Monday Forest photo: May 9, 2012

2:00pm 20C cloudy 

I love this time of year. We've finally made the shift from brown to green, but the mosquitoes aren't out yet. It's mild, but not too warm. The birds and frogs are going crazy with lust and I actually spied a couple of woodpeckers in flagrente delicto today. It seemed a rather hasty and furtive affair to tell the truth, but not my business.

The new bloom for this week is violets.

Monday Forest photo: April 30, 2012

12:00pm 14C cloudy

Well, last week I mused that the leaves might be out by this week, but I didn't account for the week of cold and windy weather we've had since then. Today was the first mild, almost normal day in a while. I'd kind of been sucked into thinking we were having a warm spring, but April was ordinary, maybe a bit coolish, and if things are ahead of where they normally are, it's mainly because of the extraordinary heat we had in March to set things in motion. Perhaps the new normal is that all bets are off.

On my walk today, I spotted the first Trillium flower of the season. I get all Ontario-patriotic just thinking about it. After all, it's the provincial flower and we were all indoctrinated as children that we must never pick them, because they will never grow back and they are very special. I never have picked one and I don't know anyone who has, though I have heard that perhaps they aren't as delicate as all that.

After a brief hiatus for weather, there were lots of Trout Lily blooms today.

Monday Forest photo: April 23, 2012

3:00pm 4C light rain

Most of the snow has gone, but we woke this morning to a very snowy day. I won't complain, because we desperately need the moisture, and a couple of days of snow and rain should help. I thought the leaves might be out by now, considering the warm weather we've had already this year, but only the poplars and some shrubs have actual leaves so far. As it turns out, it's probably for the best. Maybe next week.

Monday Forest photo: April 16, 2012

Scarlet Cup mushroom

Monday Forest photo: April 9, 2012

1:00pm 10C overcast

It's an ordinary April day for once. Breezy and threatening rain and not too warm or cold. Things are happening here in Monday Forest, even though you have to look closely still. The wild leeks are up and growing like crazy everywhere, and there are lots of little miscellaneous green things popping up. We're two weeks ahead of last year, but I guess that's no surprise after the incredibly warm March.

Trout Lilies are up.

I found lots of unopened Round Leaf Hepatica. Last year, there didn't seem to be so many, only scattered individuals, rather than the patch of a dozen or so I saw today.

Monday Forest photo: April 2, 2012

4:00pm 10C clear

Ahhh spring.

The wild leeks are up! This is the season of munching on leek leaves while walking. I come back every day with garlic breath.

Monday Forest photo: March 26, 2012

3:40pm -1C clear

Well, Mother Nature does have a way of bringing one back down to earth pretty severely. After last week's glorious summer weather, we're back to below seasonal temperatures accompanied by a strong north wind. I've got the waaaay early garlic and asparagus all mulched and protected from marauding chickens (they can't resist scratching in straw) so hopefully they will survive their optimistic foray into early spring.

This poor toad was on the trail a few days ago when the temperature was up in the twenties. He was so still I thought he was dead, but I didn't do a full investigation to be sure.

Monday Forest photo: March 19, 2012

11:00am 18C sunny

 So sorry about the missing month of Monday Forest. I did take pictures, and I'll probably post them for continuity's sake sometime. We've gone from winter to summer and it isn't even officially spring until tomorrow. I read in the paper that some expert is calling this stretch of hot weather (mid twenties in March!) a 1 in a 1000 year event. Yesterday, the record high temperature was broken by 9 degrees C and there's warmer for later on this week. In fact, the forecast low for Wednesday night is higher than the previous record high. This weather is impossible not to enjoy at this time of year (well, any time of year) but it's a little like how I imagine it feels to live the high life on stolen loot. In this case, we've stolen our kids' climate.

The forest floor is coming to life even though only yesterday there was still snow covering more than half of it. I don't know what this hairy-tongued thing is.

For comparison, this picture was taken last week, when the temperature got up to a whopping 12C. This is what kids in Canada do - on the first nice day they put on shorts, find a patch of bare ground and skype with their friends on their mom's laptop. With chickens. Just like when I was a kid. Except for the skype and laptop and chickens. More like transistor radio and book, but still.

Monday forest photo: June 20, 2011

2:30pm 25C clear

Well, not a bad way to see spring out. The weather is perfect. I wish I could capture smells with my camera, because the forest smells amazing. There is the intoxicating balsam fir, a lot of different florals, some medicinal herby smells and the earthy earth. It's such a treat to walk through the woods and it's a different experience every day.

There's a cedar tree with a hole in it, that we've been watching ever since we moved here, to see what kind of creature lives in it. A couple of days ago we found out.

A very busy hive of bees lives in the hole in the cedar tree and we've been fascinated by their comings and goings. The picture fails to capture the very large number of bees and the loud hum that accompanies their activity. If the mosquitoes and deer flies weren't so persistent, I could spend all afternoon watching them.

