Trillium and lady slippers!

The heat has been atrocious. 

We've a female red squirrel. She was pretty hot, running around. She lay down on the branch in the shade until I apparently disturbed her! She was watching me clean the goldfish pond. 

Even Cinnamon took it easy! Here he is in the Muskoka Room. He prefers it to the A/C! 

First trillium!

Someone posted photos of their ladyslipper. That inspired me to go check our little nook. They are coming along. I've snapped photos, so if I forget to go back amongst the 6 billion mosquitoes, I'll have proof. They are late this year.

Chores take a lot of energy. Some we are happier doing, especially involving water! JB is filling his water fountain, it was a surprise gift for him a number of years ago! 

It's taken me three days to get it all done. Fishies out (day 1), fish tank drained (day 2), equipment cleaned (day 3). Finally, day 4, I reassembled them, now that they are dry, and get the tank ready for October!

Jack-in-the-pulpit!

 The season is well on its way. I had to get the anti-itch cream out. Blackflies and mosquitoes. There was a mosquito in the house while we were watching Vera!  If you look closely in this photo, you can see even the mosquitoes were hiding from the heat in the shade. (No, not that much dirt on my camera lens!) I've been cleaning up, placed the cans in there, slowly backing away from the horde. 

My Aspen grove is doing well, despite the spongy moth attack last year.

The big news is that two of the robins have hatched! I'll bet the third is out, as well. But I try to avoid the area. This is an image from June 2020. We had a drought, and I didn't realize that even as young as this, the parents will follow and feed them. 

We're up to around 11 eggs in the wood duck nesting box.

11 wood duck eggs from Jennifer Jilks on Vimeo.

A day of joyous sights

I've been trying hard to relax and breathe. Hubby went out to dispatch Meals on Wheels. I'm trying to avoid the anger, vitriol, and hateful politics on Facebook and Twitter. There are many peeps who've posted many great Mother's Day weekend photos, which is hard for those sans family. There are others insisting on being more moral than our Prime Minister, or spreading myths around the causes of the Fort McMurray forest fires. Then there is the Trump issue.

Today, they are marching in Ottawa: protests against abortion rights. As with the courts ruling on my right to physician-assisted suicide, don't take my rights away, in your virtuous moral grandstanding. This is 2016. I had an abortion in 1974. The world didn't end. Birth control failed. I was sick as a dog. Full stop. Let's not set back Canadian women's rights 40 years. We're having a hard enough time with domestic violence and sexual assault. The Ghomeshi issue disturbs me so much. His abuse of power is so common in positions of authority, never mind amongst peers. </Rant over>

This is my journey to good mental health this week.
Firstly, Bambi sprouting his antlers, sitting in the sun out the kitchen window.



On the way back from seeing my client, the Greylag geese have been happily feeding on the river.

My client let me pick two african violet leaves from her collection. It's fun visiting her. She is 92, losing her eye sight, mobility and energy. My late father had such a collection. It is delightful visiting her. I have successfully rooted my two leaves in vermiculite and planted them. My thumb is so green.


I saw Daisy keen on something on the forest edge. Turns out it was a garter snake, the diameter of my little finger. She forgot it was there, and you can see her ear in the 2nd photo, as well as her tail in the 3rd. She wanted a mush, by this point, and flopped onto the ground!


The bullfrog tadpoles, who spend two years in the pond (unlike other frog species), has got wee little legs!


I hauled the hose out of the water barrel, and look who popped out with it, trying to fix up the water fountain in needed water. A grey tree frog.


I was trying to do laundry, first load was good (sheets). My clothes, I wanted to hang it out for the afternoon. Sadly, I forgot to push that 'START' button! Back I went later...the laundry was out for the 2nd time this year. The lovely white and purple violets look so nice around the flag garden.
P.S. Prominent on the laundry line is a lovely scarf my friend, YAM, designed. She lives in Scotland.


