so many trees :)

Mountain Ash along the back fence

Silver Maple budding

We've got three different Maple trees in our yard, two Silver, three Norway, and one Red ..the Norway's are definitely my favourite - their lime leaves stand out beautifully among the greens all around.

I'm loving having so many trees to watch in this yard. :)

Dear Garden Diary,

I've finally had to break down and hire a landscaper to take the shrubs out. I offered them free for weeks, and only one person came. A few will go next door, Edie and Katie will take some to redo their hedge line, and Marie's sister Leeann will take a whole group to start her new yard. I'm happy they're being saved, and finding homes with good people. As much as I wanted to rip this garden out, I can't just go around killing perfectly good shrubs.

As for what I'm going to plant and where ...that's a good question. I know what I want, I'm just in the process of making sure I place things as best as I can for these wacky top of the ridge weather conditions. Wind, again, is going to dictate this garden more than I like..., sigh, but there's not much I can do. Strategic planting, the buddy system, that's what I'm counting on.
A couple of lilac have followed me home recently after a conversation with Anne next door lamenting the loss of the lilac grove in the lot behind which was once Dr. Ballantyne's garden. Apparently before the McMansion was built no thought was put into preserving the lilacs, so they were all mashed before anyone could save a few. I'll never understand that kind of "development"..

The destruction of mature trees to build and plant new trees was the theory yelled at me - literally yelled at me, by Rajni A when I called to ask why the condo development next to Maplecrest Tower was taking down mature trees on the Maplecrest side of the property line. She insisted they were on the side of the new condos (which they weren't), and that they were "in the way." It didn't matter to her - absolute ignorance to how long it takes to grow a mature tree, or to develop natural green spaces in urban areas. We should be preserving them, building around them, not destroying them in the process. I don't understand the mentality of developers in this city.
Rajni went on to tell me how beautiful these condos would be, and how the landscaping would improve the view.. (yes, because un-naturally placed leafless trees, and shrubs from nurseries really compare to mature evergreens). She said, "you just wait, in a few years it will be gorgeous." ...completely self centered and thoughtless... my mother didn't have "a few years" and in the meantime her tranquil view was destroyed. Rajni and the developer were completely self serving. I don't like those kind of people.

So, along with roses, Dr. Ballantyne's garden will come back to this space with lilacs - Madame Lemoine (a double flowering white), Tinkerbelle (pink, and a weird hybrid standard at that- so unlike me), and of course a few Beauty of Moscow (white-pinkish). I've also learned from a neighbour (um, can't remember his name...) that Dr. B used to plant impatiens all along the south end of the property. Though I have plans to add a border bursting with lush shade plants, at their feet will be impatiens, as it should be.

cedar grove

It was my birthday, and I had some time between appointments and had some time. With the 30x30 Challenge in mind, I found my way into an urban stream. Thankful for my boots and comfortable socks, I stood in the middle of McVicar Creek, sometimes slipping a little getting knocked over by the shallowest running water, suffering a little vertigo for some reason.. 

Suffering great confusion over my photographic demands, my iPhone spat out a few uh, interesting, panoramas. I haven't looked at them all yet. 

The sky was blue and the creek was a swirling mas of bubbles and life rumbling around me. Sometimes a camera just can't capture it, you have to be there.

Where would we be without urban forest escapes? We're fortunate in Thunder Bay to be within minutes of them in every direction. From science at the Tree Farm to Centennial with rivers running between. It ties into why I prefer to be a pedestrian, or on a bike - so that I can take advantage of these escapes. 

Irritated drivers paying the highest price for gas get crankier waiting in dual Tim Horton's line-up for the worst coffee in the world - if only they knew a better perk was right there in front of their eyes, hidden behind asphalt. 

growing a forest in the city

My little Emerald Ash Borer, Madge, and I attended the first class of the Citizen Pruner Program last night. By rare luck Rohan also happened to be in town (in fact his plane landed less than an hour before the start of class and I was there waiting with my boots on as he pulled into the driveway), so he also joined for the evening.

I am SO HAPPY I chose to do this. When I signed up I was literally sitting on my bathroom floor after long cry, sniffling and flipping through The Key when I saw the ad for this year's course. April seemed a long way away at the time, and I really wasn't sure if I would be up to being involved in ...anything...
I decided to sign up, on the off chance I'd feel like doing something by April.

Since that time...

....I've found myself back at work,

involved in other projects,

considering more..

So here I am in April, still crying, but back in it..., and loving this class. 

I've been wanting to learn more about trees. My knowledge of them is very book based and photography driven, but identification often escapes me and I didn't even realize how little I knew about their care until last night.

