We took Environment Canada's weather warning seriously this morning. Yesterday's all-day heavy rain had kept us indoors. It just doesn't feel right to us, to miss a day of rambling about in the woods. We were determined that today's rain wouldn't end up keeping us from our daily ravine walk. We just cleared the table of breakfast dishes and off we went. Unprepared for what we found when we exited the house.

Since threat of rain was imminent, and plenty of rain predicted, we wore raincoats, all of us. Two adults and one very small dog. We would forge ahead through the ravine, rain or no rain. But when we walked out the door we were bathed in a gentle steam of warmly moist air; it felt just like a steam bath.

Once we dipped into the ravine and were surrounded by the trees, still dripping from yesterday's rainfall and whatever fell overnight, we saw leaves and pine needles steadily falling from the canopy above, but not yet any rain. The sky looked as though someone had hung out an amorphous mess of dripping, still-soiled clothing. But within the forest of the ravine despite the heavy overcast and gloom the colours of fall gleamed brightly.

Still-ripening apples dangled from branches, inviting us to pick a few to test their sweet, moist crispness. The trails were lush with fallen needles and colourful piles of foliage looking like forest confetti. And at this time of year when the combination of fall and wet conditions are ideal, mushrooms begin to make their presence, attracting us with their fanciful shapes and sometimes improbable colouration.

Overcast conditions and wet foliage somehow transform a landscape; it becomes exciting, entrancing, vibrant with colour nuances and fragrance. And this morning had all of it. We were, after all, able to take our time enjoying the surroundings that so complement the quality of our lives, without rain interrupting our amble. It was when we were about fifteen minutes from completing our circuit that the first tiny drops appeared.

By then the atmosphere had completely changed; the steamy heat had vanished and in its place was an emphatic breeze, and the air now felt cool. The sky, however, had become darker and it was clear that rain was imminent. Still, we took our time ambling along, and the light shower lifted, though not the darkness. When we reached the street, leaving the ravine, the rain began again, tentatively.

And by the time we entered our house a downpour of gigantic proportions pounded the windows, streaming ferociously over the glass panels, and looking up into the sky it resembled nothing so much as a giant aquarium.

Just like Goldilocks I like the weather not too cold, not too hot, just comfortably warm. Although not too warm. A little breeze is helpful. And when you're working in the garden even clouds are useful to shelter the hard-working gardener from the hot stare of the sun.

Yesterday's weather conditions provided all of that, and it was quite helpful to my resolve to finally get some action going on cleaning up the gardens. A start on it, in any event. For there is a lot of clean-up to be done when the growing season is at its stalemate between nudging new growth into life and staggering back into the soil, to await another winter's passage before spring renewal.

So, I collected the tools I needed, secateurs and shears and other types of snips, long-handled and short, to begin the adventure in close-cropping old greenery to make the garden nice and tidy awaiting late fall, when it's far too cold, blustery, wet and miserable to do all of that. It's far easier now than it was years ago when I also had to winter-blanket some sensitive plants which have since hardened off to our Canadian winters.

For many years, while the first of our magnolias was struggling to maturity I used to protect it by entirely blanketing it. Along with holly and rhododendron, azaleas and even yews. None of these specimens any longer get covered. Some of our roses do, but not the Explorer series or other tough customers like rugosa roses. I even stopped covering my tree peonies and though it's more of a struggle for them, they too manage to survive the winter - although they're slower in recovering come spring.

So I began yesterday by snipping off the long, overgrown spears of lilies and irises, cut back the peonies and the ligalarium, the astilbes, tickseed, Chinese lanterns, bleeding hearts, Jacob's ladder, ferns, bee balm, geraniums, phlox, echinacea and other spent perennials. The hostas can wait and so can the clematis, the black-eyed Susans, Ladies mantle, and other things. Because by then I had run out of energy.

And five paper compostable bags, four feet in height were full to the brim. Moreover, I was feeling not only exhausted but extremely warm and needed a break. Looking around, it hardly seems as though I've begun the process. There is just so much more needing to be done before all looks neat and tidy and prepared for winter.

