Butternut Tree

After discovering the 'Loose and Leafy' blog, I've decided to follow a single tree for a year, and check it out every month.  In fact it sounds like such a good idea for photography, I may follow several trees, at least seasonally.  The tree I've chosen first is a Butternut, Juglans cinerea, growing right in our old stone fencerow, past the garden shed.

The Butternut tree is uncommon, but it is found along the Niagara Escarpment here in southern Ontario so it's not surprising to find it here.  But it's rapidly succumbing to the Butternut Canker disease, so rapidly in fact that it's been named an endangered species here in Ontario.  The search is on to find individuals who may be immune to the canker.

It's a fairly coarse branched tree, here with branches reaching wide because it's growing in the open along the fencerow, but in a forest it grows tall and straight to the canopy.

I chose this tree to follow because I'm worried about it.  Several branches have died since we moved here, and it just doesn't look healthy.  I'll probably have to trim more branches next summer, but if it does have the canker, it's only being affected very slowly. This picture was taken in the fall.

This is a good look at the bark, which consists of coarse vertical ridges that wind a little, joining and separating as they go.  This trunk is about 16" in diameter.  As part of following my Butternut, I'm going to find out how to recognize the canker so I can monitor that.  I think the small black patches may be the start.

The branches are quite coarse too, with no fine little twigs here.  The trees (and leaves in summer) branch out alternately, and the leaves are compound with numerous leaflets, forming a leaf up to 15". long.

Here's a close-up of a twig, taken earlier this fall.  It shows the coarse texture, and several alternate bud scales.  The tree bears an oval nut similar to the round walnut, and this tree bears well.  We have dozens of small Butternut seedlings popping up around our meadow.

The Butternut often shows up in my sunrise shots, taken from the window where I'm having my morning coffee.  It's the left-hand taller tree, just to the right of the shed, and this is what the yard looks like today!  About 20" of snow and -21°C. temperatures!

Lucy's 'Loose and Leafy' blog provides a place to record your following an individual tree for a year, so this is my initial post.  I'll be expecting to make one a month for the next year.  Check it out and visit dozens of trees around the world!

Linking to Tree Following:

Visiting Scotland

I'm still trying to figure out how best to handle the new pages I've added to my blog, a steep learning curve!  How, for example, do I let you know that I've added new content to one of the pages?  I've now written and added a bit of personal advice for travelling in Scotland to my 'Scotland' page.  I've already had comments about that, and it's the most common comment among students in my on-line course.  You can read it here:

I've learned how to set up a page with links to topics, rather than one long post you have to scroll through, and thereby revised the setup of my Scotland page.  I've also learned how to wrap text around pictures - though still somewhat awkwardly.  But I suspect that if I want you to see the new content I actually have to post it on the home page of my blog, and later link it to the appropriate other page.

But this interferes with my blog being mainly about 'seasons in the valley', unless I just accept the fact that only some posts will fit under that heading and some won't.  The only alternative seems to be to announce any new content on the home page of the blog, like this.  Any advice on how to handle this would be welcome.  And in the meantime, feel free to check out my advice for travelling to Scotland if you're interested!

Winter is here!

I think winter is now here to stay.  We had a foot which collapsed to about 6" with 24 hours of warmer temperatures, and now another 10 inches, so it's well over a foot out in the yard.  I think the cross-country ski season has certainly arrived, even though I'm not allowed to for another month :(.  Here are a few pictures of the wintry day around the yard.

Our tall ornamental grass outline against the darker house.

And beside the birch tree cluster.

A little corner of the garden that I like the looks of in winter, which I pass every day with the dog.

In between snow streamers we even had a little bluish sky, here above the line of pine trees that mark the north side of our meadow.

In this weather Roxie doesn't get far before she's plagued with balls of snow between her toes.  So she just curls up in the snow and chews them off (the snow balls, not the toes!).

It was definitely too deep for slogging through the meadow in mukluks, so out came the little cheap modern snowshoes, which actually have their uses.  I tramped a loop trail around the meadow for us in the deep snow.

And eventually I made it up our drive and climbed over the snowplow ridge, to look down the road at our now very white world.

Linking to:

More Barns (and a Little Sunshine!)

I managed to find some sunny skies among my barn pictures from nearly a month ago, so here are a few more interesting barns found on my drives around in and near the valley.  Four of the five are variations on that basic bank barn that is so common here.

