Is it possible to have too much of a good thing? Possibly, but only if you fail to appreciate it all. And there is so much to appreciate. Another new study -- there are so many of them -- attests to the quality of life enhanced with exposure to nature, adding the proviso that only those who open their senses fully to the natural world while within it, not those who do so with cell phone in hand never absorbing what surrounds them, receive the health and healing benefits available to anyone.

It puzzles us beyond belief when we see people hurtling through the forest trails, never letting go of their cellphones, speaking into the ear of someone at the other end. There are times when we've seen people focused on their cellphones when we begin our circuit and an hour or hour-and-a-half later, see those same people still engrossed in conversation with their cellphones.

Those who ride bicycles at breakneck speed down the hillside trails of the ravine do so for reasons other than to touch nature, and it's debatable what kind of benefit they derive from the experience, as well. Others ride their bicycles into the ravine at a leisurely pace, park them out of the way, stroll over to the creek to look for waterfowl that occasionally can be seen, sit awhile in tranquil repose beside the creek and the mesmerizing flow of the water, and it's clear that they are in the process of appreciating what surrounds them.

We had another beautiful day of intermittent sun, with a temperature high of 25C, small breezes and dry atmosphere. Very warm, but certainly tolerable. Jackie and Jillie were anxious to get out for their traipse through the forest trails. They're far less interested in being out in the backyard, though they'll tolerate it if we're outside; more interested in being out at the front of the house so they can monitor who goes by on the street. In the ravine, though, the ambience is one of exploration and discovery and they make the most of it.

As do we, for the time we're out. Those studies that conclude the benefits to be had with outdoor exposure for people accustomed to spending almost their entire waking hours indoors, don't necessarily recommend long extended periods and frequent excursions to natural green areas. In fact, what they recommend is relatively modest; 20 minutes of exposure, three days a week to achieve health and well-being benefits. Any increase in that minimum recommendation is increasingly positive.

Although we spend infinitely longer and more frequent periods ambling through forest trails, we also spend quality time in our gardens. It's a different kind of experience; still touching nature where she lives and being among the vegetation that she retains the creative formula for, but the pleasure involved in the gardening ritual is entirely different; a sharing of creation with the great creator. 

The beauty that surrounds us overwhelms our senses at times, excites our pleasure and encourages us to never stop. Of course whether it's hiking forest trails or gardening, a certain amount of energy expenditure is involved and that too is a necessary requirement for health; exercising the body as well as delighting the spirit. Jackie and Jillie told us so.

Of course there's the household and it too demands attention. And so we multiple-task ourselves daily as well as bring order and leisure, pleasure and duty to our lives. I wasn't looking forward to it, but decided today to de-pit a large bowl of cherries, because we have an excess of the delicious fruit. I pulled the stems, halved the cherries, extracted the pits, and prepared to bake a cherry pie. It took a while, but the end result will be appreciated for dinner-dessert tonight.

 

Today gave us one of those mornings that just yearned to please us everywhere we looked as we all ambled about the garden in early-morning comfort. No need to rush out to the ravine's forest this morning to beat the heat and humidity today, the heat spell has broken and today's high temperature wouldn't compete for discomfort with the past week's average of 30C.

So a slight breeze accompanying us, we poked about the garden before breakfast. Jackie and Jillie always race out before us, and often barking in excitement. Squirrels on the back fence? Bark! The smell of the raccoon who'd been by at some time? Bark-bark! A slight movement catching their eye of one of the tiny resident chipmunks? Bark-bark-bark! Birds singing in the trees? Oh, bark!

We remonstrate with them to no avail. Barky little dogs. And if one of the chipmunks just unfortunately happens to be about in the garden, riotous pandemonium, as they chase the little fellow, thankfully no match for his lightning speed. We've no way of knowing whether the chipmunk, like some squirrels, enjoys provoking our puppies, or whether the tiny creatures feel dread and fear at their presence. Sometimes they'll listen when I feel cross enough about their behaviour to demand they stop.

A few days back one of the little chipmunks streaking back and forth in the garden, J&J in hot pursuit, slide into my foot as he zipped by, having thrown our two little black monsters off by a feint that distracted them. They spend as much time in the front garden as the back. Irving had bags of soil stacked in a corner of the front patio and discovered that some of the bags had been bitten through; a bit of mischief.

We took ourselves off to the ravine for an afternoon circuit through the forest. I keep dressing in that old white, light-cotton outfit, baggy trousers and hooded baggy top that gives ample protection against the mosquitoes. It was cooler today for our hour-and-a-half venture through the trails. Some of the dogs that we see recognize us to the point where they'll come over to greet us. One big old lady lab we came across today almost pushed me off my feet. She likes to rub herself against my legs, one side then the other. It's the way she responds to being greeted. When she was still a puppy she had a habit of making a direct beeline to pass through between my legs in her excitement, almost toppling me.