Monday forest photo: May 24, 2011

9:00am 20C cloudy

 No, I didn't get raptured or even hauled off by a swarm of mosquitoes. My camera was galivanting around Toronto yesterday, so not available for a Monday forest photo. I think this week looks like last week, except someone took a crayon and added more green.

There are lots of violets everywhere, even some yellow ones.

There's a patch of wild columbine with these beautiful ornate flowers.

I think this is what is called wild lily-of-the-valley. I was a lot more sure of that before I tried to identify the next one, which I think is star flowered Solomon's seal, also known as wild lily-of-the-valley. I guess this is the limitation of using common names.

Monday forest photo: May 16, 2011

9:45am 5C rain

Someone flipped the green switch on the forest this week, but they turned the heat down and left the water running. Just when things were starting to dry out the rain has started again. I'm going to bed with the covers pulled over my head until the sun comes out.

Monday forest photo: May 9, 2011

9:00am 12C sunny

After a cold, rainy week this sunny mild weather is most welcome. Everything is greening up, though no proper leaves on anything yet. Around here, this kind of spring weather is often quite brief as summer can arrive any time now.

There are lots of trilliums in bloom now, though we don't have carpets of them. We also don't have swarms of blackflies or mosquitoes yet.

Monday forest photo: May 2, 2011

11:00am 12C rain

Another rainy day. The leaf buds on the trees are getting huge and I expect that next week's picture will be noticeably greener than this one. With the warmer temperatures, there's lots going on if you look closer up. 

The sight of a trillium bud is enough to warm the heart of a native-born Ontarian, as it is the provincial flower and we spent our elementary school years being told how special and delicate this plant is. I wouldn't dare pick one for fear of wiping out the entire species. I guess the message got through.

The trout lily (Erythronium americanum) was in bloom this week. Some pollinating insects were taking advantage.

We saw a group of Yellow Rumped Warblers in the woods on the weekend. We had a great view of them since the leaves aren't out yet and they aren't at all shy.

I've seen quite a few snakes already this spring, Garter snakes and Eastern Smooth Green snakes. This was a tiny little green snake looking for a patch of sun with no humans in it.

Monday forest photo: April 25, 2011

2:45pm 17C overcast

From this distance, things look much the same this week as last, but spring is definitely springing. We had some terrible icy weather since last Monday, but we've had some lovely mild and sunny days, too.

In the last couple of days, the Trout Lilies have started to emerge. I found this description at Andy's Northern Ontario Wildflowers (a wonderful resource!):

Forms a colony of 1-leaved sterile shoots with no flowers and a few 2-leaved fertile plants with flowers. The mottled leaves resemble the skin pattern of a brook trout. The Trout Lily is pollinated by ants, and after a seed is planted, it takes up to seven years for a mature plant to grow and flower. Trout Lily has a fascinating seed dispersal mechanism - its seeds are dispersed by ants through a process called myrmecochory (pronounced "mirme ko ko re"). Attached to the outside of the seeds is a fleshy structure called an elaiosome. The elaiosome is rich in oils and proteins. Ants carry the seed to their nest and feed the elaiosome to their larvae. The remaining seed is discarded in the ant's nutrient-rich waste pile. This symbiotic relationship benefits the ant, which gets a food source, and benefits the plant because the seed is dispersed, is protected from rodents, and is placed in a nutrient rich area in the ants nest where the seed has a greater likelihood of growing.

Wild for wild leeks

Yesterday, I noticed green sprouts peeking through the leaf litter all over the open forest. Today on my walk, they were much larger and I was very happy to discover that they are wild leeks. It's easy to tell because the leaves smell and taste like garlic scapes, except fresher and even more delicious. The entire plant is edible and the bulb is much like a garlic clove.

Some of the plants flower later in the summer and their seeds are a bright shiny black. The plants with flowers are best left to grow on, because, as with so many spring ephemerals, there aren't any flowers until the root is several years old. Wild leeks are considered threatened in Quebec because of excessive harvesting and there are strict limits on the amounts one can pick there. Ontario has no such restrictions that I know of and some of the over-picking has apparently spilled over the border into eastern Ontario. I will pick some wild leeks, but I know that I wil be the only picker on my property and I will follow sustainable picking practices. Unfortunately, even folks who pick a small percentage of wild leeks in a given area can still contribute to a problem if there are other pickers doing likewise.

I will be spending some time finding recipes for wild leeks in preparation for harvesting some in a few weeks. This is our first spring on this property and this is a very pleasant discovery!

Monday forest photo: April 11, 2011

12:15pm 21C cloudy

Glorious spring! The picture does not capture the warm humid air and the narcotic smell of the balsam fir. Farther along the trail in the cedar grove there is still some snow and the trail is icy, but that doesn't matter today. We saw a garter snake on our walk and heard the spring peepers in full song.