Flower power: bugs 'n blooms

I know, for those on the other side of the earth, it's winter. I happily share our flora and fauna for you!

I will look back at these images in our winter and breathe it in deeply. Enjoy each moment. It is brief and fleeting.



Here we are, selfies on the new dock.


Daisy has a horrible deerfly bite. They are awful this year.


I'm thinking that these are the first instars of the Elm sphinx. We shall see!


The 'barn cat' is happiest in and around the house. Daisy, I could smack her, has been crossing the highway for greener pastures.

Bon Echo Park Wanderer Too'r: photo set 3

The message in the rock now.
They originally painted it.

The chains remain where the Scottish masons hung on to carve the rock back in 1919.
It seems sad to desecrate it, but when we know better we do better.
My final post is about the ancient pictographs.
 Dear Flora adored him, and tried to contact him through seances. They say she was successful!

Flora's ashes were dumped in the lake, below the sign. It is a deep lake, with little turnover, hopefully no one has swum through her ashes, as legend tells one such incident in Muskoka.

Back in 1919, now a public domain photo
Flora MacDonald Denison (owner of the property) 
is under the "P" in "amplitude". Her son Merrill Denison is under "know".

Dedication to Walt Whitman carved into the rock at Bon Echo Provincial Park in Ontario. Published in Canada in 1919.

There are rules about rock climbing, as it is illegal without being part of a climbing group.
Rock climbing at Bon Echo (Alpine Club of Canada Toronto Section)

Also, as in many parks, the flora and fauna depend upon the natural formations and habitat. It seems a shame to destroy it either way, but people do climb, paint, chop things down.

We've been complaining about this on-line: cottage country is not the same, what with the loud noise, bonfires, fireworks, partying, disrespect for neighbours and nature, not to mention those who use the lakes as Nascar tracks.

One of the old, dead cedars in the rock was dated, our NHE interpreter told us. They grow slowly, with horrible conditions!

Bon Echo Provincial Park is a provincial park in South Central Ontario north of Kaladar, Ontario, approximately 6 km north of Cloyne.

Bon Echo features several lakes, including part of Mazinaw Lake, the second-deepest lake in Ontario. The southeastern shore of Mazinaw Lake features the massive 100 m (330 ft) high Mazinaw Rock, an escarpment rising out of the water, adorned with many nativepictographs. The unofficial mascot of Bon Echo Park is the Ojibwe trickster figure andculture hero, Nanabush, who is among the 260 plus pictographs found in the area.Pictographs are often confused with petroglyphs, which are rock carvings rather than the rock paintings found on Mazinaw.

Settling in...flora and fauna to explore

wee warbler

What a lovely place, even the OPP target range, with automatic weapons, doesn't faze us. We know who they are!

The wildlife is wonderful. No one about to scare them off.

Moth was huge!

The deer came back.

Nibbling at the food

Deliriously happy cats

The cats are in heaven. Oliver especially.

Check under the deer feeder!

check under the tree!

smashing tree

Look at the leaves!

One single sunfower

with a cold little bee

Even managed to get my chair here!