Tag Archives: Lake Muskoka

Fairy Crown 7 – Columbines & Wild Strawberries on Lake Muskoka

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My 7th fairy crown for late May was created at our cottage on Lake Muskoka, a few hours north of Toronto. It features native wildflowers and fruit: red-flowered eastern columbine (Aquilegia canadensis), common blue violets (Viola sororia), wild strawberry (Fragaria virginiana), lowbush blueberry (Vaccinium angustifolium), the poet’s narcissus (Narcissus poeticus var. recurvus) and a little weed for good measure, yellow rocketcress (Barbarea vulgaris).

If my city garden takes a somewhat naturalistic approach to gardening, it is nonetheless situated in a traditional urban neighborhood. It might be the most flowery front garden on the street, but I’ve worked to make it fit in with the lawns up and down the block by having a hedge as a side boundary; by retaining old clipped boxwood shrubs on either side of the front stairs; and by paying attention to pleasing floral succession, from the earliest snowdrops to the last asters. And my neighbors do love it. In contrast, the meadows and garden beds I created atop Precambrian bedrock at our cottage on Lake Muskoka a few hours north of Toronto are truly wild-looking – and there’s no need to fit in with any neighbors. (I wrote about gardening at the lake in my extensive 2017 blog titled ‘Muskoka Wild’.)

I don’t grow tulips there — they’re just not right for the lake — but my fairy crown for May 20th features the last daffodil of the season, the poet’s daffodil (Narcissus poeticus var. recurvus).

Daffodils grow amazingly well in the acidic, sandy soil here since they love to dry out in summer, popping up each spring amidst the big prairie grasses and forbs.

Besides the poet’s daffodil, one of my favourites is the highly scented Tazetta variety ‘Geranium’, below. 

My grandchildren have all experienced nature on Lake Muskoka. This is Oliver exploring another perfumed daffodil, ‘Fragrant Rose’.

And there is nothing more satisfying than a bouquet of perfumed daffodils on the table in April or May.

On many occasions, I’ve tucked a bunch of daffodils in my bag as I head back to the city.

Daffodils flower concurrently with our little native common blue violet, Viola sororia.

Viola sororia is native to Muskoka, as it is to much of northeast North America. It doesn’t take up a lot of room and grows wherever it pleases, but always with a little shade and moisture at the roots.  

Apart from violets, the landscape here features a large roster of native plants, including the lovely eastern columbine (Aquilegia canadensis) that pops up in the lean, gravelly soil where many plants might struggle. I try to sow seed of this species, being careful to leave the seeds uncovered since light is necessary for germination.

But wild columbine is very particular about where it wants to put down roots, and always surprises me when I see the first, ferny leaves pop up in a new location in spring. 

Hummingbirds are said to enjoy the dainty flowers of eastern columbine, but I confess I’ve never seen them doing so.  I would have to lie in wait on rocky ground by the shore, not as much fun as sitting comfortably on my deck watching them fight over the ‘Black & Bloom’ anise sage (Salvia guaranitica).

Muskoka and wild blueberries just go together naturally, and somebody’s grandmother always made the very best wild blueberry pie in August. In our family, it was my husband’s mother, and she taught her grandkids her secret recipe, including my daughter. So I’m always happy to see the queen bumble bee pollinating those first wild blueberry (Vaccinium angustifolium) flowers in May.

But just in case the chipmunks find our berries before we do, we always make a stop at the wild blueberry stand on the way to the cottage from town.

Wild strawberries (Fragaria virginiana) bloom in Muskoka now, too, and on parts of my path above the lake they form a perennial groundcover so dense that I am sometimes afraid to step into their midst, lest I damage them.

But there are always enough strawberries ripening months later to make my grandkids pause on their way to the lake to sample the fruit…

…tiny, admittedly, but oh-so-sweet and juicy.

Similarly, May is when the dark-pink flowers of black huckleberry (Gaylussacia baccata) adorn the shrubs in the shade of the white pines along the lakeshore.  The deep-purple fruit will ripen in August and though somewhat seedy, it is sweet and good for eating raw or baking.

