Jack’s Walk

Scrappy squirrel©voyager, all rights reserved

Well, it’s a scorcher of a day here. 31 degrees with a humidex of 40 degrees. Ordinarily I could laugh it off, but we’re staying with my mother-in-law who doesn’t have air-conditioning and it’s just not as funny when there’s no relief. Poor Jack is suffering the most. Thankfully, he’s still in his light summer coat, but he’s disinterested in everything except sitting in front of the fan. That’s pretty much my attitude to life, too. My fibromyalgia flares up in high humidity and it feels like I’m walking through a dishwasher in double gravity boots. As a result, our walk today was strictly business related and once Jack’s business was done we trudged back home to sit in front of our fan.

Harraka Island – Chapter 2

Today we’re back with Ice Swimmer for the next chapter in his series Harakka, an Island. Thanks, Ice Swimmer. I’ll let you take it from here…

 

Chapter 2 – Uphill

 

1. Crossroads, ©Ice Swimmer, all rights reserved

In picture 1 we’re looking south. The low wooden building is the brackish water aquarium building. We’re going to go uphill, to our right.

 

2. Geese Uphill, ©Ice Swimmer, all rights reserved

A barnacle goose family is blocking our way. They’ve got little ones so the parents may get aggressive.

 

3. Geese Uphill in More Detail, ©Ice Swimmer, all rights reserved

A closer look at the geese.

 

4. Uphill, © all rights reserved

After a bit of an undocumented detour, the goose family is elsewhere so we can try going up the hill. It seems there’s a dead tree at the end of the road.

 

5. Dead Tree and a Windmill, ©Ice Swimmer, all rights reserved

Indeed, a dead tree, a lamp post and a windmill/wind turbine. And there are a few gulls.

 

6. Footprints, ©Ice Swimmer, all rights reserved

Going up the hill and looking at the gravel, one begins to wonder: “To whom does this island belong?”

 

7. Building, ©Ice Swimmer, all rights reserved

The gulls are observing their surroundings and we can see a vaguely neoclassical building.

(link to previous post, Harakka an Island: Introduction)

Itsy Bitsy, Lean and Mean

This is the last in this Itsy Bitsy Spider week, that has gone on for almost two weeks. That does not mean however that spider contributions are not welcome anymore. Should you come across some pretty specimen, definitively take a picture to share.

Today’s picture is from rq: Just a lean, mean, bug-eating machine hanging out.

Picture is bellow the fold.

[Read more…]

Jack’s Walk

St. Lawrence River, Pointe Claire, Quebec, ©voyager, all rights reserved

Jack and I have arrived safely in Pointe Claire and we’ll be staying here for a week or two before heading home. The weather here is really humid and hot so we decided to head out early and what better place to go for a walk than beside the scenic St. Lawrence River. The road that runs beside the river is called Lakeshore Drive and it’s a very exclusive address. The homes along it are all large, beautiful and most definitely out of my price range. That’s alright. Looking is free and dreaming is fun and at the end of the day I’ll still be content with my own little house.

Tree Tuesday

This week Tree Tuesday comes to us courtesy of Opus who took these photos on Mt. Batchelor near Bend, Oregon. The first shot shows just how windswept the location is with a tree that could only manage to grow in a single direction. The next two photos further demonstrate the harshness of the landscape in images of rock, scrub and the carcasses of long dead trees.  I find the set quite poignant, especially the last shot showing how the remains of a once proud giant breaks down to feed a whole new generation of trees. Thanks for sharing, Opus.

Mt. Batchelor, near Bend, Orgeon, ©Opus, all rights reserved

©Opus, all rights reserved

©Opus, all rights reserved

 

Pollination Party – Ants and Flies

I truly am envious of Nightjar’s flowerbed.

Nightjar notes: Ants are not very good pollinators, but they definitely show up for the nectar buffet, as do flies. One curiosity I was told about the Stomorhina lunata is that the larvae feed on, very specifically, locust eggs!

©Nightjar, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

Acanthiophilus helianthi and an ant.

An ant. On a flower. In a picture.

Eristalis tenax a bee mimicking hover fly.

Stomorhina lunata

 

Harakka Island, Finland

We’re starting a new series today on Affinity, courtesy of Ice Swimmer whose photos are always a delight to receive and to share. This time Ice Swimmer is taking us along on an adventure, one delightful chapter at a time and in the spirit of telling a good adventure story we’ll be posting a chapter every few days. I’ll let Ice Swimmer take it from here.

 

HARAKKA – An Island

Foreward

This photo series is dedicated to the memory of Caine. The pictures had been taken while she was still alive, but I didn’t get around to making a writeup, so I never sent these to her and then it was too late.

 

Chapter 1 – Introduction

Harakka from Kaiva, ©Ice Swimmer, all rights reserved

Harakka is an island in Helsinki, Finland. It is located in front of the southern end of the Helsinki peninsula. The island is accessible by boat from Kaivopuisto. The introductory picture is taken from the hill Ullanlinnanmäki, the highest point of the park Kaivopuisto. The island has been home for a lighthouse in the 18th century and during 19th and 20th century in military use, until 1989. The buildings in the island were built for the Russian garrison before the independence and for Finnish forces after that.

Now the island is a nature preserve and there is a Nature Centre to educate children at daycare and in schools about the environmental issues, renewable energy, natural history and conservation coastal and archipelago flora and fauna and also further develop said education. A community of artists also uses one of the buildings in Harakka as studio, exhibition and meeting space.

The Finnish name Harakka means magpie. Supposedly something on the island has looked like a magpie. The Swedish name, which is older than the Finnish name is Stora Räntan. In modern Standard Swedish the name would mean “The Large Interest Rate”, but it was probably something else in the local dialect.

[Read more…]

Jack’s Walk

 

Jack with a bit of seaglass, ©voyager, all rights reserved

Jack and I are leaving Perce today on our way home. We’ll likely go as far as Mt. Joli today, which is about a 6 or 7 hour drive and then on Sunday we’ll make the rest of the trek to Montreal where we’ll spend a few days with family before heading home.

The leaving is difficult. We must say goodbye to the mountains and the streams and the beautiful beaches full of treasure for another year. It’s been a good year, though, and we’re leaving with pockets full of happy memories and a big box of rocks. There’s even a bit of seaglass to add to my jar at home. Jack is sitting beside my jar of of seaglass that lives here. Year by year it grows and someday I might even have it filled, but it’s the hunt that keeps me coming back. It’s taken 25 years and a lot of bending over, one piece at a time, to reach this level. I consider it time well wasted.