Birds, plants, hiking and digging...

 April 21, 2024

 It has been a week of cool temperatures, a few sunny days, and a lot of wind. There has also been rain, and a few gusting snow flurries coming suddenly out of nowhere, between sunny breaks in the clouds. A few of the flurries came down as bouncing pellets, not quite hail, but hard enough to be heard pattering on the roof. All of it melted on contact.

The new herb bed framing is in, levelled, soil chinked in around the perimeter, and white clover seed pressed into the edges.

The new planks are thicker and wider, and made of hemlock, so here's hoping they last longer. Because the planks were wider, I had to dig out the edges more to set them in because I want to keep my 4 X 16 inside measurements. I am always amazed at what I dig out from the 'undisturbed' soil. I wonder at the habits of those who came before, because there is always stuff. I've found square nails, bits of glass and crockery, and even once, the leather upper of a boot!

Did they just throw stuff wherever?? 

This brown Javex jug was found intact, behind a stone fence, the sun glinted off a bit of it sticking out of the forest litter and drew our attention.

The pond is up, beautifully full, and yesterday a Belted Kingfisher flew a chattering pass over it.

Early in the week, the Tree Swallows returned. There was suddenly a lot of chittering around me, and looking up, there were 5 swallows zipping around the clearing, and arguing over the nest box. A pair appeared to win the rights, and they have been perching on the clothesline poles and above the nest box daily. Nest building has not started yet.

Last weekend we took a hike just inside the Algonquin Park boundary to a place where Trailing Arbutus grows. It is an early spring bloomer with an amazing fragrance. The leaves are evergreen, and the waxen flowers are white, and pale pink.

Closer to home, in some disturbed soil, wee Drabna is blooming. A tiny, tiny plant that one could very easily overlook.

Crinkly, dark green rhubarb leaves are unfurling, and soon there may be enough stalks for a small harvest. The earliest tree to leaf out is the crab apple tree, and this year is it's bi-yearly bloom year. The buds are open just enough to make out the tiny, tight bud clusters.

 

Bush flora and fauna....and barrels 'o peas.....

April 14, 2024

The snow melted, the rain came...is still coming....Thankfully. The bush is now full of the vernal pools that were missing this spring. The pond has come up beautifully, the grass is greening, and when the sun comes out again....things will be bustin' out all over!

The heavy snow has broken down a lot of trees in the bush, and some have just keeled over from all the moisture softening the soil. Hubby has done a round or two of the trails, with ATV and chainsaw, and today we pulled off a few more smaller trees that have succumbed since then. 

The red squirrels have had a prosperous winter with lots of white pine seeds to eat. The stripped cones are lying in piles under trees, beside rocks, wherever the little rodent sat to eat.

The resident Pileated Woodpeckers certainly have lots of options with all the dead and dying beech trees. Apparently something edible was still in this stump after this broken tree was cut down.

More blooming things in the bush...

                                 Eastern Leatherwood

                                           Red Maple

And on the trail cameras....

A moose ambling by. It has a bald spot on its withers where it has probably been rubbing against trees to dislodge it's tick load.

(Disregard the date and time stamp.) This mild winter was probably a bad one for moose ticks.
On the gardening front, I have baby tomato and pepper plants just emerging, under lights, and there is some life starting to show up in my winter sowing jugs outside. Mustard, kale and oregano are poking up tiny sprigs of green. I've since prepped a few more containers and set them out with marigolds and several varieties of lettuce.

Perennials have been moved from the nursery bed in the end of the Field Garden, into the new bed out front, and I shovelled lumps of the remaining snow around them for slow-release moisture. It has been raining for several days since, so my timing was good. By no means is it a finished project yet.

The herb bed has had the rotten edging removed, and the new hemlock planks are being readied for insertion.

This is the first bed we made when we moved here in June of 2017. I was dismayed when I encountered this behemoth right in the middle, which refused to budge.

A couple of years later, I decided to dedicate this bed to herbs. To make the soil deep enough for planting, we cut an old water barrel into sections, and I positioned one right on the rock and filled it up with soil. I made the mistake of planting mint in it, but the rock did help stop the spread. We rolled the mint barrel out, put it on an old aluminum toboggan and pulled it to a spot over near the compost bins with the ATV. I'm sure it will be happy and thrive there! The other piece of water barrel in the foreground has oregano plants in it. The rock is marked on my garden plans every year, and again will be a place to plant very shallow rooted stuff.

