Quite a winter we've had so far. Nature has been throwing a mixed bag of winter goodies at  us. Last week  the average temperature ranged around -6C to -12C, and with the incessant wind -- occasionally moderate, but now and then whipping through the atmosphere, our daily hikes through the ravine have been extremely cold. 

Added to which has been the two snowfalls, mere days apart, that together brought us up to our average snowfall for the date, which usually falls gradually to the accumulation we see now. Those two storms added 70 cm of snow on top of what had already fallen previously. The snowpack on the street alongside people's driveways is considerable, lawns are under three to five feet of snow.

 

 

So yesterday and today we had a break. Wind, to be sure, but temperatures rose to 3 and 5C; one day sunny, the next overcast. I set aside my snug Icelandic winter cap and double mittens for lighter coverings.
We still dressed Jackie and Jillie in their warmest winter jackets and little boots, but we felt significantly more comfortable, given the warming  trend. We're not so foolish to think that it will continue, but we'll enjoy it while it lasts.

 

 

Yesterday too, for the second time on the weekend, we saw a pair of Mallards in the creek.  That was a surprise. We usually see returned Mallards along with at least one Great Blue Heron in the spring. We're nowhere near there yet. There were also flocks of robins, swooping down to the creek and then back up again graceful arcs toward the overhanging trees. A week ago we saw a family of three Pileated woodpeckers.  

For our hike today we were accompanied by our youngest child. Some young child; he's now 62 years of age. As a biologist, apart from being our son, it's always such a pleasure being with him on our hikes, as he points out things we're less likely to notice, much less interpret. He won't stay with us this trip as long as his ten days in December/January. It's just that he had a conference in Hamilton and stretched his stay another week for us.

 

 

Today's hike took place in the expectation that it might rain while we were out. Lucky us, the rain held off. The forest trails are in fairly good shape now, well trodden down from use since the last of the snowstorms, to form a fairly solid base underfoot. Still, the trails apart from the main trail, tend to be narrow and choppy, just a bit of a challenge on our ascents and descents of the hillsides. 

When we had completed our circuit for the day, Jackie and Jillie leading the way, we stopped briefly adjacent the forest creek, wondering if the ducks were still in residence there. Thinking about what they could be getting to eat, likely algae and minuscule aquatic life that might sustain them. It's possible that this pair and others didn't migrate south this winter. Instead spending their time at places along the Ottawa River, which the ravine creek feeds into.

 

 

First order of business on our return home is always preparing a little fresh vegetable salad for Jackie and Jillie. In anticipation of their after-hike treat, they rip through the house after one another, sliding on substantial scatter rugs, nipping at one another, excited beyond measure at the prospect of wolfing down their favourite treat. 

 

That done, I decided to bake a small batch of chocolate chip cookies. While I was in the process I thought why not make them chocolate-chocolate-chip cookies, so I did. I had the oven on anyway, to roast a pair of Cornish game hens for dinner, and it took no time at all. 

Ours is a large country stretching from east to west, north and south, each of the parts of the sum total experiencing variants of seasonal weather conditions. But lately, a weather system so vast has struck -- large enough to hover over the entire country, leaving it in winter's icy grip everywhere and showering great heaps of snow in a wide arc even to areas not normally experiencing snow that accumulates quickly and remains for a surprising duration.

In that vein, we had an email from our younger son this morning, sending along a freshly-taken photograph that followed a night of snowfall in Vancouver, which rarely experiences that level of snowstorm. Enough, we could see from the photograph taken out of his patio doors toward the backyard of his home, to see branches weighed down with a thick blanket of snow and his garage roof piled high and gleaming white.

Yesterday was another cold day here, of -8C in the afternoon, but tonight we're expecting a low of -20C, and that's quite cold. Cold enough to appreciate a dinner of comfort food that presented itself in the guise of an all-in-one dinner, a meat pie that included both meat and a bevy of complementary vegetables. To warm us and satisfy our need for energy to compensate for what it takes to maintain body warmth in exposure to a winter day.

