In the time we've known him he's grown from a dark-eyed sprite of a child peddling his toy car up and down his parents' driveway, five houses up from ours, to a 20-year-old obedient son, solicitous about his parents, and ever willing to help by doing chores around the house. His university studies now over until the next semester, he has a summer job, but on his days off there he is, in the company of his father, following orders.

We can count on a wide smile and greeting from him whenever we see him, and a neighbourly 'catch-up' conversation. On our way to our daily ramble in the woods, there they were, father and son, working on putting together a new flower bed at the front of the house. Mohindar directs and Imran renders his opinion, then commences to do the assigned work. Their smiles and greetings were as anticipated, with the added information that they had locked themselves out of the house.

Every door of the house was firmly, securely and resolutely locked off from entry. They had no keys with them, no cellphone, nothing. So my husband went back to our house to get our cellphone for their use. To telephone Rajinder, to inform her that her men were unable to get into their house, and could she please return home and rescue them?

No, they said, thanking us, they didn't need anything else. They weren't interested in going over to our house. It was a nice enough day, they didn't mind staying outside, and they could continue the work they were doing. It was a nice enough day, but threatening to rain at any moment and since they couldn't enter the garage either, we offered to give them our garage door key, but no, that wouldn't be necessary, they said.

By the time we returned from our walk, surely an hour later, and not ourselves having to make use of the rainjackets we and our little dogs wore, they were still outside. They weren't certain they had got through to Rajinder, because it seemed the batteries in our cellphone (which we rarely use) had gone dead. My husband went around to look at the side door of the garage, and said he'd be right back as soon as we washed our little dogs' muddy feet, and he would have, he assured them, no trouble opening the door, since it didn't have a dead-bolt.

Just as he ambled over a few minutes later, Rajinder came walking up the street from the bus stop.

Twenty years ago, when we first began exploring the myriad trails that entered and looped about the extensive ravine that anchors this community with its forest and waterways, we had come across a faint offshoot of a trail and looking down into the ravine from that trail we encountered a rather surprising sight. Someone had obviously taken it upon themselves to take possession of a tributary of the main creek, along with its sloped sides,
to deviate from nature's very own natural and haphazard selection.

Introduced by someone was the vision of an orderly, refined and quite extraordinary gardening scheme that took advantage of the natural surrounding to impress upon nature that a human hand with all green digits and a mind to alter and reform, could impose upon her a landscape quite unlike the one she had herself gifted to the community. Except that this was not a gift to the community. This landscaping effort, wide, deep and broad in its execution, was the presumed possession of one individual. A house sat at the lip of the ravine's border, on a small, dead-end street, and it was the owner of that house who had made that presumption.

An enquiry to the municipal offices brought the information that the individual in question had somehow, years previously, maneuvered his local reputation as a pillar of his community, a church elder and acquaintanceship with town councillors to enable himself to be legally invested with the property in question. Elsewhere, anywhere else in that protected natural area, it was strictly off limits for anyone to assume they had the right of encroachment.

From time to time we wandered that way, each time to see new 'improvements' to the area, an elongation, where the sloped sides were tiered and carefully tended with plants, elaborate stairways built, canopies erected, the creek tributary closed off, a languid, cool pool resulting beside which lounges were placed, and planters hosting colourful annuals carefully situated to bring colour to the area, along with garden pot lights to illuminate it at night. There were compost boxes built of wood, and the entire scene below illustrated one man's obsession, and what hard work and determination could produce; a modern-day hanging garden of Babylon.

We hadn't been that way for years, when it occurred to us during a shorter stroll than is our usual wont in the ravine, as a result of incessant rain events, to go along that way out of curiosity. It represents a relatively short walk in a direction we don't normally take. And it was evident as we approached that something was different. The elderly retiree who had devoted so much time, energy and cost to the production of a manicured garden out of nature's own devotion to a natural forested environment had obviously given up the ghost.

We've no idea how long it's been since the treasured garden that had been ringed with "private property" and other warning signs of trespass had been abandoned. But it was more than obvious to us that it had been. It has almost completely reverted to its unadorned-by-human-hands state, to its natural and equally beautiful state. It is now as it should be.

She is elderly and relatively frail as a result. When we pick her up we can feel her bones protruding, there's a dearth of fat in her fleshly covering. Some of her front teeth are gone now, as she verges on her 19th year.

Her hearing is badly compromised. She hears only too well on the upper sound register; sharp sounds startle her to the point of panic.

