West Island Wildlife #1 A new venture ... A 14 page illustrated "webzine" to introduce readers to the amazing variety of wildlife and plants to be found in the green spaces, parks and gardens of the West Island of Montreal. This is the first of what is hoped to become an occasional [...]
No particular reason to share this photograph other than that I like it. This was some 30+ years ago in the middle of Bordeaux ... it was a truly wet day to go sightseeing.
Playing with Light I was driving along the lakeshore in town (the lake being a widening of the St-Lawrence River) a couple of days ago about 7:30 in the morning when I was struck by the light on the water. Normally I would have had a camera with me but I was [...]
That time of year again A couple of days ago we took our exercise in the arboretum (again) and found the trail we were exploring to be leading us past one after another after another "mushroom" which were popping up and spore shedding everywhere we looked. There will be more in the coming [...]
Common Yellow Garden Spider (Argiope aurantia) About this time of year we start to enjoy the big webs and bright yellow bodies of the Yellow Garden Spider. Today we found one busily wrapping up a snack she had caught in her web ... hard to tell, but just possibly a Japanese Beetle. [...]
Being susceptible one morning this week to a little pedantry I happened across the word IMbed in a leaflet from Birkenstock about the tiny-bubble infested poly-substance they make they wonderful gardening clogs from. IMbed, the little man at the back of my brain squealed!! Philistines, the word is Embed. Harrumph. Well it [...]
We are now a couple of months into our learning experience with high density successive vegetable growing. Quite a success so far and perhaps this is a good time to publish an update for those who have been asking questions. In May we started with the installation of three raised vegetable beds [...]
Following a long and very heavy spell of high heat days with health warnings to stay indoors etc there was rain today and afterwards this wonderful moth was working the flowers on the milkweed plants. About the size of a thumb and an absolute gem of an insect - we have seen [...]
I happened, thanks to the internet, upon this article from the London Review of Books that I felt was worth sharing with my friends, many of whom will understand. I am a huge user and fan of all that the internet has brought us, I don't yearn to go back to blotchy pens [...]
Not that we have any urge to escape from the garden - this lockdown business is not causing any mental disturbance at all - but occasionally we like to check up on what the wild world is up to and so we take ourselves five minutes down the road to walk the trails [...]