It's a long time in canine years since he was young. As a puppy he was energetic, inquisitive, loving adventure and people, prepared to leap straight into the arms of anyone who would give him attention. And when he was young and perky and brightly appealing there was no lack of attention from people, including strangers who we would come across in the ordinary course of a day, out and about with him. His diminutive size and sweet appearance appealed enormously even to people who had no particular love of dogs. And still does.

Even back then, though, I had to patiently extend an effort to teach him not to fear heights or to leap. If I could get him to momentarily forget his extraordinary (for a dog, I would imagine) sense of caution by throwing a toy onto a heightened surface, in his eagerness to take possession of the toy he would automatically make the required leap. On his own, without trickery to disarm his fear, he would never respond just by voiced invitation. Eventually he learned that he was indeed able to jump about without dire consequences, and he ended up leaping to heights that surprised me.

In the last few years his sense of caution and fear that appears to be inborn has returned, however. A few years back he had a nasty tumble down a set of stairs, and ever since then he has been suspicious of stairs. He still mounted them, but over time more and more reluctantly, and now he won't at all approach stairs with the intention of ascending them. When we go upstairs to bed he has to be carried up with us. He will still descend, but not an entire indoor flight of stairs, only those leading from the deck to the garden and then only in stable conditions.

Now, we cater to his whims and wishes to make him comfortable, to please his notions of achieving some goal. In this summer weather our little sun-loving dog likes to venture out into the outdoors to listen to the natural sounds all around, observing the life of the creatures that inhabit our little microsystem. But that means ushering him to the backyard after breakfast and as soon as he becomes too hot, hauling him back up. And installing him in his second-most favourite spot, on the glider, sitting on the deck, its cushions enveloping and comforting him.

We placed before the glider an ottoman to reduce its height and give him confidence in leaping down off the glider when he's prepared to return to the house, since he's easily able to open the screen of the sliding doors to emit himself. But I watched once, last week, as he leaped from the ottoman and still wasn't able to secure his four little paws on the deck, tumbling over onto his side before he could scramble back to place himself four-square on the solid floor. Since then he's been averse to jumping down on his own and will stand on the ottoman, appealing for help.

Button had never been so timid. She would just charge ahead to explore any situation that appealed to her, even when she was much older than Riley's now-14-years. But, personalities are all different, and her character was quite unlike his.

People are most idiosyncratically individualistic in their values and orientations. A fact of life that is expressed about us constantly in every facet of our lives as we come in contact with people around us. A case in point as close to us in particular as our closest next-door neighbours. Take, for example the family on our right, a retired couple with their two university-age children. One is studying theatre arts the other kinesiology.The mother is a smiling, outwardly friendly person, while her husband and their children are emotionally cloistered, her husband in very particular socially withdrawn a person who assiduously avoids any contact however remote, with anyone outside his immediate household.

And then, there's the family to our immediate left, who have never integrated themselves socially in the neighbourhood, but are friendly and good-natured people. They've been neighbours for 17 years.Those to the right do the least they possibly can to ensure their property, house exterior and lawns are kept tidy and in good shape, though they certainly have the 'man-power' to do so. Seldom do we ever see any of that family outside their home other than pulling out of or into their driveway. We've lived beside them for 23 years. The years have produced a steady disintegration resulting in a slovenly atmosphere permeating the property, unattended and reduced to a miserable appearance. This does not result from a lack of funding, but an obvious disinclination to exert themselves physically and an avoidance of confronting the necessity to address adequate maintenance.

As opposed to those on the left who are constantly contracting professionals in house maintenance to conduct upgrades of one kind or another within and without the house. At the present time, there's a landscaping company with all kinds of modern heavy-duty landscaping equipment coming in to noisily deconstruct work that had been done by previous landscapers, including ripping up an incredible amount of brick and stonework in patios and walkways to eventually replace it all with newer products that have appealed to the home-owners.

Both of the children in that household have achieved their education and one works as a pediatric nurse at a nearby hospital, the other has performed a variety of jobs all pointing him toward eventual work with the RCMP. They're unself-consciously open, not gregarious by nature, but obviously comfortable in the sphere of human social interaction, reflecting their parents' example.

