Where does the day go? All the more so when one wakes late, and even then the allure and comfort of remaining in bed, talking, discussing the news, playing with Jackie and Jillie ensures a really late entry into the day. Time zips by, afternoon arriving before we've had a decent chance to appreciate the morning hours adequately. Of course, lingering interminably over breakfast as an everyday ritual, prolonged even more on the weekend with more elaborate meals first off in the morning, kind of makes certain that late morning slips effortlessly into early afternoon before we know it.

And then for the next few hours we can play catch-up. It's a game Jackie and Jillie enjoy participating in. I can tell them I'm busy, have a lot of things to get done, and they assume I'm telling them, hey, let's have some fun, because I feel guilty and squat down for some play-time tussling with them.

Irving went out shortly after breakfast on one of his missions. To the bank, to pick up a Sunday Star, to get some more hardware, and in particular a ceiling roundel which Home Depot no longer carries and others do, to Canadian Tire for chandelier bulbs. No end of things to be picked up. Amidst the madness of Christmas shopping, now in full sway. It's frantic out there but it'll become even more so as we move into December. 

On his return he decided to start putting the light fixture together, all the bits and parts to be fitted into a whole, before he can install the thing. He sets  himself these tasks fairly spontaneously and then feels a sense of  time-urgency to get things done. I tell him he can work at a more leisurely pace since there's no schedule, no urgent time frame within which he must complete something, but that's not his way.

Off we went to the ravine on yet another heavily overcast, cold, windy, damp day. We left at 3:00, but at 2:00 we had a bright, brisk treat when the sun came out briefly to pay a local call. That's when I took Jackie and Jillie out to the backyard for a bit of recreation between our local squirrels taunting two little dogs and ending with both pleased with the outcome.

We're now at that time in mid-November when we yearn for snow to cover the landscape. For one thing, the absence of foliage and the sight of bare masts rising to the sky in dark silhouettes needs some visual  relief and snow will do that. For another, the forest trails are thick with muck and greasy, saturated foliage sliding underfoot. Snow will help that, too. As will the deeper penetration of frost in the forest floor badly needed at this juncture and on the near horizon.

As we ascended the main trail on the ridge of the forest we encountered others out like ourselves and for a little while there was a frantic free-for-all as dogs arranged themselves around Irving, doling out cookies. These are our friends and acquaintances; some we've known for many years, others more recently met, along with their dogs. Some of the dogs are restrained, some are bumptious, either by personality or by firm discipline. Irving appreciates it when dogs take cookies from his hand politely.

Last night as we concluded another busy day, we had what I call a 'harvest soup' for dinner. Chopped onion, garlic, celery, red bell pepper, potato, in a chicken-soup stock, with frozen corn added the last ten minutes of cooking. Today it'll be another favourite, dried beans, chopped onion, garlic, tomato, zucchini, sweet potato, tomato paste, cumin side and garam masala. This time I prepared a whole-wheat, cheese and rosemary-infused flat bread to accompany the soup.

 

On our way up the street heading toward the ravine this afternoon, we saw one of our neighbours putting up Coloured lights above his garage. The usual commiseration; weather always tends to be miserable when it comes time to pasting !colour!, 'lights!, !joy! onto the domestic landscape in anticipation of Christmas. Bob just grinned and shrugged. Irving and he have known one another for the last fifty years.

Bob had gone straight from university to the ranks of officers in the federal department of Customs & Excise, and Irving was by then a senior officer who didn't stick around but went on to other government departments in his ascending career. Bob had stayed with the department and he retired several years ago. When we moved into our current house 30 years ago, we discovered Bob and his family living up and across the street from us.

 

 

 Bob wanted to ask Irving about how to differentiate between ivory and bone. His wife had been left an antique in her aunt's will, a turn-of-the-century Mah Jongg set. Ivory is now prohibited entry in many countries in reaction to the crisis of impacting elephants being slaughtered for their tusks in the dark underworld of illicit smuggling. Bob had been informed by an expert that the pieces in the gaming set he thought were ivory were actually bone. At Customs & Excise, Irving was an expert on art and antiques and wrote rulings that stand today. He does have sound, deep knowledge in both spheres, and he told Bob the pieces were likely bone.

 

The thermometer put us right at freezing, but there was no wind, though the sky was deep in overcast. We anticipated, given the last several nights of sub-zero temperatures, that frost would begin to set into the ground, but once we gained the forest trails we noted they were fully as wet and slushy as the day before. And we sighed. It takes forever to clean off Jackie's and Jillie's little paws these days. It's as though they stepped in indelible India ink.