A few days before the rain started, I dumped the soil out of these two barrels onto a tarp, revitalized it with some moisture control soil and a good pail of my sieved compost from last spring.

This morning, in the rain, I donned rubbers, waded out along the edge of the overfull pond, cut willow sprigs for uprights, then wove and tied a few more around for supports. A not too tall variety of pea is planted around the circumference. When the rain stops, I plan on putting just a few lettuce seeds in the middle.

What a difference a few days make....

 April 9, 2024

This trail camera picture was taken on March 27, of a few deer milling around the salt block.

On April 4....same camera....

 

A few birds have landed on the branch where we put a trail camera to capture them pulling roving out of the ball for nesting. The ball is a little tufty, so some birds have been at it, but there are no pictures of them.

A Blue Jay with a corn kernel in its beak...

A Chickadee....

Hairy Woodpecker....

And a Robin....

Then the branch after the snow fall...

That snow is all melted now, the surface of the pond has risen a good bit, and the last few days have been the warmest of the year so far. Tree buds are swelling, snowdrops and crocuses are blooming, and there is a definite green tinge on the lawn.

On recent walks, I have heard and seen a pair of Pileated Woodpeckers who appear to be sticking around this area. Birds are filtering in from the south. Song Sparrows are setting up territories around the clearing, Dark Eyed Juncos have been here for a while but are now doing a lot of singing. The Eastern Phoebes are here, having arrived before the snow, and one has chosen the barn for a nest site, sitting up on the peak and calling consistently. Merlin is telling me that a Golden-crowned Kinglet is hanging out behind the garden shed. It is wonderful to put names to all the calls we are hearing, some I've always known, but others are frustrating me no longer!

As far as the eclipse went, Monday morning was clear and beautiful, but clouds rolled in by event time, and we only caught glimpses of the sun whenever the clouds thinned. It was cooler and sort of dim for a bit. 

Serious gardening has started...I've moved some perennials to the new bed, and the herb bed is being readied for it's new framing. Expecting one of my favourite signs of spring very soon....frog song!

This morning.....

 April 4, 2024

Well...I wanted moisture! And it is early in April....

The rain changed to snow mid-afternoon yesterday, and snow is still coming down, but lightly. The thermometer is holding just around the freezing mark. Looks like just short of 5 inches on the picnic table.

The wind is getting up. Already there are branches, and I'm sure, trees down. Mother Nature is doing her spring pruning. Thankfully we don't have to go anywhere, although someone obviously felt the need!

This will bring the water level up!

And just a reminder that it will all melt away, and soon....Took this one of a Wintergreen plant on the weekend....

The forecast has double digits (in the 50's F) starting on Sunday...and sunshine!! Things will really begin to POP then!

Spring stuff...

March 31, 2024

I know it is spring when.....the water cress in the pool below the spring pokes it's head above the surface..

When the bulbous rhubarb shoots begin to show....

Chive shoots....

Garlic poking up under the leaf mulch...

A Snow Drop...

Swelling Lilac buds...

The bush is very dry and appears barren....but look!

What is that wee glint of red up there...??

One of the first things to bloom out in the bush. It is the female flower on an hazelnut shrub. Those are one inch gradations on the cardboard, so, it is very tiny.

The pollen bearing male parts are the catkins on the stem below the blooms. There is an old one from last spring hanging below the new guys in the picture below. They will stretch out, all the little scales will open and release pollen.

I found this hazelnut on one of the shrubs, a leftover from last summer. 

The Hazelnut shrubs are easy to spot now, with the catkins on the twigs.

It is a wonderful time of year to amble around in the bush. The flies and the leaves aren't out yet, so one can see everything that becomes invisible once the leaves emerge.

The header picture was taken from the Egg Rock trail this morning, looking over the Little Bonnechere River where it comes down out of Algonquin Park. There is still some ice present in the river. As we were descending the trail, a threesome of Trumpeter Swans flew along above the waterway, below us, their calls echoing, their bodies so white in the bright sunlight. 

 

Happy Easter.

Spring meanderings......

