In some cultures family is all-important. This doesn't rule out those families having friends outside their culture, but within a shared culture its members do tend to cling together long after they have migrated outside their country of origin where that culture has been established since time immemorial as far as they are concerned, establishing the patterns of their lives.

And so it is with Sikhs who migrated to Canada generations earlier, raising their own offspring with the tangible flavours of their culture. Some may have few contacts left in their country of origin and look upon Canada as their native country, one with which they completely meld in its values but the culture lives and it thrives. An inextricable part of that culture is the firm clasp of family, as the most meaningful part of life.

The kind of emotional dysfunction and petty arguments and wretched clique-ism that so often permeates families, leading to disinterest in one another and severed ties and bitterness doesn't seem to weigh down such families' firm grip on familial supportive solidarity. One can see this at times of great celebration and during sober times of grief.

One of our very closest neighbours has had a succession of health problems and often surgery related to them in an effort by medical science to restore normalcy to him. Most of those operations have been of only moderate success in their outcomes, and all of them have proven to be a burden to his body's capacity to spring back. Several days ago he underwent the most grave of all surgeries; a triple-heart bypass.

His recovery will be slow, given his body's tendency to recover slowly from all previous interventions. The medical prognosis pre-surgery was that he would be released from hospital between five to seven days post-surgery. The intention was that while he was in immediate recovery to begin physiotherapy; get him up and walking around in the days following surgery in preparation for return home.

That hasn't happened. His pain and discomfort is too great, his heart is beating too rapidly, and the cardiologists are maintaining a close watch on him. His family, wife, children, his siblings and their extended family are virtually at his bedside. He is surrounded by love and support. He is a man who needs it all and more, since he also suffers from clinical depression.

Such is life.

How foolish of me, what a short memory I have, to make such an immediate conclusion when our weather transited suddenly from hot and humid to cool and rainy, that summer had ended. That assumption was obviously premature, and there was little excuse for it, other than lamenting the passage of summer into autumn. At my age, having experienced these frequent events of weather seeming to change day by day in such huge leaps, I should have known better.

That we had been experiencing heat and humidity for a week, followed suddenly by a  spurt of subsequent days of plunging temperatures and non-stop rain should have nudged my memory for the many times this kind of weather ping-pong has occurred. It didn't, however, and after bemoaning summer's passage, here we are once again firmly plunked back into summer with all its consequent heat and humidity. Warranting a light dinner last night of a potato salad garnished with fresh vegetables. And salmon.

Our usual ravine hike was a heated affair, and we were grateful for a light breeze and the sun-shielding canopy overhead. We were also surprised at the presence of people walking dogs whom we'd never before encountered in all our years of daily ravine hikes. The ravine is a natural treasure, quite under-used, so it's always a surprise to come across those we haven't seen before. Two young woman walking large dogs indulged them with permission to cool off in the muddy creek to their hearts' content.

As for Jack and Jill, they were outfitted yesterday with new harnesses. They both agitate over having to wear harnesses, not that they're any more content to even wear their collars. We leave them collarless in the house, but once we venture outdoors, on come the collars. For identification purposes should anything ever happen and they become separated from us. Button and Riley accustomed themselves to these constraints and we hope that Jack and Jill eventually will, too. Meanwhile, they've both bitten through quite a few of them.

My husband is always on the lookout for those that are soft and yielding, for maximum comfort. Maximum comfort to our two little imps is no impediments to their free movement at all. That will eventually happen as they become older and more responsive to where we want them to be at all times, but that time hasn't yet arrived.

In the 1950s of downtown Toronto the old Brunswick Hotel (it was old even back then) was a clapped-out, disreputable drinking establishment in whose near proximity it could be guaranteed one would see alcoholics publicly displaying the type of mental abyss typical of alcohol addicts. Bloor Street itself back then was fairly run-down and tired in appearance. Close by the Brunswick Hotel was where my parents' convenience store was located; about two doors over.

I'd be asked by my father when barely into my teens to fit my body into the tight space that represented his store's front-window area, to arrange displays of items sold in the store attractively in the hopes that people would be enticed to enter and make purchases. It was a dusty enclosure; the first time I was dispatched to do the job it was clear that it hadn't been done in many a year. That neglect was just one of many my father, on becoming the store's proprietor meant to change. The odd times I was tasked with manning the cash register as a kid, I was told precisely what to charge when someone might toddle over from the Brunswick to buy a single cigarette.

My parents stocked their narrow, elongated cave of a store with everything imaginable, from newspapers and magazines in languages other than English as well as more local ones, to canned foodstuffs my mother would trundle over in her buggy when they were on sale at the Dominion Supermarket a block away. With tobacco products, toys and gifts, candies and baked goods, ice cream in huge drums to be scooped up into cones, housewares and anything useful and inexpensive that could be stuffed onto the shelving along its narrow aisles.