When Irving was finished working downstairs in his workshop putting the finishing touches to a door he's building, and I finally completed the laundry, folding away the four loads that Thursday brings weekly, we went out for our afternoon walk with Jackie and Jillie, thankful for another day without wind on a mostly overcast day. On the way there, stopping to talk with some of our neighbours who shun the ravine, but take daily walks in the neighbourhood.

The footing on the trails is now excellent, they've been well tamped down by many boots making their way through from the larger community, and others who drive to the various entrances off other streets in a 40-minute walk radius. We don't really need the cleats strapped onto our boots now that the ice on the trails has been well insulated by successive snowfalls, but it doesn't hurt to wear them for greater stability on the snow-packed trails where there are uneven areas quite unlike walking on a sidewalk.

Our first visitor was the highly excitable Sully, a lovely Golden who scampers over having broken free from his human to make the trek from one trail to another to visit with us. Unlike most other dogs who sit calmly in front of Irving awaiting their cookies, Sully barks frantically until the first cookie appears, then the second, and then like all others, dashes off to regroup with his patient human.

No sooner was he gone than fleetfootingly gamboling along came Bip and Bop, always seen together since their humans tend to walk together, as neighbours enjoying a leisurely hike through the urban forest. They have a tendency to wait silently, expectantly for their allotted share of the cookies before turning and fleeing back uphill to the upper trail system, happy for another day's cookie distribution.

They know where we are at any given time, since our presence is a giveaway thanks to Jillie somehow sensing their presence, as distant as they may be from sight, sound and presumably smell. There's a certain timbre to her barks when she's beckoning friends and although they don't tend to bark back in recognition, they're irresistibly drawn to where her barks emanate from. 

And then, along came Evie, whom we haven't seen in ages; our ravine times don't mesh. Once she had her measure of cookies she dove into a snowbank while we talked awhile with her human. She nestled as deeply as she could in a snow nest she fashioned for herself, dipped her head under a few times, and settled down to cool off in the frigid -8C day.

We never know what adventures our younger son experiences until he regales us following his constant trips to raw nature. Mid-week he spent a few days kayaking at Sechelt. The daytime high rose to 10C in Vancouver and it was sunny, so off he went for a few days of wilderness camping. It was cold at night, he said, but he made a little campfire in the evenings and the mornings to warm things up a little. And the sun, he said, makes quite a difference, as we well know.

 On his way paddling in to one of the islands in the Georgia Strait, he saw two humpback whales. They were about 400 metres distant, he said, on the opposite side of the island he was heading for. The water was tranquil, there was no wind. They spouted and they dove, and because of the conditions he was able to see and assess their enormous size.

Nothing quite so exciting happens here. After they surfaced, then went under a second time, they didn't reappear. He's never kayaked and camped out there so late in the season, and hasn't seen whales there before. Correction, he has, but at a larger distance, though he could still see their spouts. This time he could actually hear them breathing.

As for us, we're getting much colder daytime temperatures. Last night the temperature dipped to -7C, and today it managed to get up to zero, with little wind. The sun was blazing through the sky, so we thought we'd get out a bit earlier in the afternoon, and I planned to finish the house cleaning on our return. Usually by the time I've completed the cleaning, the best hours of the day are gone, and when we get out to the ravine for our afternoon hike the sun is already setting.

Dusk arrives early in the forest, and it takes no time for it to transform to dark.  On days when we've gone out to the ravine in milder temperatures, around 5C, when we return home it takes forever to clean our puppies' paws. Small as they are, they pick up muddy stains from the forest floor at this time of year. We use warm, slightly soapy water with a sponge as they sit on a towel, to try to clean their paws. 

Usually it's a breeze, but the freeze-and-thaw cycles of frost setting in overnight and milder air thawing the frost during the day creates a clay slush that makes it almost impossible to clean their paws. No problem today, just a single pass and they were clean, unlike Saturday when it took eight swipes to finally get them clean. And their towels bore the brunt of the muck.

