It's not unusual for May weather in the Ottawa Valley. We're stuck in a few really cool days. There was danger of frost last night, but I don't think we got down to 0C, likely just 3C. Still, when I looked around the garden and the garden pots briefly before we set off for our ravine hike, I saw several casualties. The ipomoea vines were looking rather put-upon. I had planted several lime-green (potato vines) in a few of the larger pots, and they look limp and almost crushed. With luck they'll spring back to life.

The alliums are now fully opened and they're large and beautiful. And walking past the lilies-of-the-valley in the side garden, the breeze carries with it the divine fragrance of those delicate little bells. All of the garden pots look just fine, though a few of the more tender plants in the garden look as though they decided to curl into fetal-plant position for warmth.  

It's still cold today, was only 5C when we came down for breakfast, but the sun is out and the wind is less ferocious than it was yesterday, so growing things in the garden will surely recover. Nothing else much appears to have suffered from the cold. Just as well we had watered quite deeply yesterday and that helps delicate vegetation to survive cold temperatures.

Cold enough last night that we wanted something hot and comforting for dinner. We had a fresh vegetable salad, neither hot nor particularly comforting, but it was quickly followed by a French onion soup, piping hot out of the oven, and lingered over in appreciation of its taste, texture and warming qualities. We had the fireplace back on and felt we needed it, last night.

And though I had stopped baking goodies for Friday night dinner when it was so hot and steamy the last few weeks, today's cold chided me so I baked a half-dozen large coconut cupcakes that we call Madeleines. The tops are dipped in raspberry jam then shredded coconut, instead of icing, and they're absolutely delectable.

When we did get around to taking Jackie and Jillie to the ravine for their daily round-about, we passed the three young pre-and-teens who live several doors up from us, playing with their basketball net. They're often occupied with it or with skateboards and they've become quite skilled with both. While we wore jackets and had gloves stuffed in our pockets 'just in case', the boys wore shorts and had taken off their shirts. 

For the first half of our circuit through the trails we saw no one else out and about, and assumed that it was just too cold for people to rouse themselves for a turn in the forest. That all changed in the second half of our circuit when we came upon a seemingly endless stream of people, some we're familiar with and others new to us. Like the woman walking two quiet and very large Dalmatians, and a young fellow walking alongside his grey Great Dane whose size was that of a pony, easily taking up most of the width of a narrow trail.

We noted that the wild lilies-of-the-valley are now in full bloom, just as the cultivated ones in our garden, though we've never been aware that the wild ones are fragrant, they're so petite it would be surprising to be aware that they're capable of producing scent. The lone clump of henbane we'd seen a few days back have opened a few more of its flowers; a deep pink in bud stage, turning to pink-blush in flower.

Just as we were close to winding up our trek for the day, along came Barrie and Sheila with their three Border Collies and we stood around having a good chat, relieved of the presence of mosquitoes, the sole good that comes with cold and wind. Barrie told us that a mutual hiking acquaintance we haven't seen in almost a year and his dog are in his black books.

The dog, a usually well-behaved if unmannerly white German Shepherd had bitten a man who had been out on the trails this morning, bicycling with his young daughter. Nova, the German Shepherd, had raced after the man's bike and bit him on the ankle. Barrie is furious that Rod has chosen not to take responsibility, claiming that it was the man's fault, not his dog's. But, he said, Nova is now gaining the reputation of a 'biter'; this isn't the only time he's bitten someone. 

Rod, he said, has become irresponsible and cantankerous. He's a huge, tall man, always had a bit of an imperious manner, prone to expressing contempt for other people who don't discipline their dogs the way he prided himself on doing. A man who seldom listens to others but always has much to say himself. Still, it's disappointing that he is neglecting his dog's socialization, and taking no responsibility for his own lapses.

Mondays are always busy days in this household. Today my husband was putting moulding that he made yesterday around the insert of a door he installed in the upstairs bathroom a few days back. Originally, months ago, he measured and constructed the frame of the door, and then he set about the lengthy business of designing a cartoon, enlarging it, cutting out its constituent pieces, and then putting together a stained glass insert using the pieces as a guide. The insert was completed last week, the door frame installed, the insert placed within the frame, and now he was finishing up the work with the moulding. The last step will be to paint the door.

When he was finished with that, he set about vacuuming the house. While I did the dusting, and washed the floors. All time-consuming. Household rituals. Not the door, but the housekeeping. The most time-consuming is the dusting, going from room to room, dusting furniture and everything that sits on it. Then dry-mopping the hardwood floors. Washing the tile floors is a breeze in comparison, though there are lots of floors to wash, two bathrooms, the kitchen, laundry room and breakfast room.

Then we're done, and it's time to head out to the ravine for a spin around the forest trails with patient Jackie and Jillie. And so it went today, a day of continual overcast, dark skies following overnight and early morning rain, with more threatening. So of course we all wore raincoats and planned if we got caught out in the rain to make it a short circuit through the forest.

That didn't happen, rain didn't come down on us, as it has done several times this week. The trails were more muddy than we've yet seen them, reflecting the amount of rain we've had and the forest's saturation. There was a high wind moving the treetops, sending leaves and pine needles spiralling down. Lately, when we get back home from these jaunts we discover needles in our hair, jackets and trouser bottoms.

Out in the forest our eyes are drawn to the leafmass, mostly still green, but an increasing presence of yellows, pinks, reds and browns, making the landscape look pretty ethereal. Fascinating really, you can find yourself temporarily stiationary, just standing there gazing upward and watching the wind play with the foliage, switching your attention from the dancing leaves to the intense colour variations.

It was a day that seemed to draw more people than usual out for a Monday. But the crowd that came out (not much of a crowd, but a fair number of people with their dogs) were for the most part regular hikers out with their dogs, dogs that were so clearly delighted with the day, romping about energetically, challenging one another to little spurts and starts.

We came across the spectacle of a tree trunk looking as though someone had been inspired to carve it in a pattern. It was a dead ash, its trunk bare of bark. Ash in particular, assailed by the Emerald Ash borer, have been hard hit in the forest, though they're desperately trying to make a comeback. When they're dying ash  tend to shed their bark in great discarded patches. This ash had thrown off its bark a while ago. And what was evident on the naked trunk was the pathways the ash-deadly insect in its larvae stage had left as its larvae steadily killed the tree. 

Some of the dogs, mostly the larger ones, eager to chase the numerous squirrels ran amok in the interior of the forest. Actually, the squirrels themselves were chasing one another up and down tree trunks as though in an excess of excitement over the day, the weather, the fallen cones aplenty. 

At some junctures the ambient light became very dark, and it was toward the end of our junket out in the woods that the sun suddenly remembered its perch in the sky and shoved the clouds aside.