside from the occasional cookie treat. When we pass the thick, heavy snag that was once a vigorously majestic giant spruce, Irving brings my notice to something fairly unusual.

With all the rain we've had and approaching autumn I've been expecting to see colourful fungi decorating the forest floor and there have been none. As compared to their lavish presence spring and fall in most years, there were none to be seen this past spring, either. But there, sitting on the tall, rough spruce snag, was a large yellow mushroom, like a gold medallion aseat on its throne. Nature!

Later, when we decide to make our way through to the forest meadow to see what's going on there, we plow through the thicket of grass taller than me, and now in seed. Growing so thickly it obscures the narrow path. Which doesn't seem to faze Jackie and Jillie, following me in the lead. When we exit that maze, I discover my perspiring bare arms are well powdered with sticky grass seed, clinging to my moist skin. What a bonus...