Heavy overnight rainfall continued throughout this morning and into the afternoon hours. A dark day of perpetual dusk, overhead black clouds scudding over a landscape that would see no clearing this day. A day of leisure and the comfort of a warm, dry house, while outside raged the wind and the rain, the atmosphere cool and denying aspirations toward a tryst with nature in our nearby forest.

There is an undeniable beauty on such moody days. Looking out toward the house exterior into our gradually diminishing  garden, I'm grateful for the beautiful, still-fresh-in-appearance, hardy annuals that continue to bloom in our garden containers, insouciantly denying the season and oncoming frosts. Each time now, at this time of fall, when I glance out at our intimate landscape I'm thankful for this brief extension of summer's garden gifts. In the knowledge that their remaining time is brief.

We're absorbed by the news, watching footage through the Internet compulsively, listening to news releases, viewing debates and worrying, worrying with concern over outcomes. We speak quietly together, our voices betraying disquiet and concern. Jackie and Jillie are concerned about nothing but their creature comforts and we reflect those basic instincts ourselves. Unlike theirs, ours are tainted by the stain of ages-old experience.

We regularly update one another in sometimes terse passages of newly-acquired information. And then turn to musing over what underlying message there can be regarding events and statements by those close geographically to those events. The tragedy unfolding yet again seems too much to bear. Bear it we must. And look for comfort wherever it can be found in the outside world, finding instead that it is sparse, while the opposite is spirit-overwhelming.

Then finally the rain begins to lighten, though not the sky. Soon, in mid-afternoon we're able to get out with our puppies, albeit dressed for more rain, which will most certainly fall, given prevailing conditions. We're hoping a brief interval will allow us a short walk through drenched forest trails before the rain continues, and this is exactly what occurs.

We take precautions in balance on our initial descent into the ravine. Throughout the hours of heavy rainfall, much more foliage has descended to the forest floor. A kaleidoscope of colour is everywhere, beautifully varnished by the rain. Colour, despite the gloom of the dusky forest interior, is intensified. 

The creek is swollen with rainwater. It rumbles and burbles over cascades created by rock and fallen trunks and branches that temporarily interrupt its smooth but turbid flow. Carrying with it, fallen detritus, masses of spent foliage, and cloudy with particles of clay. A strange, and eerie light, common to such weather events, hangs over the landscape, further enhancing its beauty.

While our bodies are physically active, our minds are passively focused on watching Jackie and Jillie, and allowing our eyes to capture the beauty surrounding us. There is no intention, only a relaxed mode of contemplation even though the serenity of the place clears our minds. One other couple whom we're familiar with has braved the opportunity to briefly visit the forest. Their dog, far more familiar to us, takes its share of cookies, and we see no one else out this day.

When we return home we linger briefly in the garden. To look at the brilliant colours of the forever-blooming begonias that we plant so lovingly and expectantly in the spring, so many months ago, yet seemingly just yesterday. The flowers are lush and lovely, their colours scintillating with rain.

 

The world is a strange place, and the human beings that people it make it even more so in a way that nature has little control over. The reverse of humanity having little control over nature. Which is as it should be, for the most part. There's an article in the paper today, that the Economist, in presenting its latest findings on the livability of the world's great cities has given Vienna, Austria, top billing. Judged by the standards of health care, education, stability, culture, infrastructure and the environment.

 

Jews had a prominent place in Vienna's culture, as philanthropists and collectors of art, along with their role as leaders in medicine and science. Vienna now boasts its pride in Sigmund Freud, but in 1938 when the Anschluss was declared, Austria opened its arms to German domination and enacted laws disentitling Jews of their citizenship blocking them from academia, purloining their property and sending them into exile.

 

A cheering crowd greets Adolf Hitler as he enters Vienna. Austria, March 1938. USHMM

Kurt Waldheim, a politician and diplomat who eventually became chancellor of Austria, was a member of the Hitler Youth movement (National Socialist German Students' League), and was involved in war crimes. Before becoming Austrian chancellor, he was elected by the United Nations general body to become UN Secretary-General in 1972.

