Yesterday's ravine walk was most pleasant. They often are, but it helps, during the winter months, when the temperature rises sufficiently to enable us to venture out with our two little dogs, without having to place boots on them to protect their paw pads from extreme cold.

Yesterday was just such a day. As luck would have it, the atmosphere warmed up sufficiently to allow us to venture out with them, with their coats, but no boots. The boots are useful, enabling us to stay out longer with them before their feet start to freeze up and we have to carry them for awhile, until they warm back up again. On the other hand, the boots also don't give them the grip they need to clamber up the many snow-slippery hills in the ravine, and they often require help to make the grade.

When it's relatively mild like that too, we have the pleasure of seeing more squirrels out and about, anticipating our arrival with their daily peanut treats, placed here and there along our hour-and-a-half route. Long accustomed to us, some of the squirrels run toward us to face us directly, demanding to be noticed and peanuts given them, rather than await their deposit in the usual spots.

And, on this occasion we saw Stumpy, a small black squirrel minus tail, waiting for us at the foot of the first long hill, beside the huge old pine whose crumpled trunk bark is the depository of many peanuts. Enabling us to give him the special, three-chamber peanuts we save for him as our favourite little woodland creature.

Tweedledum and Tweedledee were also there, a pair of young black squirrels who always travel together, seemingly inseparable, although we cannot distinguish one from the other, and one of them is bold enough to confront us demandingly, while the other shyly awaits being gifted, from afar.

And further along, a half-hour later in a different part of the forest, we came across Stumpette, yet another tail-deprived little black squirrel who resembles Stumpy, but whose personality is distinct from his.

Distinctions we have realized over the past three years of our acquaintance with them.

We don't appreciate being distracted, when we're perusing books. But the woman seemed to insist, wanting to know what kind of books, exactly, we were looking for. And the truth is, it's almost any kind of books, excluding romantic novels, that attract us; biographies, history, novels, detective-crime novels, adventure, almost anything, well written, will do to compel our attention.

And since we happened to be perusing shelved books, arranged by author and genre neatly enough displayed, at the Salvation Army thrift shop, one can never tell what one can come across. It was a lucky day for us, as it happens. My husband was able to acquire quite a few mint condition Tony Hillerman crime novels which he enjoys reading, on this occasion, and one translated from Spanish to English by an author new to him, but of whom he had read.

The woman who kept insisting she could assist us, informed us that she was a former librarian, with a degree in library science, and she did, in fact, know her authors. A very pleasant woman, now employed with the Salvation Army, and eager to assist her clients. She it was who led me to Khaled Hosseini's Thousand Splendid Suns, and promised to hold for me a copy of his celebrated The Kite Runner, if one showed up again.

I was also able to pick up a copy of Michael Ondaatje's Anile's Ghost, and one of A.S. Byatt's Possession. All of which will take their turn on our home library shelves and eventually make it into our reading grasp, soon as we've finished with those we're currently reading.

For me, that's Peter Newman's There Be Dragons, a tome of a book, following which completion, next in line is Norman Doidge's The Brain That Changes Itself, a gift for my 75th birthday by our youngest son.

A month after her 19th birthday our miniature Poodle-Pomeranian-mix, Button, is back on a week of her monthly-protocol of oral antibiotic. Her veterinarian recommended this to us two years ago, to ensure that she no longer becomes so dreadfully ill as she used to, when a massive infection would set in, causing us to feel we were going to lose her.

Her heart and lungs and other vital organs are all in good shape, but for a heart murmur, and she is still energetic enough to have her daily ravine walks, although because she is now blind and deaf she must be carefully and firmly guided at close range. She stops on the trail and begins to walk in tight circles from time to time, so we have to wait until she stops circling and is prepared to walk a straight line along the pathways with guidance controlling her through her harness and lead, so she does not veer off, as she often wants to do, into the woods, off the trails.

When the temperature dips below minus-6-degrees Celsius, she has to be booted, otherwise the frigid temperature ices up her little paws. And she wears a winter coat out in the ravine, a lighter sweater to keep her warm in the house, during the day. She looks unkempt, because her hair continues to grow at an amazing rate. Since I cut it with scissors when I can manage to get her still for a few minutes, she no longer looks well groomed; she tries to avoid being fussed over.

