November in the neighbourhood and July on my web page

 This is a tall agave like plant that blooms in the late summer.  Last year it had two tall spikes of these lovely creamy bells.  It seeems to bloom every second year.  The one in the back garden has finally started blooming.  It was a tiny plant when I first got it years ago.  I am working on getting the 'July' album done for my old web page.  Like the June album, July is going to have 160 photos on 16 pages. 

 This is a catananche caerulea, or cupid's dart for the July album.  These plants are short lived perennials, but they self seed.  I seem to have lost this plant in my garden and shall put it on my list of new ones to get next spring.  The butterflies like these flowers.

 This little bush has been left in the park.  It has some gorgeous Autumn color, so I am glad it is still there.  I see there are still lots of blackberry bushes.  The blackberries are considered an invasive species in the parks, and they surely are!  There were always people to enjoy the pickings, though. 

 This is one of the circles they have added to the park.  There is now, also a sign about the park trail and a small bicycle stand.  We get a lot of traffic on this trail.  I never noticed them before they put the trail through to our street.  The people still have one block to walk on before they connect to the trail that continues through the Coply Park.    I am still waiting to see what trees they will be planting, as per the plan.

 This is the view from the trail towards our house with the Liquid Amber tree dressed for the Autumn season.  Its an attractive curvy trail.  Last Spring I had our cedar hedge topped at about 12 feet.  From our dining room window we get a view of the traffic on the trail, now.  I really must find the time to get out and use the trail more.  It is wonderfully wild park.   I haven't seen the deer for a couple of years.  There has been a cougar in the park.  We have eagles nesting somewhere in the park too.  Every year I see the new baby eagles out for flight training.  I think there were 3 of them this year. I don't know where the nest is though. 

This is a close up of some of the drift wood on the beach at Waterton Lake, from our trip through that Peace Park list July.  That is a wonderful park.  They have fields of wild flowers that are native to the area.  I hope I can get a few of our natural flowers re-established in the park across the street..  They have planted grass, but the rest of the Colquitz Park has grass too.  There is a lot of information about the urban forest plan and the park in Saanich on their web site.  I need to study it more to see if I can help mother nature to re-establish some of the natural ones.  I must be very mindful of keeping my ivy or holly trees from running over to the park.  I see we already have some ivy that has taken over along the river where there were fawn lilies.  Its not my variety of ivy, though.  There is also quite a lot of broom in our park.  There was a fish count in the river, a month or so ago, and we have some salmon and cutthroat trout.  I haven't seen the river otter for years, but I imagine they still live in the river.