And then, I must remember to plant the new allium bulbs, and the grape hyacinths for their lovely spring showing.

There's that old cautionary tale of people anxious to be of assistance to others, in their interpretation of how best to give aid, doing anything but.

The example often given of a blind man carefully making his way across a busy intersection, then standing to rest briefly after his successful crossing before carrying on. A pedestrian, seeing the man hesitate at the crossing, with the light turned green, swiftly took charge of the situation, informing the blind man, as he firmly tucked his arm under his own, not to be concerned, he would guide him safely across the street.

Leaving the blind man after the crossing, with a cheery "have a good day", back where he had started. At the very side of the intersection that he had begun his unassisted crossing from, and now facing the need to repeat the feat.

Yesterday, while shopping at one of our local supermarkets, I felt just a little bit like that blind man. Nothing wrong with my eyesight, nor anything else about me. I am perfectly competent, physically active and cerebrally functional.

Yet a young woman, before me in the line-up awaiting service at the cash-out desk, smiled at me, then manoeuvred my full shopping cart into a position directly behind her own, at an angle I felt awkward and would never have done myself. Because for some reason it was particularly busy, the persons behind me moved their own shopping cart directly behind my own and more or less boxed me in.

I found myself in an awkward situation, standing beside my canted cart, and having to lean over the width of the cart to withdraw the food I had filled it with, to place it on the moving conveyor belt for cash-out.

The women behind me insinuated herself bodily on the opposite side of the cart, suggesting that she could make my efforts less difficult, by handing food items out of my cart to me to place on the conveyor belt, a gracious gesture for which I thanked her for her kind consideration, but was able quickly to demonstrate to her it was a gesture that was unneeded, if I could just move my cart back to a more accessible position other than where the initially-helpful shopper had moved it without my consent, but making herself immensely pleased with her thoughtfulness.

When we first began our circuits in the forested ravine off the street where our house sits, the top portion of the ravine represented a fairly open field filled with small shrubs and wildflowers in season, with a few tall pines, before dipping back down into the ravine proper with its heavily forested areas. Now that once-open space is densely covered with trees. The elms have since succumbed to Dutch elm disease, never having grown beyond a decade's-worth of maturity.

But the pines and the spruce, the maples and the poplars have absolutely thrived, providing a very respectable ground cover and a nice canopy for protection from sun and rain. Lately, the ash trees have fallen victim to the more recent invasion of Ash tree borers and they are in sad decline. But there are a few wild apple trees and they have produced munificently this year.

Yesterday my husband picked one promising apple up from among the litter of those that had fallen beside the trail, polished it nicely on his shirt and presented it to me. It was crisp, sweet and juicy, surely the best apple I'd tasted this year, although I am not normally given to eating apples, strangely enough.

And this morning, my husband hauled upstairs for me the basket of large McIntosh apples our daughter had brought over as a gift, harvested from the larger of the two apple trees that sit beside her house. This evening, we will enjoy an apple pie; we do eat apples in that form, a favourite of my husband's.

Byward Market, close by the Parliament Buildings in Ottawa is a vibrant, colourful place full of activity, people coming together to drop into the many cafes and chat, tourists coming along to take in the sights of an everpresent traditional local market where local growers display rank upon rank of fresh vegetables at harvest time along with flowers and decorative plants for sale. And no end of stalls displaying and selling local crafts, as well as crafts coming from the far ends of the Earth.

Close by within easy walking distance there are federal museums and galleries, and foreign embassies. Even closer there are streets that beckon the eye of the passerby with shops dedicated to high fashion, and funk fashion alike. It is a place meant for strolling, for gawking, for entertaining. And to pick up one's favourite magazines from a shop that sells more titles than you might ever thought possible, magazines whose topics range from politics to fashion to the arcane.

And small establishments who sell both local and imported cheese specialties, another irresistible draw. When passing the stalls whose shelves hold garden zucchini, garlic, squashes, cauliflower, broccoli, brussels sprouts still on their stalks, heritage tomatoes and bell peppers, local mushrooms and corn, it's impossible not to linger and purchase a few items for one's own table.

