Deep into summer, with overheated days and more ahead, wildflowers of the season, like Queen Anne's lace, are in their glory, blooming happily. Vegetation on the forest floor is thriving, even while we've had a paucity of rain this July. We've never seen thistles of such gigantic proportions before, they're just enormous, the plants growing five feet tall, and the thistle flowers beginning to bloom their bright, deep purple.

Venturing out in the early morning, sometimes the sun is absolutely blinding in its intensity, glowing behind and above the forest canopy, sending its warm fingers of light whenever it can penetrate the summer thicket of foliage.

Yesterday morning Jackie and Jillie came across a few friends. Four-month-old Nova, the white German Shepherd, races over when he hear/smells their presence from a distance, long before his human knows that we're nearby, and Nova, in an excess of emotion, squeals his happiness at seeing us (or rather our two little black urchins). Nova's predecessor, Lily, whom he resembles uncannily, had a special relationship with Jackie and Jillie and they with her.

With Nova this time was a middling-sized Portuguese water dog, another puppy not yet a year old, and whom we hadn't seen for a while, nor did we recognize him as a result of having seen him only previously with long, fluffy hair flapping wildly about him. He has since had quite the hair trimming.

And so our morning walk along the woodland trails went yesterday, with pleasant occasional company, and the opportunity once again to look about us at the landscape, the incomparable beauty of which we will never feel we've seen enough of.

Different story this morning; it's incredibly cool, with a sharp, blustery wind hurling rain against the windows of the house, and a draft emphatic enough through the front windows of the house to slam shut bedroom doors and startle us all in the process.

Looks as though new prevailing weather patterns are changing plenty of things in the world. In our little corner of the world for the present at least the worst we are experiencing, and sharing to a degree with many others across the globe, is immoderate heat. Needless to say in a wealthy country like ours there are many cooling-off opportunities for people to take advantage of, for relief. The burden of heat and usage of electricity has not yet brought us to a situation where power has to be rationed.

And though we're experiencing an indefinite period of rain shortage, we're nowhere near a drought, a condition that has brought desperation to the food security through normal agriculture to many areas of the world. The most we can complain of -- and complain we do; it's part of the human condition, after all -- is day following day of high humidity and uncommon atmospheric heat.

Today is one such day, so was yesterday and the days before, seemingly ad infinitum. Yet nature isn't entirely unkind, for she has sent along cooling breezes so that even in low-to-mid 30sC conditions and high humidity we can count on wind to break the constant, enervating spell of the heat. Little episodes of temporary relief, after all, still spell relief.

Still, there are things that have to be done if you're a gardener and some basic and necessity actions call out, apart from mowing lawns which have been reduced in necessity thanks also to the paucity of rain and the overabundance of heat. A thriving garden with plenty of perennials still needs care; in cutting back, tidying up, tying up, dead-heading. In this heat, both a pleasure and a burden, but the burden brings pleasure.

We keep looking for the jewelweed to flower; it has colonized an area of the ravine with a plenitude of plants but a scarcity of flowers. We think a stray seed had someone ventured into the forest thinking it would present ideal habitat, in error. A forest that we're very well acquainted with, one that when we come across an old ghost pine recalls for us a time when it was a robust, healthy tree,  until the advent of a dreadful ice storm that laid waste through the forest, maiming and killing many mature trees.

Jackie and Jillie have no idea of any of that, it happened long before they were born. We come across wildflowers now like yarrow, growing beside ripening raspberries. Our two little dogs know all about raspberries; they're moist and sweetly delectable and occasionally they get treated with a few of those tiny berries.

We continue to enjoy our daily walks in the forest with Jackie and Jillie. Even they have now become accustomed to going out before breakfast to enjoy the morning cool before the heat of the afternoon sets in. The sun, at a different angle, gives the landscape a bit of a variant perspective and that's interesting. Not that our little dogs give that much notice. It's the tantalizing smells that beckon them all over the ravine, informing them of who has passed before us.

We thought it mightn't be a bad idea to wait for early afternoon to set out on our usual walk on the woodland trails of the Bilberry Creek Ravine forest yesterday, because the  temperature overnight had been a bit cooler, the wind was up and it didn't seem at all bad out as far as heat was considered.

The thing of it is, I like to preferably get my housework finished in the morning before setting out so that on our return I can relax and do things other than housework. It's a tossup really, which works best. But on really steamy days it is wiser, no doubt about it, to spend our hour, hour-and-a-half rambling about in the ravine earlier in the day.

True, my housework awaits me when we return, but on the other hand, after finishing all those little nagging tasks, I can relax and turn my attention elsewhere without contemplating preparing to go out for our afternoon walk if we've already been out in the morning. We venture out daily because we treasure the opportunity to walk among thickets of trees, to see all manner of vegetation growing by leaps and bounds, to recognize wildflowers in season, to feel relaxed and privileged to be there.