Many of the urban trees I've admired for years, photographed in seasons, are actually trees at risk, trees who haven't been properly pruned for life in the city. What we need to be striving for is to:

"grow a forest tree in the city." ~ Vince Rutter

Rutter Urban Forestry

Which means assisting trees to grow as they would in their natural forest setting, but in an urban jungle of concrete rivers and competitors for height. Trees in the forest grow tall, reaching their canopies to beyond one another. Urban trees don't compete for that sort of growth, height isn't their main concern.

Survival is really their only real motivation - sort of like grieving parents. Reach for the sky and reach for everything around you, hope for the best. 

The irony being that shortly before the class Madge and I admired some trees in famous Canadian paintings to get ourselves in "tree-mode".. 

Madge doesn't damage trees
she admires them in famous Canadian paintings

Very much in the theme of an earlier post about my desire for a "droopy spruce" for Finn's garden, in my mind I saw a White Pine in a forest - my favourite (with Tamaracks) ~ or something similar from a Tom Thomson painting when Vince spoke of those forest trees in the city. A tree as it should look, and what we admire as fine art. 

We don't have those kinds of trees in urban settings. Our city trees (with the exception of a few) are allowed to reach further than they grow tall. They find themselves developing extra limbs and unnatural growth - things that our human species would baulk at and insist on fixing immediately ... plastic surgeons make more $money$ than radiologists. Just sayin'. 

This class is going to help us take better care of all the trees in our new yard, and any new ones to be added. It has already taught me so much, and changed my perspective. I see trees with new eyes thanks to a few hours of an entertaining lecture ~ what can happen in another couple classes and some field work? A lot, I think. 

Madge, my rather incredible little bug, was hand crafted in clay by artist Heidi Hunter. Her creations are something intriguing, quirky, hilarious, sometimes a little grotesque (but I like that). I've been following her on Instagram, Twitter, and Etsy and enjoyed immensely the "construction" of the Emerald Ash Borers as she made them. She posted photos of their ceramic class anatomy being built from books of bugs - so gross but so interesting. Madge has all her little bug parts, she's a real EAB, just turned to stone and glazed ...so pretty with sparkly eyes. 

Find Heidi by searching @elfguts

links to good stuff:

Thunder Bay Urban Forestry

Why we don't like the Ermerald Ash Borer (the real bug)

More on the Emerald Ash Borer

Vince asked us all to draw a tree at the beginning of class - what we thought what a "perfect tree"...my first drawing was similar to this, but without the roots. (and I added a bird's nest in my first tree) (can't find that drawing).. anyway, he suggested we try drawing another tree at the end of the class, and notice the differences.
In yoga, and during acupuncture I often visualise a tree - specifically the Oak in our front yard. I breathe through the roots, up the truck, through the branches, into the leaves reaching into the sky then back down through it all into the roots and into the earth. Why I left roots off my first drawing ...bothers me.. .My branches weren't as well "pruned" either - more like a city tree than a forest tree. These on my after-class tree may not be much better, it could be taller - with a better canopy.
I wonder what kind of tree I'll draw in a few months...

Dear Garden Diary

I could go on without a computer, and I could even lose my camera, but I could never let go of a sharp pencil and a notebook. Long before digital photography and garden blogs I had my garden journals, and they are still where I do my best thinking. Drawing the landscape and doodling gardens is the best way to visualise plans...

...Photoshop works too. 

It's been hard for me to draw beds that I don't remember very well. I took some photos last year, but not enough - and not while I was thinking 'garden'. Not knowing how much space I have doesn't really matter right now..., they'e big enough beds and I think I can fill 'em (of course I can fill them)

Moving from Pearl (divided or taken whole): ligularia, all adopted daylilies (red, peach, yellow - unknown), geranium *Wargraves Pink, John Davis Explorer Rose, Therese Bugnet rose, Morden Blush rose, Morden Sunrise rose, rudbeckia, stronecrop *Autumn Fire, hostas (of course), tiarella, pulmonaria, irises, peonies x 2, ...um, ..more...

To be added: roses (already mentioned), joe-pye weed, liatris x a few, cone flowers, heliopsis, annual butterfly weed & evening primrose (if they survive a few seasons hooray), heath aster (small white, various other asters, various stone crop, lemon trillium :), ...and who knows what else...

A bird's eye view of this bed is really what is needed to display the haphazardness of shrubs and marigolds - oh and some individually planted cosmos completely frail in the wind.. It's pretty much all going to go. The Oak tree (my favourite) deserves better company. 