March 24, 2024

We have passed the vernal equinox, and it seems that Mother Nature suddenly woke up, and is trying to make up for the 'Winter That Wasn't' by the temperatures and snow she is throwing at us now. We have had mostly bare ground for a while, then a good dump of about 2 inches of snow that miraculously evaporated once the sun got at it.

March 18

The ice in the pond went out on March 17, but now is firmly back in, to the point I might be tempted if I still had my skates! This is the first spring in the 6 springs we have experienced here, that the pond has re-iced. 

March 22

Temperatures have been quite nippy, mornings dawning with lows of -11 to -19C. (12F to -2F), some days the mercury barely getting up out of freezing territory. Of late, we have had an abundance of lovely sunshine, with the solar batteries staying topped up so well, it is time to disinter some electrical appliances from winter storage. During the winter, we watch our power usage carefully and use the wood stove a lot for cooking. Living with solar electricity, one is cognizant of electricity being a finite resource.

Yesterday, a cold but beautiful sunny day, we meandered up the Valley to Petawawa where my sewing machine was in for servicing. We did a short foray into the residential area of Garrison Petawawa. There is a park there on a high promontory overlooking the Ottawa River, with a wonderful view of the islands in the river and the hills along the shore in Quebec. The picture does not do it justice. That is quite a steep hill going down from my vantage point. The park is called Home Fires Park, and is dedicated to the families who keep the home fires going while their loved ones are on deployment.

 

Back here, on our home front, Hubby has been trying ways to get at a large fallen white spruce tree that had split at it's base when it fell, but firmly wedged itself up on neighbouring trees. It has been taunting him for quite a while.

The tree top is still hung up, as even with pulling it with the tractor, it refuses to budge. There is another good length of usable log in it.

He was able to cut out one log to process. The tree has been hung up there for a while, and the lumber is very dry. This is some seriously beautiful, dry spruce lumber. The boards are just over 13 inches wide.

We have piled it with stickers between the boards and covered the pile with a piece of metal sheeting.

As far as gardening goes, one can only dream as of yet. I've pruned my little fruit trees, and cleared up winter detritus from around the edges of the clearing that might interfere with the mower. I have cell packs filled with starting mix, ready for a few things I will start indoors, but am trying to patiently wait a couple more weeks. The tulip nubs have stalled in their tracks, helped along by the deer who found them before I got them shielded. They sure weren't a very big mouthful!

Spring sunshine....

March 13, 2024

Spring is surely springing...so say the flocks of northern geese who are going over today in flock after flock. They are so high up, their wavering chevrons are like faint pencil lines in the blue sky, their calls so faint that it takes a bit of looking to spot them. 

The temperature hovered around the freezing point last night, after rising to 15C (59F) yesterday afternoon. There are still lumps of snow around where snow banks were, and on north-facing and shady spots in the bush. The ground is still frozen and hard, but look!!

The first tulip nubs are showing up in the Triangle bed!

On the agenda this morning was re-mounting the Tree Swallow nest box. 

Hubby lagged the board with the nest box onto the cedar post in the corner of the Triangle bed so it overlooks the pond, just a bit further toward the barn than the clothesline post it was on last summer.

We sunk that new cedar post well down into the earth the first summer here, when I dug out the few choked and scraggly perennials that were there around an old, rotting post. It should easily support having the board lagged to it. The triangle bed delineates where the road goes curving around in front of the barn. Last summer, we had hurriedly put a Tree Swallow nest box onto the far clothesline pole when they arrived, then realized what a bad idea that was when I couldn't use the clothesline for fear of disturbing them until the swallows fledged. Once they did fledge, all the little bodies lined up on the clothesline, teetering back and forth to keep their balance.

Other critters had obviously been using some of the Bluebird boxes, a squirrel had packed in shredded bark,

and probably mice had packed in leaves and dry grasses.

On a wander around the clearing in this morning's beautiful warm sunshine, the perennial beds are looking unkempt and my fingers itched to get at clearing them out, but....not until we get into consistently warm temperatures and all the bugs and pollinators who are overwintering in those hollow stems have exited.

One other bird thing was to tie a clump of wool roving encased in a net bag to the branch of a tree for the birds to access for nesting material. We are planning to mount a trail camera aimed at this in the near future.

The pond is still firmly iced in, and we are hoping for more moisture, as it's surface is about two feet short of where it was last spring.