There’s a native serviceberry here at the lake too, but don’t expect to see billowing clouds of white flowers like those big species further south. Its Latin name Amelanchier humilis gives a clue as to its shape, “low, spreading serviceberry”.  Still, native andrena bees love nectaring on it in May, as do the bumble bee queens, which nonetheless must remain wary of  crab spiders looking for their own meals.

My crown’s golden jewels are flowers of the common European weed in the mustard family, yellow rocketcress (Barbarea vulgaris). In Europe, it’s called ‘rocket’ or ‘bittercress’, suggesting a strong-tasting, edible green. Indeed, my foraging friends would recommend picking the basal leaves as they emerge in spring or the rapini-like flower buds (raab) to cook in recipes.  Failing that, just wait for the mustard-yellow flowers to appear and wear them in your fairy crown!

I use my smallest vases to display these delicate blossoms of spring on the table – a welcome celebration of nature’s return to the shore of a lake that was thick with ice just weeks earlier

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Want to see more of my Fairy Crowns? 

#1 – Spring Awakening
#2 – Little Blossoms for Easter
#3 – The Perfume of Hyacinths
#4 – Spring Bulb Extravaganza
#5 – A Crabapple Requiem
#6 – Shady Lady


A Devastating Gypsy Moth Summer on Lake Muskoka

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Well, I tried. That’s all I could say about my summer 2020 preventive efforts as I watched hordes of gypsy moth caterpillars climbing up our oak trees in summer 2021.  Though I probably dispatched tens of thousands of caterpillars with the egg-mass-spraying program I blogged about last year (and those masses completely dried up), there were obviously egg masses too far up in the trees that escaped my control efforts. And before we go any further, I am going to continue to refer to this insect as a ‘gypsy’ moth, since I’ve read rather refreshing and reassuring things from actual Roma people who are proud of their collective name. If I were publishing scientific journals, I would need to abide by nomenclatural consensus, but “LDD moth” (from its scientific name Lymantria dispar dispar) confuses the issue unnecessarily for the sake of this final blog.

May 20 – Let me take you through this year’s saga in photos, beginning with my pant leg as I sat on our dock on Lake Muskoka, a few hours north of Toronto, on Victoria Day weekend. Those tiny things are the newly-hatched first instars. They were falling freely from the oaks and pines above our heads. But we read reports in the papers at this time of people developing contact rashes from the tiny larvae landing on their necks!

May 22 – I took a spring wildflower walk through the forest nearby and found an early instar on the leaf of striped maple (Acer pensylvanicum).  These first and second instars are the stage at which aerial spraying forests with Btk (Bacillus thuringiensis subsp.kurastaki) works, with 2 applications at 7-10 days in age and a second approximately 2 weeks later, while caterpillars are less than 1/2 inch long. Gypsy moth males complete 5 instars; females require 6 instars for the additional energy to produce eggs. Caterpillars feed on foliage for 6-8 weeks before pupating.

Alas, Btk also kills the larvae of native butterflies and moths actively feeding at the time and is increasingly proscribed by governments, which is why I photographed this native moth on our back door. It would be an unintended victim of a spraying program – part of a life cycle of which we may not have intimate knowledge but is most certainly part of the native ecology.

June 2 – When we returned to Lake Muskoka eleven days later, the caterpillars were everywhere, including on our house siding where…

…. in the heat of the day, hundreds climbed up to seek shade on the north-facing back wall, many heading right to the roof eaves.

On the hot, exposed hillside behind our cottage, they were eating the leaves of the many red oaks (Quercus rubra) that grow naturally there. The sound was loud, like Rice Krispies…. “snap-crackle-pop”.

June 4 – As I took a break from gardening, once again I was able to assess the development of the caterpillars on my clothing…

…. and the veiled hat I wear to deter blackflies in the woods.

But some landed on our sundeck and were fair game for the resident ants.

Because of the phenomenon of the caterpillars seeking shade on our north-facing cottage wall, we were able to carry out a program of dispatching them into soapy water. We did this several times a day.

Over several weeks in June and early July, we filled many buckets with caterpillars, not that it did much good. It just made us feel we were doing something to help our trees.

The feeding continued throughout June. I could stand beside a tree and watch a never-ending procession of caterpillars up into the canopy…..

