A couple of weeks ago a knowledgeable friend (thanks Ron) drew my attention to a tall and mature Cottonwood tree growing beside the local cemetery. Way, way up high he said “it looks like there is a birch tree growing out of a crack or fork in the main trunk”. Finally we got [...]
This an advance notification ... some months ago I mentioned that I am working on a project to write and publish a book currently with the title of “1001 Species” – an illustrated natural history of a small town" It's coming along quite nicely and I hope to have it out in [...]
A Hermit Thrush briefly showed this morning and posed nicely for these photographs as he went about his business looking for food on the rough grass. I managed to grab a short video as well - there were ten seconds of camera shake in the middle where the camera lens caught the [...]
About a week into September, days are a little cooler and the colours are moving towards warm yellows and reds ... some pictures for you to enjoy as text is in short supply this week.
Another error of common naming A common tree/shrub in North America is the Sumac, around here mostly the Staghorn Sumac (Rhus typhina), athough there are several other species in the genus. A good row of them grow along the boundary of the Garden at Fritz where I volunteer every summer and shelter [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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.
A better sort of lawn A corner of the garden, with cherry and Amelanchier blossom, in the warm evening light. You will observe that the "lawn" is not a striped green sward cut to within an inch its life but has been left to do what it wants to do. It is [...]