This is a different view of a nice barn I posted on Dec. 15th.  Did you notice the pick-up truck parked on top of the old silo!?  I think this farmer must have a sense of humour!  It's the only one this week that has that gambrel roof line.

This is a huge large moderc addition built around two sides of an old bank barn, just last fall.  You can just see the peak of the old barn above the new roof.  It's an unusual style of barn, so I'll be watching to see what kind of livestock the farmer brings in.

A much less active smaller old barn, with an obviously unused silo.  It looks like it's had a shed roof extension on the far side and has seen better days.

Yet another standard bank barn with a shed roof extending it in this direction.  The silo suggests dairy cattle, but I'm sure I recall sheep in this farmyard in the summer.

This is one of my favourite farms to photograph when the fall colours are changing.  The maple tree up front frames the farm view well when it's all red and orange!  An old bank barn in the centre, with several large additional buildings around it.

As you might guess with all the barn pictures, I'm linking to The Barn Collective.

But this is the first week of Sunlit Sunday, a place to celebrate sunny winter days too:

New Blog Pages for 2015!

I have finally got myself organized to add some new pages to my blog, an expanded 'About Me' section, a place for just Fhotography, a page on Scotland, and a place for 'Reflections'.  It's taken me months to decide what I wanted to do, weeks to develop some content, and a lot of days to screw up my courage and finally hit the 'Publish' button.  No new post today, but I invite you to check out the new pages.

Another shot of those Lavender fields in the Cotswolds, just for fun.

I have to first give credit to all of you bloggers out there whose blogs give me ideas, inspire me to try new things, to set goals, and to do some more writing.  You are far too many to list, but I've gathered many ideas as I decided on what I wanted to do.  My first 'Reflection' is on finding so many on-line 'friends' through blogging.

You may wonder why I have a page devoted to Scotland.  Well, we've visited there several times, several of my ancestors are Scottish, and I start teaching a distance education on-line course on the 'Landscape of Scotland' tomorrow.  I'm also giving some Life Long Learning lectures this winter on the topic.  So this will be a place I can draw information together, and maybe post some photos.

I'm excited that these pages will open up new writing and photo opportunities for me, as I expand them with more content.  I may add another page or two, and I may even make the Fhotography page a seperate blog.

I'm a bit of a dunce when it comes to technical stuff, so there was a bit of trial and error in getting here.  You'll see I've reformatted the blog a bit too, a few weeks ago.  And I will still be stumbling through as I figure out the best way to continue adding content, and let you know it's here for reading.  Advice is welcome. But I feel like I've opened a big new door for writing and photography in 2015, a good way to start the year.

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I could just say 'the weather up here is frightful', but it's really not that bad.  We have a good foot of snow now, and as I was walking through the storm this afternoon, the snow gradually turned to ice pellets.  You could hear it tinkling against the trees as it fell.  But the freezing rain is supposed to stay further south.

Our last Christmas/New Year's guests, our daughter, her husband and our precocious 4 year old grandson went home today, so all the rush is over.  Our oldest son called from Haida Gwaii where he's spending the winter, and our second son who lives a lot further north, dropped in for an overnight visit, so it's been a good Christmas for family.  Now it's back to the regular routine, and eventually the decorations will come down and be packed away.

More 2014 Adventures!

Last year's adventures continued through the 2nd half of the year, at least through October - til I had my heart surgery and had to slow down a little.  But back to feeling great now and ready to go in 2015!  Our big trip of the year was to Paris and England, on a garden tour we designed for ourselves, particularly to see the garden at Versailles and Monet's garden at Giverny.

July - The gardens at Versailles - the biggest demonstration of power and wealth in any garden anywhere.  Enormous and very formal, this is the work of Louis XIV, showing the world that he was the 'Sun King'.  This is just one tiny corner of the huge garden.

Monet's Water Lily Garden.  The complete opposite, Monet's garden is a riot of colour, and his water lily garden was the basis for many of his paintings in later years, including his famous water lily paintings in the Orangerie in Paris, which themselves are enormous canvases, about 8' high by 30 - 50' long!  It was amazing to see both the garden and the paintings in one visit!