…. where, gradually, the foliage began to disappear on our trees.

When we returned to the cottage on June 23, most of the oak trees looked like February…

…. and our back porch was covered with dried-out oak leaves and male flowers. There would be no acorns produced this summer, one of the seldom-mentioned effects of gypsy moth predation. A 1990 West Virginia study on red oaks said “The high carbohydrate content of acorns provides the energy necessary for winter survival. Loss of mast crops due to direct and indirect effects of gypsy moth defoliation may result in large-scale reductions in wildlife habitat and food sources.” The study mentioned three factors related to defoliation: “direct consumption of flowers, abortion of immature acorns due to low carbohydrate supply, and lack of flower bud initiation

Meanwhile, the caterpillars had begun their assault on our big white pines….

…. leaving our sundeck littered with needles daily.

On July 1st, Doug stood on our dock picking caterpillars off the pines. A drop in the literal bucket, as they say.

Besides the oaks and pines, the caterpillars devoured staghorn sumac leaves….

….. and the foliage of my poor nannyberry (Viburnum lentago)…..

…. and even snacked on some meadow perennials like daisy fleabane (Erigeron philadelphicum).

That weekend I visited one of my favourite wetlands nearby, a place I call the Torrance Fen. Here the caterpillars had stripped the speckled alders (Alnus incana)….

…. and were working on the winterberries (Ilex verticillata). 

On June 26th, I took a walk down the dirt road near our cottage and looked at the forest there. Because it is more mixed than our hillside, the damage seemed less severe, but there was still the crackling sound of the caterpillars eating. They were on the young beeches (Fagus grandifolia)…

…. but completely ignored the white ash (Fraxinus americana). Sadly, emerald ash borer has other destructive plans for that species.

Paper birches (Betula papyrifera) and trembling aspens (Populus tremuloides) were stripped bare.

By June 30th, the oldest caterpillars had matured and begun seeking a sheltered spot in which to pupate. Pupae are a dark red-brown with hairs on the exterior; female pupae are larger than the males.  They will stay in the pupal stage for 1-2 weeks before hatching as moths.

Some of the aggregations were truly disgusting looking, with tens of caterpillars pupating together.

But on that day, I also noted a lot of withered caterpillars stuck to branches in a ‘backbend’ position, indicating they had died of NPV or nucleopolyhedrosis virus.

If there was any good news this summer, it was that July featured unusually rainy weather – which was not great for people wanting to plan events outdoors, but was the best possible news for our ravaged trees. Refoliation of defoliated deciduous trees requires sufficient groundwater to enable a new round of leaf formation and photosynthesis. Watching the rain fall outdoors actually gave me great joy…

…. and this Canada Day rainbow seemed to augur well for our trees. This year, at least.

I even spent some time on July 4th counting the number of monarch butterfly caterpillars eating the leaves of the butterfly milkweed I’d planted just for them.

And on July 12th, I photographed the new leaves appearing on our red oaks…..

…. even as newly-hatched male gypsy moths flew about in a flurry, seeking the stationary females. The females were everywhere, including in the grooved bark of white pines and…

…even under the plastic tarp covering our firewood pile (and on the firewood itself.)

But on July 14th, it was sadly apparent that the egg masses on trees were much more abundant than in summer 2020.  This was one of our worst affected trees. Without sustained cold temperatures in the coming winter, it seems evident that next summer will be even worse, if that’s possible.

So (as in 2020) I mixed up another batch of my horticultural oil solution, attached fresh sponges to my extender pole…..

… .and began the long process of spraying eggs. With the number of egg masses I’ve seen it will be a long process this autumn. But each mass contains a potential of 200-1000 caterpillars so it’s definitely worthwhile to reduce their numbers. And it was evident from last year’s dried-up egg masses that the homemade oil does the job.

I made a video that captured some of this year’s saga, below. Just as a last word, I have read in so many publications that gypsy moths tend to come in cycles of 10 or 12 years, but we have never seen predation like summer 2021 in more than 40 years of visiting and living on Lake Muskoka.  If this becomes an annual phenomenon, it will have dire consequences for our tree canopy. Fingers crossed for a cold, cold winter, since extended days of temperatures -25C or lower are reported to be fatal to the egg masses.