Once the snow flies in earnest and remains on the ground that will no longer be a problem. It's one that doesn't exist in the summer. They'll be able to go about normally on the initial snowpack, but once it gets really cold, from about -6C and colder, we'll have to dress them with little rubber boots. Otherwise their tiny feet become numb with the cold and they just stand there, frozen to the snowpack.

 

Today was a beautiful late fall day. Cold, to be sure, but yesterday's penetrating wind was gone and the atmosphere was no longer raw. Although the sun throws feeble heat at this time of  year, it can still be felt like a warm caress when you're directly in its path. The sun, in fact, was so brilliant that even with sunglasses it almost blinded us. Even the sun glinting off the water in the creek had that effect; eye-dazzling.

We're steeped deeply in voluminous rain again. Not only rain, but the temperature has taken a plunge; 3C in the morning and it has since, by afternoon, nudged up 2 degrees. There'll be frost tonight, but our remaining flowering plants won't be hurt this time, I'm sure, since they've been well inundated with rainwater; protection against a quick frost. 

In weather like this we work to a kind of relay team rhythm. One of us dons a raincoat and persuades the puppies to follow outside. Jillie is quick, she does her business and zips back up the stairs to be let into the house. Jackie takes his sweet time, no matter the weather, and sallies back and forth around the backyard, trips around to the back of the garden sheds, under the deck, over to the back fence, then repeat. He's in no hurry.

Meanwhile, whoever stayed in the house takes in the wet, bedraggled pups as they appear at the sliding doors to towel them down as dry as possible. Invariably, after this routine they're bumptious and want to have a tussle; not with one another, but with us. We take turns at this routine too.

I took my camera out with me on one of my 'turns' to snap a few pics of the still-blooming backyard potted begonias. They look perfectly composed. This weather presents no dilemma to them. Not until frosty nights become more numerous and seriously nippy. That's the time when garden clean-up includes divesting the containers of their bright and beautiful flowers.

The wind that has accompanied the cold and the rain has thrashed the trees, bringing down more foliage, twigs and whatever else is detachable. Everything, leaves and flowers, glistens with rain. The windows are thick with droplets that cling to the glass. The screens are full of rain. Ladybugs are doing their own seasonal thing, trying to escape the cold by entering the house with us. Yesterday on our return from our brief ravine hike we found a slimy snail clinging to Jillie's haircoat. Out it went, poor thing, into its element.

No interlude in the rain today offering us an opportunity to get out. A perfect day to warm ourselves with the  help of the fireplace, and on it went. It will remain on for the remainder of the day, until we move ourselves upstairs to bed.

On the brighter side, we've got a family Zoom get-together this evening when our older son talks about his recent trip to Italy to attend an international Antique Telescope Society convention, that took place in Rome, Florence and Milan. He had 'spare time' to visit museums and art galleries with their legendary sculptures as well as absorb the sites visited as a group by attendees of the conference where he delivered a paper himself.

How serious is the wildfire situation in Canada? Very. Yellowknife in the North West Territories with its 20,000 population is being evacuated as wildfires there are steadily approaching. Communities in Alberta and in British Columbia are on alert, and many have had to evacuate given the ongoing threat of combustively dry conditions in Canada's superb forests. Wildfires not close to human habitation are allowed to burn themselves out. Those where firefighters are dispatched pose a threat and are destined to be fought. Three wildfire-fighters have lost their lives to these conditions in the past month.

We see similar situations elsewhere in the world, from Hawaii to Greece, Spain, Portugal, Turkey, the United Kingdom and France. Our youngest son who lives in British Columbia does a lot of alpine backpacking for recreational enjoyment. He decided on an area off the Duffy Lake Road not far from the Stein Valley this week. On Tuesday when he set up his tent at the mountain summit he ascended to, he had a clear view in all directions. And all he could see was wildfires everywhere, charred landscapes.

It looked, he said, like an atomic bomb aftermath, the smoke rising in all directions. He stayed there until Thursday when he returned to Vancouver. He is intimately familiar with the geology. He is a biologist, after all, and what he's seen in the destruction of forests is exceptional, well beyond yearly wildfire events. 