Photoshop doodling, imagining those Hansa roses building a (maintained) hedgeline, a mix of sun a shade plants tolerating the changing light from morning to night, ....there are still bare spots in this doodle which are easy enough to fill..., I just wish I had a better sense of space right now.

I'd like to find a Double River Wye daylily (my favourite), which I had years ago, but for some reason never took with me..., or lost along the way.

All of this reminds me of the front garden transformation at Pearl. :)

The south facing side of the house is..., um, ...crazy. The Virginia Creeper has swallowed the house, and though it needs a good haircut it is also a giant birds' nest condominium. This needs to be done carefully. I have no idea how.

I don't want to lose the creeper, I like it..., I even like it swallowing the house. Maintenance is all that's needed. 

As for the two shrubs with a red x mark, ...sorry... they don't even understand what they're doing there. Random round green balls. 

The star marks line the new path we're considering putting in. It became apparent right away that people will always being walking around back to find us - in the shack or otherwise, especially in summer. Having a path added to the existing lockstone will al so enable us (Rohan) to clear it in winter. (Aussie man loves his snowblower...). I've given myself a few extra inches of garden bed against the path to allow for low growing perennials - oooo, and maybe some creeping thyme and smelly things to walk on. 

The first step, as with any garden..., is the soil.., and good grief the soil in these beds is horrible.

This is a view of the little kidney shaped bed outside the shack. Rocks, dandelions, marigold bundles, and a clump of cosmos. For all the efforts in renovating the house, this took me by surprise. Sigh. This garden needed me. 

I know I can't physically do the work, so I'm counting on Bill and the team to turn this over and top it up with some compost and manure mixes. Once the soil is taken care of in these beds (front under the Oak, along the south fence, front east-south face of the house, the weird kidney bed by the shack, ...and the small areas on the north side of the house... That - is what I'm going to tackle this year. That and planting a tree or two in the back (one bare spot)..

...should keep me busy..

Gardening?

Gardening. I do think about it, and what I might do with this new yard of ours. I think that in about twenty-five years we'll have established, somewhat, a garden carefully planted and sort of sustainable. These things always change, as we know.

I'd like to know more about the history of the yard. I know that Dr. Ballantyne kept a rose garden in the NE corner... that is something worth researching.

The current arrangement is ...weird. No, not weird... it's as if someone used some kind of landscape software that mechanically plunked perfectly shaped perfectly boring shrubs in a perfectly boring pattern. Yeah, it looks nice, neat... too neat. Definitely not the jungle style of amygardenerd's blazed trail of past gardens around town.

The only thing that is good about it, in my mind...is very good - the trees. I'm in love with every tree on this property. Again, somebody carefully planned the planting of these trees, but this time I approve. A few maples, a very busy Mountain Ash, and that oak tree out front that has been the focus of my meditation when I'm trying to remind myself to breathe. In spring I'll start documenting them, start doodling some more maps of our outdoor space. I've never had so many trees - so many beautiful trees - to be responsible for, which makes me feel a little bit excited.

The trees are all nicely placed - with the exception of a little scraggly (ash?) out front. See, I really don't know my trees well enough. I have to get better at that. In autumn their colours put on a flawless performance, everyone in tune and complimenting the seat next to them. Spring should be just as good. Understandable how Vivaldi was inspired.

I'm going to call on Urban Greenscapes and the local plantcycle to help find new homes for any shrubs that are removed. Because I'm not entirely sure what the plan is yet - or even a semi plan, or a clue.. I'm not going to do any massive transformation of any bed. There are enough open spaces in the existing beds - large spaces that were filled (dotted perfectly) with yellow marigolds and random wispy cosmos unable to stand up in the wind up here on the hill.
I have photos somewhere of the perfect grids of marigolds, but I really don't want to face my photos folder right now - I'll did those up someday for a laugh.

I've been meaning to call Laura (hi..) .. I'm hoping she can help me with some division and relocation. There are some plants (okay, a lot of plants) at Pearl that I want to have, but I also want to preserve what's there. There are a lot of friends who could use a good division or quartering (that sounds horrible) - and if I could face the house maybe we could organize a plant sale.. *shrug*...
I really don't think I'll be able to go back there until I can see the house full with another family. That awful swirling dizzy feeling swooshes over me and through my body when I think of the air that morning, the last time I was there....the trees, Heather wishing congratulations through Rohan's driver side window as we raced off to the hospital in labour with Finn. The last time I was there, Finn was still safe inside me.
I don't want to see the house empty. Everything about it confuses my memory-reality-mixup in my head - was I really pregnant? Did all that really happen?
I can't go back to the house. Not now...I don't know when..