While as a canada cialis levitra davidfraymusic.com collection it’s fulfilling to watch, it does not likely work as a remake. Things to no rx levitra follow along with Kamagra treatment: Whatever you had during may affect your health including physical, metal and reproductive. Hotels Miami South Beach, Miami Attractions and Everglades Tours and An Enjoyable Florida Vacation, Coral Castle is a most attractive monument in Miami. levitra samples The study was observational, so there is purchasing viagra in canada not a permanent cure.

Into the May Woods Once Again

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On Victoria Day weekend, with almost two warm weeks having elapsed since my first May wildflower foray into the woods flanking the dirt road near our cottage on Lake Muskoka, near Torrance, Ontario I was curious to see what else had come into bloom.  This time, knowing the blackflies and mosquitoes would be active, I came prepared with a Coghlan’s head net for my hat.  What a lifesaver that was!

As I left our place on the Page’s Point peninsula, I noticed the sand cherry in flower down by the shore. Prunus pumila is a plant not only of sandy shores along the Great Lakes, but of smaller lakes, too. It also emerges from soil in granite outcrops, like Lake Muskoka.

Spring bees love the sand cherry flowers. This is an andrena mining bee.

Lowbush blueberries (Vaccinium angustifolium) were in flower, too. Fingers crossed for sufficient rain to produce fruit.

I also noticed the rather subtle flowers of limber honeysuckle (Lonicera dioica), another Muskoka native.

Further down the path was a little stand of gaywings, aka fringed milkwort (Polygala paucifolia).

Back on the dirt road, hepatica, spring beauty and dogtooth violet were all finished, but I found some sweet little downy yellow violets (V. pubescens) in the grassy centre of a neighbour’s driveway.

Wild sarsaparilla (Aralia nudicaulis) was now in full bloom.

False Solomon’s seal (Maianthemum racemosum) was just about to flower…..

…. .and across the road, little starflower was becoming used to its new name, Lysimachia borealis (formerly Trientalis).

I stepped down into the wetland on either side of the road to get a better look at the violet that my Field Botanists of Ontario Facebook page had identified for me in my last blog. You can see it in the mud under the emerging royal ferns (Osmunda regalis var. spectabilis). It’s called Macloskey’s violet or small white violet (Viola macloskeyi) and is native to much of northeast N. America. This is when I really appreciated my bug veil!

Here’s a close-up look at the violet.

In the wetland on the opposite side of the road, cinnamon ferns (Osmundastrum cinnamomeum) had mostly unfurled since my last visit.

There were masses of Macloskey’s violets here too, but what was that white flower at the edge of the swale?

It was wild calla or water arum (Calla palustris) – my first time seeing this lovely marginal aquatic plant.

Wild calla bears the spathe-and-spadix floral arrangement typical of the Arum family (Araceae). According to the Illinois Wildflowers site: “The spadix has mostly perfect (bisexual) flowers… These small flowers are densely arranged across the entire surface of the spadix and they are numerous. Each perfect flower has a green ovoid pistil that is surrounded at its base by 6-9 white stamens”. Flies are its principal pollinators. After flowering ends, the spathe and spadix both turn green. As fruit develops, it turns bright-red.

I actually made a little video of my foray into the wet areas and you can hear the mosquitoes in the blue violet segment, as well as the lovely Muskoka birds. It ends with the chokecherries (Prunus virginiana) further up the dirt road.

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The chokecherries had just been in bud two weeks earlier, but were now in full flower….

….. and hosting native bees as well as this little beetle.

In the woods, beaked hazel (Corylus cornuta) had leafed out.

Eastern columbine (Aquilegia canadensis) grew here and there on shallow soil atop rock outcrops.

I saw exactly one rock harlequin (Capnoides sempervirens) but it was difficult to capture with my cellphone so I’ve added a camera closeup from a previous spring behind our own cottage.

And of course loads of wild strawberry (Fragaria virginiana).

The forest floor under this sugar maple seedling (Acer saccharum) was thickly carpeted with the leaves of countless species still awaiting their time to shine – or perhaps never rising at all, but merely part of the great fabric of nature here.