 

 

Yesterday's raw atmosphere -- and a Friday at that -- had brought out many more people than today's relatively more benign day, one without rain true, but small snow squalls. It was a peaceful stroll for all of us. The remaining colours in the ravine were beautifully highlighted by the dim, almost-dusk prevailing light. There is always plenty of interest for Jackie and Jillie picking up messages from other dogs as they sniff and snuffle about. 

 

 

Where a small grove of old wild apple trees still flourish -- and this summer bore bumper crops which accustomed us to picking the small sweet-and-sour apples in late summer and early fall for nibbles for us and for Jackie and Jillie -- under their outspread branches lie hundreds of their tiny offcast apples and we wondered whether many are eaten by local wildlife. They'll lie deep in snow overwinter, and when spring melt reveals them they often still look edible.

 

On our way back, out of the ravine and on the street heading for home, Bob was waiting in his garage to 'catch' us, to show Irving Louise's Mah Jongg set. It bore no resemblance to ours which is in a finely finished and fitted wooden box with drawers and brasses; theirs is of worn cardboard in understandably awful shape, but Irving was able to show Bob what distinguishes bone from ivory. 

 

Once we cleaned up the puppies and I chopped up their little vegetable salad treat, I went back out to clean up the fallen leaves for the final time. Dan, our wonderful next-door neighbour was busy himself, putting up what will be eventually an entire panoply of Christmas decorations. Irving had already raked up and disposed of the bulk of all the fallen foliage, I was just finishing up the last of the fallen leaves. 

 

Irving drove out to Home Depot for some hardware he wanted to pick up. When I finished the raking, I put down newspapers on the other half of the garage matching the half Irving had done the day before to catch the oil dripping off the undercarriage of the truck. When he returned from his shopping expedition he would find paper down to do the same with the oiltrellled car.

 

Jackie and Jillie smothered me with frantic kisses, so glad I had managed to escape the danger that lurks everywhere they're not around to protect us. I put on the gas fireplace and everything seemed warm and snug. 

 

When Irving returned he brought with him a Santa Claus melon, two dozen navel oranges, bought elsewhere than Home Depot; he always takes the opportunity when he's out to drop by FarmBoy. At Home Depot he picked up the hardware fittings he had wanted. And a crystal chandelier he planned to hang in the family room. A surprise for me. I've been noting the lack of bright light there despite a proliferation of floor and table lamps.

Quite a crowd of squirrels on the porch this morning, coming and going constantly, jostling and chasing one another as though there weren't enough peanuts to go around for everyone. They're decidedly more frantic now as inherited and lived memory kicks in warning of impending hard times with winter's approach. The raccoons are coming around now during the night singly. All the kits and juveniles are now fully independent and packs of five and six at a time no longer congregate on the porch at night.

We're eating differently now, too. Just like the wildlife feeling the need for more substantial meals to cope with the extra energy it takes to face the icy wind, cold and damp temperatures. Last night we had oven-baked fish 'n chips with a salad, the night before breaded chicken livers with mashed potatoes. What used to be called 'stick-to-your-ribs meals.

We weren't out at all yesterday other than close around the house, in the backyard. Rain fell constantly and too heavily to venture out; neither Jackie and Jillie nor we would find any pleasure in defying the wind bursts hurling rain about. So we reluctantly gave our daily hike through the forest trails a pass yesterday; little other option available to us. Had we been inclined to get out in the wee hours of the night to try to witness the eclipse of the moon, that too would have been foiled, hidden from us, given the stacked dark clouds in a darker night sky.

No more rain today, though. Instead we were given the gift of light snow flurries in the morning. The temperature sat at 2C, and snow was coming down. Yesterday the temperature wasn't able to rise above zero, and we had unrelenting rain. It's a reflection of what the upper atmosphere was like, apparently.

In fact, today gave us just about every kind of weather condition. Even the sun popped out occasionally, if briefly. The cold seemed even more frigid than the temperature gauge informed us, because the atmosphere was also saturated. When we did get out, the wind followed us persistently and miserably until we entered the ravine, when it became muted.

Earlier in the day Irving had driven the car over to the garage which had finished with the truck, leaving the car for an oil change and anti-wnter-salt-oiltrell treatment. The garage had called suggesting he keep their loaner car, and once they were finished with the car, they would call, and Irving would drive their car back to the garage to pick up his own car, job completed.

In between we looked after our usual household routine. Irving  raked up newfallen leaves in the backyard, then lined the garage floor with old newspapers to soak up the dripping oil from the undercarriage of the treated vehicles. I baked coconut cupcakes and put together a whole-wheat bread dough then started a chicken soup for dinner.

