We've veered suddenly from lovely early fall weather replete with sun, breezes and mild temperatures to days of unrelenting rain, and now a steep fall in temperature, but the return of the sun. The garden loved the warmth and sun followed by the rain. Everything seemed to perk up, beautifully.

And when the cold arrived, the preceding rain happened to protect tender growing things from feeling too abandoned by departed summer. The giant Dahlias have outdone themselves in size, and that  translates mostly to sturdy stalks that have grown to an absurd height, and plenty of foliage, but a sparsity of blooms. One of the Dahlias has given us plenty of delightful yellow flowers, another two round-petalled pink ones of lesser numbers, while a fourth has finally begun blooming fabulous spear-petalled layers of white-pink blossoms.

The Morning Glories are in their element, and so are the Nasturtiums, both robustly twining over everything else in their close vicinity. The blue of the Morning Glories almost vibrate with translucent colour in the early morning sun. And the variations in gold and orange of the Nasturtiums with their streaks of opposing colour are decoratively appreciated, even while garden standards of fall like Coneflower, Tickseed, Asters, Black-Eyes Susans, Clematis, Hydrangea, Ligularia, Swamp Sunflower and Roses are beginning to fade.

With this cold weather and the threat of overnight frost, however, it's time to think of cleaning up the gardens. And yesterday was as good a day as any to indulge. Both of us got out into the backyard to begin the process, trimming and cutting back perennials, beginning with the peonies and on to the Japanese anemones, the geraniums, the lilies and the iris foliage. While we snipped away and loaded up two large compost bags for an hour while Jackie and Jillie played around us, themselves happily pulling out violets to eat the roots as they're wont to do, we've made barely a start.

It will take many more such days to make any kind of tidying impression for fall on the gardens. And when we've completed that seasonal chore in anticipation of being greeted by a neat and tidy (relatively speaking) garden come spring, attention will be turned to emptying the garden pots of their annuals before too many frosts turn them to mush.   I will collect the potato vine roots, and the begonia bulbs to overwinter in the basement as usual.

And when it's all done, there will be a feeling of relief and accomplishment in readying the gardens for the long winter 'night' of sleep, likely with a comforter of well-seasoned compost over all.

This past week has given us perfectly idyllic early autumn weather, adding considerably to our enjoyment of our woodland treks. The atmosphere has been mild, lacking humidity, with good brisk winds and what more could we ask for? The atmospherics have been perfect for full enjoyment of this transition period. From time to time we hear the clamour above of Canada geese winging their disciplined formation southward.

At night we can once again hear songbirds twittering to one another as they make their yearly passage toward more clement climes in anticipation of winter. Small flocks of transitory migrants have been taking full advantage, as they are meant to do, of the bird feeder that stands aloft outside our dining room windows.

When we meander through the Bilberry Creek ravine, we are surprised to see the growing volume of foliage on the forest floor. And looking about us, the tell-tale signs of change are beginning to display themselves, from the foliage of sumacs turning their initial stages of fiery red, to the hawthorns, the first to defoliate, showing off their red haws, and the birches hosting bright yellow leaves in preparation for shedding them.

Goldenrod has lost its bright yellow, the flowers turned to the colour of straw, and the only wildflowers left are asters, hanging in there with their pale purple blooms. Some ground vegetation like dog strangulation vines have declined markedly, already being absorbed into the forest floor.

The superb weather days have changed a bit, with the previous several days being rain-filled. For yesterday's ravine perambulation we all were equipped with rainjackets, including Jack and Jill. The canopy is as yet sufficiently undisturbed to offer us a fairly reliable shelter from the rain, as long as rain isn't too heavy, and yesterday's, though steady throughout the day, alternated between lightly moderate and slightly on the heavy side. We didn't come back drenched, any of us.

And the overcast, dim conditions always surprise us by transforming colour hues to a deep brightness. The sky, through varied shades of aluminum and pewter, emits enough light so the camera captures it even though we can't take full advantage of it while we're hiking through the trails surrounded intimately by the trees, enclosing us in a twilight zone.