I'm going to bring my John Davis rose, of course, ...though I don't know where to put him yet. This new space isn't going to be as kind to him as his current space. The problem is, his current space is almost a little too kind, and he can get a little carried away. A garden person/family may not mind, but I suspect most people don't want long reach thorny branches poking into their back door.
It's a lot cooler up here, and the damn wind is effing ...windy.. I'm going to swear a lot about the wind I suspect.
I'm hoping to use roses around the yard as an extra barrier to keep critters both in and out. I'll take Marie Bugnet from Pearl too - I know nobody wants all those teeny thorns. I don't mind the thorns - they can be useful. There's that Morden Sunrise rose (still in his pot, I believe) and Morden Blush, neither very useful but definitely pretty. Front garden beds? They'll have to be tucked in somewhere warm against the house to survive up here.

New rose bushes with replace some of the boring shrubs, big ones, fragrant ones - the ones that remind me of my mother because they reminded her of the beaches of Massachusetts where she played as a young girl. Hansa for one, but I know there are others..., I'll find them.

Bigger space, bigger beds... means bigger plants. Dwarf varieties have filled my other gardens, this one is going to get some big guns. Solomon's Seal, Goat's Beard, hostas of ridiculous size, they'll all be joining us.

The backyard will be dog run territory - literally - enough space for them to truly run. That was another of the many reasons we wanted this house. How do you reconcile a love for dogs, gardens, family space, and still live downtown in walking distance to all the good stuff and the lake? Space was a big issue for us.
Before we moved in we worried we would alienate all our new neighbours. We'd be those crazy dog people with a poopy yard. Little did we know our new neighbours were worrying the same in reverse. Dog rescues to one side, dogs to the other, dogs behind, dogs down the lane - and as it turn out we have the yard to host them all. It's doggyville up here.
Our dogs are happier than they've ever been. It's like a little Tree Farm out there, complete with wide open spaces, and bushes to hide in to leap out on to your basset brother. They're having fun.
Most of the back yard will always be reserved for dog space (and skating rinks).

I'll keep my gardens closer to home.
You would think with all this space I'd have thought of a good place for some vegetables. I thought I had, but the wind blew that one away. The peanut shaped bed near the sunroom boasts nothing more than a cotone aster and a large rock (we like the rock)..., and not that I have anything against the reliable contone aster..., boring. This guy might keep his spot for the mere reason he's about the only one who can stand up to the wind tunnel that frequently, sometimes violently, blows through there. The marigolds and cosmos certainly didn't like it.
Low growing succulents might like the space - maybe some more rocks.., the pretty amethyst rocks Rohan put in at Pearl.

There's a bed at the back... there's a caragana in the corner, and I recall a bunch of hostas. Not much else.. I didn't look to closely before, so we'll have to see what comes up in spring. That bed would be (possibly) the warmest and most protected for a vegetable bed - but it's so close to dog territory it would be at risk for both the sneaky pea and tomato eating basset hound, but also the icky thought of pee seepage in the soil around it.
Let's keep the food away from that, okay.

I'm probably just going to pillage that bed and turn it over to the dogs.

If anything actually gets done I'll be surprised. I can't seem to get anything done these days. Small steps they all say. Don't get defeated. My body aches, it's sick from the grief, I still can't digest anything, and I'm in knots from being so tense and hunched over crying, I'm all twisted up. Sarah did some pretty wild acupressure yesterday to try to untangle some of the knots, but I think some new, bigger ones developed overnight.

Planting would probably do me some good, and I'm sure I'll find myself back in the back of the greenhouse digging in the dirt at some point. Maybe I'll just go for the ladies, ..at wine-o'clock. Maybe a bit of both. Maybe not at all. I dunno....

I'm just not really sure where to direct my garden thoughts. I've thought often about what Heather said when she was here last week - about her birthday tree planting fundraising. It would be nice to do something similar but in memory of Finn. Heather just wanted to plant a tree, but her friends helped her plant ten - boulevard and public trees, carefully placed near people who will care for them all over Thunder Bay. How nice is that?
I'd like to plant some trees for Finn.

I think this year will be mostly about the trees. Trees and roses. Sounds like a good place to start.

wild wooden horses

Sarah and I spent most of yesterday's acupuncture session talking - about creativity, dogs, and Chinese New Year. It was great conversation, and in the frame of acupuncture it was just as healing as the needles. We often have those sorts of conversations.
There was no acu-nap, in fact we laughed so much that I had to keep stopping myself from jiggling the needles out of me. I didn't rest as much as I usually do during acupuncture sessions - it was more like laughing yoga and I came out feeling not only relaxed but rejuvenated in a way I haven't felt for a very, very long time.