And then we took ourselves out to the ravine, padding Jackie and Jillie with their warm winter jackets and heavy-purpose harnesses to trot off for what we thought would be no more than the usual hour-and-a-half circuit, but turned out to be much longer. As we literally sloshed through the sodden trails, we kept coming across old friends with their dogs, one after another. Everyone has so much to talk about; from items in the news, to the weather, to personal anecdotes.

The dogs line themselves up next to Irving and he doles out the anticipated cookies, then they mill about and wait for the irritating humans to stop jawing, so they can get on with their forest adventures. The forest floor resembles a bog, or a wetland, now. It had already been in a state past-saturation, with ponds of rainwater making a permanent home where the soil should be dry.

Now, the ponds have expanded, they're longer, larger, deeper, and new ones have popped up. The trails haven't fared too much better, all the fallen foliage that had once sat so deep, dry, colourful and crackly on the trails have become a soggy, slippery mess. The trails are still more negotiable, however, than they were after heavy rains when we first came upon them decades ago. Then, they were true forest trails; narrow and topped with leda clay. Since then, they've expanded in width considerably, thanks to the heavy equipment brought in to ameliorate and reconstruct collapsed hillsides, and the gravel deposited over the years so a good boot grip could be maintained on ascents and descents, though much of it in the first several years simply washed down the hillsides in heavy weather.

We did see the sun come out for the space of an eye-blinks cheerily blinking back at us as it began to set on the horizon. We saw slightly more of a return to snow flurries and ice pellets, both of which quickly melted to join the accumulated moisture left by yesterday's marathon rain event.

Ottawa is enveloped in an atmospheric lake. So deeply that the sun cannot find us. It is dark and it is extremely wet. Although the temperature is below zero, heavy rain, not sleet, not ice pellets, not freezing rain and not snow descended from last evening extending overnight and prolonging its presence throughout the day. Grim.

Irving left the house early, before breakfast in fact, to deliver the truck to a garage in Vanier where they will do an oil change and oiltrell the undercarriage of the truck against rust this coming winter. While they're at it, they will also look into the 'emergency light' and replace the emissions control device. 

 Jackie and Jillie were decidedly displeased at his leaving the house. They stood with me watching as he drove off into the dark morning rain. They they departed themselves. Upstairs, back to bed. The house very quiet. My explanation failed to assure them that he would soon be returning. Driving a loaner car. 

I started the laundry and poked about a bit. Didn't look as though the rain would relent any time soon. Didn't look as though J&J would be getting out for a walk any time soon. There was some correspondence I meant to catch up with, and did. 

When Irving returned he told me what a madhouse it was out on the roads this morning. From the state of traffic it seems clear that most businesses have recalled their employees; only government offices not yet in full operational presence. But government is, in fact, the largest employer in a capital city.

Trouble was, the major road en route to the garage was closed off and detours, unmarked, were the order of the day adding to the confusion of driving around a place not frequently visited. When he'd called to make an appointment at the usual outlet, they were all booked up, everyone anxious to get their vehicles prepared for oncoming winter. Same thing happened last year, and they recommended an appointment instead with the larger establishment, further away from our own area.

By early afternoon the puppies were restless as usual, wondering what the hold up was in our usual preparations to get out of the house and away to the ravine for a forest trail hike-through. Their consternation was mollified to a degree when a small vegetable salad for each of them miraculously appeared. Before that, I was cutting up a pineapple for tonight's dessert. Jackie was hanging around, and this must have been the first time I've ever tried him with pineapple. I thought the acid in it would repel him, but no such thing; the sweet flavour quite satisfied him.

Unable to take photographs out-of-doors, I took snaps of the colour that appears on our windows in the stained glass that Irving has produced over the years. Our garden may be gone for the season, but the stained glass offers permanent gardens, a presence for which I am grateful. We enjoy those windows and appreciate all the colour nuances that emerge at different times of the day, the seasons and the prevailing weather.

When the sun it out in a clear sky streaming through the windows, the colours gleam and scintillate and warmth passes through them. But at those times what the eye sees the camera exaggerates; extreme light conditions make for poor photographs. And when it is cloudy out, or darkly overcast and the stained glass is muted, then the photographs come out well, undiffused colour and clarity of form..

