Along the Shoreline

We headed out the narrow, gravelly road from Dyer's Bay (perhaps the most potholed road we've ever driven!), toward the Cabot Head Lighthouse.  It's a long slow drive close to the shore, but we stopped a couple of times to take more pictures.

Cabot Head has three huge outcroppings of the Niagara Escarpment cliff, just inland from the shore.  The one you see every now and then driving along this road is East Bluff.

A closer look shows how high it rises above the water and the road, which is visible on the left just above the shoreline.  These bluffs really stand out with some high vertical cliffs.

I could have stood all day just watching the water roll in directly on the shore.

Crashing at your feet, ...

and swirling around the rocks.

The most amazing part is that along this shore there was a large lumber mill that went right down to the waterlevel, with major docks for shipping lumber to Chicago and parts west.  There is virtually no trace of it today, and most visitors would assume that it's entirely natural.

We moved on a little further and watched the waves crashing on these two big rocks, while I again took too many photos.

Of all the pictures I take, I don't think there's anything nicer than the waters of Georgian Bay on a sunny summer day!  Tomorrow, the lighthouse.

Dyer's Bay

We managed a couple of days up at the trailer a couple of weeks ago, and one day drove out to see the shoreline at Dyer's Bay, and the lighthouse at Cabot Head beyond it (the distant cliff below).  It was one of those perfect Georgian Bay days - a breeze bringing the waves onshore out of dark blue water, under a clear blue sky.

Looking north there's a line of cottages along the shore, but a several kilometre undeveloped shore beyond that to the northeast.

I find waves rolling in on the beach mesmerizing, and could have taken hundreds of pictures!

Looking south you can see the distant outline of Cape Chin, far to the south.

The waves just form never-ending patterns, the surf rolling repeatedly up on the gravel beach.

Because it's constantly changing, you can just keep taking pictures forever.

A telephoto view down the beach compresses the waves and gives a slightly different picture.

I'm trying another video.  In this one you can hear the waves rolling in.
I could listen to the sound of that surf forever too!

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The Moon, Sunset and Sunrise

I finally got an almost-good shot of the moon a few weeks ago - that is it's almost in focus.  At least it was in focus enough that I could crop it a little and get a large image.  I will keep trying.

The best moon shot I've managed in a few years.

I like these wispy cirrus clouds when we see them against a clear blue sky.

We don't get many good sunsets here, with a hill blocking our view to the west, but this one looked promising for awhile.

There were two layers of clouds, the lower darker ones blowing over, and the higher clouds reflecting the sun.  I waited for more pink clouds, but it just faded out.

I posted this shot of the sunrise three weeks ago.  Note where the sun is.

And this shot shows where the sun rose this morning - the location of sunrise is moving south fast as the season changes fastest at this time of year.

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Environmental Farm Tour

On Saturday I had the chance to go on an Environmental Farm Tour, sponsored by the Owen Sound Field Naturalists.  It focused on the Bighead River Demonstration Project, undertaken about 20 years ago.  In it farms were given grants for streambank stabilization, fisheries rehabilitation, cattle crossings, and so on.  It was a chance to see several of these projects 20 years later.  The Bighead River is the next watershed north and west of the Beaver River.

We started at the Bighead River near the 7th Line, in a large bend where the river had been eroding the slope fast!  Rock placement around the entire bend has stayed in place successfully, and the bank is all vegetated instead of bare eroding soil - a good start.

The next project didn't look like much, until you realize that this was also a badly eroding creek, threatening to take out the bridge.  Rocks were placed, but all those Willows were 3-4 foot stems simply stuck in the bank.  They took root and grew, now completely stablizing the bank, and a cheap solution.

Here more rock placement and brush bundles were used to stablize the streambanks.  In all these cases before and after fish sampling revealed up to 300% increases in fish populations, and you could see the clarity of the water.

This stream ran through two cattle pastures.  With bare banks from the cattle access, it was eroding badly, and threatening to take out the concrete well in the distance beside the stream.  Rock placement and cattle crossings solved the problem.

That's the cattle crossing in the centre, simply old concrete beef barn floor slabs placed in the creek so cattle wouldn't stir up the creekbed when crossing.  And with an easy place to cross, they avoided the rest of the creek bank, letting it revegetate.

Here's another cattle crossing in the other direction, not currently in use.  Farmers had to put in a percentage of the funding on most of these projects, which gave them a sense of ownership and resulted in improved maintenance afterwards.

Now the cattle here are fenced out of the creek, and it's a huge improvement in habitat.  My own research when I taught at the Ontario Agricultural College was about how to get landowners involved in stewardship practices like these most effectively.  In this case, they did everything right.

You can't even see the stream here, but those scattered fenceposts run on both sides of the creek, fencing cattle out across the middle of the pasture, with one spot left as a cattle crossing.

This is a alternate cattle watering spot, a water trough with a bit of cement to keep it from turning muddy.  It's covered to give shade and try to keep the water cooler.

This farmer was lucky.  He had a spring high on a hill, and was able to run a waterline that operates by gravity.  And by providing this alternate water source, he could fence the cattle out of the pond and creek entirely.

By this time at farm #7, we had moved almost to the top of the Bighead River watershed.  Compare the creek here to the first picture above!  Rock placement and planting trees on the steep slope to the right solved a really serious erosion problem here and narrowed the creek.  The few boulders placed in the middle of the stream cause eddies behind them in high spring flows, carving out deeper holes, providing better fish habitat.

You can see how clear the stream is here.  The farmer here was really proud of how well things had improved on his stretch of the Bighead.  The other thing the government did right with this program was to hand over the administration of it to a farm organization, the Ontario Soil and Crop Improvement Association (OSCIA).  The result was widespread acceptance by farmers and success in getting practical projects on the ground.  Judging by their success 20 years later, the program was a great success!

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Flowers and a Dying Butternut

The garden is winding down at this time of year, and flowers are fading.  Days are noticeably shorter, and today it's been really cold!  And I almost missed this month's deadline for reporting on my Butternut tree, which I fear is dying.

I almost missed spotting this white Coneflower, and it's now on it's way out, like many of the garden plants.

I think the Heleniums are past their best, but they're still adding some bright colour to the garden.

The sedums are bright and in bloom at this time of year though.  We have both pink and white ones.

We have a couople of sprawling mums, also looking a little faded now.  We thought we'd lost this one, so at least it's survived.

All the Sunflowers were eaten by the critters that do battle with us, but this one popped up from under the Zuchinni this week, our only Sunflower this year.

We've got a big patch of pale mauve Vervain.  But what do you do with plants that get tall and overgrown and fall over in all directions?

The Phlox are almost over, but this purple one is my favourite colour.  It's growing in the shade, so doesn't put out many blossoms, but it's a pretty colour.

And the raspberries that have been struggling in various locations over the nearly 15 years since my wife brought the bare root stock home, have finally got a good crop of berries for the very first time!  We've started enjoying them, and will have quite a bit of picking we can do yet.

Then there are the weeds that I've been neglecting, like this bright thistle that escaped my attention until it was 3 feet tall!

But my Butternut tree is not doing well.  Even though the leaves never turned colour, they've all pretty well fallen off now, and there was no crop of Butternuts this year.  Some years the ground has been littered with them.

It's the comparison to the other trees in the fencerow that makes me think it's dying.  All the leaves are still surprisingly green here, but the Butternut stands out as giving up it's leaves first.

Reflections

Lots of interesting reflections on our paddle of the other day.

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