I sometimes wonder that people who take walks in nature fail to observe the minutiae of nature unfolding before their very eyes. It is constant and daily, likely it can be reduced even further, but our senses fail to register changes and the appearances of new things on such a small time-scale. From day to day, though, we can manage to notice new things appearing before us.

But that's the thing: how many people take the few seconds to stop and peer more closely if needed to realize that changes have taken place? What's more to the point how many actually care? For most people it's the actions they take that are important to them, thinking in terms of expending energy by doing certain things (running and bicycling as examples) and in the process exercising muscle, not mind. There are no calories to be dropped by exercising the mind.

On the other hand, exposing the mind to new circumstances and happenings tends to broaden the mind in the sense that new experiences and realizations expand one's knowledge and sometimes spurs keener interest in what is 'unseen' because it goes unnoticed. And if it isn't noticed then it isn't worthwhile focusing on since it just doesn't exist. We tend to look for fungi on the forest floor, because they can be colourful and fascinatingly shaped.

Today there were several revelations open to our notice, when we entered the ravine with our puppies, Jackie and Jillie. Much of our time hiking through the forested trails is spent watching them, in actual fact. For various reasons; to see that they behave, which they often do not in their frequently-practised hostile attitude to other dogs, designed to get them into trouble, and to guide them and protect them and attempt, fruitless as it is, to teach them better modes of manner.

But we also look around us, at the trees, the bugs and the birds, smelling the fragrance of wildflowers, hearing the buzz of insects and the bright lilt of birdsong, the wind soughing through the forest canopy. Today on one of the rails of one of the bridges -- of all places -- we saw an owl pellet. It isn't often we see those expelled rejects of feather, bone, and other inedible parts of creatures consumed by owls, and it's more likely to see them lying on a path, not a bridge rail.

We noted dangling red cherries are now ripening on the wild cherry trees in the ravine. They're much smaller of course than cultivated cherries and undoubtedly lack the sweetness, but they will serve birds well and they're beautiful to look at. In some places alongside the forest trails there are wildflowers that grow nowhere else in the forest. Among them wild sunflowers, growing to a good height and producing flowerheads very similar to cultivated sunflowers. We saw the first of them beginning their bloom today. These sightings tend to give  us quite a bit of pleasure. They may be repeated year after year, but each time they occur, they delight us anew.

There was ample opportunity to pick ripe raspberries for Jackie and Jillie's consumption, on this heavily overcast day. It was sprinkling, but not heavily, when we set out, so we dressed all of us in rainjackets. Jackie and Jillie didn't seem to mind, and it was just as well that the ambient temperature didn't rise above 23C, though the moisture level was thick enough to cut with a knife, as the colloquial saying goes.

After our return back home, I put together a potato salad for dinner. I thought to substitute part of the mayonnaise I'd be using with sour cream. My potato salads are always shot through with green onion, bell pepper, snow peas over shredded lettuce and topped with sliced tomatoes and peeled baby cucumbers. 

We had gone out early in the morning to do our grocery shopping, and when we prepared to leave again in the afternoon, Jackie and Jillie pleaded to go with us. So they did. I took along water for them, and a section of the newspaper for me to read in the car while waiting for Irving to conduct his downtown business. We just didn't want to leave them home alone again to enable me to do that special shopping together with Irving, so we three sat in the parked car while he went to the special cheese shop at Byward Market where he can buy specialty cheeses, and to the magazine shop where his art and antique magazines are to be found.

On the drive, which takes no more than a half-hour from our house to downtown Ottawa, we saw on a traffic roundabout an equestrian statue with Queen Elizabeth that I don't recall having seen before. Also, on our way along the Eastern Parkway, we saw that the RCMP 'musical ride' horses were out of their stable and in their paddock for a change. They have a large area of grassy meadow to roam about on, yet the horses, some 30 or so in number, seemed to be comfortable standing together in a crowd along a fence.

A Community Benefactor

For quite a while the devoted trail-hiking community had no idea who the mystery person was behind such acts as rescuing the trails from impediments like the occasional fallen tree trunk which we all stepped over until someone brought in equipment to saw the trunk into pieces and set them aside off the trail. And then, when trail maps began appearing at various sites throughout the ravine, posted on tree trunks in the most visible areas, there was no implied connection but again, a mystery.

Finally, someone began putting up little containers in which were deposited bags for the obvious purpose of picking up canine excrement. There had always been a problem of dog poop lying on the trails, evidence that some dogs simply didn't get it, nor did their people, even while most dogs practised pretty good etiquette going off trail into the woods to deposit their offerings.

Ripe Thimbleberries

We reasoned of course that it represented biological waste and would become part of the greater forest mass of accumulated biomass, enriching the forest. No one picks up after all the raccoons, squirrels and birds living in the forest, after all. And then we began seeing bags someone used to scoop up poop being thrown carelessly here and there off the trails into the forest, sometimes landing on tree branches, sometimes on the forest floor.

Pilotweed

Organic matter deteriorates, plastic does not. One could only marvel at the gross stupidity of anyone who would stoop to scoop then toss the product encased in plastic into the very area that was being cleared of such detritus. So it was with a huge sense of gratitude that we began to see containers popping up for discarded and full bags. Someone had gone to that amount of trouble. But who was that someone? No one seemed to know. That someone also gathered all that excrement weekly bagging and placing it on the closest street for pick-up come garbage collection day, without fail.

Someone who was so conscientious and altruistic graduated to placing small garbage pails fitted out with garbage bags to replace the smaller ones previously used. And those pails filled up surprisingly quickly. And they were assiduously collected every week for trash removal. We knew it wasn't the municipality and the parks department, though this is no park but a natural forest. Eventually it was discovered who the person was.