July - Lavender Farm, England.  We saw a lot of gardens in England, including 2 of the big 3 (Hestercombe and Hidcote, Sissinghurst being the 3rd which we've seen before).  But the highlight of the trip was discovering the incredible lavender fields on this farm in the Cotswolds - 100 acres of purple!  It was at the peak of blooming, ready for harvest, and it was spectacular!

Late July - Canoeing the Saugeen.  Smaller adventures continued at home, including several canoe trips like this one down the Saugeen with some friends.  This continued until a doctor abruptly told me to stop in late August.  Maybe next year!

August - the skipping stone beach at Big Bay.  We did have a great family visit with our grandson to the 'World Capital Skipping Stone Beach', where we skipped stones for an hour.

September - the water powered grist mill in Walter's Falls.  I was really excited about our Photo Group's visit to the water-powered mill in Walter's Falls, one of only 2 or 3 still operating commercially in Ontario.  We got an inside tour which was fascinating.  This is the flume the water runs through from the mill pond to power the mill.

October - Indian Falls.  In late October, our last outing before my surgery was to Indian Falls, the last larger waterfalls in the area we hadn't visited yet.  I see lots of opportunity to return here and get some interesting photos from the gorge down below the falls.

December - Ice at Georgian Bay.  No such adventures in November and December, but I did enjoy the day I drove to Meaford and found this ice along the shoreline of Georgian Bay.  I'll return over the winter and see if the ice accumulates and forms bigger sculptures.

So in spite of two months off for recovery, I think we had a great year of adventures.  Tomorrow I'll get back to some regular posts.  It snowed more overnight, so we now have nearly a foot of light white powder - feels like real winter!

2014 Adventures

While I was selecting the photos for yesterday's review of the seasons in 2014, I was reminded of all the adventures we've had too, so I thought I'd post a few of those.  Getting out exploring and taking pictures is my favourite way to spend time, so the adventures we've had, big and small, are my measure of a successful year!

January -Cross-country skiing at Glenelg.   With last winter's snow, the cross-country skiing was the best it's ever been, with very few gaps due to milder weather or ice, and a very long season.  I was out more often than I've ever been.

February -Down in the swamp.  I think my favourite ski trail of all is the stretch of one trail at Glenelg that goes through a cedar swamp - impassible and impenetrable the rest of the year, but a place of beauty in the snow, especially with the sunlight filtering through the trees.

April - The Ephemeral Waterfall.  Just more skiing in March, but several great adventures in April.  First, I climbed down a ski hill and along the base of the cliff to see for the first time, the ephemeral waterfall that is created when Wodehouse Creek backs up and floods during the spring melt.  This was a huge roaring waterfall for a few weeks in 2014, but then dried up completely for the rest of the year.

Iceland - We had a crazy trip to Iceland for a week when we saw an off-season travel bargain at less than half price and decided to try it.  I'm still wary of such 'bargains', but this one was exactly what it promised. We saw geysers, whales, mountains, and some of the most spectacular waterfalls in the world!  This is Gulfoss Falls - all for less than the price of visiting Disney World (and a lot better scenery!).

The flooded karst!  Back home at the end of the month, a friend and I paddled in on the ephemeral lake that is created when Wodehouse Creek, which normally drains down through a sinkhole, overflows and floods.  This is normally a hay field.  It's the drainage from this lake that creates the ephemeral waterfall above, both of which lasted about 3 weeks this year.  This was a really neat expedition, even if short.

May - fossils on Georgian Bay.  On the May 24th weekend we took our grandson and his parents fossil hunting at Craigleith Provincial Park on Georgian Bay.  A beautiful sunny day, and lots of fossils found.

June - Egrets on Chantry Island.  Our little photo group organized a late spring outing to Chantry Island, off the harbour of Southampton.  It's a bird refuge to protect the nesting egrets, and was absolutely amazing.

The Fabric Artist's Quilt Show!  And for the fabric artist in the family, the giant Markdale Quilt Show took place in late June, after 2 years of organizing work.  It was a spectacular success for the Queen's Bush Quilting Guild, and the fabric artist deserves a lot of credit!  Now she can get back to quilting instead of organizing!  This is my favourite among her many quilts - what I call her 'Explosion Quilt'.

Snowing steadily today, up to about 6", with wind blowing it into drifts.  It's looking like January for New Years!  And the snow just keeps on coming - that's a good thing, a very good thing in my mind.