Summer has arrived = Summer Solstice

A small taste of light and sound from the Anishnaaabe:

Since sound travels at about 3sec/km and the fireworks are 10km away, the sounds from the first burst don't arrive until the end.

wise old bird

PS At Plus 19C this was much much warmer than on New Year's eve/Hogmanay/Silvester, maybe proving "native" intelligence?

McGee Creek Revisited

June 24th, 2016:

June 18th, 2019:

Difficult to believe!  That was looking west, down stream from the bridge. Now let us look  upstream on July 2nd 2016:

And on Tuesday June 18, 2019:

Evidently the cattle have not been using this pasture recently this year - maybe one ought to contemplate growing wild rice or "manoomin "   and let the beaver help. Would the Conservancy enter into a partnership with the grower to help sell the rice? Maybe one could encourage the beaver to build the dam upstream from the bridge to increase the flooding- However, from time to time, the dam would have to be lowered to maintain a flow of water needed by the "manoomin". Let global heating come!

Wise Old Beard

American Pie

These impressions, and there are many, have been filed under UFO. However, I think the bird is an American Tree Swallow, maybe playing in the mud.

I think there is only one and the same bird appearing in all the photos although last year there was definitely a pair. I suspect our "season" is  a couple of weeks late since there is also no sign of the Baskettails hatching - will check again today.

WOB

Dear Wawa - at foot-bashed-in, a year later

I was returning to the scene of a year ago when I saw a pair of Canada geese and a large number of goslings -

Later I saw a third adult was also swimming near by:

In response to my "Wawa" I have changed the captuon/header from knee to foot.

Wise Ol' Wawa Dad ( aka WOB)

Continuous as the stars that shine

I continue to quote from William Wordsworth's poem, "I wandered lomely as a cloud"

Now I will look at some of the variations in white:

The petals may be narrow or round, smooth edge or wavy.

There are more variations than this, but apparently not where I was in the "here and now". Maybe I will be able to return to Durham Wood and see if the variations  seen in 2011(?) are still to be found.

By the wayside of memory recall I have been trying to get the MacBeth quote - it is Dunsinane Hill
and "Macbeth shall never vanquished be, until Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill Shall come against him."

So nothing to do with Durham Forest at all - now I can have my nap - sorry, a holiday this morning!

Wise  Old Bird

I wandered lonely as a cloud

It actually was trying to rain since Kim had applied to be here. However, ...   !

There were a few groups of red trilliums which I will show here:

The reds are among the whites but not as numerous.

The reds appear to be scattered among the whites. There might be an influence from beech trees - or it might just be the nature of this woods, on the floor of what was once a post ice-age lake-

Ten thousand saw I at a glance

It is hard for me to realize how long it has been between entries. 2000+ photos later and I have a mission to communicate some observations I made of trilliums in Scout Valley. The quote is from a
poem by William Wordsworth entitled "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud"

Now I am anything but a poet. However, I did see close to 10,000 trilliums, maybe not in a single glance but over an interval of an hour  and a hillside. The following shows their state of blooming this year.

More or less: all the whites are trilliums. (There were a few other species with white flowers but not enough to alter the statistics - I haven't showed all the plants.