At least she is now accustomed to being without sight, no longer thumping her head so mercilessly against objects she cannot see. She has learned to negotiate her way around the first floor of the house; we carry her upstairs to the second floor at night, to sleep in our bedroom. We have had to block off access to the stairs; it's just like having a toddler around the house again; she has, in the past, fallen down the stairs and we want to avoid that re-occurring.

When it's time to eat, she no longer waits expectantly in the kitchen to be served, but has to be picked up and placed directly over her food bowl before a whiff of her food is recognized by her faltering sense of smell, and she begins to eat. Amazingly, her appetite has improved as she grows older. And now that she is so old we no longer worry about giving her treats like bits of bacon or sausage. And she loves her daily salads, a mixture of cooked corn, peas, beans, carrots, topped up with fresh red bell pepper and snow peas.

She sleeps away much of the day, just as she sleeps soundly throughout the night. Her daily ravine walk takes up roughly an hour and a half of the day, otherwise she paces around the first floor of the house restlessly, for hours at a time. If she has been sleeping up on the sofa in the corner that is her favourite daytime sleeping place, once five o'clock arrives, she wakes as though an inner alarm clock has roused her.

And then she begins her restless pacing until her evening meal is served an hour later. We do our best to gauge the right time to take her out to the backyard to urinate and evacuate, and mostly we're in luck, but sometimes not quite. She will go for hours throughout the day without urinating, and we realize she forgets to drink water, so we have got into the habit of picking up her water bowl and placing her directly over it, muzzle touching the water, to remind her to drink - and she does, copiously.

Once in a while, on a rare occasion, it is as though she thinks she is once again a puppy and suddenly, amazingly, begins to caper at a dazzling speed, just as she used to when she was a youngster, all those years ago.

During the winter months I like to prepare a hot soup for our evening meal. Comprised primarily of dried peas/beans that have soaked overnight. And complemented by the addition of tomatoes and vegetables like okra, zucchini, celery, carrots to make for a hearty vegetable stew. In the preparation process, finely diced garlic cloves, cooking onion and jalapeno pepper begin the process, before the addition of the soaked peas and beans.

And while I rely on each of these vegetables to add something to the final product, I am often puzzled by the effect of the jalapeno pepper addition. The volatile oils in the pepper certainly affect me while I am in the process of cutting it into small pieces preparatory to adding it to the initial stage of soup-making. I cough incessantly, my eyes tear. But when the soup is finally ready to serve in the evening, after the late addition of the fresh chopped vegetables, there is a dominating sweet taste, no hint whatever of heat from the pepper.

And, despite that I have washed my hands countless times after handling the jalapeno pepper, if I happen to finger a corner of my eye, I immediately transfer obviously residual oil to that corner of the eye, and I can feel the stinging heat of it for a long while afterward.

We had also embarked on our usual walk in the wooded ravine with our little dogs, to ensure that, despite their advanced age, they still maintain their muscle mass. While there, and wearing gloves and over those, woolly mittens, enabling me to scrabble about in a bag for peanuts to disperse here and there for the woodland squirrels, I can feel the tips of my fingers becoming extremely cold. Later, in the evening, my fingers burn, leading me to suspect I may have been on the verge of frostbite while out trekking in the ravine.

How's that for a double-whammy on sensitive fingertips?

The old year has fled into history, the new year has made its debut, and our house is once again very quiet. The spaces are now our own to inhabit, though they are sufficiently commodious to accommodate far more than just we two and our two little dogs. They too recognize the difference, that two other people with whom they are intimately acquainted, have departed the scene, until next time they mysteriously re-appear to help us celebrate yet another milestone in our lives.

So, each is asleep in its own little bed, until we are finished with the day's chores and are prepared to take them out for a ravine walk on this bright and sunny day, where a few hours earlier, as we came down to prepare breakfast, flurries were lazily circling the atmosphere.

Although it has been over thirty years since our youngest child left the family home to make his own way in the world, when he arrives back home for a visit from his own home in Vancouver, it becomes a celebratory occasion. And even though it has been just over six years since we represented the workday caregivers for our granddaughter, when she too arrives for a week's visit, it too is a cause for celebration. When those visits intersect, it becomes an even greater occasion.

