President's Letter - September 2021

Greetings, Garden Friends –

I’m writing this on August 17, one week into our relaxing vacation on Georgian Bay, Ontario. We are off the grid (solar works very well, with a little propane for the water heater) and surrounded by water, so life is a complete change from Cleveland! Tomorrow I’ll don a mask when I go into “town” (Parry Sound, pop. 6,500) for groceries and books.

We’re on the Canadian Shield, a vast outcropping of granite, with pines, some deciduous trees, juniper, blueberries. There is no topsoil, so there is no gardening other than in containers, and this year the border opened too late for me to find my usual herbs and bright geraniums. I filled in with whatever I could get!

When we arrived we found an Eastern Phoebe nesting on top of an awning housing under the eaves, and the four chicks fledged a few days ago. Before then there was lots of activity as the parent birds flitted back and forth with bugs for the babies. Loons call night and day – we must have at least three pairs in the inlet. The terns have gone, but seagulls are still here, and warblers. We should see more warblers in the coming weeks as they migrate. Hummingbirds appeared at the feeder not five minutes after I hung it up on a pine branch off the front deck.

In Cleveland we contend with deer and rabbits. Here it’s beavers, and they’ve been busy. What happened to that pretty chokecherry near the deck on the west side? Same thing that happened to a grove of maples and an oak that was getting big enough to shade the deck. It is a bush again, as it has been several times before. The beavers leave a spike about 14” high and the tree sends a handful of new attempts up around it. Nothing to do about it, unless you’re a Cairn Terrier and then it’s your job to bark furiously when you see a beaver swimming toward the shore…

I will see you in September when we get together for our first program on Thursday the 30th!

Leigh