As for us, we are caught in the middle; retired, giving attention when weather permits, to growing our garden and taking huge pleasure in the results. We like to amble about in the garden in the morning after breakfast, discovering new and sometimes unexpected blooms, appreciative of the burgeoning growth and variety, texture, colours and freshness of it all. Except lately everything has been covered with a fine stonedust that mutes the colours and creates an overall drabness, draining pleasure and producing instead an aghast sadness.

When that kind of work is taking place as is being done next door, transforming the grounds so radically with the use of heavy equipment and men labouring in the heat of the day to fulfill a contract as a living wage, the inevitable result is resounding clashes and a littering of the atmosphere with insistently brash soundwaves, making relaxing out on the deck less attractive in the afternoon, and our morning garden roundabouts better avoided. It's just one of those things.

The supervisor of the men performing the work happened to see my husband scraping the detritus of piled gravel, dirt and bricks off the roadway in front our driveway and sweeping the detritus that driving over it all plasters onto the driveway, so he approached my husband and assured him that this was unneeded labour on his part. His company will always meticulously clean up after themselves, leaving any properties impacted by work they undertake as tidy as they were before they entered the picture.

My husband thanked him. We can't expect people earning a difficult living to understand fully how what they do legitimately in response to work orders that keep a company in operation, to extend Herculean efforts to ensure that nothing disturbs neighbours. Given the nature of the work it is simply not feasible. So yesterday we hoped for rain to wash away all the distressing stone-dust produced by mechanically sawing the bricks and stones that has settled on our gardens, but in the interim my husband went about watering it all, in hopes that when next I returned to the gardens my distress would be alleviated.

It is, in any event, a brief interim in the summer months to create a disturbance in leisure hours that will soon enough be done with as they complete the work and move on elsewhere.

My computer mouse has latterly gone berserk from time to time, engaging in some really peculiar antics, so I decided it was time for a replacement. Besides which, the printer cartridges needed changing, so off we went yesterday afternoon to a nearby shopping plaza. While we were at it, we decided to drop in to the JYSK store and another home decor store both of which sell fairly nice bedding. Just browsing, to see if either of them, located quite close to our original destination, Office Depot, had anything we could tell our granddaughter about.

When we were exiting the first of the shops, I noticed a cashier looking questioningly at us, as though suspecting us of attempting to abscond with something we  hadn't paid for, although an electronic security system is set up at the doors to prevent just such occurrences. I imagine then that most people who enter, exit with purchases, not given to browsing for comparison purposes.

Our very selective granddaughter is on the lookout for an attractive (to an 18-year-old) bedding set; sheets and pillowcases, and a comforter set for her University of Toronto living arrangements come September, since she'll be living in residence close by the campus she'll be attending. She wants colours and patterns that are extremely youth-feminine and that's hard to come by unless you look online and see them breathlessly advertised at inflated prices appealing to the decor-obsessed determined that when they set out for the first time to decorate some place that is nominally 'theirs' outside the family home, that new place will express their taste and personality.

I don't see what she has her heart set on as matching her personality; taste perhaps, and that will most certainly change in a short period of time. I had taken snapshots of some of the offerings and sent them along to her in case there was something that struck her fancy. As it happens, nothing did, though I sent along about 7 photos of comforter sets I thought might appeal to her, since she had sent me links of those that did, attached to an online marketing company that doesn't ship to Canada, and even if it did the price was absurd, to which would be added the differential in Canadian funds.

We left the car where we'd originally parked it and walked over to a few destinations in handy distance to conclude our other missions. When we returned to the car, prepared to head for home, there was a shopping cart from nearby HomeSense that had been left beside our car. If anything makes me disgusted about people's shopping habits, it is their laziness in not returning shopping carts to the depot caches meant to contain them, rather than leaving that little social obligation for other people to do, in fear of a loose shopping cart presenting as a missile if an unobservant driver strikes one.

I made to move the cart, then noticed something left in it, someone's cellphone. My husband waited in the parking lot with Riley while I entered the store to hand the cellphone over, with an explanation to an employee there whose manager could take charge of it, though I really felt like just depositing it in the nearest waste disposal unit.

