The Promise of Spring

The spring flowers are bursting at the seams here, just tantalizing us with their swelling buds, but not quite blooming.  And it hasn't snowed again in five whole days!  Spring for me is not just the spring flowers blooming, but the anticipation!  And may the snow be finished by now!

Yes I have to record this, but the Daffodils don't seem to mind and recover quickly!

In the back yard, the first of what will be many Primrose is in bloom.

This is the first of the umbrella Primrose, which has somehow found its way through the leaves.

And the Hellebore are starting to look like themselves.

There's one Broad-leaved Grape Hyacinth in bloom.

And the Daffodils are oh so close!

The Forsythia will bloom in a day or two too.

Out front the buds of the Hyacinth are ready to unfold.  I'm almost counting the hours for some of these!

Down Nelson West

Nelson West is one of my favourite rides, but one I avoid much of the summer.  It's a favourite because of the startling variety of older homes, from big to tiny.  And it's one I avoid because there's a 200 yard stretch of pavement that is simply absurd!  It's called 'alligator pavement' and it makes riding a wheelchair both painful and difficult.

But the other day I ventured forth, largely to look for any changes.  This is a Heather just coming into bloom.

There's one house with very nice gardens, here a patch of yellow Crocus.

They also had a very few Snowdrops.

And a small patch of Squill.

After that I was hard-pressed to find any more spring flowers, but this old tractor was still there.  Hasn't moved in at least 7 years.

A combination of Canadian patriotism and Easter I think.

And my favourite old barn.

Here at Home

 After my ride the other day Mrs. F.G. practically chased me out of the kitchen onto the back deck and patio when I got home.  I rode down the ramp and she started moving pots so I could get close to the Crocus for pictures.  These are the Crocus I see in the distance from the window.  It was fairly warm and the sun was shining so it was a great opportunity to get some quick shots.

We've got a mixture of bright yellow, blue and white Crocus out in the back garden.

They certainly provide a bright spark of colour in the early spring!

I had almost forgotten that we have a dense patch of those brilliant royal blue dwarf Iris, my favourite spring flower.

And one more, yellow Crocus right below my bedroom window.  Spring is definitely here!

Around the Block

 Got out for my first slightly longer ride on Saturday, and really enjoyed it.  Looking for signs of tree buds showing up, but found nothing, just a few spring flowers in a friend's garden.  I'll be heading out after I post this again - it's 17°C here!  A heatwave for April!

Let me see now.  Blogger has loaded these in the reverse order I intended.  I wonder if I can write the post backwards.  It was a beautiful and warmish day, about 8°, so with my jacket I was fine.

A big Willow I passed, showing off its bright yellow colour.

Down the street I went.  Everything was pretty clean, and the sky was blue!

A tall White Birch I pass, it reddish twigs almost ready to send out those tiny leaves.

At my friend's house I snapped some tiny Snowdrops.

And another nice patch of those beautiful tiny blue Iris.

On my return trip I passed the hospital and the line of tall trees marking the top of the ravine - actually the top of that Nipissing shoreline, which in this location is well forested.

A couple more nice maples that turn beautiful orange in the fall.  This is one of my favourite rides in the summer, taken when I just feel like a shorter ride.

Back to Regularly Scheduled Programming

While I've been regaling you with stories from the ancient past my favourite spring flower has started  blooming, the dwarf Iris in a brilliant royal blue colour.  It's right by the front door, on the south side of the house where I watch for it every spring.

                     

Ah, but then winter blew in with a reminder that it's still April!

Just a light dusting this time, thank goodness.

Those poor Daffodil shoots just carry on.  

But then, even worse, they came along and spread more grit!  Just what I don't need!

By the next morning though, the snow was gone and we were back to a view that looked like April.

Some distant yellow Crocus, about 20 feet away.  Bright sparks of colour in the garden.

Ancient Glacial Shorelines Here in Meaford

The last post I'm going to do in this short series is one I've been thinking of for a long time, and that is the ancient glacial shorelines that run through Meaford, one of them passing  just a couple of blocks from where we live.   These are just things that fascinate me, hills that I see as we drive or I ride around town that intrigue me.

The first is the Nipissing shoreline, dating from about 4000 years ago, when glacial lake levels rose again following the very low Lake Stanley episode.  This shoreline is found around much of Lake Huron and Georgian Bay, if you know what you're looking for.  The waves on lakes abutting a gentle hill will cut into that hill, carrying sediment away and leaving a relatively steeper bluff behind.

This is my crude attempt at drawing the Nipissing shoreline as it passes through Meaford, with apologies to my readers from out of town.  It starts in the east end forming the north edge of Lakeview Cemetery, as anyone who has been there will recognize.  It wiggles a bit where the Georgian Trail cuts through, and forms the long hill up Sykes Street.  If you take the back road it's behind houses on the south side of Edwin Street. and curves around to hit the Bighead River.