Sarah has a very healing way of (doing everything) translating her knowledge whether it is trying to find a way to explain Chinese medicine using English words, or her perceptions throughout our conversations - physically/medically, emotionally and everything in between. These conversations are as powerful as the needles and create a really good energy just in themselves.

I didn't cry as much as I have been during acupuncture lately.

When we got to the subject of the Chinese New Year Sarah told me about an article she had read about the significance of this year of the Wood Horse.

We have just been traveling through [a] void - in two Water years - which immersed us in a descending place of degeneration, dissolution and chaos, a time when our internal world of formless spirit and emotions held total sway over every attempt at external control or order. For most of us, it was an unsettling time of letting go of many things, either voluntarily or forcefully, a time of deep soul searching, with gradual or sudden destabilization in many areas of family and livelihood.

I don't think there is anybody I know who doesn't look back on 2013 as a year of profound change, good and bad - but mostly bad. Massive life shifts, career moves, family's losing and gaining - and losing again. I think about Andy's dad, the awesome Ken Schmidt, who passed away right on the cusp of this massive shift in energies. There are a lot of really incredible people who left us in the last twelve months, and I can't help but wonder if they're all connected in some very special way.

It was just as the second water year began that my mother was given weeks to live, just as the baby growing inside me was making it clear he was a survivor (of pregnancy). Turmoil, chaos, confusion, ...absurdity followed.
Those water years were hard, especially the last, filled with profound loss, but with scattered moments of extreme happiness. Many, many people made major adjustments to life.
It's not just me Sarah and I were talking about - herself, and so many people we know have been though a lot in the last year. I know more people who lost in 2013 than any other year I can remember. Friends (and friends of friends) have been through hell and back with health and life on the line. Lots of people moved too; all over the world, big moves, life changing moves, families blending, families splitting up, new houses, new stuff, new places - coincidence?
Meh, this stuff happens all the time, right?

There might not be a bigger shift of energies

in the entire 60 year wheel of Chinese astrology

 than this one coming up

–the shift from two Water years of deep introspection

to the fast-paced spurt of extroverted forward propulsion

that the Wood Horse brings.

It's impossible for me to not look back on 2013 and not try to find some sort of meaning. I'll be doing this for the rest of my life, I'm sure - sifting through the chaos, trying to understand the absurd (running on a hamster wheel). At the same time I'm desperate to find a meaningful path to follow forward. I've been feeling this strong sense of disorientation for months and need more than anything some clarity.

This feeling I have of being in a new life dominates the days. I'm in a new house, surrounded by things and friends from the past - familiar but new simultaneously, missing some significant people, not quite knowing what to do with myself, not really knowing how to define myself anymore ...I even think I look different (beyond just the expected postpartum changes). My old life ended when Finn died, and I've sat stagnant ever since.
Is this lunisolar event a new beginning, or the start of something? I want to hope so.

The article goes on:

This will be a Promethean year, the Beginning of all beginnings, arriving around January 31st to February 4th, 2014. Full of uplift, optimism and compelling inspiration, we will be guided into purposeful action of the most elegantly simple and powerfully fruitful kind. After two years of feeling every revelation of corruption in the dark as if it was scouring our subconscious insides and wringing us dry of watery emotion, we are ready for this change! Light, hope and clarity of vision gallop in.

We laughed throughout my acupuncture session every time Sarah said, "Giddy up!" like a new mantra or affirmation. It sounds so silly. Silly, but effective (and I suspect a lot of people will be saying it in the coming months). Later in the day Rohan and I laughed at a CD that arrived as a freebie in an order of wool I received - it claims to be music for creativity along with affirmations, which I assume are things like "I am beautiful" or "I am worthy" and other nauseating phrases. I'm going to guess there's no "giddy up" on that CD.

This is a year to follow your inner voice like never before, for it will have a universal cosmic ch’i within it. Higher guidance is with us every step of the way. Reach for the sky, call up your vision, fuel your plans with vision boards and creativity, find a fresh path and pace yourself well.

My inner voice and vision have spent the last few months as a tree, specifically the oak tree that anchors the south east corner of our front yard. In the early days after Finn died Sarah had me use the image of a tree as a device in relaxation breathing - to take me someplace else and be something else, breathing in from my roots and reaching toward the sky, feeling the light and the air, imagining the seasons...all of it. I've used it daily ever since, and always as a way to calm myself before a grief counselling session.
The tree works for me, I've always had a good relationship with trees - from my childhood spend in Wishart's forest to the rows of the tree farm, and of course my affair with the trees of Waverley Park and other urban giants.