Just as well none were handy.

All local supermarkets advertised imported sweet cherries on sale last week. I have been buying them for the past while and we've been enjoying them as fresh-fruit desserts unadorned by anything additional for dinner lately as a change from the more readily obtainable fruits in all seasons. But last week I bought a really large amount of cherries. I had intended to bake a cherry pie with a portion of what we had been enjoying.

But then my husband was out doing a little shopping of his own and he brought home a goats-milk cheese roll. He enjoys all manner of cheeses, but not the cheese he had brought home. He hadn't looked closely enough and instead of plain goats-milk cheese, it just happened to be lime-lemon enhanced cheese he had bought. I said he'd like it, just give it a try. He did and said it tasted to him very much like cheesecake and although he enjoys cheesecake, he likes his cheese unadorned by anything added if it isn't pepper or chives.

Use it, he suggested to me, to bake a cheesecake, so I agreed. And as I did I thought, oh well, there goes my cherry pie baking session. But no, I thought again, why not combine them? And so that is precisely what I did yesterday morning. I baked a cheesecake using that goats-milk lime-lemon variety; with eggs, sour cream, vanilla and sugar it turned out to be a quite creditable effort. Particularly when I prepared the cherries to spill over the cheesecake, once it was baked and sufficiently cooled out of the oven.

It presented as a very nice dessert that my husband appreciated. I did too, other than that I could still detect the sharp taste characteristic of goats-milk. Now that that experiment ended with a degree of success, we'll continue to enjoy the cheesecake for the next few days, but I don't think I'll be in too much of a hurry to bake another goats-milk cheesecake.

When we were young we were both drawn to green open spaces and enjoyed being within a treed landscape. My earliest memories as a child were of deep pleasure to be derived in such landscapes. It was certainly not that my attention was deliberately drawn by nature-loving parents to the meagre landscape of parks in a crowded city centre where my parents, struggling to get along as immigrants paid attention to bill-paying, and just surviving focused all their attention.

Now, living in another city amidst the kind of plenty that was unknown to us back then, we come counter often enough to the boredom of young people impacting the environment that is of such importance to everyone. Littering is a given, we see that in the neglect of people to pick up after themselves; with the proliferation of paper coffee cups and disposable plastic water bottles, their remnants reminding us of what an uncaring society we are.

In the wooded ravine nearby our home, we have over the years witnessed our natural surroundings being abused. There are people who regularly go through the ravine, on the other hand, picking up the litter that others leave behind in their devotion to the environment.

We've seen where young people have attempted to light fires on wood benches, bridges, tree hollows. One such blaze was successful enough for the fire department to respond. As they did several years back when we were alerted by a blaze from a tall bankside of the ravine over the main creek that sent my husband scrambling up the steep incline only to have an inebriated young man leap out of a shelter he had made of fallen branches, to protect the fire he had made. After we alerted authorities in fear of an uncontrollable blaze, he was arrested for public drunkenness and mischief and the fire department snuffed the blaze.

We've seen young men strolling along with axes, and asked them not to chop down any trees. Which does happen from time to time. Just as occasionally we will be enjoying a daily ravine circuit and become aware that someone had been there before us, snapping off the slender trunks of saplings. In the winter, particularly when school is out, young people often make ramps on the trails to make their sledding or snowboarding more exciting. The ramps, needless to say, create an impediment to people who prefer to walk, not sled or snowboard.

It was considered good sport by some young people to hurl stones at a beaver family that had settled itself several years back at another junction of the creek, where from time to time beavers tend to migrate. Although no racoons or foxes have informed us that they too have been targets, there's little doubt this is just what happens. Empathy for the wildlife that surrounds us is in miserable absence, as well.

Two days earlier when we were almost through our daily circuit I greeted a young man entering the ravine at a street junction, taking his silence for the usual morose attitude of many young people unaccustomed to civil behaviour. My husband was quicker to intuit why he was carrying long-handled garden tools with him, and suggested he not build a ramp on the trail. What would his parents say to him if they knew, he asked. To this the boy responded: They couldn't care less.