Originally, it was the intention of the medical team involved in his care post-surgery to have him up and out of his hospital bed briefly to begin therapy; he was to be assisted in walking for a few minutes. As it turned out, he was in too much pain and too weak for that to happen. That part of his therapy was delayed for several days. It does seem to the casual observer rather prematurely optimistic that an older man who has just undergone triple-heart-bypass surgery would be expected ti bounce back so quickly and in Mohindar's case it would not reflect his own medical history.

Yet a mere five days after his surgery he was sent home to recover, in the care of his wife and his son. And three days after he was discharged from hospital, he was sitting having lunch with his family when he suddenly fell into a deep faint. His son could feel no pulse. So Imeren gently slapped his father's face, calling to his mother to immediately dial 911, and stop screaming. There was no response to Imeren's increasingly urgent face-slapping, and the seconds ticked dangerously by, but he remained calm, doing what he felt he had to. He also had to take the telephone from his mother who was so traumatized she was unable to inform the 911 personnel what her own address was.

The ambulance arrived in less than five minutes and paramedics stabilized Mohindar, then rushed off to the nearest hospital with him, not the Heart Institute from where he had been discharged. He remains there yet. The nurses at the other hospital had no idea of the just-admitted man's history, and the doctors swiftly ascertained that his heart rate was perilously low. They estimated his heart had been beating at about 15 times per minute instead of the usual 60 to 75, and perhaps had gone even lower. He would surely have died if his son hadn't persisted in attempting to arouse him to consciousness, finally successfully.

No one had been monitoring the effects of the drugs that had been prescribed for him; in total a dazzling number of drugs for various purposes in his recovery condition. So no one was aware that the effect of the heart drug was too radical. His premature discharge from the Heart Institute was clearly inappropriate in Mohindar's case.

When I was admitted in a sudden health-collapse incident five years ago as a result of a dangerously low blood haemoglobin count due to a bleeding ulcer, itself a byproduct of the daily aspirin regimen, I was kept under observation at the Heart Institute for five days, wired up to all kinds of interpretive devices, and undergoing several exploratory procedures before discharge. The blood transfusions aside, along with the invasive procedures, it seems to me that undergoing triple-heart-bypass surgery is an infinitely far more serious situation surely meriting a more careful evaluation of the patient's condition necessitating a much longer hospital stay for assurance of stabilization post-surgery.

As we began ascending the first long hill from the street where our house sits, into the ravine yesterday afternoon, we came abreast of a couple we haven't seen in years. When my husband retired twenty years ago he would often come across this couple with their dog, when he embarked on his morning ravine walk with our Button. Their dog was an absolute character, a lovable, prankish little terrier mix to whom they were devoted.

This is a couple that decided to take in a much larger dog that had been abandoned in the ravine, many years ago. Regular ravine walkers were alerted to the presence of a good-sized, dark-haired dog that would suddenly appear in sight and then abruptly vanish. Its barking signifying to many calls of distress really disturbed us all. And no one could get close enough to discover if the dog had any identifying tags.

But eventually, in an out-of-the-way part of the ravine someone found the dog's den. Whoever had abandoned the dog that left its crate, and inside a blanket, and a food and water dish, both long empty. The dog simply kept returning to what was familiar to it, and which offered it comfort; its crate. But there was no one there to support it, to ensure it could live its life without harm coming to it. It had to forage for itself, but what is there to support a domesticated dog in a wooded area of small wildlife?

Before its den had been discovered people had been leaving food out for it, sprinkled here and there throughout the ravine. But once it became known where the dog went to at night, a trap was set for it. The trap consisting of fresh food and water set out beside its crate. And over a short period of time the dog began to recognize who it was that was leaving it food and water. And it was this couple. Eventually trust was established and the couple took possession of the dog. It lived with them and their initial little dog for as long as its natural life sustained it, in their loving care. That was a dozen years ago. Soon after that dog died, the other did as well, both in their elderly years. They never did commit to another dog in their household.

