Sometimes timing is everything, and sometimes you're so busy and intent on what  you're doing that  you just fail to notice what's happening around you. There's always nagging little things to be done around the house, from routine daily chores to giving attention to familiar household items that require fixing. We find ourselves fully occupied with both, at various times during the week. We're fairly flexible in the time we devote to taking Jackie and Jillie out for their afternoon hike through the forest, and that time arrives when all the household chores have been done for the day, and off we go.

We saw our two children (in their 60s) off today, back to Toronto, and took our time over breakfast. Then, it was time to start the laundry on schedule, a four-load event that takes hours to get done. And in between changing the linen on the beds, gathering the towels from the bathrooms, refitting the beds with fresh linen and cleaning up the bathrooms. 

 

Irving has his own chores to pay attention to. He had parked his truck in the driveway to enable our guests to use the garage since they left some of the gear they took along on their three-week trip to Truro in the car; better to remove it from temptation in the driveway and secure it in the garage. So when they left, Irving cleared things out of the driveway and swept up the garage before driving the truck back in, a chore for him that had been put off for far too long.

 

We dressed the puppies in their collars and halters, hauled on our hiking boots and were just about to go out the door when thunder and lightning suddenly took the place of the partially sunny sky that occupied the heavens most of the day. The suddenness of the heavy, sweeping rain  had us mouth agape. And slightly irritated. Jackie and Jillie were confused; they were all set for their walk in the forest and we were just standing there watching the rain pummel the landscape.

 

Yet, in no time at all, the rain stopped as suddenly as it burst  upon us, and the sun returned, glancing its light and heat over the puddles that had accumulated in that brief period. Nothing then was holding us back so off we went, to find the forest interior steadily dripping as the forest canopy began to shed its unexpected load. Everything looked bright with a glistening sheen of rain. 

 

Underfoot the trails were drenched and the runnels created by previous heavy rainfalls this summer, appeared to have been gouged out a little more deeply. We proceeded with a measure of caution on one of the steep sidetrails, descending toward the first bridge once we achieved the bottom of the first hill. Jackie and Jillie looked about in vain for any of their friends to appear. Living as close as we do to the forest, all it takes for us is a quick trip up the street to the ravine entrance.

 

It's this time of summer that Irving can't resist plucking ripe berries and offering them to the pups. This year Jackie refuses the blackberries where last year he ate them and Jillie didn't want them; now it's the reverse. Both, however, will grace us with the favour of avidly slurping up raspberries and thimbleberries.

No sign any longer of the Great Blue Heron that we had seen on three consecutive days last week. He's likely flown on elsewhere. He's not a regular denizen of the forest unlike the owls and Pileated woodpeckers. Hawks and bluejays come through the forest in the spring, along with Mallard ducks on their migration return flight and they stay awhile, then move on.