Rainy fall...

Wow. We've been having quite a bit of rain: yesterday 14 mm, and it is raining today. There were thunderboomers, again, and power outages across the province. We escaped. We had power, although we did have to reset the clocks.


I'm glad I was out and about the previous day. The goldfish pond is full, which is a shame, because once my new aquarium filter pump arrives (Friday?), I'll have to bring fishies in. That means draining it a bit at a time, as there is always one stubborn fish. Eleven fish, I have to remember...

I found that the bugs are still on the milkweed, despite the leaves being stripped by monarch caterpillars and milkweed bugs. It was quite a meeting!


I wanted to liberate a stump from the forest. It's a tree that grew on a 'nanny tree,' and the curve in the trunk reflected that. The birch tree is still standing, but as the stump rots the support for the other trees is gone. The photos are from March, 2019.
 
I found meself on the trailcam bringing it back.

The trick was to chop off the rest of the tree branches with the reciprocal saw, which I did. Then I could lift it. I popped it in a garden, it looks rather cool.

While I was at it, I took the wagon down to lot #3 to liberate some rocks from the forest. Whilst there, I found a total of three red efts.
 

In case you are wondering, I did not pick them up. (My hands were clean.) I covered them back up carefully. However, an archive photo, a red eft:

The eastern newt (Notophthalmus viridescens) is a common newt of eastern North America. The red eft (juvenile) stage is a bright orangish-red in color, with darker red spots outlined in black.

a red eft

I brought this triangular-shaped rock back to the garden. The rocks shift as trees grow around it. 

Yay, fall.

Spring creeps up the continent!

Yes, it surely does. My paperwhites are slowly growing. I had to have some flowers indoors.


The boats still wear coats. The Rideau is quite frozen in the middle ground.


You can see the melt in the yard, under the warmth of the trees.


On a walk, it looks like this tree is going to go over. It's a nanny tree, a tree growing out of the trunk of another. The first photo is Feb., 2016. The wood of the old stump is slowly falling off. The 2nd photo was yesterday. I think the birch will fall sometime.


On the trailcam, the fisher.
 

As I wrote, spring creeps in...
I could hear it and knew it was something I had not heard in awhile. Listen!


It flew from the cedar to another cedar. I thought I saw a familiar bird, creep UP the tree and believed it was the creeper. I went to All About Birds, and searched for their sounds. Sure enough!
This is an archive photo. Nuthatches creep down, head first. These begin at the bottom and work their way up!

March 6th, 2016

April 3, 2014

Four years ago, bird watching with Buster.
Brown creeper from Jennifer Jilks on Vimeo.

Daisy walkies, Nanny tree, forest bathing

Firstly, at the house...this is not normal for February!
 

Daisy and I took a brief walk. She climbed her favourite tree.
 

You can see last year's leaves, along the deer trails. Then the mosses, which have come to life in our melt and rains. Normal temperatures are below the freezing point. The Rideau Canal skateway in Ottawa is closed. It's the middle of Waterlude, I mean, Winterlude! A great celebratory winter festival.


I do have to keep reminding her that she shouldn't go out into the wetland. It's pretty wet! She loves walking there, with the bulrushes rustling in the wind!

This tree isn't harmed by the pileated woodpecker. It continues to grow. Good birders know this. Some biologists denigrate the Pileated, but it is all nature.



Here is our Nanny tree. A birch has grown on the stump of another tree. It's beginning to tilt, however, as the stump is rotting. I first learned about Nanny Trees when visiting Stanley Park. Stanley Park Nanny Trees