This and That Coming back from a walk we found a Banded Hairstreak butterfly (Satyrium calanus) on the "other" sort of milkweed (Asclepia tuberosum). They only open their wings to fly away but the upper surface isn't much more colourful than this. ** Not bad photo for one taken with an iPhone, albeit it [...]
We seem to have slipped into the habit of writing a round-up of recent activities in the garden around the middle of each month. This one is being composed as we swelter under a “heat dome” sent to us from south of the border - far too hot to do anything physical at [...]
A few days ago I shared the picture below on Facebook. It's a Common Red Soldier Beetle on the flower of Wild Carrot. I knew that the wild carrot is another of those alien invader plants from Europe brought over by early settlers but assumed that the beetle, pretty common here, was [...]
Lawn Care - The "LoMow" Way, a taster. Regular followers of this journal will have heard earlier this year that we have pretty well let our lawn loose to do whatever it wants to do this summer - just a couple of mown paths through it so that we can reach the corners [...]
Very Tiny Bees A very trending topic, as they say, at the moment is how to encourage pollinator species not to go extinct die to habitat loss, insecticidal sprays and climate change. This something we are hastily in favour of. Trouble is, when we think about pollinators we usually think [...]
Cartooning ... Seeking some illustrations for a project elsewhere I started sketching on my iPad using the Procreate app ... I tested some of these on Facebook and enough people were complementary that I thought this might amuse the followers of the journal on a hot, too hot, Sunday afternoon. It was fun [...]
I have had a city park near to me pretty well all my life and because they have always been there I have rather taken it for granted that they always would be. Some parks have been wide open with trees and grass and sometimes a lake. While others have been more formal [...]
Eastern Chipmunk - Tamias striatus Although every other creature in Quebec other than Coyotes has visited our garden in the 21 years we have been here we have never seen a Chipmunk before, so we were really happy to see this young fellow scurry across the deck after a major wind and rain [...]
Text here Evening Peonies I happened upon these flowers as I was wandering the garden looking at early roses - attended by vampire mosquitoes. The light was gorgeous.
House Wren Troglodytes aegon - the commoner of the two Wrens around here. We also have Troglodytes troglodytes, the Winter Wren, which is the same species as the European Wren called simply "Wren" over there. rather less commonly seen and this isn't it. [...]