Fables of the Green Forest

In the news, Forest Fires...and brush fires within the city.

It's going to be a hot, dry, Smokey season. Since the beginning of May I've been hearing the saying "April showers bring May flowers" a lot, but April didn't have very many showers this year - so I don't know what kind of May flowers we're to expect. A fellow gardenerd sat in my office today lamenting her 200 bulbs that appear to have missed their season. Her crocuses didn't bloom, and her tulips are stunted - much like, I suppose, my mother's, who are showing petit flowers on short stems this year instead of the sturdy (medium) flowers they should be. They're cute, but incorrectly cute.

I've been wishing for rain (so I can wear my new boots) and hoping for a good thunderstorm. I moved the last group of my plants from the front holding beds to the back holding beds last evening. *tangent* I know it sounds corny, but I feel a special attachment to these plants now. For a while there (when I first started this journal) I had come to accept that I would loose everything I moved - the winter was so harsh, I had given up. Looking back at all my pictures of my garden had me lamenting...but now they're back, and they look (surprisingly) healthy.
HUGE root balls - lots of soil, that has to be the reason they made it. I love my soil ;). What those plants need now is some rain, a deep soaking, and some lightning.

The temperature hovered up in the high twenties today, a typical July day in May. Wasn't it heavy jacket weather two weeks ago? There was snow a month ago. Yesterday was cool, and today Hannah begged to go to the Cascades. What's going to become of the forests this year if I'm worried about my dry garden plants?

The water bombers were out last weekend. We saw a number of them swooping over Canadian Tire. I've never seen so many at one time (making me think they were practicing), nevertheless there they were - the season's begun.

This quote is well said,

"Fire has always been, and will continue to be, a significant and natural phenomenon in Ontario’s forests. The Boreal Forest environment is a fire-dependant ecosystem. Fire itself is neither friend nor foe and only becomes good or bad as it relates to human values."

Ministry of Natural Resources Forest Fire Management

Again I'm reminded of David Attenborough's Private Lives of Plants. He demonstrates, using a fire engine's ladder, the energy it takes for a tree to pump all the water it needs to all it's branches - upwards. Silently, he adds, in comparison to the roar of his truck. Trees are so clever :)


and...
Aboreal Emblems from the Canadian Forestry Association

and...
The Ontario Forest Industries Association (OFIA) is a provincial trade association representing member companies that are the responsible stewards of between 75 and 80 percent of Crown land managed for timber in Ontario.

and...
Tree Index from Iowa State University, part of Project BIO.


and...it's past my bedtime.