Jack’s Walk

The Lily Pond, ©voyager, all rights reserved

This is going to be a strange year for Jack and I. Usually, at about this time of year we pack up the car and head down the highway to the east coast where we spend our summers by the sea, but this year we’ve decided to stay home. My mother’s health has been deteriorating and even though she lives in a nursing home I still worry. I’m an only child so I don’t have a sibling to call on for help. I begged for a brother or sister when I was young, but to no avail. Too bad, an extra pair of eyes and hands would be nice at this stage of life.

When we’re down east in Perce we stay with Mr. V’s mum who is 93 and has been living alone. This mum is still a going concern. Well into her 90’s now she still manages everything well and on her own. She shops and cooks and still bakes cookies because who wants store-bought. She also still drives, irons, gardens and has just found herself a rather nice, very old-fashioned and sweet boyfriend who will be spending the summer with her. He’s just a kid at 78. That means just a bit less worry for us. Our east coast mum will have a wonderful summer even if we can’t be there to share it with her.

Jack hasn’t ever spent a whole summer in Ontario so I’m going to see if I can find a few new trails to keep him engaged. Me too. I like to be outside and I don’t what I’m going to do with myself without my annual hunt for seaglass.

Jack’s Walk

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It’s been an overcast and humid day here, but at least it didn’t get overly hot. Still, neither Jack nor I like the humidity so we went out early to avoid the warmest part of the day. We just went to our familiar forest, but a pack of 4 shaggy, black and white springer spaniels livened things up a bit. They bounded up at us from behind, ran a few circles around Jack – all going in different directions and then bounded off down the path without stopping to take a breath. It all happened so fast that Jack didn’t get a chance to say Hi or Bye and he loves to say both. I think he felt cheated so I gave him an extra milk-bone and soon enough the world was right again and off we went.

Jack’s Walk

©voyager, all rights reserved

©voyager, all rights reserved

I was off helping a friend today, so Jack and his daddy had a boys day without me. They are well-trained scouts, though, and upon my return I was told that the poppies are blooming at the end of the street. I grabbed my camera and set out to take a few shots. There are about a dozen flowers in total, but today only one was fully blooming. The rest look set to open tomorrow and I’ll definitely be back to take another look. I can’t resist those blood orange petals or their pompons of purple chenille.

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Jack’s Walk

The peonies next door. ©voyager, all rights reserved

Jack and I got a late start today because of rain. I wasn’t really feeling all that energetic either, so we stuck close to home and walked around the neighbourhood. Jack likes to do that every few days so he can keep up with the P-mail. When we’re on a trail I don’t notice that Jack is slow, but in town on a leash Jack dawdles and dithers and takes forever to get all the way around.  It’s his nose. It takes him in all sorts of odd directions, even backwards. He inches along inhaling deeply, seldom looking up and stopping often for an in-depth nosing. Sometimes he licks this or that particular blade of grass and sometimes he lifts his head to sniff the air around him, usually with his mouth open like a cat. He carefully leaves his own news in rationed dribbles on important posts and seldom leaves more than a few drops in any one place, believing that brevity is the soul of wit.

Lab Spider

It’s a perfectly posed arachnid from Avalus who says,

This spider found herself caught in glassware one morning in our lab. I contained it with a glass funnel to take the photo and released it.

I’ll bet that spider tells the story of this adventure at all the spider gatherings. Not everyone will believe her.

The photo is below the fold

[Read more…]

Jack’s Walk

©voyager, all rights reserved

I’ve been waiting weeks for the first and only flower on my new purple peony bush to open. It sat there for the longest time just being a big, plump bud that didn’t change and I’ve been getting impatient. Well, finally, yesterday it started to unfurl and by late afternoon its petals were getting ready to spread themselves open to the sun. I was getting excited… and then the wind started to blow. And then the rain came and then my beautiful purple peony blew open and apart. Well, damn. At least the bees don’t mind. They’ve been busily gathering pollen all day so it hasn’t been a total loss.