Shortly up the Bighead it's represented by the rapids where the river has cut through, and then it curves around forming the south side of the bluff where the hospital sits - Hospital Hill they call it.  Then the old shoreline curves around west of the Community Centre and Arena, the fairgrounds and continues north.  In so doing it crosses Collingwood St., the hill I ride down when I ride downtown.

Last spring, before the leaves were out I stopped at the short dead end of Berry Street, just north of the river and south of the hospital.  This view is looking directly west at the dead end, up that steep hill.

Slightly to my right was this view, the forested slope across someone's lawn, a corner of the hosital visible at the top.

Partway back out that short street you can look up to where the water tower and helicopter landing pad for the hospital sit.  I left the garage in for scale and perspective.

The ancient Algonquin shoreline is another story.  It isn't visible passing through town, but rather wraps around town, extending in a confusion of slopes up into the Bighead Valley.  This was the level  established about 9000 years ago as the glaciers first retreated, the same age as those hunting structures on the Alpena-Amberley Ridge, deep under Lake Huron.

Perhaps the easiest place to see the Algonquin shoreline is on Grey Road 7 when you're heading south at the east end of town.  The hill at this point is certainly big enough that you can't miss it.  It's much larger than the hills associated with the Nipissing shoreline.

And of course you see that hill again when you drive back down it into Meaford, one of our beautiful views over the bay.  So there you have it, ancient glacial shorelines at a very local scale here in my hometown.  Having put this together I can think of several other photos I'd like to get, and more information I'd like to find, especially about the Algonquin lake level.  Perhaps then I'll write a more comprehensive post about this.

The Indigenous Legends

 Now that you know about the discovery of ancient indigenous hunting sites of the Alpena-Amberly Ridge, lets move a little east and look at the stretch of water between Tobermory and Manitoulin Island.  Tobermory sits at the northernmost tip of the Saugeen (Bruce) Peninsula, and is known for its offshore islands and shipwrecks (two right inside the harbour).  The area is now encompassed by the Fathom Five National Marine Park.

The Niagara Escarpment that creates the eastern shore of the peninsula continues as the east shore of these islands, all the way to Manitoulin.  And with divers exploring 24 shipwrecks, scientists have discovered both ancient tree stumps and a gigantic submerged 'waterfall'!

This map is intended as a wall hanging, but it's the best I've found to show the location of that ancient waterfall, in dark blue.  This waterfall formed during that Lake Stanley phase of the Great lakes, and necessitated a river flowing from Lake Stanley to Georgian Bay, creating this waterfall.  

In those ancient days there would have been an actual waterfall, said to be larger than Niagara Falls today, but of course now that it's submerged, there isn't any water that's actually falling.  The white somewhat triangular-shaped island where the deeper water channel seems to begin is Flowerpot Island, where our family camped in about 1967.  I never dreamed a big waterfalls was just offshore!

We get a different view in this bathymetric cross-section, the peninsula on the left, and Manitoulin on the right.  The river channel leading to the falls is clearly shown, leading to that deep plunge pool offshore.  There's a secondary river and waterfalls on the right hand side, between Fitzwilliam Island (the arrow-head shaped one) and Manitoulin.

I'm just blown away to learn this and see the diagrams, since we once had a cottage on Manitoulin, and made the trip by ferry at least 40 or 50 times, as well as visiting Flowerpot Island.  

At the lecture that sparked these posts, one of the things Lenore mentioned was ancient legends of the elders from Neyaashiinigmiig (commonly known as Cape Croker), the closest community of the Chippawas of Nawash that suggested a land bridge between the peninsula and Manitoulin.  I'm not sure it would have been a 'bridge' as we understand the term, but there was certainly a lot of dry land around the islands.

Returning briefly to the research on the Alpena-Amberley Ridge, as well as the drive lanes that the researchers discovered, the divers took samples of the soil and remaining vegetation they found.  By bringing up samples of the sediments and analyzing them, they built a picture of this ancient landscape.  

Professor Lisa Sonnenberg of McMaster University, led the analysis, finding that this ridge would have had small trees and shrubs interspersed with wetlands, giving the appearance of today's today's Hudson Bay  This is one of the stumps they found.

It's not too big a surprise then to read that National Park researchers have encountered stumps in several location in Georgian Bay.  This is another of those stumps.

"Chippewa elders of the Cape Croker reserve have long repeated ‘legends’ of their ancestors being able to walk from Tobermory, at the Northern tip of the Bruce Peninsula, to Manitoulin Island, an area that, today, is covered by 90 km of water,"  I guess it's true!