For us, unusual weather consists of daily rain eruptions. Either through thunderstorms, a series of thunderstorms following directly on one another, or unannounced sudden downpours. This too is not 'normal' for us. All that rain, however, does limit the potential for wildfires, although Ontario and Quebec have had their share of wildfires and evacuations this summer.

We've been fortunate enough to manage getting out to our nearby ravined forest daily in between rain events with our two little dogs. There was afternoon rain yesterday, evening rain and rain through the night and morning rain, then out came the sun again. When we went out for our afternoon hike today the sun was out, the atmosphere was cool and windy. The forest, unlike yesterday, didn't appear particularly inundated.

I clambered over the rocks dumped years ago along the slopes of the banks of the forest creek to stop erosion of the Leda clay base. At my age of 86 I don't do that too often; too chancy for a slip and fall but I couldn't resist wanting to take close-up photos of the multitude of wildflowers growing along the creek bank; the Himalayan orchids, the tiny orange orchids of the Jewelweed plants, the feathery-pink flower wands of the purple loosestrife. I was careful and came to no harm. Jackie following me, had no problems maintaining his balance but it was I who wielded a camera.

Irving was busy almost the entire circuit we took, picking blackberries and ripe thimbleberries to dole out to Jackie and Jillie. For the occasional dog that came along, not knowing what to do with the plenitude of berries, Irving offered cookies and they were delighted to accept the offerings. When we reached the pollinating meadow, there were bees everywhere, busy on the ragweed, the pilotweed, the purple loosestrife and goldenrod.

Later, in the garden, I felt a little guilty about not having this week spent some time weeding and trimming. Because I'm normally so busy during the week, I usually leave that for Saturdays, but tomorrow we've been warned, will be an unusually rainy day and perhaps there'll be too few respites to allow garden work. Right now, an afternoon rain has stopped and the dark clouds that caused it are moving on, as the sun is returning. Unsettled is the least that can be said of this summer's weather conditions.

 

Following an initial, brief period of discombobulation, Jackie and Jillie have now settled into the routine of accommodating themselves to the presence of two more family members in the household. They've been exposed to similar such events when from time to time one or more of our children come to spend brief periods of time with us from their homes in other cities. They renew their familiarity with other trusted family members and then when they leave, wonder where they've gone off to.

 

What they don't reconcile themselves to, ever, is the presence in the house of unauthorized creatures, particularly when summer brings the occasional big black fly into the house. Neither Jackie nor Jillie acquiesce to the presence of insects, flying or otherwise in the house. They may take their cue from me. They don't, like Irving, carefully lift the creature and expel it to the out-of-doors. If they see a fly on the sliding doors they vie with one another trying to capture the insect with unkindly intentions.

But if they're in bed, and a fly whizzes by that we weren't aware had entered the house, Jillie is stricken, actually petrified. She behaves as though she's haunted, and won't settle down for anything, until she has been assured that the creature is gone and will no longer present as a threat to her well-being.

 

Out-of-doors it's a different story altogether. They neither of them like flying creatures, but accept their presence and tend to pay them little attention. And as it happened we had the rare displeasure of being assailed by mosquitoes today while we were out on our afternoon tramp through the woods. The forest floor is slowly beginning to dry from its constant inundations, and the mosquitoes have come back to life.

 

The day turned out mostly sunny, and warmer than it's been lately. What truly distinguishes the day, however, is far fewer clouds coming it to crowd the sky and shut out the sun. Uncontested, the sun is searingly hot on any skin exposed for any length of time. A dry, but humid day. Still, before we had completed our fairly short circuit through the ravine this afternoon, a light patter of rain began, without amounting to anything substantial.

 

By the time we returned home to wander the garden briefly, a light shower sprinkled down on us, but if that is all the rain this day presages, we have nothing to complain about. We would appreciate no rain of any substance until after dinner, however, since Irving will be busy with the barbecue. We've decided on ribs today, and potatoes and green beans. Earlier, I prepared and refrigerated a piquant salad of fresh chopped broccoli, Vidalia onion, dried cranberries and French dressing for a bright, fresh taste on our palettes, balancing the barbecued ribs.