Instead, they offered to look after other people's dogs, to give others a chance to get away, or at times when people had to look to board their dogs for one reason or another. The last time we had seen them was several winters ago, cleaning up the trails of dog dirt. And so here they were, on a rare foray into the ravine once again. And they offered to us their services should we ever require them. There is no one we would prefer to trust with our little Jack and Jill other than this pair, secure in the comfort of knowing that with them they would be safe and tenderly fulfilled.

We two find solace in nature when our emotions are depressed. At a time of heartbreak, unfamiliar to us, and placing us in a shared state of utter miserable helplessness, close contact with nature does help to restore us to a move level emotional state. The effect is undeniable. It was like that for my brother for whom nature meant life itself. Life and nature's end concluded for him yesterday.

We decided to make our way past our usual circuit within Bilberry Creek ravine and return to the 'other side' of the ravine where decades ago we were accustomed to ramble about, when we were younger, more vigorous and energetic and where we navigated barely-visible trails hemmed in by thickets of new understory bushes, closing what may once have been a little-used trail. But to get there the wider, much-used woodland trails of the community come first.

Beyond the trees one can see the playing fields attached to a primary school. A place we used to backpack our granddaughter to each morning while she was in our care as an infant and where she used to take her first uncertain steps in the natural world. She learned to make her own way about as she grew older and our daily woodland walks continued. Later, as a teen, when she was no longer in our daily care and she would visit, she chose to eschew the walks in the woods.

We had gone the old familiar routes in reverse for a change and were ascending a long hill toward the plateau above when approaching us was a man we have latterly become familiar with. We'd seen him the first time several months ago when we'd been caught out in a violent thunderstorm in the middle of one of the trails, seeking shelter under a large old pine surrounded closely by beeches, when he nonchalantly made his way by us, pausing for a brief greeting, his large golden lab hurrying ahead, and both quite drenched.

Coming across him again on a later occasion he explained with a laugh that being already drenched he saw no need to hurry at our first meeting. And he told us that he had installed several footbridges at points we no longer traversed in our daily walks. Those points were, in fact, at the very furthest reaches of where we used to tramp about all those many years ago. He had carried the lumber in for long and awkward stretches and constructed the bridges because he wanted to be able to readily access that portion of the ravine that is on our side.

So yesterday, there he was, and about to embark on a hike that would take him over the two footbridges and he offered to show us the way. We agreed, following him, and found that his route was the very same one we had ourselves regularly used decades ago, the difference being that the bridges he had installed made crossing the creek all that much easier. We recognized every step of the winding trail, where we ended up at a place that a large cement pipe fed the community storm sewers into the creek, and where beavers had, over the years, installed themselves, building a dam. From time to time the beavers would be relocated by the local wildlife authorities. Now, it appeared a pair of beavers had returned and the water level in the creek at that juncture was quite high, deep enough to partially inundate the little footbridge.

Its depth represented an opportunity for his dog, Diesel, to indulge himself in a good, vigorous swim. While we stood together and talked, the yellow Lab entertained itself by launching into the creek, paddling about, emerging to shake vigorously, stream over the bridge, run about and repeat the process until he was aware that it was time to continue their hike in a direction opposite our own.


The footbridge was sunk slightly as we traversed it but we used it anyway, and then took to a rather steep ascent, narrow and uneven, to obtain the height close to where we had taken our diversionary side-trek to mount to the opposite side of the ravine on the day's outing.

This has not been a good day. This has been a day of ineffable sadness. A day of mourning.

A day when we had need of emotional relief, and we sought it in one another's arms, weeping. And then we sought that relief together, walking through nature. We went further afield than we usually do, and discovered that the beavers have returned to their old haunts. Unlikely to be the beavers that had occupied the creek in previous years, but perhaps offspring of the originals.

