Thursday 12 May 2011

A Walk In The Woods...


Bokeh walkers...

Last night my daughter, the neighbour kids and I went for a walk in the woods in the conservation area up the road.  It was a beautiful night except for one tiny little thing well it wasn’t just one tiny little thing it was multitudes…bugs!  Don’t know how many of you deal with bugs but right now its black fly season here in Ontario and they are pesty, they swarm all around your head and you have to watch that you don’t open your mouth too much or you have the potential of inhaling them and gagging on a black fly is not fun.  So the best thing to do is walk fast and keep your mouth shut :-)

The woods were beautiful, right now all the Trilliums are blooming and they’re such a gorgeous flower.  Actually they’re Ontario’s flower and so you’re not supposed to pick them.  I must admit though that as a child I could not resist and did pick some and my kids have on occasion picked some as well…you know when they were little and came in the house with their tiny fist filled with wild flowers.  How can you reprimand them for that?  On a side note my daughter just checked on line and we’ve been misinformed as children and this is only a myth…kind of like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny…everything’s a myth :-) Oh, some more information has just come in via daughter on internet…it is illegal to pick them in provincial parks.  Am so glad we have this straight now. 


Occasionally you come across some soft pink Trilliums...


...and the odd red Trillium.


So we trudged through the woods, the four of us and our dog with me trailing behind stopping on occasion to take some shots of the trilliums, well I was always trailing behind, yelling “wait for me,” I’m a chicken in the woods along.  But you didn’t really want to stop long or the bugs would have a feast on your flesh.  Well I came around this one corner and looked beside me in the trees and low and behold there was a porcupine hanging on for dear life to a tree trunk.  I had to get some shots but didn’t want to get too close…didn’t know if it was possible for those critters to aim and fire their quills at me.  Apparently when my daughter took the dog by the porcupine was near the trail and the dog was bent on capturing that thing and so it raced up a tree.  Dogs…porcupines…horrible mix.  We’ve experienced this before as our dog got a little too close for comfort to a porcupine and now will no longer go to the vet. 


As we are heading out of the woods there was suddenly a flapping commotion above me and so I look up and see all these vultures flying from the tall pines and not just two, three or four but probably twenty…wow…cool.

What a wonderful walk it was.     










3 comments:

  1. Looks and sounds like a walk to remember!
    I experienced the black flies when I spent a week at Lake Gogebic in Michigan's upper peninsula. Ugh!

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  2. What an adventure, Tina! Good thing you had your dog with you to protect you.
    Beautiful images of the Trillium. I don't think we have them in the south.

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  3. I saw my first Trillium in Portland last week! I had never seen one. They are beautiful. Glad you escaped the wrath of the porcupine! :)

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