The prolonged series of violent thunderstorms that hit this region last Thursday was surprising both in its ferocity and its aftermath. We were fortunate, no problems in our direct area, but not far away from where we are, roads were flooded and so were people's basements. Actually there's heavy equipment far down the street at a house backing on to the ravine, and it seems a basement there was invaded with rain, or perhaps there was a sewage backup.

 

Three years ago a multi-million Combined Sewage Storage Tunnel was built and put into service by the city to forestall just such events. Regardless it was overwhelmed last week, when 315 million litres of contaminated water -- sewage mixed with rain -- was sent into the Ottawa River. There was insufficient capacity in this new storage tunnel to accommodate the sudden surge brought on by the rain.There were parts of the city that received 700 mm or more packed into a few hours from the intense downpours.

Banks burst at one place in the Rideau Canal, streets and parking lots and basements flooded. To say that this has been an unusual summer is a gross understatement. Fire crews were out pumping out basements and people were forced to throw out carpeting, drywall, furniture and heaven knows what else, as a result of the flooding their homes experienced.

 

As for us, all that water was unusual, but there was nothing untoward happening that couldn't be handled by our immediate landscape. The forest was inundated and it managed to accommodate all the rain that came pounding down without additional mishap. Rainwater dripped from the trees when we entered the ravine later in the day once the rain had stopped, and the forest floor was utterly sodden, the creek ran high and tumultuously downstream to the Ottawa River, yet otherwise nothing out of the ordinary occurred.

 

Our garden was drenched, some plants looked fairly unhappy but they recovered quickly even though we received rain following that event, each and every day. With the exception of today and yesterday. No rain, just cool temperatures and high humidity. Yesterday under dark-streaked clouds, today mostly sunny, perfect summer days.

Randy and Andrea went off to spend the later morning and afternoon downtown. They'll go to Byward Market and poke about elsewhere in the downtown area. I'm planning on making a cheese quiche for dinner, along with a garden salad and preparing fresh Ontario strawberries for dessert. Last night we had chops on the barbecue and they went with a Moroccan cous-cous salad and to finish things off, Irving made some of his wonderful vanilla ice cream to have with luscious big cherries.

We were out in the ravine with Jackie and Jillie, in the early afternoon, taking our time and just moseying along. It will take quite some time yet before the forest dries out from the constant inundation it's been treated to this month, but it will take more than two days without rain to accomplish that. After the forest hike we left Jackie and Jillie, two unhappily abandoned little dogs, to go off to the supermarket for our weekly food shopping expedition.

 

Andrea drove Irving over to the Canadian Tire garage to pick up the truck he had left for servicing the day before. So he got a ride over,  unlike yesterday when he walked back home. He took the truck in for normal servicing, but also because he was concerned at a back-end rattling that began a week earlier. A clamp had to be replaced, holding the muffler and the 'check engine' light nuisance is now gone, a part replaced, something to do with the catalytic converter, so he was enormously pleased.

That done, we all decided we'd go off for an early afternoon hike through the ravine. We were really surprised to see how wet everything was in the forest. Hard to believe it was the result of the rainfall that erupted, surprising us just after Irving had finished barbecuing chicken drumsticks for dinner last night. The amount of rain was prodigious, and it was sudden, but it lasted for no more than an hour or so, unlike most of the rain eruptions and thunderstorms we're becoming accustomed to as a daily event, in this new version of summer.

Could be the forest has reached its saturation point. The stream was running full, but the trees weren't dripping, and they shouldn't have been, since today dawned bright and sunny, although by the time we left for our hike, clouds had moved back in. It was breezy and the temperature rose to no more than 24C, with no rain in the forecast for today. But we'll see.

I'm planning to prepare Moroccan cous-cous to accompany grilled steaks Irving will be doing on the barbecue for this evening. And fully expectant that although there's no rain in the forecast, it will materialize nevertheless once Irving sets dinner in motion. He rolls the barbecue under the deck canopy, so it keeps dry there, but it's a nuisance having to cope with the rain.