©voyager, all rights reserved

Jack’s Walk

©voyager, all rights reserved

The forest is slowly passing into summer. The trilliums have vanished from the landscape and the Jack-in-the-pulpits are fading out, but the false Solomon’s seal is exploding into bloom all over the forest floor. I think their star-shaped flowers look like fireworks and I love the gentle curve of their leaves. Their flowers should last for another week or so and then the white will fade to green and the forest will turn itself to the business of growing the trees another season bigger.

Jack’s Walk

©voyager, all rights reserved

Jack and I came across a bit of forest cute today; a baby chipmunk.  Well, I say Jack and I, but Jack was too busy sniffing and snuffling to even notice the creature. The chippy looked to be fairly young and it sat for a few seconds checking us out before dashing away on some important business.

Jack’s Walk

Keeping me waiting ©voyager, all rights reserved

My pink peonies have come and gone in a blaze of fuchsia glory, but the purple peony that lives beside it has just been sitting there with one great big bud that still hasn’t opened. Both plants are the same size and age, both plants live in identical conditions and both plants budded at the same time, yet something is obviously different. This is the first flower this plant has ever put out and I’m getting more and more anxious to see it. There wasn’t a label on the plant when we bought it last year so I’m not even sure what shade of purple to expect. I swear I’m trying to be patient, but please my pretty peony, won’t you please open your big purple eye and look at me.

Jack’s Walk

The river is high and I don’t care… ©voyager, all rights reserved

It was a quiet, sunny morning with a blue sky full of lazily drifting cupcake clouds that called to me to come outside. I’ve been waiting for this feeling. This not having to grin and bear it when I take Jack for a walk. Today was a day when I would have gone for a walk even if I didn’t have a dog. To celebrate, I made a thermos of coffee for me and some ice-water for Jack and took us down to the river to see if we could find us some beavers.

We’ve been avoiding the river area because of flooding, but it’s been a month or so since we were there and I was hoping things had improved. Well, not only hadn’t they improved, but they’ve worsened. We didn’t get far past the entrance when the whole path went underwater. Jack thought this was great fun and didn’t let it slow him down, but I wasn’t quite as willing to snorkel my way around. I let Jack frolic for a while and he was a gentleman today and dried himself off in the grass when he was done. Then, we trundled off to our usual forest for a nice, dry walk in the woods.

Happy Jack ©voyager, all rights reserved

Jack’s Walk

It’s a mystery ©voyager, all rights reserved

Jack found a mysterious structure in the forest today and it left both of us shaking our heads with confusion. It’s a small building, you can see that Jack towers over it, with an open doorway and no windows. The walls are made of a mixture of mud, sticks and leaves and they form a simple A-frame cottage. Around the outside base of the structure there was a ring of plain rocks that formed an exposed footing and a single small sheet of gray plastic had been laid over the roof as weatherproofing. Inside there was a single, large rock painted a brilliant azure blue. The rock was incredibly heavy, much heavier than it looked, and I couldn’t lift it. I was able to shift it a few millimeters towards the back, but it felt almost as if something was pushing against me. As we were pondering the situation it suddenly began to rain and since neither Jack nor I could fit into the tiny shelter we reluctantly made our way back to the car. On the way home Jack told me that he’d detected a faint odor of pipe smoke and dirty feet and that he’d heard something that sounded like singing, but only for a moment. Well, that’s curious, isn’t it. Jack and I love a good mystery so we’ll be returning to see what more we can discover and next time I’ll take a few simple tools with me, like a flashlight and a something to use as a lever.

Jack’s Walk

The shy flower of mayapple ©voyager, all rights reserved

Things change so quickly in the forest at this time of year. Today we found very few trilliums and those that remain have turned the pretty pink of fading glory. Also disappearing are the Jack-in-the-pulpits and I’ll miss them the most. Taking their place are the shy flowers of mayapples and small patches of buttercups and forget-me-nots. The false Solomon’s seal is also in bloom and hundreds of baby trees have sprouted up across the forest floor. The biggest change we saw today was in the quality and quantity of light. The canopy is nearly full and the bare, bright light of winter and early spring has vanished into dappled pools and deep shade. The quality of sound has also changed under the fullness of leaves and the forest is entirely more intimate and inviting.

Mayapple, why must you bloom facedown? ©voyager, all rights reserved