Little wonder we equate summer with spontaneity, when we are able on the spur of the moment to do anything in the outdoors we enjoy without necessary advance preparations to face the weather. Today, yet another warm, breezy and sunny day. The backyard inviting us to mosey about, looking at the gardens, admiring whatever has most recently gone into bloom. For their part, Jackie and Jillie busying themselves sniffing about for the irresistible scents of the rabbits. 

 

 

The bearded irises are now in flower, so are the Mountain Bluet, the bleeding hearts, and the Ladies Mantle in the rock garden. And surprise, one of our oldest climbing roses has also started to bloom. Then there's the lovely shade of pastel orange of a peony which has finally decided to flower this spring, the first time ever in its four-year residence in the garden. Jackie and Jillie may be engrossed in sniffing out the presence of squirrels, chipmunks and rabbits, but I'm enthralled with the sight of nature's generosity of flowers.

 

Irving planned to barbecue chicken drumsticks for dinner tonight, so I thought that coleslaw would accompany them very nicely, and shredded cabbage, carrot, sliced onion and dried cranberries into a salad we could enjoy later on today, with a piquant dressing including apple cider. 

 

We set off relatively early in the afternoon for our quotidian tryst in the forest hoping that the breeze would keep the mosquitoes down to a manageable level. The robins are really enjoying this weather in the ravine. At this time of spring we always see robins scurrying about on the forest floor for whatever reason for an avian species they find bipedalism appealing at this time of year, but it's a kind of robin-ritual we've been long familiar with.

 

Jackie and Jillie don't even find it in them to chase the robins any longer; they're as accustomed to seeing them on the trails and beyond now, as we are. Their songs followed us, adding yet another melodic note of serene pleasure to our outing. We also saw the yellow flash of warblers in flight around the forest creek. And adjacent one of the trails, we watched as a Hairy woodpecker flitted from tree to tree until one tree trunk satisfied its search.

 

As we once again approached the creek on our way doubling back on the circuit we had chosen for the day, we came again across the one clump of wildflowers we now know as an invasive species, to be found in the forest as far as we could see. Growing just above the creek on its bank, the oddest 'aquatic' group of beautiful yellow irises we've ever seen. They have a reputation for aggressiveness in pushing out native vegetation, yet evidently though we've never seen them before last year, never even imagined their existence, there is but a single clump.

 

Himalayan orchids, another invasive Asian species on the other hand, really are aggressive in their habit, and we've seen them proliferating in parts of the forest for years, now being challenged, their presence much diminished since the appearance of fast-spreading thimbleberry shrubs (purple raspberry) that have in their turn colonized the area fast being vacated by the orchids.