A number of people we have had long familiarity with who live close by variant ravine entrances go out several times daily for walks. They may not take the lengthy circuit we do, or be there as long each time, and on the other hand, they may. When we were younger we went along at a much speedier pace than we do now. So an hour spend rambling up and down the trails, climbing hills is more than enough for us each day.

Jackie and Jillie seem to find it so, as well. Even though most often when we return from one of our jaunts they become excited and energized, playing and tumbling about, racing after one another upstairs and down, through the house, until that spurt of energy finally tires them out and they relax.

So out we went in early afternoon thinking we would be spared the worst of the afternoon heat, and no doubt, since we were in the shade of the forest canopy enjoying a cool breeze, we were. But the atmosphere was so heated that even so, after an hour of ascents and descents we felt fairly hot. Exiting the ravine and walking down the street to our waiting house also makes a difference for that brief, full sun exposure puts the cap on things.

Even Jackie and Jillie feel enervated by their brief amble down the street, anxious to get into the house to cool off. It helps, I suppose that we wipe their little paws with cooling water. And then the next thing we know, they're off everywhere at once in hot pursuit of each other.

It's always a busy day when we've errands to run downtown. But first, on a still-somewhat-coolish day we took our little scamps, Jackie and Jillie out to the ravine for a stroll in the forest to enjoy the cool atmosphere cast by the treetop canopy of the masses of trees in the woods that those trails take us through, helped immeasurably by a good, strong breeze.

As usual, when we returned home they sensed we had other things in mind than just settling down and anxiously circled us to try to determine what was happening. Their uncertainty didn't last long as we prepared to leave and they in turn made it abundantly clear we shouldn't even think of leaving the house without taking them along. So we did. Along with a flask of cool water since they would be waiting in the truck while my husband ran the errands and I agreed to sit in the truck along with them.

Driving the Eastern Parkway is always entertaining, and it was no less so yesterday afternoon. We passed familiar places, not the least of which is the Ottawa River where the Province of Quebec can be seen in the distance, its shoreline dotted with churches and residences in a picture-card-perfect display of what could be a late-19th century portrait of a sleepy backwater.

On our way it wouldn't be possible to make that drive without remarking on the proliferation of wildflowers on each side of the highway, heavily wooded areas behind them. Queen Anne's lace prominently displayed everywhere, along with black-eyed susan, leftover daisies and clover in flower, a show of nature's own masterpiece gardens.

We passed the aeronautical museum, its parking lot full as usual with visitors, and beside it the small airport where private planes of all description are parked until their owners decide they want to explore the nearby skies, and on a day like yesterday's skies of blue and puffy, white clouds they had the perfect opportunity.

Then came the Royal Canadian Mounted Police horse paddocks, a facility housing the incomparably beautiful black Arabian-bred horses made famous by the RCMP's musical ride. Some of the horses were out in the meadow, browsing, far more of them clustered under a broad canopy to shelter from the rays of the sun; this unrelenting day after day of unusual heat gets to everyone.

Arriving at Byward Market and the Rideau Street bakery took far more manoeuvring than we've been accustomed to. There is so much construction and municipal infrastructure remediation going on that traffic is constantly re-routed to a confused and crowded maze out of which drivers finally find their way to their destinations, as we did.

On the return home after acquiring magazines, specialty cheese, and a large assortment of breads and rolls most of which will be popped into our home freezer for later extraction and use, we passed Rideau Hall, the home of the Governor-General where at the front gates  two of the G-G's foot guard stood to attention in their traditional splendour (dreadful heat traps on such summer days), a tradition of the British Empire, emulating the very same spectacle to be seen in London where the Queen's Guard is on watch outside Buckingham Palace.

Last year while trekking through the forest trails we had come across on several occasions a small group of two men and a woman we thought to be in their early- to mid-20s walking three very large dogs that looked as unfriendly as the young people were. We have a tendency to greet anyone we come across, and though they reciprocated the greeting it was clear they had no interest in having anything to do with other people, and that was fine with us.

The behaviour of the dogs, however, was a little troubling. They weren't overtly aggressive but it was something about the way some very large dogs that haven't been socialized behave that catches your attention. We were concerned about our two little dogs in their presence and tried to control the situation by calling Jackie and Jillie to us. In the presence of those dogs they were pleased to accommodate us.

Soon afterward on one of those occasions we came across a clearly upset man in his 60s walking a very small black Labrador, who told us he had been sitting on one of the crude benches along a trail, his dog quietly beside him when seemingly out of nowhere three large dogs had surrounded his dog and one attacked it. He called out in alarm and immediately separated his dog from the other, potentially risking harm to himself, when he noticed the three young people hoving into view to take in the situation. None of them responded to the situation, however. No one of them called off the clearly aggressive dogs.

