The Golden Rod was alive with insects Tuesday morning in the warm sun - here are four that posed for their portraits. There were also a number of Hover Flies which never paused long enough to be immortalised. Clearly a Bumble Bee and I think most likely Bombus impatiens (Common Eastern Bumble Bee) [...]
A Garden Month (to 24 Aug 2019) Pictures follow Even back in late July some end-of-summery things were already being noticed such as a small group of Waxwings taking berries from the Dogwood bushes on a hot and windy day … the sort of day on which it is perfect for Japanese Beetles [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Desirable Weeds Continuing the experiment of seeing what comes up if the lawn is not mown ... this week we have Buttercups and we have Clover. Actually we have two species of Clover ... this is a tall clover (Trifolium hybridum* - the Alsike Clover) but we also have low [...]
Two years ago as part of the creation of the Canada 150 Trail in the Morgan Arboretum a subset of volunteers from the friends of the Morgan Arboretum created "The Copse". As I have said in earlier posts, this is a small collection of trees and shrubs, all native species, selected for their [...]
Living with Wildlife Not infrequently after looking at a plant or bird picture that we have shared here or on Facebook people ask if they can see our "wildlife" garden ... not everyone lives close enough to book one of our guided tours so this is what (part of) it looks like on [...]
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 [...]
Finally, things are growing Back from a couple off weeks in England we returned this week to find the garden had suddenly started to "move" despite the weather having been cooler than normal for the time of year. Thursday 16 was sunny though and a bit warmer so a wander around the garden [...]
The Skip Garden - A very different sort of garden We were in England for a couple of weeks recently - hence the curious absence of regular Sunday posts on this Journal. While there we spent a day with an old friend of J’s wandering around a part of London that until recently [...]