There were also seedling oaks, both red oak (Quercus rubra) and white oak (Quercus alba). The latter, in this neck of the woods, never seems to get bigger than a small scrubby tree.

Those oak photos were the last ones I made for 30 minutes because I got turned around and lost in the woods. It was only for a half-hour, but it felt like hours. I climbed over and under downed trees and came to hemlock stands and fairly high cliffs, beyond which lay… more forest. Since it was mid-afternoon, I followed the sun, thinking I needed to go south – but I was in fact walking more west than south.  Nothing looked familiar – I was really lost, and getting thirsty in the heat!   Feeling a growing sense of panic, I called my husband Doug back at the cottage. “You need to veer left as you’re looking at the sun to find the dirt road,” he said. Within 10 minutes I started to recognize some of the plants I’d seen earlier and then I heard the voices of children and saw the roof of a truck heading down the dirt road. Whew!  Next time I won’t wander without taking water and leaving a trail of cookie crumbs! (Note to self: also get compass and GPS apps on phone.)  The arrows below with our cottage marked in red approximate my wanderings.

When I got back to the dirt road, I found the first instar of the gypsy moth caterpillars that will  ravage our Muskoka oak and pine trees this summer. Very tiny, it was crawling up the leaf of striped maple or moose maple (Acer pensylvancum) which was also sporting its pendant green flowers. Some of my readers will recall my 2020 blog A Gypsy Moth Summer on Lake Muskoka in which I described how I used a homemade oil spray to kill the egg masses.

Heading back to the cottage, I found maple-leaf viburnum (V. acerifolium) in bud…..

….. and a few trilliums that had not yet withered in the unseasonal May heat. And I had learned a few valuable lessons about going into the Muskoka bush alone!

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If you want to read about my meadow gardens in Muskoka, have a look at this blog from 2017, Muskoka Wild – Gardening in Cottage Country.

Into the May Woods on Lake Muskoka

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What a beautiful weekend I enjoyed recently. Not only was it Mother’s Day and I had my first-born, ‘two-days-before-Mother’s Day’ son nearby, but we enjoyed a walk up the dirt road behind neighbouring cottages on Lake Muskoka near Torrance, a few hours north of Toronto, and found a treasure trove of native spring wildflowers on both the lake side and the crown land side. The photo below is of the road from another May. This year, the sustained, cool weather meant leaves were just breaking on the trees and best of all the blackflies had not yet emerged!

Ecologically, the address of the dirt road near Bala marked with the red arrow, below, is (broadest to narrowest classification) Ontario Shield Ecozone, Georgian Bay Ecoregion 5E, Huntsville Ecodistrict 5E8.  According to the provincial classification: “The Huntsville Ecodistrict is an undulating to rolling landscape underlain by Precambrian bedrock. The terrain, particularly in the west, has been heavily influenced by glacial Lake Algonquin that inundated the area about 11,000 years ago. As the land emerged from underneath the ice, morainal material was deposited. The area was then submerged under the glacial lake, which removed or reworked much of the material through wave action and fluctuating lake levels. The western portion of the ecodistrict is characterized by a mosaic of bedrock ridges with a discontinuous, shallow layer of morainal material, bare bedrock, and pockets of deeper glaciolacustrine sediment.”  Most of our district is covered by deciduous and mixed forest, including northern red oak, red maple (sugar maples predominate in the east part of the ecodistrict), yellow birch, paper birch, American beech, basswood, eastern hophornbeam, eastern hemlock and eastern white pine.  

Though we’ve had our cottage for two decades, it was precisely the right moment to enjoy a bounty of spring wildflowers I’d never seen flowering all together, most of them dependent on the dappled light under deciduous trees before the leaves emerge to cast heavier shade. Plants like round-lobed hepatica, Anemone americana, both the white and purple forms.

Many gardeners think they need to do a clean-up in autumn or spring, removing every leaf to expose bare soil; indeed, I heard a leaf-blower droning away on a cottage property nearby. But nature is under no such misapprehension; the spring understory here on Lake Muskoka is thick with successive years of red oak and beech leaves, all contributing to the health of the soil and the richness of the forest. Hepatica has no trouble emerging through them, pushing fresh new leaves and fuzzy flower stems up through last year’s bronzed foliage which then withers away.