Trees are about the only thing that have interested me about our new yard. The garden stuff will come in time, for now it's just not a big concern for me (I imagined myself too busy with a baby too think much about it).
The trees in the yard - and in the park across the street - have actually been quite entertaining. Their colour in the autumn is how I see the blur of those weeks, and their lights are what brought me (and others) a smile at a very dark time (of year and otherwise). The Wild Thing in the park will never be seen as two ordinary trees urban trees, but always with ears and horns looking out on the lake. In the backyard a small mountain ash has the wings of a million birds every day, its berry supply almost entirely devoured already.
It's easy to correlate all this tree business to wood and the symbol of the wooden horse, and if anything I can consider it a starting point - to something..

I'm already on a fresh path, not by choice but here I am; and I have no choice but to pace myself because my body and my mind need to heal slowly. If a little bit of optimism is ahead I'll take it.

Waverley Winter

Waverley Park
4 January 2013

A Bright New Year's Day

1 January 2013
10:58:03 AM

It's a new year, a new beautiful blue sky day in Thunder Bay. I should be outside soaking up the most of it, but my holiday hibernation switch hasn't yet been turned off. I see no reason to get dressed today. Flannels & slippers #ootd

Now is as good a time as any to update this blog.. I've been feeling a little embarrassed since the January 2013 issue of The Walleye was released and the reader survey gave it a number two 'Best Blog' mention ...knowing that I haven't even looked at it in months. So, being that resolution time of year I'm going to add 'update blog regularly' to the list. ...but really, I say that all the time. For years I've been putting off finishing my glossary here, and somewhere along the way I stopped listed my book wishlist, which I miss.. this passive aggressive blogging behaviour needs to change. Today feels like a good day.

In the last twelve months I've carefully watched #TBay Tweeters, images in Instagram, and followed the 'Thunder Bay' Facebook feed full of photos - all the historic print & postcards and countless current shots of sunrises over the Sleeping Giant- it never gets old - ...it's been fantastic to watch and read the pride. I've met some brilliant Thunder Bay people through Walleye assignments, everyone so humble, ready to share, grateful for the paper's nod. I can't tell you how much it means to be a part of something that spins such positivism.  

fruit & popcorn strings

hung for winter birds

at St Paul's on Waverley

I see good things ahead in 2013. Our neighbourhood is full of fun people, thriving local businesses - walking distance to everything we need, friends, food fine & diner, anything we want. I'm surrounded in parks, outdoor skating rinks, and some of the City's tallest trees. I've never been happier about where I live.

My camera and I have big plans for the year ahead; not sure exactly what, but we're pretty comfortable with each other now so it's time to take our relationship to the next level. I'm still constantly amazed with what the iPhone can produce, and the photo app experimentation is endless... makes it too easy sometimes. Instant sharing has sucked a little quality time away from this blog. 

Collecting photos of favourite trees has been an ongoing project that requires better organization - especially now that I see that so many of my photographed trees have been turned into stumps. (This should definitely be the year I join that citizen pruner program...) I never get tired of roaming the city with cameras; there's so much to see when travelling by foot (or bicycle), slowing it down, taking shortcuts through parks, recreational trails & downtown river walks. 

I am smitten with this new tree on St Paul Street at Red River. 
It is so full of potential - I can imagine it years from now, 
dressed up in lights with ornaments for the birds. 
What a nice addition to downtown. 

It makes me want to breathe a little deeper. 

As for a gardener's resolution or two (or many more)... the list is long, kind of like the gardener's to-do list. That's nothing new, not even in a new year. R commented (complained?) the other day about the tulips and daffodils suddenly available at Safeway, "It's still December!" he said with an eye-roll. I was preoccupied with photographing the spring blooms and checking out the new 2013 gardening magazines already on the racks to think there was anything wrong with daffodils in December. My Christmas loot included a few new titles for the garden book shelf, putting me in the mood for spring planting as of Christmas morning.

Here's to 2013 

to a healthier life, to family & friends and to the best of Thunder Bay, Cheers!