Like the basket brimming with strawberries from Quebec that we found irresistible, and even more to our pleasure, the best we've ever tasted. And the entertainment quotient of the market doesn't stop there. On full display at various points there are buskers, talented men and women singing, dancing, playing musical instruments, offering free classic or popular music to please the ears of anyone.

Though we've seen musician groups from Peru and Mexico in the past, Tuesday marked the first time we had seen a young woman in classical Japanese Edo period dress, playing the Shamisen.

The market is also a place where men and women young and old gravitate to, to ask of passersby if they can "spare a few coins", to enable them to buy food. These are people who fall into various categories; runaway teens (usually from abusive home backgrounds), drug- or alcohol-addicted people, and people whose mental instability has placed them in the environment of life on the streets. I'd meant to return to where the Shamisen player was located to express my appreciation, but before I could, I was accosted by a smiling, beautiful young woman, very well dressed, who asked for "loose change".

Responding as I always do, but realizing that I hadn't much loose change to offer, she watched diligently as I withdrew two $10 bills from my purse, searching for the change she had asked for. She thanked me for the meagre handful I offered, then made an offer of her own. She would take one of those $10 bills off my hands and return to me $6 in change; and the difference would enable her to "buy food for my dinner".

Wordlessly, I handed her the ten, waved aside her offered 'change', smiled and went to move on. While she called out after me "god bless you", and I was left to wonder at the strangeness of human nature.

We experienced the usual pleasant drive along the Ottawa River Western Parkway. The river was calm, blue and wide, picturesque on this early fall day of exceedingly warm temperature and clear sky, sun beaming down on the landscape illuminating all the bright colours reflecting autumnal change. The staghorn sumacs at this time of year are a miracle of nature's bright palette, a pleasure to the eye, a sentimental reminder of previous perfect fall days.

We passed fields of pumpkins, their bright orange orbs picture-perfect reflection-opposites of the blazing sun above. They are ready to be harvested so that supermarket shelves and farmer's markets will be festooned with their array of sizes and temptation-enhancing arrays of offerings celebrating fall harvest.

Passing the aeronautical museum, an array of small, light private planes, including the occasional bi-plane is seen parked off in the distance, a series of picturesque circus-like tents backgrounding them in preparation for festivities that make their way into the area at this time of year.

Horse-empty fields at the Royal Canadian Mounted Police paddocks for their estimable stables of show horses are full of geese, taking advantage of the opportunity to eat to their fill before their long migratory flight south for the winter.

And over, well over, a number of fields-distant, the horses themselves out in a paddock, seeking shelter under a grove of mature, still-green trees, whose canopy shelters their gleaming black hides from the heat of the early afternoon sun.

She is like me in many ways, but not necessarily in aesthetic ways. When I felt that a pastel or floral-themed sheet set would be more in keeping for sheet sets for young girl she was thinking along the lines of a Mondrian-inspired print, and she favoured white sheets with black and red geometric stripes. I flinched at that choice, but it was hers and she really liked her choice, so who was I to say otherwise?

She thought she would expand on the theme and transform her entire bedroom to reflect those colours. Her mother didn't mind. In fact her mother helped her daughter to paint one short wall of her odd-shaped bedroom a stark red. And an opposing black emphasized the completion of the theme on yet another wall, while the remainder were left white. An adventure in interior design obviously, pleasing to our granddaughter's critical eye; an offense to mine.

But again; her choice. So when, last week, I went shopping for a duvet for her bed, I also looked at duvet covers. And I thought some of them were really attractive; so much so that I bought a new one for our own duvet, emphasizing softly-coloured spring flowers. But for her? That would hardly do. To my relief there on the shelves of the large linen area of the JYSK outlet we shopped at were duvet covers that were bright red overall superimposed with large figuratively nominal black-or-yellow-outlined blossoms.

And sure enough, she liked it, enormously, when I showed it to her a day later. Thanking us for having bought her a duvet, despite her having said time and again she preferred we would not. She had grown accustomed to using the feather-bed that we'd erroneously bought for her years earlier in place of a duvet. Now the feather-bed can go where it belongs, under her, during the upcoming long icy winter nights, and the duvet over, as it should.