Looking to the future - When I was a kid over a half century ago Hallowe’en (it had an apostrophe in it back then) was an indoor party with "exciting" games such as apple bobbing. Nobody actually had these parties but we read about them in children’s story books, probably written pre-war. Sometime [...]
A Project Perhaps? We were walking near home recently, as we do every day to keep things working as they should be, and went along a short stretch of a road separated from the Autoroute 20 (that's the very busy and noisy road to Toronto) by a dense but narrow stretch of trees [...]
The End of Autumn We had thought that our last visit to the forest a couple of weeks ago would be the high spot of the tree colour this year but somehow the leaves have hung on and this morning's exercise found us walking under some more glorious golden trees. That and [...]
This is Thanksgiving Weekend in Canada and yesterday was our Golden Wedding - what better way to celebrate both than a walk in the golden light of the Arboretum. After 50 years our feet know the paths to follow rather well. [...]
I’m just getting into a collection of essays ("Vesper Flights" - Helen Macdonald) by a Historian of Science at Cambridge. I was struck by this paragraph from her introduction. "What science does is what I would like more literature to do too: show us that we are living in an exquisitely complicated [...]
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. [...]