And in the forest, the trillium are happy to see the sun. Also, the hummingbirds are back! I was busy making some hummingbird food.

The lone bee house has hatched it's first compartment. I checked, and I'd put it up last September: Mason bee, pollen bee or solitary bee nest box


Then there is the fountain issue. I was trying to straighten it and it tipped over. The pump coupling, into which the copper pipe fits, snapped. I've wrapped it in a small piece of old hose. Jury-rigged. Now I just need someone to help me lift the big piece up over the copper pipe.

Serendipity in the outdoors

I wanted to see who was down at the frog pond. Monday, I managed to capture a photo of Mac Muskrat. Suddenly, I saw something across the pond. I think he has a girlfriend! He left the spot where he was eating, swam over to her, and there was a bit of a confrontation, and a huge splash!
Twitterpation!




I was doing a circuit, and walked back up to the backyard forest to try to look for the owl and/or their nest. I thought I could see a face in the hole in the dead tree. I'm still not sure!


The flowers have been lovely in the forest. White trillium are nearly ready to burst, the red trillium are out, and columbine. Do you know how hard it is to walk, looking at the ground trying not to step on the flowers, but watching the trees for the birds?!
 

Back up on the hill, there was something in the tree. A porcupine having a nap. They are nocturnal. I didn't know if it was the owl, at first, just a dark shape in the sky. The tail gave it away. There is a den across the street. There are quite a few, many become road kill since they cross the highway slowly in the dark. The latter is an archival photo.
 

The ebb and flow of the seasons: tent caterpillars, grosbeaks, trillium

There are the seasons, the changing weather, climate, and there is Climate Change. We can't call it Global Warming, since there are places that are warmer, wetter or dryer, like California.

I've found it interesting to track weather data. My friend, Nancy, has log books from her family which recorded data: ice out, rainfall, etc. My data lets me know how much well water I can use, and if I should refill the goldfish pond! We've had half the rain of May compared to last year.

We missed all of this precipitation, sadly.

Climate – the larger patterns over a region, over a long period of time.
Weather - you can cite regional averages, but 'normal' can fluctuate. They can predict the weather for the weekend, but beyond that, you cannot be sure!

I was checking out the rainfall for last year:
May 2014 we had 166mm. The previous April, 2014, 160 mm rain. Compare this to April , 2015, only 84mm. If April showers bring May flowers, we're a bit short.

Critters depend upon rain, and many need water for reproduction. There are years that the bugs are decimated by a hot season, which affects the birds, others when they thrive.
My stacked wood has attracted many critters.

DRS and a spider. See it?!

Dock spider - they are immense!

The birds at the feeders have been amazing. My foot is healing, and I've been duly resting in on the front porch. I have spotted a couple of new species for me. A Gray Catbird, a flighty thing, only identified by its song, as well as a female Black-headed grosbeak. You can compare the female Rose-breasted grosbeaks with this one, much larger. I'm waiting to see the finery of the male! The white around her eye, the pale beak, and the double wing bars are clues. Her belly is quite pale, with some yellow. You can compare the two grosbeak bellies!

Three female Rose-breasted

female Black-headed grosbeak

Lots of people were out driving in the heat. Many going topless!

We took a backroads drive, on a dusty, dry road. I noticed a lot of the tents. This is going to be a banner  Tent caterpillar year! There were hundreds of thousands of them! They go in 10-year ebbs and flows, I've read.

At one spot, eagle-eyed hubby spotted a turtle. I rescued it, setting it in the direction in which it was going, across the road.

It took the No Trespassing sign to heart!

Such a cutie, Painted turtle

The Trillium are having a banner year. Trillium blankets the forest floor. Bright, white faces shine.

In Westport, swallows and a warbler of some sort! Look up, look waaaay up!

A lot of snappy dressers at The Cove, we had lunch on the patio.  It was good, but we just had pub food, chicken fingers! I did have a salad for dinner...
We like our hats, some of us!
Plus, a muskrat swam by.