Our pantry and refrigerator remained well-enough stocked even after our week away, that we felt a partial food shopping expedition would do well enough for the week.Our focus was on fresh fruits and vegetables. Although at Farmboy we also picked up milk and cheese and a small corned beef roast, along with a challah and a French stick. Cauliflower, corn, green beans, tomatoes, cucumbers, and just about everything else is in high season, abundant and inexpensive. 

There's still Quebec-grown strawberries in two-quart baskets, and avocados, pears, kiwis, raspberries and grapes at great prices, though you'd pay just about anything for their fresh goodness. Cantaloupe and Honeydew sizes are huge and we love them for breakfast. They have the freshest mushrooms you can buy anywhere. And the choice of unripe and ripening bananas unlike other supermarkets where you've got to wait a week before bananas are ripe and sweet enough for the table.

Shopping done, on a cold, darkly overcast morning following a night of rain, we rescued Jackie and Jillie from their self-imposed purgatory of abandonment. And as we unpacked, treats were in order for them, until we could sit down to the breakfast table where they enjoyed an extra portion of breast meat with their kibble from yesterday's largish roasted Cornish hen. They should have been well stuffed, but they hung around until their hard-boiled egg was chopped and ready to eat.

We were expecting a serviceman to come by in early afternoon. We'd made an appointment because our automatic garage door openers are malfunctioning, but he failed to show up. Which left us the option of heading out to the ravine with the puppies a bit earlier than planned. And it turned out to be a good idea since despite the cool ambiance of the dark overcast, the sun began to evidence itself now and again and it seemed a perfect afternoon for a prolonged hike.

We've been surprised lately by the number of people who've begun coming out to the forest. All the more so that the days have been so cool and rain-threatening. In the previous two days we just managed to make it back home from our ravine hikes as rainbursts began coming down. For a refreshing change, it wasn't rain that concluded our hike today, but the emergence of the sun amid a wide blue backdrop of clear sky.

We came across so many of our hiking friends today that we tended to linger and just talk. It's on occasions like this that you fully realize there's a hiking community of like-minded people living in the larger community surrounding the ravine. People we've known for years, and their dogs, everyone comfortable with everyone else. And questions of concern raised at the extended absence of one familiar face or another.

Our pups burst with excitement when they see, hear or smell their own doggy friends in the distance, long before we become aware. With the exception of some of those dogs suddenly appearing, far from the companionship they entered the ravine with, searching out the Cooke Man's offerings. Sometimes they appear dashing toward us in their eagerness not to miss out on a treat, and sometimes they suddenly appear behind us, surprising us by their silent, but no-less-eager approach. We know them all by name, greet them, and treat them.

And by the time we reached home after leaving the ravine with our pups, the sun was out in a blaze of glory, treating us to its seasonal warmth and brilliance, drying out the garden and inviting us for a stroll around the garden to see what's still left in a swiftly-diminishing colour display of tired floral offerings.