Last night we had barbecued steaks for dinner. With Irving's special garlic bread he takes such care to prepare. And steamed broccoli, cucumbers and tomatoes, followed by segmented clementines to clean our palates. We don't have steaks often because we don't eat meat often, but summer and barbecue and steak seem to bring out the caveman carnivore in men. It's not easy to find small steaks, though he always chooses the smallest he can find. It's an awful waste, because neither of us can put away more than half; we should really only prepare one between us.

Today, I'm making dinner. I've used a pint of blueberries to make a blueberry crisp, rolled out dough for cheese-sesame-seed croissants, and I'm cooking a fish chowder for dinner. Complementing the 24C we're enjoying.

There was a surprise waiting for me when we'd returned from our hike before I got busy in the kitchen. An old rose shrub that I'd planted heaven-knows-when, which had never produced a bloom, suddenly did, a deep vermilion, quite different from all the other roses currently in bloom. I had looked for buds, and discovered that something had been nibbling at the tops of the stalks of this rose...which has produced anyway.

As for the other roses, they're surpassing all expectations, far more vigorous and productive this year than most for some reason that escapes me. More clematis vines than the earliest-blooming one with the huge, sumptuous flowers I so much admire, are beginning to bloom. Again, for some reason that eludes us, this is turning out to be a great blooming year for perennials.

Barely a whisper of a breeze slipped through our open bedroom window last night to relieve the smothering heat of the last few days. But the open window also gifts us with morning birdsong, and that is not to be missed when robins, cardinals and song sparrows challenge each other to a sublime orchestration of early morning paeons to summer. The lilac perfume from our neighbour's old lilac bush completes the lavish feeling of being pampered by nature as it still continues to infiltrate our bedroom and bathroom with its divine fragrance.

No question but that we would be propelled instanter out the door and into the ravine up the street with Jackie and Jillie on this perfect morning. While the relative cool of night still lingered. And the morning breeze authoritatively moved the air about. Before the full impact of the day's glaring sun took effect. No chance of rain today, not a cloud in the sky. Until, on our return from our hike through the forest trails, there appeared on high a few wispy-white frail streamers, white-on-blue.

Our neighbours at the top of the street whose backyard abuts on the ravine entrance were already out in their backyard with their elderly little Yorkie, Newton. So that was our first, brief stop, Jackie and Jillie excited to see their little friend. Then the descent into the ravined forest. The tree canopy swiftly embracing our presence, sending out tentacles of air to settle around us the still-cool early-morning forest atmosphere.

We came across an almost-expected micro-landscape of tiny mushrooms forming a fungal colony around the almost-ground level remains of an old tree stump, long dead. Every summer those tiny mushrooms appear, are there for a day, swiftly disintegrate and by the following day are no longer to be seen. Through the course of the summer months they will re-appear and disappear a number of times. Nature's long-term plan of expiration, decay-decomposition and renewal.

Eventually, as we made our way along from major trail to interconnecting trails the heat of the broiling sun over the canopy penetrated, the air became denser, cloistering, heating our bodies with the energy of movement added to atmospheric conditions. Best to gauge one's progress to these conditions; you climb the hills a little slower, gain the height, rest a moment or so before proceeding at a slower-to-moderate pace. Still, our bodies have finally acclimated to the series of 30C+ days, and we feel fine. Also well exercised by the time we climb the last hill and emerge once again onto the street.

Then it's time to poke around the garden before breakfast. Taking inventory of what should be done later on. And later on in the early afternoon we go out to do some light gardening work, cutting back the vegetation of the Icelandic poppies after their bloom, the flower stalks of the bloom-spent irises, pulling up the now-scrawny-scraggly forget-me-nots, bleeding hearts, weeds, there's always something to do.

And watering. The peony clumps in the backyard look a little peaked, they're thirsty, no rain for over a week. The roses, flourishing with June bloom, also like to be watered, so for the first time this year, Irving put on the sprinkler for the backyard. I used a garden watering pail to mix up some flower fertilize for the hibiscus shrubs. 

Then we sat out on the deck for an hour under the awning, talking, reading, relaxing. Jackie and Jillie try to accommodate themselves to being out for a prolonged period on the deck, not their favourite occupation. They leap onto the loveseat where Irving is seated, and alternate that with the glider where I have seated myself facing Irving, but in neither place can they find comfort. It's just too hot and uncomfortable for two little black dogs, even out of the sun. We have a bowl of water out for them, but in the end they prefer going back into the air-conditioned house to relax in their own version of cool comfort.