The world is always in crisis of one kind or another, be it a natural phenomenon whose origins have nothing to do with the machinations of humanity; floods, tornadoes, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, wildfires; an inferno of never-ending calamities. The major cause of human disruptions, however, remain human actions, where world wars break out, and smaller, deadly conflicts follow. From places in the world as diverse as Darfur, Sudan, to Syria and Ukraine, territorial ambitions and ruthless leaders set the pace.

All of this to say how fortune we are -- we and most of the world's population -- not to have intimately and directly suffered the effects of these dire situations. Aside from the very real fact that we live with the indelible shadow of a collective memory of what humanity is capable of, and mourn the loss of distant relatives who never were given the grace of a future. 

 

Living in security and comfort as we do, we also know that the world is ever in flux, slowly changing around us. What we have assumed to be a permanent way of life, a history and culture that has been stable for generations is changing.

This knowledge doesn't hamper our enjoyment of life in the present. We go about our daily lives, little impacted by the news we read daily out of the rest of the world. A world where migratory aspirations have since time immemorial seen humans arriving on shores not their own, to become their own, eventually changing the face of humanity and the environment it makes its own.

 

Today, our little family enjoyed another hot and humid summer day, the air scrubbed fresh by an all-night rain that brightened the colours of all that surrounds us. A humid day, thick with moisture and warmed by the sun. Where inconsequential little things take our attention. A sudden inclination, looking about the house, to decide to move around paintings hanging on the wall; for a new perspective.

 

An urge, despite the heat, to move about the garden beds in wonder that nature's vegetation is so responsive to its environment that daily there are new surprises. And there is never a lack of pampering the gardens, just to attend to the odd little adjustment here and there, treating the plants just as we do the paintings in the house interior. So snip off old blooms to make way for new ones, tie up wandering tendrils of vines, prop up the long slender spears of lilies with restraints to keep them from falling gracefully from garden to lawn.

 

Above all, look to the exhortations of two little puppies who are certain that the hours of the day are passing too swiftly and when will they ever be given the opportunity to strut along the forest pathways sniffing out intriguing odours, discovering the presence of unrecalled items of curiosity, reminding us they haven't yet had their cookie treats, greeting their friends as they appear in expectation of cookie handouts.

These are the plentifully serene and worthwhile episodes in life that no one should be denied.

 

 

In this household, the scene is set for breakfast when the morning newspapers are set beside our plates,  with two little dogs hovering below the table, beside our chairs, preparing to hoover up anything that falls -- or that Irving slips to them surreptitiously with the naive impression that my eagle eyes haven't spotted the transfer because I've given up chiding him.

 

Both the puppies and the newspapers are often good for a laugh. Jillie is the more persistent of the two; if no one 'notices' her hanging around, or Irving finally feels he's sacrificed enough of his breakfast for her, she seems to feel that if she can't enjoy any more breakfast, we shouldn't either, and she repeatedly slips over to the sliding doors to be let out onto the patio.

 

They've been doing that quite a bit lately. They're not 'outside' pups, they prefer to go out only if they must. Otherwise it's the sofa and love seat, thank you very much. But the last few days have been clones of spring with mild temperatures, no wind, and blue skies as far as we can see toward the horizon. Our backyard, because of the way it faces, has a microclimate; it tends to be much warmer than anywhere else outside. So when it's mild like this the backyard feels balmy, full sun warming everything up.

 

So Jackie and Jillie like to go out on the deck and enjoy the sun. Jillie, more than Jackie, but he doesn't want to miss out on anything if his sister is doing something. Which brings me back to the newspapers. Today had its share of chuckles, reminding us of just how lopsided peoples' mental faculties can be. There was one story out of Hannover in Germany about a ballet director who had taken umbrage at a less-than-stellar review of one of his group's performances. He  let the critic know just how outraged he was at her comments by smearing animal feces on her face. One can only hope she's in hot pursuit of suing him in criminal court.

 

Ah, and this one; our confidence in our world leaders seems not to be have been displaced. American President Joe Biden's White House is advising its public that there are 'no indications' of an alien presence to explain those mysterious 'balloons' being shot down over North America. "I know there have been questions and concerns about this, but there is no, again no indication of aliens or extraterrestrial activity with these recent takedowns", assured White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.

 

We both breathed a huge sigh of relief, and wondered why China's President Xi Jinping even bothered to refute U.S. Intelligence's suspicions of the balloons shot down being part of a surveillance mission globally, associated with the People's Liberation Army, by poutingly pointing out that Beijing was itself outraged having discovered ten American balloons hovering high in China's airspace, spying.