Big Boreal Adventure

Big Boreal Adventure

There are 35 of these cedar posts around Thunder Bay, each topped with a plaque designed by a local artisan depicting relevant nature-based images. Refer to your free guidebook (available at Thunder Bay Public Library locations) to learn more about each location, as well as clues on getting there. Guidebooks also include blank pages for rubbings at each post.
This is such a clever way to encourage people outdoors, and to explore the incredible nature trails within the City. It's sort of amazing that these places exist between the lanes of Thunder Bay traffic - between a place filled with lousy drivers and ignorant "specials," but it does. Tranquil is one word, a deep breath is a feeling. Sometimes I wish more people around here appreciated these places as travel routes, ...but most times not - for as well travelled as they are they are still underappreciated, even unknown, to so many in #TBay.
They've also now included geocaching - with GPS units available through the TBPL - something perhaps I'll rope in T & W to explore in. ;)

The new trees along the McVicar Creek recreation trail are amazing, simply amazing. Imagine this path in a few years when those maples gain a little weight. I walked this path every day to and from work for years year round; my love changed and grew in so many ways every day.

If there is anything in Thunder Bay that people need to appreciate more, this is it. How lucky are we to live here, and to have this steps away from home? Peace in the City.

more trees

another favourite Waverley  Park tree

Favourite Trees of Waverley Park I

24 September 2012

#favouritetrees #urbanforestry

Birch Point Park

Boulevard Lake

Disc Golf at Birch Point Park

The 1st Ever, Right Deadly, Birch Point Disc Golf Tournament takes place this Saturday, September 15^th beginning at 11:00am at Boulevard Lake, Birch Point Park. Not only is this tournament promising to be amazingly fun, but it offers a great opportunity to see how integrating recreational activities into natural environments and existing parkland benefits our community....

Read more in The Walleye: Right Deadly Fun.

Our local course at Boulevard Lake’s beautiful east side Birch Point Park has had its target baskets since 2010, thanks to a few guys with drive(rs), with support from Innova Discs, and a City’s Park Division dedicated to environmental ethics and public well-being.

Open to anyone, with the only cost being in discs (which can vary in price from $15 - $30), disc golf is an ideal sport for our outdoor-loving City.  

Our 18-hole course takes you on about a five kilometre walk

 through the park’s celebrated treed peninsula,

 the pace entirely up to you.

Phil Jamieson throwing
at Birch Point Park

Tournament entry fee is $25.00 which includes lunch, and a tournament print disc. Register at The Loop Clothing (corner of Red River and Court), or come out to Birch Point on Saturday to watch an afternoon of right deadly fun.

Link to their Facebook group Birch Point Disc Golf or directly to the The 1st Ever, Right Deadly, Birch Point Disc Golf Tournament page.

Follow them on Twitter @TBDiscGolf

Check out www.innovadiscs.com for information about disc golf, glossary of terms, rules of play and more.

Weather Hypochondriacs

 Oh dear, here we go again. The Chronicle Journal spent Monday contradicting itself from one page to another. A regular victim of the 'global warming alarmist syndrome', our local newspaper should spend a little more time researching their trivia, and possibly do a little bit of unbiased investigative research.

On page A2:

"Today's Trivia

1932: A day of Muggy heat

(28.3C) spawned an electrical storm with heavy rain in

the Chaplin area of Saskatchewan. It flung utility poles across roads, blew down barns, coal sheds, and chicken coops (oh no!)...and overturned wagons. In Chaplin, the Alberta Pacific Elevator Company'soil house was lifted and carried several metres, and a building filled with barrels was left in the middle of the road.

World Environmental Day

Courtesy of the David Phillips, 2012 Weather Trivia Calendar"

...must have been "climate change" that caused that storm in 1932 - they just didn't have a fashionable name for it yet.

Two pages over, the CJ tells us that "climate change is very much upon us" because the East End flooded after some heavy rain. Obviously my heart goes out to all those who lost so much, but flooding shouldn't be unexpected in a place that was once, not long ago - geologically speaking, at the bottom of a Great Lake.

Our house here in Port Arthur was also once at the bottom of our Lake. Maybe someday it will be again. My first UofG hort course years ago had me running all over town tasting testing soil (yeah, I ate some...in the name of science!)... anyway, it gave me a great appreciation for our geological history from a garden soil perspective - most of which was once under water. This should be the perspective we view our City in, and respect that.

The alarmist perspective doesn't help. "Weather over the northwest is getting more erratic all the time." No it's not. It's always been erratic, changing - for about 4.5 billion years. Locally, I can point directly to the thoughtless and environmentally careless clear cutting around the Dog Lake area for changing the wind patterns in the City. ...just an observation from an observant gardener and greenhouse worker. It broke my heart when I saw what they did out there, just as it is over that ridiculous clover leaf at Hodder Avenue and 11/17. Do you not think that by changing that landscape we're not going to notice a change in the City of some sort? Some gardener somewhere will notice - or a cyclist riding along a bike lane - a new wind, a different water run-off...
This is not "global warming" that's changing anything in Thunder Bay - it's us. Stupid humans who think that they know more that mother nature, that a few trees here, and a little bit of the oldest rock on the planet won't be noticed if taken away and destroyed.