When they left, one after the other, the house began to settle into its accustomed air of serenity. Gone the bustle, the expectation, the little surprises, the joined activities and shared occasions that never fail to give us so much pleasure. We half expect to hear or see one or both of them rounding a corner, laughing, joining us for breakfast, dinner, a walk in the woods, an evening board game. Or to nestle together in the family room to view a film.

Father and son to decamp to the nether regions of the house where the workshop is located and together to work on a project or discuss alternatives methods of tackling a problem. Grandmother and granddaughter to confer on a choice for the day's dessert for after-dinner presentation.

It was difficult to become accustomed to the absence of our children, one after another, as they become independent adults and left the house. It is still difficult on these very temporary occasions to bid them farewell as we once again experience the rituals of arrival and departure.

It's been a peculiar weather-day. Milder by far than the preceding days this week. We woke to a dawn that gave us a pewter, cloud-filled sky, but temperature just at minus-6-Celsius. Soon enough we had clear skies and full sun.

Enabling us to have a ravine walk with our two little dogs who did not, this day, require boots to shelter their feet from fresh snow on the trails that would grip them with icy-cold in temperatures lower than minus-8. And we had the additional treat of seeing a Pileated woodpecker come back down from the boreal forest to thrum on the frozen bark of the ravine's winter-bare trees.

We set out shortly afterward to drive our granddaughter back home. Taking with her her new haircut, waxed, eyebrows, her new La Senza-bought underwear, her new school supplies for the new semester, and the suitcases full of clothing she had brought with for her six-day stay with us. By the time we had set out for the hour-long drive, the sun had disappeared behind clouds that brought alternately, freezing rain in a series of events, along with silver-rimmed cloud openings where the sun ventured to make its appearance again.

It was beyond pleasant to have our grandchild with us for just short of a week, coinciding with her uncle's visit with us on his way to attending a Fisheries conference in Moncton, before flying back to Vancouver. The interaction between the two was amusing and appreciated; we had our younger son to ourselves for the first half-week of his stay, and our granddaughter for the last half-week of her stay.

Sandwiched in between was a bit of exhaustion in ministering to them both in a manner that satisfied the standards of a mother and grandmother. Now it's time for a brief recuperation for both of us.

By coincidence yesterday our granddaughter spoke at length to me on the telephone about her English assignment for school; to produce, over the holiday break, a book review to be given orally to her class. Each student was assigned a classic piece of literature to read, admonished to read it at least twice, and then to produce an oral description of the book, citing relevant passages, so that the rest of the class would receive a picture of the novel's essence to more or less fire their imagination. the book she had been assigned was Jules Verne's Time Machine.

She is far more accustomed to reading novels that are current, very current, like Jodi Picoult's oeuvre; she had read every one of her novels and likes them immensely; they bring her into the world of present-day social concerns and how people deal with the adverse events of their lives. The infant we once looked after during the day while her mother worked, is now finding her place in society, as a young teen.

She has made it a habit of discussing with me the nature of each of the books she reads, what they portend, how society is impacted, and her impression of it all. She also consults with me concerning her English assignments. This one is interesting enough, she finds, albeit not her first choice of a topic, though she finds the language and the expressions stilted, a little antiquated, not surprising in a creative work among the first of its genre, dating almost a century back in time.

Later, in the evening, we settled down with our youngest child, enjoying his semi-annual visit with us from Vancouver, to view a film together that he had downloaded on his mini laptop from the Internet. Strangely enough, this film too focused on time travel, but with a very sinister, suspenseful undertone. It was a gripping film, enlarging on a topic that has always fascinated people; why time moved in one direction only, and why not explore the opportunity to go backward in time? The film, The Source Code, was gripping, melancholy, and brim-full of tension.

Very well done, in fact, although it had its faulty details; why, if someone had perfected an atomic-type bomb and was intent, as a brilliant, but psychotic lunatic, on expressing his contempt for society that is imperfect and unjust, to blow up the entire megalopolis of Chicago, would he first cause an explosion in a train? Why bother? And, why would it not be necessary to continue to ensure that a human brain has an energy source (glucose), when it is being used to experiment in time-travel, hooked up to electronic connections solely.

With the recent news out of CERN, and the experiment that was replicated by several teams of theoretical nuclear physicists, more than hinting at the final disclosure of evidence linked to the presence of the Higgs Boson, for a fraction of a second whose outcome will eventually - or perhaps, eventually - be the overturning and advancing of conventional wisdom, science fiction, as always predicts the future.