It's likely an internally deeply-submerged anxiety about meal preparations that nags me to plan as far ahead as I can for our weekly menus. It probably dates back to the time when we owned our first little house around 1957 in a northern Toronto suburb where even back then it took at least an hour to drive back into the city on a daily commute from Richmond Hill to downtown Toronto where we both had jobs. Planning ahead meant less wear and tear on the mind, and if some elements of a meal could be prepared the night before -- even if it was just to make certain that a raw ingredient was out of the freezer and into the refrigerator for easy handling -- meant we were able to have our evening meal at a decent time to dispel feeling famished after a long day.

The carryover is that, two decades after our retirement from the outside workforce, I still wrack my brains and my memory file of recipes to think of a meal to be handily assembled the following day. On Monday after our ravine walk that followed our weekly house cleaning routine, it occurred to me that I could put together a riff on a savoury pie with different ingredients, as a bit of an experiment.

 

I had read that adding a tablespoon of dehydrated milk crystals to any baked recipe helped to produce a richer tasting product, and I tried it out for the first time when I put together the pastry dough for the pie crust. The result was quite pleasing. I went on to sprinkle grated Parmesan cheese over the crust I'd just lightly introduced for five minutes to a pre-bake. Over the Parmesan cheese went chopped green onions, and over that a layer of sliced tomatoes that had soaked on absorbent paper. Then I chopped fresh basil leaves and laid them over the tomatoes, and covered them with green peas. Atop the layers I poured a batter of ricotta cheese, eggs, salt and pepper. Then popped it all into a little countertop oven to bake at 350F for about 40 minutes. It produced a meal complete in itself, enormously pleasing.

This ongoing weather that seems like a continuation of summer makes a lot of things easier for us, too, in preparation for taking Jackie and Jillie out to the ravine for our daily walks. We can be more casual, have no concern over wearing garments to protect them or us from inclement weather conditions. And it's certainly a lot easier on the garden.

It would be difficult not to notice that both the forest and the garden are undergoing gradual changes. The fullness of green is beginning to recede. In the forest, it's the withdrawal of vegetation on the forest floor, leaving great voids, gaps of bare ground where not so long ago all types of vegetation had flourished. And in the garden more of the soil is being revealed all the time as annuals begin to dry up and perennials lose their fresh appeal.

In the case of both, it is growth-and-flowering fatigue, along with those shorter daylight hours, but more emphatically, nippy night-time temperatures. Both have had a good run this year, and we've enjoyed it ourselves tremendously, admiring the results of nature's bestowal of good growing weather enabling her green creatures to reach great heights of admirable conceit.

In the ravine's forest there is always ample attraction for Jackie and Jillie to meander here and there by odours their sense of smell intrigue them with. Not to speak of the added excitement they undergo by the more visible presence now of squirrels and chipmunks, avidly collecting seeds, nuts and fruits for winter storage. 

Thistles that we thought had finished their flowering over a month ago, have produced a modest new flush of blossoms, irresistible to bees anxious not to miss any opportunities for pollen collection. Whatever berries that were left in an unripe state hanging from shrubs and canes, have either been plucked by the wildlife (and us), or succumbing to the weather conditions, simply dried  up, unripe and unready.

Back at home, in the garden, the form and colour that so delighted us all summer has given way to plants like echinacea fading, and drying, a wan wisp of their former proud beauty. Jackie and Jillie find a treasure-chest-worth of crabapples littering the walk to the porch for them to nibble at leisure. Earlier in the day I had seen not only squirrels and chipmunks carrying them off or pluncking them down on some of the surfaces off the ground to enjoy, but also the arrival of chickadees to do the same.

There are two crabapple trees close to the porch, both Sargentii crabs. Further away beside the driveway there's an ornamental weeping Jade tree and for the past few seasons, it has expanded its girth and its reach greatly, while producing an enormous number of tiny, red crabapples. None of those apples have yet been shed, although I trimmed some of the wayward branches and collected them into compost bags. At one time, in earlier days, they would all have been collected for preserves-preparation, producing crabapple jelly. At one time I did put up peaches, raspberries, strawberries, blueberries, quinces as preserves, jams and jellies....