The store in the Byward Market that my husband and I have been dropping by for many years has a similar configuration to my father's old store; it is long and deeply narrow. The cash register and counter located in the very same place where my father's was. But that store specializes in newspapers, journals and magazines of a far wider variety than my father's ever did, as well as ecigarettes, conventional cigarettes and cigars, hookahs, and marijuana and other drug paraphernalia. For the past decade it has been owned by a Somali family, its members graciously helpful and patrician in their proud bearing.

When we dropped by yesterday after discovering the week before that the September issues of the monthly art magazine and the antique digest my husband usually collects there hadn't yet arrived, we found that though the shop owner had been certain they would be coming in at the very latest last Friday, they hadn't. That wasn't the only disappointment of the day. From the Byward Market we headed up to Gatineau, Quebec, since it was such a lovely day, with a high of 26 degrees, under sunny skies.

Unfortunately, when we reached Chelsea at the point where a hundred yards' distant we would enter the road into Gatineau Park leading to our hiking destination we discovered the road closed and under construction. Searching for alternative entry points we drove to some of the old areas we'd been familiar with decades ago, but found even those areas dramatically changed. Some days are just like that.

The wondrous conveniences of technology and the constant, aberrant irritations that often attend their use. Finally it seems that Hydro One has solved the problem of the destroyed lines in our area, occasioned by the misfortune of one driver in mortal distress hitting a hydro installation. No more blackouts, thank heavens.

And my computer is now purring away obediently, no longer declining me the opportunity to make use of its multitude of connections. So, for the time being, that's behind us.

On the other hand, when our granddaughter made her daily call to us from Toronto on the first day of her university classes, we were cut off no fewer than four times. Each time in mid-sentence the line suddenly went dead. Each time she redialled and we reconnected, only to have the line go blank again. Finally, we concluded our conversation via email. At least her first day went well, and she has a good impression of the professor teaching her course; now if all the rest follow suit that'll be useful.

This morning there was a call from "Visa" with the usual call-centre background sounds as a dead giveaway that this was a crank call. The caller, identifying himself by faux Western name belying his identifying accent, asked my husband to confirm his identity, only to come up against a blank wall himself of an enquiry on my husband's part demanding to know where the call was coming from.

With the explanation that someone had sourced our account and was using it illicitly, my husband concluded the conversation and then called Visa. He was cautioned that the call received was not from Visa and urged to remain vigilant about his account, which hadn't in fact, been used by us since February. Human ingenuity related to scamming the unaware knows no bounds.

What could conceivably be more aggravatingly frustrating than to prepare to use your computer only to discover that your computer has no intention of co-operating? Yesterday afternoon my computer which I hold in the highest esteem, withheld its services. It resolutely ignored my efforts to wake it from an admittedly-deserved rest. It isn't that old, no more than four years, but it has obviously grown weary of my incessant demands of its services.

While the computer was on as it should be, the monitor was blank. And nothing I seemed to do to coax it to show some signs of [not sentient, but sentient-useful] life was to no avail. I checked the connections, the cable, the plugs. I changed the mouse, the keyboard, the monitor itself to another, and ... nothing. So last night, rather than engage in my usual blogging enterprise I read instead. It wasn't time wasted; I looked through and read most of the text of 'A Visual Dictionary of Herbs', thus adding to my knowledge of herbs with their culinary and medicinal properties.

And I also began reading Children in the Holocaust and World War II, their secret diaries; a riveting compilation of the hopes, fears and impressions of young teens writing of their Holocaust-related experiences, by Laurel Holliday. She gathered the diaries, observing that they represented courage and rebellion against the cruel fate these children faced, determined to give them the audience she felt they deserved.

Cruel fate was what, in an individual sense, hit a man who was driving his car on a main thoroughfare nearby where we live when he suffered a heart attack, and his car hit a main hydro installation of the type placed on the ground throughout the area, knocking out power to an estimated four thousand homes, ours among them. We were suddenly plunged, around ten in the evening, into total darkness about five days ago. We groped about to make our way the short distance to pick up a flashlight apiece. Soon afterward the electricity was restored.

In the following days we experienced a series of brief power outages, irritating but what can you do? In one instance the outage began at five and lasted until six, and that evening up until two in the morning brief spurts of power breaks occurred. Since then it appears all the damage to the power lines has been amended and reliability restored. Initially despite that we have a good-quality power bar for protection against surges my desktop wasn't happy at all with these 'unauthorized' shut-downs, though my husband's mini-laptop seemed unperturbed by comparison.