Like many plants, DNA sequencing has resulted in hepaticas undergoing a scientific name change. They’re now placed in the Anemone genus.

Carolina springbeauty (Claytonia caroliniana) was showing its mauve-striped face here and there too, the flowers so tiny they’re easy to overlook. It grows from a corm and is one of our spring ephemerals, plants that disappear and become dormant by summer.

I was struck by the proximity of the spring beauty and the decomposing stump bedecked by turkey tail fungus (Trametes versicolor)…..

….and another fungi-rich stump flanked by masses of red maple seedlings (Acer rubrum). The coming and the going, the cycle of decomposition and renewal in this mixed forest.

Birches (Betula spp.) are not long-lived compared to other deciduous trees, usually around 50-70 years in our northern climate. Sometimes decomposition begins when they’re still standing, like this trunk with tinder fungus (Fomes fomentarius) all the way up.  It’s called tinder fungus because it can be used to make a fire; in fact the Tyrolean Ice Man Ötzi, whose 5000-year-old corpse was revealed by melting glaciers near Bolzano, Italy in 1991, had a piece on a cord around his neck.  

When birches fall, it takes little time before moss spores find them and begin to spread their green tentacles.  Before long, the birch becomes part of the forest floor.

Though rare, a lightning strike can also kill a birch.  This one would have made a loud crack in one of our summer thunderstorms.

I found this juxtaposition poignant: a young American beech sapling (Fagus grandifolia) growing against the decaying trunk of a beech killed by beech-bark disease, a terrible insect-fungus plague taking a toll on our central Ontario forests, especially those where beeches grow with hemlocks. The vector is a beech-scale insect (Cryptococcus fagisuga) which, like many killers of our native species (e.g. Dutch elm disease) is an invasive from Europe. It admits a canker fungus called Neonectria faginata.

Groundcedar or fan club-moss, Diphastriastum digitatum is a lycopod, a throwback to the Carboniferous era (360-300 million years ago) when spore-forming plants like these formed forests of giant trees. Their decomposition and burial over millions of years gave the world its coal deposits.

In low-lying areas, we found another spring ephemeral: dogtooth violet or trout lily Erythronium americanum which is not a violet but is a member of the lily family, Liliaceae.  The “trout” part is because the mottled leaves resemble brook trout.

Although it looks like the flower has six yellow petals, in fact the reverse view shows the three brownish sepals. 

The ecology of dogtooth violet is fascinating. In some parts of these woods, it made up almost the entire ground layer, but only a few plants bore flowers, the rest just had leaves. In fact, Erythronium americanum takes 4-7 years to flower, and researchers have calculated that in any given population only 0.5% will bear flowers.

There’s a little wetland along the road that drains the forest from the west. It’s where spring peepers sing in April and mosquitoes gather when the weather warms.

I went down onto the boggy mosses to get closer to the hummocks of cinnamon fern (Osmundastrum cinnamomeum) which had just emerged….

….. with their croziers wrapped in gauzy hairs. Cinnamon and royal fern (Osmunda regalis) are the principal wetland ferns here.

In springtime and after heavy summer rains, ground water moves through this wetland, passes under the dirt road in a culvert and wends its way as a creek through our friends’ property before splashing down into Lake Muskoka as a small waterfall. I made the video below to show it.

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We found coltsfoot (Tussilago farfara) in flower at the edge of the road.

 Native to Europe, Asia and North Africa, coltsfoot was used as a medicinal by early settlers – its name comes from the Latin “tussis” for cough and “ago”, meaning to act upon – and seed has made its way to throughout the region.

Ferns unfurled their croziers from the moss in the low spots.

We noticed that several of the hemlocks and pines along the road had an orange-red flush to their bark, but only on the side exposed to the light. Some research revealed that this is a fairly recent condition called Red Bark Phenomenon or RBP, having been discovered and named about 10 years ago in New England. It is caused by a filamentous green algae (Chlorophyta) tentatively identified as Trentophilia whose cytoplasm contains an orange-red pigment.