Winter and summer have been noticeably warmer and cooler many other times in the long & changing climate history here on the Canadian Shield. This is not something new and alarming CJ.., this is poorly researched, incorrect "journalism." It's interesting: I've been reading more and more about Medieval gardens - after my mother gave me a great historical gardening book for my birthday (Even from palliative care, she's still ordering books from Amazon using her iPad - which is hilarious, and so her. Love.) We are growing very similar gardens these days to those found in medieval England for similar social and cultural reasons (backyard veggies & self sustainability), and in a very similar climate. For years I've been intrigued by Shakespeare's flowers - all the same plant name I read on tags in greenhouses, in seed catalogues. It was some time last summer, we were driving - and on the radio they were talking about how so many medieval & renaissance still life paintings - or any painting that included vegetables, or meals featured this crazy looking purple carrots - just like we're seeing again now ...on the radio they were marvelling at this as if we should all be surprised. That surprised us, as we drove around.

Hannah's reading 1984 & Animal Farm and she thinks they're weird. (My mother ordered those books also - in a sweet hardcover that includes both books.) We've been trying to tell her that there are some good lessons in history - even more interesting when that history is looking into a future we've already passed. (Hey, where's my Tardis?!) If Thunder Bay is Manor Farm, I'd like to know when the pigs are going to take over...because maybe that's what it will have to take to stop the human's poor behaviour. Call it an environmental revolution, and look at it through eyes that have read how damaging ignorance and indifference can be.

If you want to know why our Lake is warming, infested, filthy, becoming increasingly unhealthy - take a look at your street, look at the run off water - and the cigarette butts that are in it. Even with our early spring, snow free roads, it took our Stupid Human City too long to get around to cleaning the streets this year - so much garbage everywhere, so much that could have been swept, ran off into our urban streams, into our Lake, on to cause problems that someday will be reported as shockingly alarming "climate change."

We put asphalt at the bottom of a Great Lake, buried the mineral rich soil beneath, we let garbage blow around on it, oil spill on it, waste fuel on it; we've taken away trees who have the roots to hold it all together - more than we stupid humans will ever have - real roots, a real connection from the sky to the soil. We've been so greedy in north-western Ontario - and continue to be, then we cry "climate change," rally, plant new trees, a garden, and think we're making a difference. But are we? Really? How can we justify that stupid clover leaf or what they're doing to the Lake Superior landscape with that highway expansion? This is not a global issue or the El Nino, or because we used too much aerosol hairspray in the eighties damaging the ozone - this is local - local stupidity and greed. Ignorance is bliss, isn't it.

How about a change in leadership. A new pig. Maybe we don't need councillors who doesn't think bike lanes are dangerous, waste time & money at the cost of our environment, and destroy our history (buildings, parks & landscape) for the sake of a parking lot for lazy people who think four blocks is the Boston Marathon.

::::deep breath::::

I wish we would see more informed articles like this: http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2012/05/29/global-warming-alarmism-when-science-is-fiction/ 

tbay urbanforestry

A favourite tree
on Court Street, across from Safeway

Urban Forestry & Memorial Ave

Will the two ever reconcile? I can only imagine how a tree lined avenue would change the entire atmosphere of Thunder Bay. Right now it's a long, desolate highway running through the City; appearing to span even wider by the asphalt covered shoulders - most right up to the box shop doors. 

It's takes me about half an hour - 40 minutes maybe to walk to Chapters from home in Port Arthur. Intercity another 20. Easy, but ugly. It could be such a lovely walk..., along side walks and recreational trails for bikes lined by grassy shoulders, in difficult areas in winter: paving stones and trees in large containers, pocket gardens of hardy shrubs and seating for people waiting for city transit. All these places are walkable, but people don't want to walk the walk. 

I can imagine the memorial trees, plaques that connect people to Thunder Bay's history, stuff that means something - give people a reason to think, come back, feel something about the City. It could be so beautiful.

An excellent letter in the Chronicle Journal (19 May 2012) 

on the subject of the City's urban forestry plan

and the meaning of Memorial Avenue:

:o)

green forest

Tree Farming

 MNR Tree Farm

10 March 2012

Pretty City Trees

a colourful Mountain Ash
I pass each day