Ladybug’s Friend
September Lavender
Sweet Pea Blossom and Pod
September sunflower
Collected from this morning’s walk.
Lovely to see lingering blossoms!
Fall Floral
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Equinox Escape
Private Campsite!
On the sun’s quarterly landmarks I take a vacation. I am learning new holy days, rooted in the natural rhythms of the universe in which I find myself. On these holy day holi-days, I devote a day to connect with nature directly. To remind my body and my mind what it is to be an animal in this world – away from the mental focus of my regular life.
Sunset view from campsite
This fall equinox, I left the city behind and headed for the hills. Along the David Thomson highway, on the crown land nestled near national parks, there is a wilderness playground for urban escapees.
An informal camp site at the end of a rough road called itself “home” the instant I entered the space. Beside the swift mountain river and ringed with mountains, it made a luxury resort for the weekend.
Harvest Moon
Light to harvest by…
Or Barley Moon, for the ripening (ripened) crops.
Moonset Sunrise Equinox Morning
In my life, this moon is the Fall Jacket Moon, the Darkening Morning Dog-Walks Moon, the Flashlight in the Pocket Moon (for said am dog-walks), and the Alarm Clock in the Dark Moon. It is the First Frost Moon, the Birds Flocking Moon, the Geese V Moon, the Leaf Turning Moon, and the Fall Projects Moon.
Beautiful and bitter-sweet seasonal signs this month – some of my favourites!
Adventures in beekeeping
Fuzzy as kittens!
I escaped the city for a few summers to work at a bee farm, some time ago. In the Honey House I delighted in watching individual bees, fuzzy and wide-eyed as kittens. As one would come trundling along the narrow path of a board edge, I would lower my face to her level at the end of her path. She would stop short and sit back on her haunches to study the new development. After a pause, recognition would dawn and she would turn tail and flee, scurrying back the way she came.
They always seemed to be able to make out the monstrously large face of another being in my features. I was surprised that they related to their fellow creatures in a way that I haven’t noticed in other insects like moths, flies, or mosquitoes. Maybe it’s the social animal coming out in them?
This morning all the neighbourhood squirrels are out industriously clipping and dropping long green spruce cones from the trees, creating a steady “plunk” throughout the alleys.
Our resident squirrel – a yearling who has set up shop under our garden shed – is nimbly flowing out to the slender branch tips of the bur oak in his quest for the last remnants of acorns, occasionally slipping in the insubstantial branches and hanging precariously with a squeak! of alarm.
Where’s Waldo!
Although no other squirrel is after his treasure mine, he must contend with a curious blue jay who stops by from time to time.
Winged Creatures
This afternoon in the back yard I looked up to see the sky filled with a huge (for here – 50+) flock of gulls! Prepping to migrate? No scavenging apparent – they’re all wheeling around, staying airborne. The flock slowly drifts off SE…
Meanwhile on the ground, and equally rare, is a flock of winged ants(?), milling about on the walk, surrounded by a host of wingless ant attendants… or predators – they are hauling off the occasional winged corpse. This happened once or twice earlier this summer, too – we watched, fascinated, as a host of winged creatures were escorted out of the ant-home entrance (in that case, a crack in a stump) by agitated ants. Eventually flying off, looking like tree fluff on the rise – a halo of fast-beating wings surrounding each in the sunlight.
1st geese sighting!
a flock of 9 geese flying south spotted during this morning’s coffee on the deck!
New nature word! BOSKY
Bosky. Covered in bushes or underwood; full of thickets. Love it! Makes me want to head down to the river valley and visit some thickets now!
Bosky Dogwood
Maybe the earliest appearance in a book is Shakespeare’s The Tempest: “My many boskie acres, and my unshrubd downe. IV, I, 81 Ah, how I long for some boskie acres of my own!
My old favourite, Sir Walter Scott, in Lady of the Lake (which I haven’t read – but obsessively revisited Ivanhoe! Which has lots of great nature writing in it, come to think of it) says “The bosky thickets.”
This great word came into my world through Ross King’s, Defiant Spirits: The Modernist Revolution of the Group of Seven, Continue reading
Our backyard hollyhocks were humming with activity this sunny August afternoon! There must be a hive within 3 miles of our place – maybe from the Nature Centre, just down the river. Someone did the waggle dance about our place!
Honeybee!
Field to Forest 