Finally, I found the 'spare' time and effort to spend cleaning up and tidying the garden a bit. It's an ongoing and regular deployment of our resources throughout spring to summer, and it's downright pleasurable. We have so many overhanging trees continually dropping detritus that the walkways, with a few days' sweeping neglect are soon piled high with dry foliage, tiny twigs and now added to that, ripe crabapples.

 

 

Yesterday I tackled the front garden and spent a few hours trimming and sweeping up.Today it was the backyard, cutting back on overgrown plants, removing spent flower stalks, yanking weeds, trimming trees and roses and above all, finally disposing of what I thought were clematis vines on steroids. Last fall when the garden got right royally trampled with the installation of a new backyard fence I wondered which of the perennials would be forever lost. In the spring I saw all the signs that clematis vines planted along the side of the fence had endured the assault and survived.

 

As they grew, I helped them by installing tall, robust bamboo stakes since with a new fence no longer of wood with lattice tops, there was nothing for them to grab on to. Among the clematis vines was the return of Morning Glories and they got staked too. Two of the vines that I took for clematis, I realized finally, were anything but. Although the foliage resembled that of clematis and Morning Glory, they were Bindweed, which I normally pluck out of the garden.

 

So today I pulled out the bamboo stakes on the two Bindweed vines that had grown to monstrous proportions, and stripped the vines off the stakes, to dispose of them for compost. The amount of vegetation they represented between them was truly impressive. Now, all that's left there is the single surviving clematis vine of the three that had flourished there originally, and the Morning Glory vines.

 

Purple Loosestrife

We've been given another glorious summer day. We've had so few days this summer that have been gaspingly hot, that alone would mark this summer as unusual. But add in the never-ending rain events and the summer has been made doubly unusual. Today has been a sunny day, tempered with cooler temperatures and a brisk wind; absolutely comfortable as long as there's not too much direct sun exposure.

 

Golden Ragwort

When we were out in the ravine the combination of temperature, breeze, dry atmosphere and forest canopy shade was perfect. So we took our time ambling along, and Jackie and Jillie were perfectly in tune.  The kind of afternoon that feels wonderfully lazy, encouraging you to stop and look out over the water swirling down the raceway of the forest creek, the breeze shifting the stalks of Jewelweed, Pilotweed and Himalayan orchids, their bright orange, pink and gold flower heads nodding in a symphony of nature's charming beneficence.

 

A far, far cry from the disastrous havoc being wrought through flooding sweeping through parts of the world, the accompanying landslides, and the miseries inherent in vast stretches of forest torched by dry lightning and human carelessness unleashing wildfires through Western Canada and elsewhere in the world.