Another night of -3C, so whatever somehow evaded the frost 'kiss of death' the night before succumbed finally last night. I was almost fearful of glancing out the front door for a\confirmation when we came downstairs for breakfast. A later, closer look when we were outdoors revealed that the spunky little rose in the garden bed at the very front of the house close to the street was thriving, frost or no frost. Cold weather seems to spur it to putting out buds and more buds, flowering in exquisite shades of ivory, yellow and pink, along with the occasional white-and-pink-speckled flower. 

 

At a time when everything else is the garden succumbs to the inevitable threshold of winter, that tiny rose shrub perks up and delights us. The classical 'stone' urn standing on the porch with its central dracaena and begonias still thrives; proximity to the house makes the difference for its longevity. The blue 'headlight' lobelias that had been planted around the begonias have long since departed; then the begonias spread and absorbed their space. 

That urn remains intact along with another on the porch rail that I bypassed when I was plucking out all of the limp, wet remnants of annual flowering plants that had been so cheerfully triumphant against the first overnight trials just flirting with frost. Today Irving and I addressed ourselves to the serious business of completing the annual fall disassembling of summer life. The garden furniture put away into the larger of our two garden sheds while I went about harvesting the annuals, emptying the garden pots of soil and wheelbarrowing it to the backyard.

 

It helped of course that the day turned out brightly beautiful, with an afternoon high of 10C, but minus wind, and the golden orb in the sky casting its brilliant warmth down on a grateful landscape. There's still more work to be done; the last of the garden pots emptied of soil, and all of them along with the garden statuary covered with plastic. At that juncture we can breathe a sigh of relief that the garden is prepared for winter. It always seems that there's so much more work disassembling the garden than doing the spring planting.

 

The sublime weather called us to tend to Jackie and Jillie's polite request to get going on our ravine hike for the day, and we were happy to oblige. Jillie lets the entire street know that her majesty is out and about; all the way up the street to the approach of the ravine she emits a series of anticipatory barks. There's a kind of ritual involved where before we plunge into the ravine Irving offers the first of a cache of tiny cookies to our pups, and then halfway down the first incline, another. Should he forget, they remind  him.

 

The forest beckoned the community today, and those who responded could not have been disappointed. Like yesterday we saw a good number of people out with children or with dorgs, or both, likely ten of these groups for the period we were out, similar to the numbers we encountered yesterday, with nary a frown in sight.