We had the jollies after that, and finally decided to get ourselves sober by heading out to the ravine with Jackie and Jillie on a sublimely gorgeous spring day, even if we're a long way from spring and the weather is just pretending, but doing a very presentable show of spring's longed-for arrival. The creek in the ravine is swollen with snow-melt.

 

It cannot yet be noticed that the snowpack has diminished, but it obviously is beginning to. There's a lot to go. And it won't, yet. We'll have another day of this mild weather than cold will return. Or not. Meanwhile, we're enjoying the break from the cold and from the need to shovel snow.

 

World events -- and the news they give vent to -- are dispiriting. Harmful to the inner spirit as the intellect attempts to make sense of it all. Catastrophic events that are nature's expressions that no one can do anything to mitigate and the world just reels and copes. And humanity's penchant for destabilizing entire continents in its never-ending agitations inspired by covetous greed and deliberate disinterest in the consequences of embarking on wholesale conflict engulfing the world in a morass of atrocious occurrences of human suffering.

 

Without the stability of a sound mind to begin with, and the foundation of an intimate relationship of long standing, people are vulnerable to the succession of events that impact both directly and indirectly on their emotions and their lives. Little wonder the incidence within society of growing evidence of mental illness pervading society is so stark.

 

 

Even well-adjusted people who lead comfortable, fairly worry-free lives are deleteriously impacted. They begin to shun the news knowing full well that there is, in fact, no escape from it. And those who cannot evade knowing of dire events and how others are faring feel the emotional connection and despair. 

 

Sometimes it feels, in scanning the newspapers, that the entire world that you care so deeply about has gone mad. That the lessons of past historical events teach no one anything. That there is no escape from nature's induced events that control our lives is a given. That no one can come away unaffected by events orchestrated by the global community's governments, rulers, autocrats, tyrant and dictators is not quite as well perceived.

 

 

As though to make a dismal prospect of a day when news seems so crushingly awful even worse, we've got a grey, wet and cold day. And so, no relief, no opportunity to clear one's mind in good, clean fresh air, one's limbs freely exploring the space we live in, sharing an opportunity to cleans the palate of the thought process.

 

With that 'extra', unused-by-recreational-pursuits time, there are always other things that beckon. Irving, for example, finally decided he would sit down and grapple with our tax returns. With that 'extra' time I finished cleaning out the kitchen cupboards. But spring cleaning isn't yet completed; there's plenty more yet to do, and I'll get around to it.

 

 

Jackie and Jillie went outside to the backyard only reluctantly today, and only when their bladders felt really full, and only when one of us led them accoutered in rainjackets, while the other rubbed them down with towels when they re-entered the house. No ravine hike today, but there's no way they would agree to skipping their after-hike salad. And while I was cutting up vegetables preparatory to preparing dinner, they insisted they were in dire need of even more vegetables.

 

Thus went the day. Not counting the hugs and kisses.

 

We weren't surprised that it was snowing this morning, only at the amount that came down. Irving was out shovelling when the snowstorm was about halfway through to plow clear pathways for Jackie and Jillie. They love snow, but on their own terms. Which is to say, when they feel like cavorting about in it, not when they're performing morning ablutions and evacuations. 

The snow was welcome, to cover the ice that had formed when several days earlier we had freezing rain and ice pellets come down. And then the following day, a clear sky, when even at -10C, the heat of the sun melted the ice on the canopy and as it drizzled down, it covered the patio doors with icicles plastered on the glass.

The snow filling up the porch didn't deter the squirrels. They came about anyway, covered with falling snow, and dug out the peanuts on the porch floor. Giving Jackie his morning entertainment. Watching their little dramas; some squirrels willing to share space with others, while the occasional squirrel, offended by the presence of others, chased them away and claimed ownership of all it surveyed.

We took our time over breakfast. More or less fixated on the news, somewhat more anxiously than usual, given the sinister ploy of Russian President Vladimir Putin to enlarge the already-largest geographic territory on the planet by accessorizing it with the violent capture of the second largest geography in Europe, Ukraine, a country which he characterized as 'racist' and 'fascist'; his duty to expunge its sovereign status to eradicate 'terrorists' from European soil.

