Sliding Into Summer

The weather hardly knows how to react to the season. We have a spate of cool days along with rain; cool enough for long sleeved shirts and light jackets, that cool. Swiftly followed by heat-burdened days hardly alleviated by hot, brisk winds scarcely bringing relief from the air heavily suffused with moisture.

We throw open our bedroom windows at night, seeking stray air currents to bring some modicum of relief from the oppressive heat. We've two silently efficient floor fans doing our fervent bidding.

So heated, so heavy the atmosphere, we decide today we won't wait for the anticipated 34 degrees to hit; we'll foray out into the ravine before breakfast. So we shower, give Button and Riley their breakfast, and decamp. By then it's just after nine, not so early after all, and already the thermometer reads 25 degrees and steadily rising. In anticipation of plenty of mosquito activity I cover up completely in thin white cotton.

A moist pudding of air heavily charged by the sun's relentless stare slaps our defenceless faces. We hurry Button and Riley along, up the street, to enter the kindness of the coolly leafed forest setting. All the sumachs, even the really slender young ones, are hoisting aloft yellow-green candles. The heat and the wet spring have conspired to encourage a green burst of energy from the ravine's trees, shrubs and undergrowth, narrowing the trails.

A solitary bee circles horizontally, hovering mere inches above the ground; can he have forgotten where he drilled his hole in the hard-packed earth? Damselflies, flit about, singly and in constant-motion pairs above the creek and its tributaries. No sign today of the great numbers of giant dragonflies we saw a mere two days earlier, one of which landed on my husband's shoulder, and just sat there so we could admire its clever guise.

We could use them, the damselflies could work a little more strenuously at ridding the area of those pests that keep encircling and bumbling into our sunglasses, forcing us to wave our arms about irritatedly, trying to fend them off. There's that lovely anemone just before the first of the bridges, still sending up its delicate white flowers. For the first time we see a small but unmistakable columbine, two tiny pink orchid-like flowers held aloft. To the best of our knowledge the only columbine in the entire ravine precinct.

Robins sing hopefully from tree branches. We're hopeful too; the weather forecast gives us encouragement that the sky will cloud over in the afternoon and unleash heavy rains through the impact of a series of thunderstorms headed our way. We could use the rain, couldn't we ever. Already we can see huge cracks appearing on the floor of the ravine and the creek banks as they begin to dry out in the absence of rain this week.

The sweet fragrance of flowering bedding grasses envelope us. When we first entered the trail there wasn't the slightest whisper of a breeze, but as we progress we can see, hear and feel the wind collecting its resourceful purpose, rushing the tops of the trees, sending stray little bits of breeze through the trees, reaching our grateful brows. The bright red berries of red baneberry glint their malice in the sun.

Tendrils of American bittersweet wind themselves about handy tree trunks. Ground ivy is growing rampantly over spent horsetails and any other handy green hosts that can accommodate its rule. Between a tangle of brown-grey dead branches fallen beside the trail exuberant thimbleberry bushes thrust themselves toward errant bits of sunlight, their bright purple-pink flowers calling us to admire their presence.

The splendid bouquets of buttercups, daisies, clover, cowvetch have been joined lately by yarrow and cinquefoil. The Vipers bugloss has yet to flower. Tiny ripe strawberries are there for the picking, for those who recall the fresh tangy-sweet taste of wild strawberries and don't mind stooping and picking for the meagre reward those minuscule berries offer.