We thought we'd take my computer in for a diagnostic test that might determine what was wrong with the connections, and we'd do that some time today. But soon after we came down for breakfast my husband looked over at my computer desk in the family room and there was the computer and monitor, up and ready for use.

Up to four days ago we were sweltering in high humidity and high temperatures in the 30s. Canadians indulge in speaking primarily of how the weather affects their daily lives. In the Ottawa Valley it is always humid, regardless of the temperature. It is what makes excessive summertime heat unbearable and frigid winter days no less so but for obvious differences. In Canada, exposure to inclement and cold conditions can kill; excessive heat less so, since there are always opportunities to enter cooler spaces. We shed our clothing as much as social decency will permit and go about our business. Alternately pile on more layers in the cold season to keep from utter discomfort.

We've now bid farewell to the heat and humidity of late summer as we prepare to enter the autumnal Equinox. We may before the next two months have passed, enjoy some respite from impending cold, in what we call episodes of brief relief: "Indian summer" days, but from here on in, winter will make its gradual presence an unavoidable reality. We can see all the signs of die-back responding to short light-days and the difference in the strength of the sun. Not only are perennial plants exhausted and shrubs subtly beginning to turn fall shades, but the shrinking of the green mass on the forest floor has begun in earnest and foliage on trees has begun to turn colour and descend from their perches.

Yesterday's all-day rain in a high temperature of 15 degrees was cool and miserable. There was just enough of a window around four in the afternoon to take Jack and Jill out for a ravine walk. Though the trees were steadily dripping with the weight of the rain that had fallen overnight and throughout the day, no rain descended while we were out, for which we were thankful. The dim light penetrating the canopy reminded us that in several months' time there will be far fewer daylight hours; a trend that has been impossible not to notice. Despite that dim light it always surprises us that the prevailing green after a heavy rain is so intense and bright, amidst the gloom.

Shortly after we returned from our hour's foray in the woods, the clouds once again relieved themselves of their watery burden. And then continued to rain through the evening hours into the early morning hours and beyond. Beyond of course, means that today is yet another day of constant rain and few opportunities to enjoy the out-of-doors.

We're stunned, as usual, at the rapidity with which summer faded, can't imagine how it could be possible that the summer months streamed by so swiftly. Didn't we even notice until now? Were we so busy enjoying the leisure and comfort of relying on sun and breeze and showers that we forgot the passage of the season? Or were we just so busy criticizing nature for all that she threw our way in her little surprises that we lost track?

My sister is four years younger than me. Her sight was always compromised, the result of a somewhat-botched forceps delivery 74 years ago. She is now, and has been for decades, legally blind. Some years ago, perhaps five, she fell down a full flight of steps. It wasn't a staircase in her own house, she was visiting the home of a friend, opened a door to what she thought was a solid floor beyond it, but which wasn't. She managed to save herself from hitting her head as she reached bottom, but she suffered from the pain and aches that resulted all over her body, for many months afterward. She never did see a doctor after the accident, and now it's just an unpleasant memory.

It's now been three weeks to a day since I fell down the stairs from our second floor to the first, and hit my forehead on the marble landing at the bottom of the steps. Remarkably and fortunately though my head hit with a real !crack! resulting in an immediate swelling and considerable pain, I don't appear to have sustained any real damage. I've no bodily aches and pains now, though I did have in the days immediately following; not uncomfortable enough to make things unbearable, just nudges of muscular aches.

My head was a different story. The left side of my face became rather grotesque in appearance, bruised and swollen, the left eyelid drooped over the eye and it was dreadfully irritating. Let alone painful to look at in the mirror, so I decided to avoid doing that. As the days progressed and the bruising became more noticeable, I more or less 'forgot' about what my face looked like as I went out in the public arena; brought to reality by the shocked expressions on people's faces and the necessity to explain that no, my husband hadn't brutalized me.

Noting my social discomfort, my husband who enjoys shopping for food, suggested that he do the food shopping and I could use the time for relaxation instead of rushing about the supermarket, and I agreed. He's done that for three weeks of supermarket shopping and since he's an excellent shopper it seems to work out well. People who work at the supermarket where we've shopped for many years have asked him where I am, and he has explained to them, and they've expressed concern on my behalf, which is rather sweet.

So while I busy myself doing the Friday baking and cooking my husband goes off to do the shopping and our little dogs aren't left on their own. We had taken to discard our original solution which was to confine them to a limited area since they're forever getting into some kind of mischievous trouble or another, to drive to the supermarket with them, leaving my husband to sit in the vehicle for the hour it takes me to do the shopping. In hot or cold weather that can be a real nuisance and a time-waster.

So, for the time being, until we can trust the little imps to more or less behave themselves on their own while we're both off doing the shopping without them, this temporary solution will do just fine.