Once we did finally tear ourselves away from news sources and exhausted our opinion of these dreadful events and the individual driving them, in the process creating desperate refugees who manage to escape Russia's military assault, bombing government infrastructure and killing any who oppose him, as well as unfortunates who get in the way of the missiles he has ordered to be launched against a sovereign nation.

Kneading bread dough helped a little to burn off indignant frustration, but its calming effect led me to mixing up a batch of giant coconut-lime cupcakes. Irving obligingly squeezed the lime for me for its juice, after I had fine-grated its exterior. Cupcakes are so easy to put together, and since I always use cake-and-pasty flour for little cakes, they come out moist and fluffy-light. 

I fiddled about so much during the afternoon with all manner of little chores that by the time we launched ourselves into the great outdoors for a tramp through the ravine with Jackie and Jillie it was getting on to the nether regions of the day. But what a sight awaited us. Again, expected after a snowstorm, but so aesthetically beguiling a wonderland it presents, it never fails to fascinate and uplift at the wonders nature creates.

The snow was thick, but also light. It also both helped and hindered locomotion. The flattened trails courtesy of the previous freezing rain has turned into a jumble of imprinted hills and valleys, but on the other hand, though it requires slightly more effort to get along through a thick layer of newfallen snow,  the icy element is no longer a threat to remaining upright.

The appearance of fresh new snow is a draw to many people in the community. And so, unlike the previous days, we came across people we're familiar with, and everyone was more than pleased with the landscape's brilliant appearance, with more scintillating white to be seen than the forest trees heaped high and dense with the snow.

 

When we spoke a day ago, our younger son told us it was time for him to fly out from Vancouver to spend some time with us. He usually comes along several times a year, but as a result of the pandemic and British Columbia closing up along with the rest of Canada, we've missed seeing him. This morning he sent along all the details of his flight reservation. So he'll be with us transitioning from 2021 into 2022 and slightly beyond. And he'll also be with us at my 85th birthday that falls between Christmas and New Year. A greater gift for me is hard to imagine.

I sent along a link for him to read about a McGill Professor, a visible minority himself, failing in two fairly routine research grant financing applications. And the reason given was that he had failed to convince the bureaucrats vetting the applications that he was prepared to give advantage of minority groups in his hiring for the laser research he specializes in. He had responded on the application that he hires on merit alone, and that didn't pass muster with government granting authorities; the bureaucrats past whom the applications must go before they reach other scientists tasked with reviewing and approving such applications. 

NSERC was one of the granting bodies. Our younger son has a connection with that federally-linked science-centric body since it was they who awarded him grants for both his masters and doctorate studies three decades ago. When we mentioned the news report to him he found it difficult to digest that this kind of politics had entered academic science. He hires on merit himself, but if two candidates equal one another in aptitude and experience, he gives preferential treatment to the one that represents a minority group. Not all that different from the McGill professor who said it's merit that moves him, though he has taught, mentored and hired members of visible minority groups like himself, LGBTQ, and others.

We went off to the ravine a little earlier in the afternoon than is our norm. Once again hoping to catch some sun. But the presence of sun today was rare and as the day wore on, completely absent. There was a slight wind, but any kind of wind on an overcast day when the thermometer won't budge above -2C, is an impediment to comfort since those blasts are icy.

If I had to describe what it was like in the forest today, 'bracing' is as good a descriptive as any. Comfortable enough if one is dressed for it, as is only sensible. Jackie and Jillie were certainly glad to be out and about. They've got so much to attend to along the forest trails, after all. Aromatic essences that cannot escape their keen noses and notice. Smells that they associate with other dogs of their acquaintance.

We're not seeing very many birds around lately; chickadees and nuthatches on occasion, and the sound of crows nearby. Mostly squirrels rushing about in food-gathering panic for winter. Makes us wonder how many of them we see in the forest we also see on our porch gobbling up peanuts. There's always such a squabble of red, black and grey squirrels, trying to edge one another out. claiming the porch as their personal territory, though eventually all of them get a turn at it, and then return for more.

Dusk falls so early, even before two in the afternoon it seems to have arrived. We ran a few errands afterward before ending up at the supermarket, so we were late returning home from shopping and as a result it was already dark. The only consolation is that because it was so dark, people's Christmas-decorated front lawns and house exteriors were lit up and blazing with colour; a bit of visual entertainment.