Last night was even colder than the night before. The temperature dipped to -6C, a freezing that aggravated the house no end. So once again last night there were pops and booms signifying expansion/contraction as the roof trusses moaning and groaning in complaint over the winter-grade cold. Loud enough to wake me, but again, not Irving. And this time Jackie and Jillie just ignored the sound intrusion. It isn't hard to imagine in the deep, dark of night's solitude that the roof is preparing to collapse. Doesn't matter how many years have returned to this very same scenario in the past. The sound is loud, and it's alarming. In another month, I'll be ignoring it, too.

It did warm up somewhat as morning crept past a very dark dawn. But 0C was as high as it was prepared to go, today. It  was -2C when we came down for breakfast, and a light accumulation of freezing rain appeared on the deck like minuscule hail fragments. When Jackie and Jillie came back into the house their haircoats were full of tiny frozen little bits of ice.

 

After breakfast, I thought I'd use the extra pasty dough that was excess to the butter tarts I had baked on Friday, and refrigerated for use later in the new week. We'd bought some lovely little Ontario crop pears yesterday that would make a perfect few dumplings to make use of the pastry, I thought. So after cleaning the bathrooms and gathering the towels we'd used upstairs and down for tomorrow's laundry, I prepared pear dumplings.

 

Yesterday's dinner was one of my favourites. I cooked medium-broad egg noodles, drained them and used the same pot to make a cheese sauce with butter, pepper, dry mustard, flour and milk, then melted grated old cheddar into it. I chopped up a few green onions and added them to the cheese sauce, and then in went the drained noodles. I put the first layer of the noodle-cheese into a casserole. Then a layer of frozen green peas, and over that a layer of tinned Sockeye salmon.  The final layer of noodle-cheese, then Panko sprinkled over, and more grated cheese, and then it was baked in a 325F oven for 40 minutes. Not Irving's favourite, but mine. Today he'll have one of his favourites; breaded chicken liver, mashed potatoes, fried onions and asparagus spears.

 

We went off to the ravine just about 2:00 p.m. and it looked more like 8:00 p.m.; dark, with brooding clouds overhead and the threat of mixed precipitation. The howling wind made the 0C seem considerably colder than it was. Once we dipped into the ravine, the forest surrounding us however, the effect of the wind was quite diminished. And though it was dark, and cold, it was not the least bit unpleasant. 

 

The landscape looks a little bleak now that there are few leaves left on the deciduous trees leaving an open look to the forest canopy, but the conifers do their best to take up the green slack; firs, spruce, hillside yews, pine and cedars. We stood still briefly watching a hairy woodpecker hard at work on a tree trunk but the intervening density of the immature trees between the trail and the woodpecker wouldn't permit a photograph of its busy syncopation.

Twenty minutes into our hike, we came across a young man we've seen frequently with his exuberant spaniel, and he wanted to talk, and talk and talk, and Irving as is his wont, was happy to oblige. They discussed weather and geography and in particular the weather-and-geological catastrophe that has overtaken Canada's most beautiful and most geologically varied province. Heavy volumes of rain, even for their rainy season, inundated the B.C. Interior causing mud and rock slides, closing down roads, with flooding necessitating evacuations in a province that was hard hit in the spring by hugely unusual heat conditions causing wildfires, evacuations and the destruction of a town.

 

 

Later, I spoke on the telephone with my sister, while Irving went downstairs to his workshop to do some glasswork. She's four years younger then me, both our birthdays fall in December. While I enjoy robust health, hers has been compromised over the years. She never had full eyesight capacity from childhood on, but she is now considered to be legally blind, the 'talking books' she gets through her membership in the CNIB a lifeline to someone who values reading as a plus in her life. We talk family and national and international affairs, in a long conversation. Neither of us enjoy telephone communication ordinarily but the rare exception is when to speak to one another.

It's so much easier to communicate regularly through the Internet, but she is one of those people who never had an interest in using a computer and exploring communication through that medium. We reassure each other that our children and our grandchildren are fine for the most part, and from there launch into discussions revolving around politics and world affairs...

I'm left wondering if that was a sonic boom I heard -- twice -- in the wee morning hours today. Irving heard nothing, he slept right through. But I heard two deeply penetrating booms vibrate through the atmosphere outside the house. They each lasted a few seconds, then quiet. The booms were about ten minutes apart, I'd judge from the fuzz of my sleepy memory. It wasn't just me. Not my imagination, I'm fairly certain.

I glanced over at Jackie and Jillie in the dim light, and they had their sleepy heads up at attention. Out of Jackie's mouth came a series of rapid, short, faint little inner barks. Jillie just outright barked lightly a few times. So whatever it was I heard they too were aware of. I don't think it was an earthquake since there was no detectable movement accompanying the sound, and I'm familiar with what happens when tectonic plates rub against each other. I had plenty of experience in Tokyo years ago, and one very alarming quake years later right in Ottawa; penetratingly loud, alarming, the house swaying.

