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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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. [...]
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 [...]
Mid-summer Progress Report We are now in our second full year of letting what was once a scrappy lawn have the freedom to just grow while we wait to see what's there and what has arrived. Mid June is a good half-way stage in the process of creating a "mead" and to pause [...]
Bird Protection Quebec regularly has guided birding field trips each weekend but, with social distancing and groups being forbidden for the past ten weeks they have organised "virtual field trips" restricted to the birds in our gardens. These have been surprisingly popular with many more people taking part than ever come out [...]
Thyme-leaved Speedwell (Veronica serpyllifolia) Working in the Fritz Garden (where the community grows vegetables for food banks) a few days ago, and preparing to plant tomato seedlings I was caught by this tiny gem of a wildflower looking appealingly at me and pleading not to be “weeded”. What could I do but [...]
There is a famous phrase from a chidrens’ poem written in the 1760s by Isaac Watts that asks: “How doth the little busy bee improve each shining hour?” ... and the answer in our case is by industrious labouring in our Socially Distant Garden. What, you will be wondering, loyal reader, has [...]