 

Last night was even colder than the night before. The temperature dipped to -6C, a freezing that aggravated the house no end. So once again last night there were pops and booms signifying expansion/contraction as the roof trusses moaning and groaning in complaint over the winter-grade cold. Loud enough to wake me, but again, not Irving. And this time Jackie and Jillie just ignored the sound intrusion. It isn't hard to imagine in the deep, dark of night's solitude that the roof is preparing to collapse. Doesn't matter how many years have returned to this very same scenario in the past. The sound is loud, and it's alarming. In another month, I'll be ignoring it, too.

It did warm up somewhat as morning crept past a very dark dawn. But 0C was as high as it was prepared to go, today. It  was -2C when we came down for breakfast, and a light accumulation of freezing rain appeared on the deck like minuscule hail fragments. When Jackie and Jillie came back into the house their haircoats were full of tiny frozen little bits of ice.

 

After breakfast, I thought I'd use the extra pasty dough that was excess to the butter tarts I had baked on Friday, and refrigerated for use later in the new week. We'd bought some lovely little Ontario crop pears yesterday that would make a perfect few dumplings to make use of the pastry, I thought. So after cleaning the bathrooms and gathering the towels we'd used upstairs and down for tomorrow's laundry, I prepared pear dumplings.

 

Yesterday's dinner was one of my favourites. I cooked medium-broad egg noodles, drained them and used the same pot to make a cheese sauce with butter, pepper, dry mustard, flour and milk, then melted grated old cheddar into it. I chopped up a few green onions and added them to the cheese sauce, and then in went the drained noodles. I put the first layer of the noodle-cheese into a casserole. Then a layer of frozen green peas, and over that a layer of tinned Sockeye salmon.  The final layer of noodle-cheese, then Panko sprinkled over, and more grated cheese, and then it was baked in a 325F oven for 40 minutes. Not Irving's favourite, but mine. Today he'll have one of his favourites; breaded chicken liver, mashed potatoes, fried onions and asparagus spears.

 

We went off to the ravine just about 2:00 p.m. and it looked more like 8:00 p.m.; dark, with brooding clouds overhead and the threat of mixed precipitation. The howling wind made the 0C seem considerably colder than it was. Once we dipped into the ravine, the forest surrounding us however, the effect of the wind was quite diminished. And though it was dark, and cold, it was not the least bit unpleasant. 

 

The landscape looks a little bleak now that there are few leaves left on the deciduous trees leaving an open look to the forest canopy, but the conifers do their best to take up the green slack; firs, spruce, hillside yews, pine and cedars. We stood still briefly watching a hairy woodpecker hard at work on a tree trunk but the intervening density of the immature trees between the trail and the woodpecker wouldn't permit a photograph of its busy syncopation.

Twenty minutes into our hike, we came across a young man we've seen frequently with his exuberant spaniel, and he wanted to talk, and talk and talk, and Irving as is his wont, was happy to oblige. They discussed weather and geography and in particular the weather-and-geological catastrophe that has overtaken Canada's most beautiful and most geologically varied province. Heavy volumes of rain, even for their rainy season, inundated the B.C. Interior causing mud and rock slides, closing down roads, with flooding necessitating evacuations in a province that was hard hit in the spring by hugely unusual heat conditions causing wildfires, evacuations and the destruction of a town.

 

 

Later, I spoke on the telephone with my sister, while Irving went downstairs to his workshop to do some glasswork. She's four years younger then me, both our birthdays fall in December. While I enjoy robust health, hers has been compromised over the years. She never had full eyesight capacity from childhood on, but she is now considered to be legally blind, the 'talking books' she gets through her membership in the CNIB a lifeline to someone who values reading as a plus in her life. We talk family and national and international affairs, in a long conversation. Neither of us enjoy telephone communication ordinarily but the rare exception is when to speak to one another.

It's so much easier to communicate regularly through the Internet, but she is one of those people who never had an interest in using a computer and exploring communication through that medium. We reassure each other that our children and our grandchildren are fine for the most part, and from there launch into discussions revolving around politics and world affairs...