Patrick leaned into a little thicket of chokecherry (Prunus virginiana)….

….. not quite in flower.  He detected a minty-basil fragrance, though the twigs are occasionally described as having an ‘almond’ aroma.

It was at this point that we left the road and walked towards a rocky outcrop about 30 feet away. Maintaining the overhead hydro line here requires tree and brush cutting that provides a little more light than normal……

……and this area was rich with loads of spring ephemeral Dutchman’s breeches (Dicentra cucullaria)….

…. and the occasional common blue violet (Viola sororia).  

I loved this exposed bit of rock, typical of the metamorphic banded gneiss on this part of the Canadian Shield, a remnant of the Grenville Orogeny and more than a billion years old. (If you want a lot more amateur geology, have a peek at my recent blog memoir, ‘My Jaded Past, My Rocky Present’).  

I spotted an unfamiliar shrub on the lake side of the road and wandered in to check it out. It was American fly honeysuckle (Lonicera canadensis) with its paired, pendant, pale-yellow flowers.

The shrubs grew on top of the outcrop nearby – not showy, but an integral part of the ecosystem.

Finally, as we got close to the back of the East Bay Landing property, there were trilliums (T. grandiflorum). Not the vast colonies we would see on rises along Highway 38 and 400 later, just a few here and there with lots more getting set to bloom.

It was the perfect way to end our walk into the May woods on Lake Muskoka.

Pigments of My Imagination

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I’ve spent the past three weeks getting in touch with my inner child.  Seriously… or not so seriously. Maybe it’s Covid.  Maybe it’s the prospect of five months of winter with no travel and few opportunities to be with family and friends. Or maybe it’s just my enduring passion for the explosive foliage colours of fall.  This autumn, I felt the need to be more playful; it’s been so grim, all the news. So I acted as impresario and asked my autumn leaves to dream up their own dance acts. They were all so creative – I was terribly proud of them (only my geisha declined to dance). Thus, on October 25th a few brilliantly-coloured leaves from my backyard Washington thorn tree (Crateaegus phaenopyrum) suggested a line dance. Why not?  

That same day, a few of the tiniest, uppermost red leaves from my neighbour’s Freeman maple (Acer x freemanii) requested my help with a maypole. “But it’s almost Halloween,” I said. It didn’t matter – they were so keen on the alliteration!  So I agreed and made them a canopy from yellow ginkgo leaves.  “But where’s our maypole?” they asked. “I’m sorry, I’m tired of drawing with a mouse. Make do with what you’ve got,” I replied.  They were a little sad at first, but once the Morris music began they just started whirling those ribbons as if it was the first of May.

Then Señora Fothergilla got into the act. “Necesito bailar!” she cried, which I understand is Spanish for “I must dance!”  So I helped her fashion a sexy flamenco gown from the multi-hued leaves of some of the fothergilla shrubs in my pollinator gardens. She was suitably impressed that there were so many colours! “Olé!”   Así se baila Señora!

A few days later after a big wind, my boulevard ginkgo tree (Ginkgo biloba) tossed down masses of yellow fall leaves. Suddenly, nine little ballerinas were doing their pliés right in front of me. None were quite ready for principal roles, but they all agreed to be part of the Corps de Ballet.

A pair of perennial geranium leaves asked if they could be in my autumn show. They were so lovely, even with that tongue-twisting name, Geranium wlassovianum.  They asked if they could do a  “pas de deux”.  I said it’s usually a man and woman, but…whatever. It’s a modern world.

Look who sashayed in from my front garden hedge! Yes, Miss Burning Bush Belly Dancer herself, aka Euonymus alatus, jingling and jangling her beads. I reminded her that a lot of people wanted her gone, invasive exotic that she is. “Who cares,” she said, “These people are boring. I come from the Sultan’s palace wearing autumn red! I dance!”  We left it there.

Things lightened up considerably when I heard the tip-tapping feet of The Chorus Line: the pinnate dancers of the Kentucky coffeetree (Gymnocladus dioicus). Aren’t they sweet? “One singular sensation, every little step she takes/One thrilling combination, every move that she makes…” Ah, dear Marvin Hamlisch.