I do another tour in the backyard before we retire eventually to the house interior ourselves. The roses and the peonies look a whole lot happier after having been watered, their colours brighter, their petals perkier, their foliage darker and slick still from the water. I drink it all in with my hungry eyes and allow my little camera to select where it will capture some of those eye-framed photographs of nature's beauty.

We're now in day four of a hot and humid heat wave. Temperatures broiling in the low 30s. And then a small story in today's newspaper, of a heat wave in the Middle East reaching temperatures of 51C, kind of put things into perspective. But it is hot here, not desperately hot of course, as it must seem on the Mediterranean coast, but hot for this part of the world, made all the more so by the Ottawa Valley's constant state of high humidity.

Taking Jackie and Jillie out first thing in the morning to evade the afternoon heat build-up wasn't feasible today, since we woke early to make it to the supermarket just as it opened to avoid crowds. And after breakfast we had to hang around the house to usher in a plumber we'd called because of a clogged kitchen drain pipe. Many years ago Irving had re-routed and installed a drain pipe network from the kitchen to the basement. 

He did that in response to a problem that had surfaced with the original plumbing that had too steep an angle at several points that served as gathering points for any food detritus that might be flushed down the sink by accident. We certainly never use the sink as a disposal for waste, and always take care to remove any waste to the compost bin. We don't tend to use chemicals to free up clogged drains. What I do from time to time is shake baking soda followed by vinegar into the sink drain to free up any possible trapped food buildup.

Nothing backed up to alert us that something was clogged, but water didn't flush quickly down the sink drain, alerting us to something building there. So, in came the plumber. I put my foot down at Irving doing any more plumbing work, though he always has, from installing new toilets and sinks and tap sets and building a bathroom downstairs in the basement years ago. There's no job, electrical, plumbing, construction that he won't tackle. In his mid-80s I think that's enough.

Anyway, the plumber checked the pipes, found the blockage and unblocked it. He said the pipes are all clean, nothing more to be done, so that was a relief. And it was only when he left, of course, that we were finally able to set out for a ravine hike with the puppies. Taking plenty of cold water along with us. Because it was hot enough to stop frequently to offer them thirst-quenching drinks.

Not many people in the larger community appeared to feel that an afternoon ramble through woodland trails spoke to them under these weather conditions, even though the sun succumbed to gathering clouds soon after we entered the forest. This sweltering weather isn't doing much harm to growing things, as long as we continue to have the occasional rainstorm.

We saw cinquefoil in bloom for the first time this year, and thimbleberries are on a flowering roll, alongside the blackberries. Heat and humidity agree with them. There will be a severe deficit in apples from the wild apple trees again this year, but the soft berries appear to be working overtime to compensate. Dogwood shrubs of all types and sizes dominate in the forest understory and they're continuing to bloom as well.

Yesterday during our forest tramp the close-by call of an owl had us craning our necks to try to see the bird, likely a barred owl, since that's what we've seen in the forest previously. But no luck, lots of WHOOOOs, but no where's. The level of the creek continues to fall, and we were more than a little surprised as we approached the creek to see in the near distance the wide wingspread of a Great Blue heron rising from the water and into the forest beyond. 

Like the pair of Mallard ducks that have hung around the forest for months, we cannot imagine what either the heron or the ducks are feeding on. The few fish that we've seen around cannot possibly be enough to satisfy their needs, but it's obvious that they've decided to make the ravined forest their home this year rather than merely using it as a temporary stage in their passage elsewhere, as usually happens.

 

It wasn't all that long ago, actually, that we were deep in white-coated winter. As the Earth turns on its axis and brings us closer to our source of life, light and heat, we become gradually immersed in winter's opposite; colour, and warmth, all growing matter exuberantly reclaiming the landscape. We've gone from the white of frozen liquid to rainbow colours emerging from the soil that now captures the liquid that falls from the sky.

 

 

Colour, form and texture bedazzles our eyes and warms our discriminatory aesthetic. Though we love the pristine appearance of a landscape smothered in new-fallen snow, we visually devour that same landscape become brilliantly verdant. And the gardens whose presence could only be assumed layered deep within banks of snow and ice, now presents us with gift after priceless gift.

 

 

The price of which is frequently an endurance test; how hot and humid can the atmosphere become before we begin to groan with discomfort? Well, this morning quite, quite hot and humid. Accompanied by a cooling breeze, the morning was set to present us with an afternoon high temperature of 32C, some chance of rain, but we weren't about to bet on it.