This morning it rained heavily at around 5:00 a.m. but by the time we rose at 8:00 it was over. Our earlier morning rising yesterday at 6:00 kind of knocked us out. When we went downstairs and looked out at the garden out front and the backyard it was to a thoroughly drenched, green world. But the rain had stopped and nothing therefore stopped us from launching ourselves on an early morning trail hike. Not even the forecast that informed us of a chance of thunderstorms, given that the same forecast said the afternoon high would be a clammy 30C once again.

Lots to see out there, the thimbleberry bushes thriving, berries ripening at a fast rate. The pilotweed now dominating the wildflower offerings, though Himalayan orchids are also making a comeback albeit in more modest numbers.

As we approached one of the entry points to the ravine on a street quite distant from our own, Jackie and Jillie were alerted and expectant long before we became aware, and there striding toward our oncoming direction was the very man who had been identified as the Robin Hood of the forest. He is always alone. He has no pet companion of his own. He spends his own money on bags and other accoutrements he places out for public use. And he's a very modest and friendly person.

He enjoys briefly stopping and exchanging pleasantries. A robust looking man presumably in his mid-fifties, he's out every day on the trails, briskly making his way along. He knows nothing about the botany of what he sees daily, cannot identify any birds by type but he appreciates the fresh, clean air, the general green ambiance and the brief acknowledgement of others that he is a man who dedicates himself to the weal of the community in which he lives. Admirable beyond words. Though it would pain him to be made a fuss of.

The creek at the bottom of the ravine was moving swiftly, swollen with rainwater and murky. On its banks, wildflowers thrive. They're difficult to approach with the presence underfoot of large rock pieces put in place a few years back as an aid in keeping the Leda clay soil in place. Jewelweed has grown in great abundance between the rocks and the soil abutting and above the creek. From the distance we must maintain rather than risk injury we can just barely make out the blooming orange jewelweed, exposed to the sun by the near absence of trees.

Back home again. And a bit of relief. When we were three-quarters of the way through our hour-and-a-half circuit, there was a prolonged, deep, thrumming of thunder. A delicious sound to us at any time, but not particularly welcome when we're deep in the woods. All the while we had been out excess rainwater had been dripping from the forest canopy. The foliage everywhere was beautifully glazed with rain and looked stunningly vibrant. Nice to get home, though, after all, without a drenching, even if it happens on a hugely humid, and extremely warm day.

On our way to the ravine yesterday morning, our neighbour who lives at the top of the street beside the ravine entrance, was just trundling a child's stroller down the street, in it her little dog, getting along in years. He is still active, curious and bold, so she's babying him a bit, but one tends to do that with such small dogs, and Newton certainly is a small dog. Neither of our two would stand for such an indignity; they'd instantly leap out of a conveyance like that, indignant that we would even contemplate strolling them along instead of their strolling along.

No one was to be seen on the street when we set out this morning, and made our dip into the ravine. A routine has been initiated, began last week and will now continue throughout the rest of the summer and into fall. Before we plunge downhill into the ravine, the ripening raspberries at the edge of the forest invite us to pluck their sweet red fruit, and we do. Amazingly, a few of the thimbleberries are also ripe enough to pick. And Jackie and Jillie are most appreciative.

It was so hot and humid last night yet again that my husband hauled another two fans upstairs from the basement. Their judicious placement gave us all a bit of respite from the heat and we slept more comfortably than the previous few nights. We still keep the bedroom windows open to catch any stray breezes. Even so, when Jillie awakens she tends to pant with the heat. Lately, we've been suffering a bit of sleep-deficit syndrome. In the late evening when I'm at the computer writing, and then edit what I've written, I keep falling asleep and jerking back awake. An obvious sign that my body is telling me it isn't satisfied with the amount of sleep I'm getting.

We were wide awake to the cool, breezy ambiance of the forest this morning, however, loping along the trails, seeing all the vegetation striving to outdo themselves. More rain fell this morning, to give way to clear skies and a beaming sun, perfect growing conditions for all that flourishes on the forest floor. The Staghorn sumacs appear to brandish their bright-red candles much earlier this year.

The bright, white berries of the dogwood draw the eyes to the contrast between the dark green of the dogwood foliage and the cool white of the berries. The berries start out with thick, round clusters, then gradually become diminished in size as birds begin consuming the berries. Butterflies seem to be fond of the berries as well, but it's hard to imagine those delicate creatures chomping down on the hard berries, though perhaps that happens while the berries are still immature, small and soft.

Every  time we pass the old apple tree at a juncture of several trails, I automatically now look up and under the branches above to see whether the little amusing trinket that someone hung there is still to be seen. It is, a perky little doghouse complete with dog, a tiny, hidden jewel, someone's puckish idea of humour that anyone can appreciate.

Where the sun manages to penetrate, pilotweed is flourishing in bright yellow bloom. Hoverflies and bees tend to make the most of their bloom period, though it seems to me that there are fewer of both this year by far, than what we've encountered in the past. They're far less visible, so obviously there are far fewer of these little pollinating helpers-of-nature than there should be. This, despite that just down at the bottom of the hill, above the creek, an old pine hosts a hive in a hollow in its trunk, and we've watched for years as wild bees fly in and out of their little colony.

This winter, on a number of occasions, we saw hundreds of bee corpses that had been discarded, hauled out of the hive and thrown down on the snow packing the forest floor below. There's no end of wildflowers blooming in succession for the bees and the hoverflies to feast on, including wild alfalfa at the top of the hill, growing among thimbleberries, raspberries, clover and poplar striplings.

An hour and a half go by quickly when we're out in the ravine with our puppies. We're comfortable in the shaded confines of the forest, and when we emerge at street level the heat and humidity can seem overwhelming, the glare of the sun blinding, as we amble back down to our house, where our hidden oasis deep in shade awaits our return.