We haven't encountered anyone yet to ask. Irving has just dismissed it from his mind. Oh wait, we did see Mohindar this morning when he returned a specialized electric drill that he and Imeran wanted to use in installing a video camera. Forgot to mention it then.

We spent a good part of the morning shifting outerwear around. Upstairs in a spare clothes cupboard with light jackets, downstairs the heavy jackets were hauled to take their place. We scrubbed around to find heavy winter mittens and toques and J&J's warmer coats and larger, firmer harnesses. Whatever got put away until next spring had first to be washed, so the laundry room was busy for awhile.

Eventually we got out for our ravine hike in the early afternoon. Just happened to be the coldest day yet this week, flirting with 0C. Low-lying grey clouds, but not much wind. And on the rare occasion the sun briefly shoved aside cloud to have a look down below and see how the puny humans were dealing with the cold.

Yesterday we thought the creek was high and wide, today it was even more so. Yesterday's billowing tide caused by the rain, today's, it seems to us, related partially to rain, but perhaps more to the opening of the sluice gates to the holding ponds further upstream, used as a flood prevention. And so the water surged, billowing and spilling, splashing and spuming over various points where the creek turns and twists on its  trajectory, the water an opaque grey-blue. The colour an improvement over yesterday's mud-brown.

The pools of standing rainwater on the forest floor likely won't be absorbed before frost digs deep into the soil, so all those rain puddles will freeze fairly soon, to eventually melt at winter's conclusion when the accumulated snowpack begins to go. We saw only a few other people out with their dogs this time around. One of whom warned us against elongating our trek this afternoon to include a stretch of trails that dip quite deeply where a tributary of the creek runs and the trails always seem to be deeply saturated.

Then home, to give the puppies their salads. And to marvel once again that despite we gave no indication that we were about to head out to do the weekly food shopping, Jackie and Jillie began to display all the signals of grief over abandonment...

Mid-November, and it's almost time to haul out the winter gear. It was raining heavily, the last time we took Jackie and Jillie out to the backyard before going up to bed last night. A lone little raccoon was on the porch, delicately selecting choice peanuts under the porch overhang. Neither Jackie nor Jillie paid him much attention, a far cry from their first sight of them many months back when they shrieked the alarum. We've started tucking the puppies up under a fuzzy blanket these cold nights, and they've taken to it. It's always colder on the second floor of the house. 

By morning the rain had frozen while twirling its way down from the clouds, and there was an appreciable gathering of snow in the garden and on the deck. It lasted but a few hours as the temperature rose to 2C, and the steady drip of melting snow off the canopy over the deck made for icy puddles on the deck. Jillie daintily makes her way around them to avoid getting wet, Jackie forges straight ahead, it doesn't bother him one bit.

We decided after cleaning up from breakfast that we'd change our routine to ensure we wouldn't end up entering the forest at dusk as occurred yesterday, given the return of the coyotes to the ravine. By the time I had cleaned up the kitchen, the bathroom and made up our bed it was late morning, so that's when we set off under a heavily clouded sky.

In deference to their size because they get colder quicker than large dogs do, Jackie and Jillie wore waterproof, winter-weight coats, and we layered a few heavy sweaters under our jackets, intermediate, not yet winter-wear. So despite the cold we were comfortable enough, all of us as we negotiated the most slick, sodden trails imaginable.

The conditions of overcast sky casting a dark aspect within the forest interior and the sodden landscape created the kind of atmospheric conditions that made colour stand out and though there was little colour left in the fallen foliage, we found it instead on the bark of trees and on branches of other trees. Fluorescent lichen which one hardly notices under most conditions, seems to come alive with a glow under this morning's conditions of the odd dusky light combined with the extreme wet conditions

The creek was fairly leaping over all the fallen obstacles crossing its width, tossing and tumbling itself under, over and through fallen trees and branches, the turbulence making it froth, the sound carrying up the hill to our ears as we descended. Makes us wonder what happened to the goldfish we had seen a week earlier; likely washed downstream and hopefully into a pool with some depth where they could safely overwinter.

Through the solidly overlapping dark clouds, the sun somehow managed to find a few cracks to enable it from time to time to give us the brief impression of warmth joining with the light that cast its way through the open forest canopy. We were literally sloshing through the trails, so heavily inundated, with the forest floor hosting little ponds of rainwater, too flush with rain to absorb any more.