News, good and bad grips our attention. For months we've been reading of suspicions about the random incidents of rare blood clots associated with the Oxford-Astra-Zeneca vaccine. The experts in the field spoke persuasively of the vast odds against anyone falling victim to the sometimes-deadly clotting, reasonably enough arguing that COVID-19 itself is the cause of clots, destructive and deadly on a far greater scale. Politicians and most immunologists advised that if you're offered an Astra-Zeneca shot not to hesitate, but be grateful for it, in this aura of accelerating variant infections.

And then, new statistics, new research suddenly changes the equation, and some countries begin to suspend their use of the vaccine, preferring the mRNA vaccines represented by Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech. And Ontario too has gone that route. The AstraZeneca doses were in short supply, partially because India, the world's largest vaccine producer, is facing an astronomical number of SARS-CoV-2 infections and a soaring death rate, the consequence of which is that reasonably enough, the authorities there have decided that the vaccines they produce -- India's version of the Astra-Zeneca shot -- must remain within India to aid in its desperate efforts at controlling the spread of the virus.

News out of Israel, being bombarded with rockets by Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists in Gaza, is none too cheerful. Israeli-Arab citizens of Israel were staging demonstrations, no doubt incited by both the PA and Hamas to create destabilization in Israel, against the eviction of Palestinians squatting on Jewish-owned properties in a part of East Jerusalem occupied by Israeli Arabs. A matter between the courts and a private entity.

Israeli police attempting to address the protests, pelted with rocks and incendiary devices. Other incendiary devices attached to balloons released from Gaza on the border with Israel to drift over agricultural fields and forests setting numerous fires, destroying crops, forests and animals. Matters deteriorated to the point where Palestinian terrorists have been sending rockets into Israeli border towns and as far as Tel Aviv. The IDF responding with aerial strikes against Hamas targets. Some of the Hamas rockets fall short within Gaza and people there are killed.

But here where we live, (while deploring the awful news and hoping that reason may prevail even while acknowledging that there is no reason in the minds of tribal psychopaths whose agenda is the destruction of Israel), live an entirely different life in a mixed society where countless languages are spoken aside from the two official ones, where neighbours on the same street hail from origins across the globe and where the country's constitution protects everyone's rights equally under official multiculturalism. That we are singularly fortunate is beyond dispute.

We've enjoyed perfect spring weather today, propelling us out-of-doors continually, culminating in an afternoon hike through the Bilberry Creek Ravine Forest trails we have the additional good fortune to access a mere few steps from our home. The sky today was a symphony of heavenly blue-and-white; just incidentally the colours of the Israeli flag. Whenever the sun shone, it felt like summer. Whenever the sun went in, the wind made it seem like early spring.

Before we'd gone out for our daily hike with our little dogs, Irving was out working on the front lawn, and chatting with our neighbour when they both watched as a raccoon that visits us frequently from the ravine, casually sauntered out of the garage. He had evidently exhausted all the offerings left for him on the porch and felt disposed to see what he could mooch in the garage. 

Cardinals and song sparrows sang for us, both in the backyard and once we were out in the ravine. This morning, the male cardinal along with a sparrow was on the porch, interested in pecking off a corner of a biscuit, ignoring the scattered pieces of cereal beside it. Before they had departed, along came two black squirrels, intent on doing the same. Everyone is glad that winter is over and spring fully entrenched.

We sauntered along the trails, in no great hurry, just enjoying the atmosphere and the landscape that changes with each turn of the trail. Jackie and Jillie sniffle and snuffle their way through the trails, now and again leaving the trail to venture into the woods interior briefly, investigating an intriguing odour they know we know they know they're not supposed to.

With the appearance of the early spring wildflowers, dandelions too have made a showing of themselves, blooming in abundance, the eye focusing on the bright yellow of the flowerheads, not 'seeing' the foliage so unwelcome on lawns. The dandelion flowers are an eye-popping shade of yellow, their symmetrical arrangement of petals, perfectly like that of a daisy's but infinitely more complex.

 When we finally exhaust our circuit through the trails and head back to street level, I pause at the perimeter of the forest to look more closely at the bright pink clustered flowers of a young feral crabapple which had planted itself and had been scarcely noticed until last spring when it first began blooming. The intense colour and the generosity of its bloom cover is truly impressive. And then, walking down the street, from a distance I espie our own two crabapples in bloom, a lighter pink colour and equally conceited.