Then, before I could say, un, deux, trois, out came the Katsura Can-Can Dancers (Cercidiphyllum japonicum) trailing a whiff of cheap, burnt sugar eau de cologne. In between high kicks, they complained that they’d been gold the week before, but I was late picking them up and they’d already started to age a little. I assured them they were still très jolie.

The can-can dancers had barely left the stage when I heard steel drums! Yes, it was the Liquidambar Limbo trio (Liquidambar styraciflua) chewing sweet gum, as they do, and showing how me just lowwww he can go.

I told Cherry Charleston (Prunus serrulata ‘Kanzan’) there was no smoking indoors but she said, “Stop your gaping, I’m only vaping!”  What could I do? I let her off with a warning.

Oh my goodness. What a spectacle when the Ziegfeld’s Follies gal swanned out in her ridiculous costume. I mean, come on, I like Zelkova serrata too but couldn’t she have worn something a little less ostentatious?

The Busby Birchley (Betula papyrifera) girls lay down on the stage to do their routine, even though the floor was still sticky from the limbo trio. So sweet, those little paper birch leaves when they spin around like a kaleidoscope.

I was in Kyoto once, but it was springtime and the cherry blossoms were in bloom. Seeing this geisha walk under momiji, which is what the Japanese call their native maples (Acer palmatum), as it was turning colour on the first day of November kind of took my breath away. She declined to dance – “I only do that onstage in Gion with the other geishas.”  Who could argue?

And then it was time for the last act: three little wild strawberry sock-hoppers (Fragaria virginiana) from my cottage on Lake Muskoka. I brought them down in the car in November and they were a little intimidated by the big city. “You’ll get used to it,” I said. “Just keep dancing.”

**********

My make-believe leaf dancers aside, I do love the season, almost as much as spring. I’ve given some thought to that and have come to the conclusion that when you live in a climate that gives you 5 months of winter, you learn to savour both the first stirrings of the growing season and also its last hurrah. For that reason, I’ve paid attention in my own garden not just to a two-month succession of spring-flowering bulbs, but to trees and shrubs that turn colour in fall. This is my front garden in October, with its Japanese maple and burning bush hedge.

My little pollinator garden features fothergilla, which turns every shade from pale yellow to deepest wine – as you see with Señora Fothergilla, above.

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From my living room window, I can watch the colour change on the Japanese maple (Acer palmatum), which provided the backdrop for my geisha.

When the city asked me what trees I wanted to replace an aged silver maple that had to be removed from our boulevard, I asked for a red maple and a ginkgo (Ginkgo biloba), below, which turns bright yellow in autumn.

The gate leading from the driveway into my back garden has Boston ivy (Parthenocissus tricuspidata) climbing across it, which turns red in late October.

In my back garden, there are ornamental grasses and azure-blue autumn monkshood and spectacular apricot-orange Tiger Eyes sumac (Rhus typhina ‘Bailtiger’) and wine alternate-leaved dogwood (Cornus alternifolia).

I love fall colour so much, I made a poster a decade ago featuring photos of the autumn leaves of 90 different trees and shrubs found in Mount Pleasant Cemetery, the 200-acre arboretum just a mile from my house. .

Speaking about the cemetery, I’ve written a blog about the spectacular display of fall colour there in October and November….

…. and more generally, I’ve done blogs on plants with red autumn leaves….

….and plants that turn orange and bronze in autumn.

I love fall colour so much I went up in a small yellow plane with an open window….

…. to photograph the red and sugar maples in the forests near our cottage on Lake Muskoka! (Thanks Doug Clark)

I love fall colour so much I had a 2018 photography show featuring my fine art photo canvases of brilliant autumn leaves….

…. that I arranged like ephemeral tapestries…

… and abstract still lifes.

I love fall colour so much I gather handfuls of leaves each autumn to paint with light…

…. and  arrange in geometric designs that please my eye….

…. and simply celebrate in all their brilliant glory. For by the middle of November, the show is over, the leaves are beginning to decompose on the damp, cold ground and winter beckons with its icy breath.

But while they’re around, we can all dance.