Epinette

One of my favourite spots. Just a few steps from a gravel parking lot to the rolling prairie. Step carefully or you'll get cactus thorns between your toes! Past the cactus patch and the rolling hills begin. You can bike across the prairie, or hike it if you don't mind climbing up just to climb down again. It's a beautiful walk but the sun can be merciless.

Beautiful blooms today - purple prairie clover, pink onion, wild bergamot, goldenrod, sage, and others that I can't remember the names of. The first time I came here, years ago, there was forest here. Since the fire the blue Grama grass has taken over along with all these wild flowers. Charcoal and decaying wood feed the soil for new trees to grow. A few remain to lead the succession.

This spot feels sacred, and it's not just because of the sundance site nearby. Here you can feel the slow insistent cycle of life.

Roadside Lady's Slippers

I spotted these Showy Lady's Slippers in a ditch along the TransCanada Highway. It was a steamy hot day and they were at their peak. They just caught my eye as we were driving past.
I suppose I really ought to be watching the road. Still, it pays to have a roving eye!

Flowers under the deck

The space under the deck was looking too bare and muddy since we took away the old deck. We decided on a hosta bed around the bottom of the tree and a bark path making a curve around it. We filled in the spaces between the young hostas with impatiens in all sorts of bright colours. I'll add a picture soon of how they look now that the flowers have filled in and the bark has been added.

The Climbing Elm

This tree and I were friends for years. I discovered shortly after we moved into the house nearby that this is a stellar climbing tree. It is an Elm tree, the last one in the neighbourhood to survive free of Dutch Elm Disease. It has clearly always been in good health, as its growth is regular and freely branching. The trunk forks every three feet or so, providing crook after crook to plant a foot in. If you manage to plan it right you can just climb up as if it were a rather odd-shaped ladder.

As a kid I used to climb up about 15 or 20 feet, then perch on a branch to survey the neighbourhood. In those days the neighbourhood mostly consisted of bush. There were a few houses, 2 or 3 that I could see from the tree, and lots of trees in all directions. My perch in the elm gave me a good view of woodpeckers, robins, warblers, nuthatches, chickadees, kinglets, and geese in the spring and the fall. A totally different perspective on the busy community of life around me. There wasn't usually much noise of people in the neighbourhood in those days, but the birds and the squirrels kept up a steady racket.

The neighbourhood is a little close in to the city, and over the years it gradually filled in. Most of the large lots have been subdivided and more houses built. Most of them have kept the large trees around the lot, but it's not the same uninterrupted forest of scrub oak that it used to be. This picture was taken on my last climb up the climbing elm. My parents had sold the house and were about to move out. I took one last climb to thank the tree for all the summer afternoons I spent held securely in its strong branches.

I think the elm is still there. I wonder if anyone else has discovered what a good climbing tree it is?

Snow Geese in Spring

Six strings of silver and black
Ripple against the blue sky,
Bright feathers glinting in the noon sun,
Calling “Stay together, safer together,”
Hurrying homewards, steadily north and west
To the past and the future.

Frozen Garden

At this time of the year I always get the urge to start gardening. I need to resist the urge. Whenever I start plants indoors in January or February, they have a long hard time of it indoors before they ever see the sun. When it's sunny and the days lengthen, it's hard to remember that we have more than three months to go until the last frost.

Most years I have planted mainly flowers. In recent years I have been experimenting with herbs with some success, and the last three years I have grown some vegetables too. This year I want to expand this corner of the garden to accommodate more space for vegetables and herbs.

Last year I planted several tomato and pepper plants and grew some against this fence, and others on a second-storey, south-facing balcony. The ones on the balcony baked and eventually developed blossom end rot, but the tomatoes in the garden fared a little better. This year I plan to make space for more tomato plants, pole and bush beans, lettuce and a couple of squash plants.

I went out in the snow the other night, pacing out the space and picturing in my mind where each plant will go. This will have to be enough for now!

The Merlin Tree

We live in an older house in an older neighbourhood, with mature trees and bushes on all sides. The dominant feature of our back yard is this spruce tree. I don't know how tall it is, but we have a three-storey house, and it stands well above the roof. It provides generously for a small ecosystem of creatures. Chickadees and nuthatches comb its branches and bark daily through the year for small insects. Red squirrels strip it annually of cone-bearing twigs, many of which they carry promptly into our roof, but that's another story.

The most exciting tree-dwellers from our point of view are the ones that don't actually eat from it, but nest in its branches. Every second summer since we have lived here, a pair of merlins nest high in the branches, about halfway up the portion pictured here. We have never seen the nest, or been able to spot them sitting in it, but we know they're there! Early in April, as soon as the snow starts to soften, we hear them calling to one another from the tall trees in the neighbourhood. If we look carefully we can often spot them sitting on exposed branches.

They spend a few weeks going from tree to tree, calling loudly. They seem to be inspecting the possible nest sites and discussing their various merits. Eventually they settle on one. Two summers ago, and two summers before that, they chose our tree. Both times they have raised one chick to maturity, and by late summer we see the three of them taking short flights around the neighbourhood. This time of the winter they are still somewhere far to the south, but already we hope they will come and raise their family here again this spring.