We saw a few interesting fungal specimen that are now beginning to erupt, thanks to the overwhelming dampness and the drenched forest floor. Among them a spread-out colony of amanita muscaria; they always tend to pop in the late summer months. We've not yet seen any bright red, deep orange and even purple fungi that we've seen in previous years and are so intriguing in their shape and colour. Nor yet the pale blue that I don't much care for; reminds me of a corpse. What was unusual, though, was a jelly-like colony of bright red fungal matter we came across nestled deep in the rotting carcass of an old tree trunk.

Yesterday, we had seen a just-emerged Monarch butterfly land on a leaf, and begin spreading and folding its wings, still damp from its birth out of a cocoon on a milkweed plant. Today it was a Black Admiral, but it chose to land on the trail itself, pumping its wings rhythmically; open, close, open, close to dry them and begin life from a caterpillar to a beautiful butterfly.

We were also surprised to come across an old patch of pussy toes, a member of the wild aster family that we see nowhere else in the forest, but on the half-way rise of a trail ascending a long hill in the forest. Jackie and Jillie aren't much interested in identifying wildflowers, but their enthusiasm knows no bound over the countless raspberries, thimbleberries and blackberries that Irving assiduously plucks for them. 

 

Last night we saw something out in the garden, looking out from our glass-panelled front door that took us back in time and left us with an almost mystical feeling. I just happened to glance out at the darkened garden, lit by the garden lantern when I saw a little flash, then another and another. At first I thought it was the eyes of a small animal, caught by the errant glare of the lantern. But those little flashing lights began popping up everywhere. And then all was still; no more lights.

 

I called Irving over but the lights stubbornly withdrew. Then after a long pause a few flickered and he saw I wasn't delusional, after all. The sight brought him back to a time when he was a young boy visiting relatives in upper New York State and he saw fireflies there for the first time. Then again, when our children were  young, say about 45 years ago, we would often take them to the Gatineau Park wilderness area for summer evening live classical music arranged by the NCC.

As we would wait for the artists to arrive, and people about us were seated on blankets, quietly whispering in the dark, we would see flickering lights popping up here and there among the vegetation on the forest floor. Our two older children at that time played in their school orchestra at a specialized art-focused high school, while our youngest was a self-directed, budding biologist. He caught a few of the bugs and displayed them, blinking, in the palm of his hand.

 

Last night I awoke to loud claps of thunder directly overhead and Jackie and Jillie offering the loud claps in canine translation back in kind. Rain lashed the windows, and I got up to close our bedroom window and those at the front of the house. Very dramatic, looking out on the darkened street, glittering with pounding rain, the ominous sound of clashing rain-heavy clouds above. Also comfortable, as I snuggled back into bed.

In the morning an email awaited me. I had already been prewarned last night with an initial email. My sister-in-law had been admitted to the emergency department at North York General Hospital. Today I learned she had suffered a stroke, and bleeding on the brain. She is fourteen years younger than Irving and me. News like that leaves you emotionally floundering. Emotions seem to close in and they're all dark and foreboding. You want to comfort her husband, but his role now is one of enduring patience.

Irving made himself busy today. Out came a stepladder so he could replace burnt-out bulbs in one of the outdoor lanterns. Then he located a small can of the dark green paint he had used for the outside trim of the house to touch up a few areas here and there. Keeping busy helps a mind dealing with a confused series of thoughts and memories.

 

In the afternoon we went out with Jackie and Jillie for their usual hike through the forest trails. They had been running amok through the house in happy anticipation of that event, occasionally sliding with an excited whack into one of us in their rambunctious glee. After last night's heavy rain, the air remained saturated as though a fine mist remained. But there was a cool wind and the sun had emerged and a pleasant walk awaited us.

 

Watching Jackie and Jillie concentrate on everything around them, careful not to miss anything at all that might seen unusual, attracts our attention to them and moves our minds elsewhere. Their high spirits seem to lift ours. Their exuberance and dedication to living life to its fullest yet another metaphor, like replacing a light bulb so light can pierce the darkness, just as medical care has the potential to ameliorate a life-changing adverse health situation.