Thursday morning at this time of the year means we put on the snowshoes and go tramping ... looking for birds along the way, of course. Here are some of the regulars. Especially amused by the Cardinal looking longingly at the squirrel's snack. Rather less amused by the hanging squirrel that somehow [...]
Clearing out the basement, well, truthfully, a corner of the basement a few days ago I uncovered a three hole pipe which, for those readers who are not into folk music, is the blown half of a pipe and tabor - the original "one man band". Once upon a time I learned to [...]
Mourning Cloak butterfly, appeared in the garden last week after overwintering in a sheltering crack somewhere We spend a lot of our lives doing gardening things and watching the wildlife regardless of whether the virus and the government allow us to wander further afield. Despite that, however, there is a [...]
Messy Eater Blood on the Snow We’ve noted before that the berries on the native Viburnum triloba are eaten in the fall while those on the similar European species (Guelder rose) are left until well into the New Year. Obviously those of the native species are more palatable while the [...]
As faithful followers of this journal will have gathered, there are a lot of squirrels around here. Although most of our gardening is designed to provide food and shelter to birds and insects it is a given that squirrels will take advantage ... as do raccoons and skunks and mice and all sorts [...]
The 21 January each year is Squirrel Appreciation Day - as we were reminded throughoout the day by numerous emails and FB posts from the various conservation organizations that we support. A couple of days later this rather scruffy black-form gray squirrel visited the garden in order to do some appreciating of [...]
"Mine, All mine!" There are two Viburnum bushes near the house, one a native species and one a horticultural cultivar. Usually the berries stay on the bushes through most of the winter as although to us they look bright and juicy it is evident that most wildlife only resort to them once all the [...]
Snack time The red berries on the Viburnum bushes are being eaten early this winter ... with some of the outside staff putting in excess energy to reach them. EXIF data Copyright © All images are made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 Canada (CC BY-NC-ND 2.5 [...]
This week the garden is hanging onto the cusp between late winter and (very) early spring - the sun, when it appears, is quite warm but the air is not at all warm and when the wind blows, especially off the river which is still frozen, it is decidedly cold. Last week we wrote [...]
It's been snowing ... Mid-March in Montreal we wouldn't expect anything else - other than that friends from milder climates are sharing pictures of green grass and spring flowers while our brave clump of snowdrops that was standing tall yesterday is once again (third time) buried from site. Nevertheless, it's been a beautiful morning [...]