Where the old dam was, once again the water is high, host to a pair that must obviously be planning to stay awhile. Our conversation with nature this morning acted as a balm, and we appreciated that. Not that anything will reverse the irreversible, when implacable death took my younger brother to its bony bosom, but he too was completely engrossed with and loved nature. And it is in the nature of humanity to return from whence we came.

Bill Freedman, our Billy, has returned to nature. As his son Jonathan remarked, the fate that awaits us all "is what it is".

Billy

Yesterday my husband visited with  an old friend who lives several houses over from ours, on our street. He had returned a day earlier from the intensive care wing of the Ottawa Heart Institute, after his triple-heart-bypass surgery last week. Mohindar has been watched over closely by his beautiful wife Rajinder, and by his son Imeren. Even their daughter Lovelyn, mother of three very young children, was at the hospital, leaving her family in Toronto to be with her mother and father and brother.

As my husband sat and talked with our friend, they clasped one another's hands. Mohindar's family has been heeding the hospital instructions carefully; yesterday taking their father for a six-minute walk, an exercise that increases by one minute daily. But this morning an ambulance came screeching up the street and the responders returned our friend to hospital.

We've been enjoying a lovely spate of early fall weather this past week. The temperature has hovered in the low 20s, it has been sunny with occasional cloudy intervals, and the humidity has lifted. A light breeze has complemented the moderate temperature and the sunshine, so what more could anyone possibly wish for to make for perfect weather to trek about in the woods?

On the first official day of autumn's arrival we decided to lengthen our usual hour-or-so hike in the ravine. When we first moved to our present home a quarter-century ago, we were utterly delighted to find ourselves next door to an extended green ravine, forested with a running creek and littered with old pines, and a wide assortment of deciduous and conifer trees. The location offered us immediate access to an area where we could walk about enclosed in living green with no sight in any direction of the streets and homes that bordered it.

Within the forest there were always surprises of one kind or another, from wildlife to wildflowers in their seasons. Over the years we've seen a wide assortment of birds, some passing through, some making their homes in the ravine; birds like pileated woodpeckers, the giant of the species. We've seen ducks temporarily housing themselves in the creek, and once a large snapping turtle. We've seen great blue herons, barred owls, generations of hawks, rooks on occasion, and a wide variety of songbirds.

We've had the friendly acquaintances of squirrels who came to recognize us. some of whom would approach us directly for peanut handouts. We've come across families of raccoons perched in the boughs of old pines. And at one time, before the woodland corridors were disrupted we would often come across unafraid red foxes; now their sightings are far rarer for us, though they still live in the ravine.

And in those early years here while we were both still employed, we would come out for daily walks after work, in the evenings, and when we did that in winter, the sky would be brightly illuminated, reflecting back the lights of the city, particularly on cloudy days, to give us clear, peach-coloured light in the ravine. And in those earlier years we had a tendency to go much further than the circuit we now perambulate.

Several days ago we decided to return to our old familiar haunts, further along in the ravine. And we did that again yesterday. There are a lot of open areas there, of meadow beside the forested areas and we don't find that particularly attractive, but there are compensations. There are very old wild grapevines growing in some areas over there, and at this time of year the grapes, in small dark clusters (vitis labrusca) hang, inviting plucking, but they are of course, sour. Also over there the Hawthorns are different; there they produce large round bright red haws, whereas on our side of the ravine haws if they can be found, are mean and unattractive.

When we had the daily care of our granddaughter, and took her each day along with us to the ravine, she learned swiftly to identify edible fruits, hers for the picking, from wild strawberries, to thimbleberries and raspberries and the occasional blackberry bush.


Englemans ivy grows over understory shrubbery and trees; there are far fewer ferns growing there and a lot more of the red-stemmed dogwood. There are also, over there, if one ventures down little-used-now trails, fairly large copses of mature cedar trees. It is a nice alternative to our side of the ravine, nowhere near as extensive, but interesting.