a place where nature, photography and writing meet
In early January, one might expect to be hiking through a snowy landscape. However, that was far from the case when we hiked a slow circuit of the trails along Black Ance Road at Murphy’s Point Provincial Park yesterday. We found the shorter grass in the meadows and forests looking quite green. Open water was […]
You might be wondering why there’s a photo of a fishing lure at the head of this post. I debated over which of several images might best represent our Christmas Day hike at Baxter Conservation Area, and the fishing lure seemed to tell the story best. Due to unseasonably warm weather, the Rideau River was […]
Last Sunday, we spent a couple of hours hiking around at the Ferguson Forestry Centre in Kemptville, Ontario. I’ve mentioned this forest occasionally as we often hike there. Parts of it consist of seedling plantations, but also several stands of seed tree pines, most of which were probably planted in the 1940s and 50s. There […]
I came across another photo that seemed quite timely and appropriate as I continue my holiday project of amalgamating many years of files onto the new laptop and an auxiliary drive. This Ironwood (Ostrya virginiana), also known as a Hop Hornbeam to some, is one of our favourite trees along the McParlan Trail at Murphy’s […]
On Saturday, while we were measuring White Oaks at Foley Mountain, I noticed this Eastern Red Cedar (Juniperus virginiana) growing atop a large fractured boulder on the exposed ridge. I’m always fascinated by trees that manage to survive by sending their roots into fissures atop a large boulder, or in the side of a rocky […]
On Saturday, while hiking some of the trails at Foley Mountain Conservation Area, we did a little tree measuring as part of our ongoing project to measure a selection of trees throughout our region. This time, we decided to focus on the White Oaks (Quercus alba) that grow along the ridge overlooking Upper Rideau Lake […]
Yesterday, as part of our “big tree” project, we measured several trees while hiking the trails at Ferguson Forestry Centre near Kemptville, Ontario. We found many broken trees and branches down across the trails throughout the forest – the result of the ice storm a little over a week ago. We also found a mystery, […]