Well then, my husband responded, build a ramp in your own backyard and then see what  your parents' reaction will be. I photoed the boy, and he ducked behind a copse of trees. I had fully anticipated that the next time we'd pass that area a ramp would be there to complicate our progress, but no, although on previous occasions someone had indeed built ramps just there, this time it appears that the youth, though resentful, in the usual way that young people are when the elderly interfere with their pleasure, had had second thoughts.

For the time being, in any event.

It is a tragedy. That life expectancy is so low for people suffering from the genetic disease affecting multiple body systems, lungs and digestive system so severely affected through cystic fibrosis. Very few sufferers seem to live beyond the age of 34. Those so dreadfully afflicted can hope for a lung transplantation procedure, which can stretch the survival years up to another five years of life.

For Jessica Forsyth of Ottawa, who died on Saturday at age 25, a young woman with a determined, scintillating personality, who when she was able to, acted as a spokesperson for the Cystic Fibrosis Canada Ottawa chapter, and a volunteer at Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario, raising awareness and research funding, it was a personal tragedy. For her, for her bereaved parents, for the community which knew her best.

Jessica Forsyth, dead at age 25 on Saturday, 19 July, 2014, of complications from cystic fibrosis: photograph, Facebook

Another young cystic fibrosis sufferer, also a pert and lively 21-year-old young woman by the name of Helene Campbell, had done her part in arousing awareness in the general public about what it is like to live with cystic fibrosis and the agony of impaired breathing and swallowing. She awaited a double lung transplant which finally took place at Toronto General Hospital in April 2012.




She has since been active, both in telling her own story of her battle against this dread disease, and in helping other families cope. A year after her own successful double lung transplant, she partnered with the Toronto General and Western Hospital Foundation in the creation of the Give2Live campaign, whose purpose is to aid thirty patients and their families on the transplant waiting list.


Some 200 families in Ottawa and four thousand across Canada are affected by the disease.

No cure has yet surfaced, although treatments are available. And recently an announcement came forward that a new type of drug meant for those with a specific type of cystic fibrosis has been developed and is being covered by the Province of Ontario through medicare. The drug, Kalydeco, meant to treat people with the G551D variation, a rare strain of cystic fibrosis can cost up to $300,000 annually.

Mid-summer finds the forest and understory flora in the ravine adjacent our home thriving, thanks to the copious rain, ample sunshine, and warm temperatures that have graced our environment thus far this season. The succession of wildflowers that grow in the mixed-base clay/sand soil of the ravine provide us with an endless array of beautiful presentations of nature's finest.

Thimbleberry blooms (purple raspberry)

The presence of birds; robins, cardinals, chickadees, nuthatches, warblers; butterflies, damselflies, dragonflies and the occasional visit of birds not normally associated with the ravine like great blue herons and dabbling ducks give us other seasonal perks of intrigue at the irresistible invitation to wander along the trails daily.

Queen Anne's lace

And of course the crows that tend to follow our daily progress through the ravine to make certain that they too partake of the peanut offerings we leave in accustomed cache-places for the red, black and grey squirrels who anticipate our daily rambles.

Cow vetch

At the present time, burdock dominate some areas beside the trails with massive growth thanks to prevailing conditions, and alongside them are thistles with their softly purple-glowing flowerheads, and the presence of new sumacs growing at a tremendous speed and often in areas where they are vulnerable to the robust antics of dogs in play stripping them of their new life.

Yarrow

The Hawthorns' haws are now in evidence, though it is the pin cherries' dangling ripening fruit whose notice is glowingly inescapable, along with the wild apple trees growing their fruit that are more visually evident. Seasonal thimbleberry bushes are larger than they usually are, some have reached my own height, and they're putting out their brilliant pink blooms.

Pin Cherries

The hazelnut bushes natural to the environment this year appear to be hosting fewer nuts than usual but raspberry canes are proceeding to ripen their tiny fruit.

Haws/Hawthorn

As for wildflowers, they're there in abundance, but only in areas where sufficient sun penetrates the forest canopy to encourage their bright presence, from cow vetch, to sunflowers, cinquefoil to buttercups, daisies to fleabane and of course, Queen Anne's lace and yarrow.

Daisies

A never-ending source of pleasure in new sightings that delight us day after day.

Sunflowers