Right about now on the calendar we're nearing the height of autumnal colour. In the same vein, our annuals, those that haven't yet been taken out of the garden for composting, are beginning to dry up. I watered our hanging dipladenia vine in the back garden for the last time, out of compassion, seeing the foliage still bright and glossy, but the flowers hanging limp and beginning to rust and fall off. 

Some of our garden ornamental trees are almost bare of leaves, but most still cling to their foliage and in a way it's sad to see how bedraggled and miserable some are becoming. But this seasonal change is inevitable and though they've been through it countless times, like us, the reaction is one of dismay. The loss is temporary, everything will regrow, from sturdy old perennials to the foliage now vacating tree branches.

This is nature's way of giving all these hard-working and varied vegetation specimens, from trees to shrubs to faithfully-returning perennials a well-earned rest. Animals are sentient, we don't have any real idea how green growing matter erupting from soil could be 'aware'. Simply put, they all react to the ancient signals of weather conditions, of temperature and of light.

Walking up the street toward the ravine, the street landscape itself declares fall  is present, winter is imminent. Trees on people's lawns, on the periphery of the forest bordering the street, all declare their awareness of the fall transition. Before we reach the group mailbox it's time to turn right, enter the trail, turn left again and descend into the forest.

Now that rain hasn't fallen again for a week, the creek running through the ravine's bottom is hugely reduced in volume. It barely makes a sound as the water makes its way tranquilly downstream. Robins occasionally rise from the water in little groups, juveniles of the season who may or may not migrate. 

Jackie and Jillie sniff about incessantly, picking up messages only their keen noses can decipher but obviously delivering important news of the canine world to them. We dress them now in light little doggy-sweaters to fend off the cool air, their harnesses over, quickly accessible to their leashes. And now and again when Jillie becomes a little too obstreperously hostile to the random presence of dogs she doesn't know, she gets placed on her leash.

We haven't the heart to restrain her, however, when the coast is clear as it mostly is, and she happily greets other dogs that she knows well from long acquaintance, off comes the leash and she's free to continue gamboling along with Jackie. 

When we return home, they turn suddenly glum. Instead of dancing around me, demanding their vegetable salad as always after our forest gambol, they go off to the family room, morosely waiting. Then, when we're ready to leave, they raise a chorus of yodeling their unhappiness at being left at home alone while we go off to do the grocery shopping. 

They didn't respond when I told them their salad was ready, uninterested in racing into the kitchen as usual to gobble them down. That had to wait on our return when being reunited with us relieved their tension and they were ready to indulge in eating once again.