Her eyesight at close range is problematical, although her peripheral vision remains fairly sound. Something like my own vision, as it happens. We've got to be careful around her, not to startle her by sudden movements. Else she scrambles in a desperate bid to escape what she feels may be a violent encounter with an immovable object. Though she has been known to walk into doors and walls.

We must now ensure that the stairs leading down to the basement are shut off from entry for her. She has blundered into the entry that was once so familiar to her and fallen down those stairs, at least to the point where they turn and there's a platform, halfway down. She has far less balance than she once had and now no longer runs up the stairs to the second floor; we carry her up to bed.

Although she considers the sofas to be her place for rest she no longer leaps up to them as she has done so easily up to the last few months. She lingers before them, and we lift her. And she sometimes forgets space parameters, scrubs about to get herself comfortable before lying down and tips herself over the edge of the sofa onto the floor.

All these distressing changes alert us to her advanced age and a future we would far prefer not to linger on. This week she's been behaving strangely again as she does from time to time; more skittish than ever, disinterested in her food, forgetting her toilet hygiene, and being unwilling to walk much on our daily routine in our nearby ravine.

It was time for her monthly anti-biotic regimen meant to forestall the appearance of mouth-and-gum-related infections and it appears that the drug administered twice a day is having its effect. Finally, she has expressed some interest in her food. Last night, while entirely ignoring her own canine kibble dressed up with cooked chicken and chicken soup, she did deign to eat mashed potato and grilled hamburger. She is quite canny about food, far preferring table food to canine kibble.

At breakfast this morning she refused her kibble and waited until a breakfast egg was prepared for her. After eating the egg she advanced to the kibble and gave us a few grateful moments.

When we first moved to our current home twenty years ago, others had already been living in their houses for three years on this newly-built street in the suburbs. The suburbs have since been incorporated into the expanded city boundaries.

Our house and one other were built years after the others had been sold and moved into, on two empty lots that had been set aside. Our house, it was explained, was an experimental model brought by the builder to this site, based on models more common in California.

Large, bright and attractive, it took my husband's attention and imagination for its large expanse of walls and open concept design. After we moved in he set about swiftly transforming the interior to reflect his own personal aesthetic, among which was a more 'closed' concept.

We were accustomed at that time to seeing young children in our neighbours' homes. Ours had long since left home to embark on their own lives, careers and families. Now, when we're out walking along the street we see those same children now mature, attending college and university, or the workforce, others visiting with their own young children.

And, increasingly, this is becoming a street of retirees. A picture has emerged among the retiree community here where the man of the household retires first, his wife continues working for a few years, and then she too retires. It's the pattern we ourselves pioneered (I think) almost fifteen years earlier.

One of our neighbours, retired a week earlier, was yesterday struggling to push a reel-model lawnmower. She's someone who enjoys gardening and intends to devote far more of her time to looking after her up-to-now lacklustre gardens. The reel lawnmower was a gift from her husband to her on her retirement.

Her husband had confided to us some misgivings about how things would proceed on her retirement; whether they could successfully keep out of each others' hair. Hmmm.

Canadians seem fixated on the weather. It is so much a part of our lives, because we live in a geography of atmospheric extremes, particularly in some parts of the country. Ottawa, the nation's capital, is the second-coldest, snowiest capital of the world. Hardiness is expected of people who live here, to endure extreme cold temperatures, high incidences of fierce snow storms, ice storms,deadly fog conditions.

In the summer we slog through extremely humid and hot conditions. And this spring has been phenomenally wet. Making it difficult for farmers to get out in their fields and even begin to sow the early crops they normally plant. For city dwellers there are other problems. We've received an inordinate amount of rain and for those low-lying areas and those without newer, upgraded sewage systems to carry away the excess, there is always danger of flooding. The city's sewer infrastructure was installed before the population became so dense, with its concomitant stress, and untreated sewage is known on a number of occasions to have spilled directly into our main water resource. The city's beaches are often closed to public swimming because of the danger to human health with the elevated levels of e.coli bacterium.

In the past few days a series of monsoon-like rain systems have passed through the area. We've experienced rolling thunderstorms, one after another, dumping sheets of rain over the landscape. The thunder and lightning have been spectacular, representing displays of nature's intemperate power. Lightning strikes hydro poles and out goes the power. It strikes homes and fires result. And the incessant rain, in its tropical plenty has soaked the ground beyond its ability to absorb any more. The result has been hundreds of calls from desperate home-owners to emergency services, because of flooded basements.