 

Instead, off we went to the ravine to prance through the forest trails with Jackie and Jillie. The rain events of just several days prior soaked the forest floor and intensified the all-encompassing green of the forest crown, but a glance below our boots was sufficient to inform us that cracks in the soil are on the cusp of reappearing, and rain would be appreciated.

 

 

The water level of the creek is quite low, though it still streams nicely along to its final destination miles and miles away. When we started out, once we gained the confines of the forest, shielded by the canopy, the breeze made it seem sublimely comfortable. But the morning was young and rapidly heating up. And as time wore on, and we progressed up hill and down, warmth penetrated and it was soon clear that Jackie and Jillie needed refreshing. There are times when they're simply disinterested when they're offered water, this was not one of them.

 

We diverged a bit toward the last quarter of the circuit, and carried out toward a meadow portion of the forest, and there we saw cowslips, fleabane, and masses of clover in bloom. We also saw what I had identified a few days back in another part of the forest as wild parsnip, and here too there was some growing. It's one of the wild plants that naturalists identify as nasty intruders on the landscape.

 

A tour of the garden was next, on our arrival back home, prior to bursting into the house and showering and having breakfast. Rice pudding that I had set on a slow simmer, with lots of cinnamon and raisins. Following navel orange halved and sectioned and bananas. Jackie and Jillie had their kibble peppered with the cut-up chicken from Friday's soup and a bit of cubed cheddar cheese to enliven their bowl.

 

Before that, we poked about in the garden, appreciating the presence of June's rose-show beginning its premiere performance. Climbing roses in the back garden and the front, and peonies beginning to bloom in the back. All the miniature 'gardens' in the garden pots and urns look fresh and contented with life thus far into the season. The gardens, however, looked peaked given the heat, the sun, the wind and lack of rain. So, after breakfast, that would be the first item scheduled for attention. And then on to the day's house-cleaning, because it's that day again.

 

 

 

We woke to a hot and steamy atmosphere so there was no need to equivocate about when we'd take Jackie and Jillie out for their daily tramp through the forest trails, today. First thing in the morning would do very nicely, thank you. It took little time to prepare, and the puppies knew something was up; they had their first clue yesterday morning when we had gone out before breakfast.

 

It was already too warm and humid, the sun glaring down out of a clear blue sky, and just a light breeze to alleviate the heat. Once in the confines of the ravined forest we felt embraced by a decidedly cooler atmosphere, shielded from the sun, and surprisingly little indication on the trails of yesterday's several heavy thunderstorms. The level of the forest stream had declined, the water-hungry forest had slaked its thirst after weeks without a rain event.

 

As often happens, whenever a trail looped toward an entry-exit point abutting a street in the community, there would be people about. Once we would leave that vicinity as the trail meandered on deeper into the forest interior, we'd have the trails to ourselves. Woodpeckers, song sparrows and robins were heard throughout the trails; the woodpeckers playing percussion, the song sparrows and robins soprano.

 

When we eventually looped back toward the creek, it was disturbed and muddy from all the dogs that had dived in to cool off this hot day, so we weren't able to detect the presence as we did yesterday, of bright orange goldfish that had miraculously escaped the hungry bills of the resident ducks. We did see, however the first clump of hawkweed in bloom this spring; not the more common orange ones we usually see, but yellow. Most people would think they're dandelions.

 

We're trying to remember whether this is an early bloom for the thimbleberry shrubs, since they're beginning their bloom as well; not most, but the occasional shrub is ornamented with typical bright pink flowers, maturing to pale pink, eventually to become thimble-shaped, bright red berries, sweet and delicious.

 

In the afternoon, despite the heat, I decided to do a little trimming in the garden. I had noticed yesterday morning that some vegetation is overgrowing their allotted spaces in the garden, and meant to do some cut-back yesterday, but we had spent the balance of the afternoon at our daughter's house, with no time left for gardening at home.

 

With the help of two different-strength loppers and secateurs I set about trimming yews, holly, crabapple trees and spirea. One of the crabapple trees (the pendant Jade), one of the yews and a bridal-wreath spirea are all planted beside the driveway and when they put on growth spurts as now-mature plants they have a tendency to veer over into the driveway, so when backing out of the garage, the car is swept abrasively with branches.

 

There were dead branches to remove on one of the Sargenti crabs as well as waterspouts that keep regenerating. Another yew and the holly were vying with one another for space now limited, which had originally seemed ample, when they were planted decades ago. Whenever I'm out in the garden I feel compelled to do things, there's a certain satisfaction in tidying up, and it's enjoyable.