Then they walked off nonchalantly with their dogs, the older man's voice trailing after them as he recommended placing them on leash for the safety of others. His little dog had been shocked but not harmed to the point where its skin was broken, and they were both for obvious reasons, upset. We commiserated and took greater pains the next time we were briefly exposed to the group. And then never saw them again.

Early yesterday morning when we were out in the ravine, about halfway through our usual circuit, we came across that man again whom we'd seen very infrequently and not yet this summer, so we walked together for awhile, his little black Lab ambling about with Jackie and Jillie. Allie, his dog, he said, was called a Coconut Lab, when I remarked on her size. A rescue, he had picked her up several years ago from the Gatineau SPCA across the border in Quebec which had a few weeks ago suffered a catastrophic fire in which quite a few of the rescues had died.

Allie had been brought in to Canada on a kind of rescue mission to place a few of this breed, from St. Martin in the French West Indies where a rescue group takes in abandoned companion animals, cares for them, and prepares them for adoption. Who has ever heard of a coconut Lab? Well, now we have. I mentioned to the fellow that obviously Allie had 'lucked in', now living with someone who cared about her welfare and valued her presence. He smiled and responded that on the contrary, he was the one who had lucked in.

Yesterday for an alteration in perspective we decided to reverse our usual circuit and start off in the direction from which we usually conclude our daily ramble in the woods. This kind of thing invariably elicits keener interest from Jackie and Jillie who are eager to be exposed to something that seems to be different heading through the forest trails.

They take everything in their stride, happy and excited to be out in the woods. Jackie on the continual lookout for squirrels challenging his never-ending attempts to outrace them to the point where he would be able to countenance them directly, rather than as usual end up puzzled at their strange disappearance, scrambling up trees before he even realizes how his intention has been evaded.

So, off we went, ascending where we usually descend, and in effect going backwards along the interconnecting trails to accomplish the loop we're familiar with, only backwards. The heat of the day hadn't yet arrived, and a really brisk wind both kept us refreshed and flying insect pests at bay, a great combination to make a  hike all that more enjoyable.

While we enjoy taking in the larger perspective of the entire landscape, we are also always sensitive to those little colourful bits of vegetation declaring the presence of wildflowers to enliven our interest even more. Yesterday was no exception, we came across nice little patches of trailing lotus mirroring the bright egg-yolk gold of the sun, on the forest floor.

Many years ago we noticed at one of the creek tributaries down deep in a gully that there was a clump of meadow rue. It was the only such clump we'd seen anywhere in the ravine. We expected it would gain a foothold, expand its presence, grow to full mature height and engender eventually a bit of a colony, but it never did. It did, years back, give birth to another, smaller clump. But now the original is gone and only the smaller one persists, but just barely; obviously the combination of soil and exposure to sun is lacking in providing the perfect environment for the plant.

Interspersed here and there among other residents of the forest floor alongside the trails, there is also buglos with its pale-to-dark purple flowers, an injection of colour among the drab brown-grey of the exposed forest floor and the bright verdance of the vegetation inhabiting it.

It's becoming kind of a semi-permanent pattern of late that we forego our usual afternoon ravine walk, swapping it for an early morning amble through forest trails in the ravine. When afternoon temperature rises to 35C, it's time to admit that this is just too enervating to head out for an hour or so, even into a forest landscape where the leafy canopy does its best to throw sufficiently dense shade to shut out the sun's burning rays these days.

Of course, on the positive side we can't complain that there's no windy relief, since there is. On the other hand, with an overheated atmosphere any breeze that happens along moves that overheated air, not cool air. Relief is temporary and more imagined than real. In the morning, however, the presence of that brisk wind does make a cooling difference.

An overheated atmosphere, little standing water from rain on the forest floor and brisk breezes represent a mosquito-repelling formula. There have been very few of those pests about the past three weeks or so, even though prevailing heat and humidity ensure that we wear the lightest of all possible garments strolling about with bare arms and legs.

Out we were yesterday morning bright and early, hot and humid, with yes, a lovely brisk wind. Each of the days that succeed one another becomes warmer than the previous. The clay base of the forest floor is cracking, desperate for moisture.

Even so, there's no dearth of wildflowers. Now that the Queen Anne's lace is flaunting its impressively decorative presence, the more restrained, yet similar yarrow is also in evidence. And yesterday for the first time we saw a lone but lovely little blue flower, a chicory wildflower. Although it will be just a little longer before the sunflowers which turn their bright faces to the sun unerringly, bloom there are exceptions to everything. They usually don't until early August, but several are opening and treating us with their golden bloom.

Though it's been a bumper year for berries this summer, for some odd reason the wild apple trees aren't burdened with many apples. They certainly flowered in the spring, but something must have happened to nip the incipient apples, a late frost, for there are few apples to be seen on trees that usually burst with them. And nor are the hazelnut shrubs producing much in the way of their fruit this summer.