There have been street closures because the water has flooded to such a height that traffic cannot proceed. And there have been evacuations of entire streets until the flooding has sufficiently subsided to assure municipal authorities that there is little danger presented to the homeowners, before they're permitted to return to their damaged homes.

A small tornado passed through the area, part of what is called a "supercell" storm. Apart from which winds, during some of these storms reached between 60- and 110- kilometres an hour.

As for us, we were startled, yesterday, when we took advantage of a lull in the rain to venture out into our nearby ravine, to discover that one of the highest banks of the flooded creek, running alongside one of the major ravine trails, had collapsed into the creek taking all manner of trees with it. Leaving the trail half its width where before there had been a considerable space beyond the trail where the bank edged out over the creek.

The creek itself can no longer run unimpeded because of dams created by detritus containing old logs, twigs, branches and who knows what else, having been swept along by the flooded creek, (tumbling down the hillsides, from the canopy above due to the pressure of the high winds and the pounding rain) and ending up jammed and stuffed at bends in the creek and by the struts from the bridges over the creek.

What is left of the trail looks vulnerable to further collapse; a large, elongated crack can be seen in the now-narrow trail's clay-and-sand-augmented-with-gravel base; best to avoid it entirely. Which means taking alternate, somewhat inconvenient, and truncated trails. What can be done eventually to ameliorate the situation is anyone's guess.

After a series of non-stop rolling thunderstorms yesterday morning there appeared a brief interlude when it seemed the sky had become lighter, so we dressed ourselves rain-protectively and our two little dogs for a brief venture into the ravine, just to get a little exercise for the day. As it happened, we got no further than exiting the garage. For there, to the south, was another gathering series of dark, threatening clouds obviously heading toward us.

Verified by the deep rumble of a thunderclap, then another, and then, even as we stood there hesitantly, the drops began to assemble, until they became a veritable torrent of truly impressive proportions. We stood in the shelter of the garage, looking outward, toward the front gardens as greenery lapped up the nurturing downpour. Mind, that was a lot to ask of the soil, which had already been well drenched by a previous day's rainstorms, not to mention overnight soakings and this morning's generous offerings.

But we have always enjoyed watching heavy rainstorms, as the rain pounds down on pavement or soil, bouncing back up again briefly in splatted displays of immense coverage. And the spectacle of lightning flashes, the rolling drumbeat of rumbling thunder has always represented an additional pleasure for us. The power and magnificence of nature.

As it happened, eventually the rushing rain subsided. And then picked up again even more ferociously as yet another storm hove into position. Then another, leading to a succession of rain abatement, then resumption. Finally, we were able to see the sky turn more silvery in hue in the distance as the thunderclouds moved on, and we thought we'd try our luck in between rain events.

When we entered the ravine we experienced the canopy dripping relentlessly, emulating the rain itself, though it was in temporary abeyance. And when we dipped down into the ravine at the foot of the first long hill, it was to see the creek swollen well beyond its normal capacity, the water almost reaching the bottom of the bridge overpasses, rushing helter-skelter to the great Ottawa River beyond.

Later, in the early afternoon, several beavers were spotted wandering about outside the confines of the ravine. One of them, obviously a youngster, waddled up our neighbour's driveway. We can only hope they found their way back home and their flooded-out home will have been restored to them.

Our gardens and their maintenance represent a collaborative effort. My husband does the heavy lifting and I do the light stuff. In the fall after the garden pots and planters are emptied of their soil, he hauls them under the deck in the backyard for winter storage.

In the spring, he hauls them back out again to position them variously, then fill them with composted and manure-enriched soil so I can then begin re-planting at the earliest opportunity, exercising my aesthetic wit.

Of course, long before that routine became established he busied himself excavating the soil around the house, then filling the areas with gravel, and finally bricked them up, constructing our small piazzas and walkways, and the stone retaining walls for the front gardens. He cut the 'stone' to fit, using basic tools, a chisel and hammer, and took his time to present us with an garden infrastructure meant to last the vicissitudes of weather and time.

For that matter, he re-built the deck in the backyard when the old one had deteriorated beyond salvage, and he constructed the larger of our two garden sheds where our winter-garden-protection materials are kept, along with the lawn mower and snow thrower and shovels.

For us and our two little dogs, the gardens represent a peaceful and beautiful haven.

Yesterday, when he was out looking around for hardware to replace the lock in our garage door - for we have suddenly found ourselves without keys, due to a misadventure - he noticed that there was a late-season-gardening sale, and brought home to me a shrub rose, three miniature rose bushes, and six clematis vines.

He loves to surprise me and I enjoy being surprised.