Among many other items in today's morning  read of the newspapers, there was a story headlined the rising cost of food products, a popular topic of the past several years. Chocolate (the dark variety) has gone up in price, and so has sugar, while the headliner was the greater cost to the consuming public of avocados, grown in Mexico's most crime-struck state. I had no idea that Mexico grew 70 percent of the world's avocado crops, nor that Canada was the world's 7th largest importers of the vegetable. Last week we paid $1.99 for a bag of six avocados; this week they're back up to their normal price of $3.99. I'd hardly call that a catastrophic rising cost. Mind, at some supermarkets single avocados can be priced up to $4.99. So we buy a bag of six and enjoy them at a reasonable cost.

 

Which leads me to another food topic of interest to me. And that is the number of times we have to empty our kitchen-top compost container which holds about two quarts of waste. Into it this morning went coffee grounds, a tea bag, banana skins, egg shells, orange rinds and avocado shells. After we did our shopping Irving usually cuts cauliflowers down to a size that fit better into our vegetable crisper by removing the leaves and most of the stem. That went in, along with trimming the leeks I bought. And then cleaning and preparing vegetables for a stir-fry saw trimmings from bell pepper, mushrooms, snow peas, garlic skins go into the compost as well. Followed by peelings of persimmons, meant for dessert.

 

I couldn't believe how frigid it felt today with a temperature high of -4C, augmented by a nasty wind that blew up to 55mph in gusts. The temperature plus the wind in the parking lot of the supermarket we shopped at made for a memorably miserable experience. I could almost sympathize with those shoppers who feel no obligation to wheel their shopping carts into the proper receptacle for them, rather than abandoning them in the parking lot for others to have to move out of the way to do their shopping. Even the short walk to park the shopping carts must have felt too much for some people, facing the icy atmosphere and blasting wind.

 

We did dress with a little more care when we went out earlier in the day with Jackie and Jillie. Neither the cold nor the wind fazed them. They went about their trotting hither and yon, back and forth completely oblivious to conditions that made us feel that if it were any colder we'd become pillars of ice. Could be that being closer to the ground helps. Even though the forest floor had a light covering of snow pellets that came down earlier in the morning hours.

 

The footing now on the slopes can be a bit dicey, so it appears increasingly as though the cleats firmly strapped on our boots will remain there until winter waves goodbye in five months' time. We saw two people at a distance with a dog, hovering with indecision at the top of the first long hill descending into the ravine, who visually assessed the conditions assumed they had no wish to emulate Monty Python's ministry of funny walks, turned around and left the area.

We encountered no difficulties ourselves, and truth to tell, there is some protection from the elements within the embrace of the forest. Generally, the wind doesn't penetrate as lustily, and although there can be some icy pockets in micro areas of the forest landscape, in its entirety it can be somewhat less frosty than out at street level. So we all enjoyed our hike, and on our return home it wasn't until we'd entered the house that I realized my face felt as stiff as ice.