October walk to Panama Hill Park

a few photos from a walk to the pond in Panama Hill Park.  The colors were spectacular on October 23.  I can't believe it has been that long ago.  Some of these trees and grasses are still full of color.  There is going to be plenty of berries of all kinds for the birds this winter.
It was coolish today, but no rain.  We have been having light frosts over night.  The humming birds are looking kinda chilled when they cannot get their frozen food.  I have one of the feeders in the house to put out in the morning with warm food for them now.
Saanich now owns all of this Panama Flats area.  I am glad I got a few photos of it when it was being farmed.  I believe it is going to be allowed to turn into a bog.  It is, in actuality, a peat bog.  It had sluice gates to drain it for the farming.  In the winter people used to be able to skate on it a few decades ago.  I hope the pond area remains as is and not part of the bog.  In the winter, more recently there has been lots of water fowl feeding on the flooded crop area.  I hope it remains that way, and the bog revives.
I was out gardening for about 3 hours this afternoon.  I cleaned leaves off the moss garden and paths.  I ran the mower over all the grass areas in the front and back and ended up with two mower bags full of nice chopped up leaves.  This is added to the vegetable garden.  I must get some high nitrogen fertilizer to add to this mix.  There are more leaves on the front tree, so I should have a good thick layer of leaf mulch on the veg. garden by the end of the season.  I cut back a stringy low cedar.. well cut the bottom branches off, and it now looks rather windswept, in my best attempt at a Japanese bonsai writ large. I cut back the Jackamani clematis and cleaned up the daylilies and the simplicity rose, a bit.  Its good to get the exercise and to be on top of the garden clean up.  I wonder how the plants survived when I was not so diligent about leaf clean up!
Do you know what butterfly that cattapiller is going to turn into?  I must look for it in my butterfly book.

Panama Hill Park

Yesterday I walked an extra half mile to the Pond in Panama Hill Park.  As the sign says this is an environmentally sensitive area.  The evergreen trees they planted are getting taller and the grasses are filling in around the pond edges.  It has been awhile since I walked here.  The meadows in the park look very nice at this time of the year.   There were very few ducks and I saw only two dragon flies. There is a well used path that goes right along side of the pond, so I cannot see this pond getting very many water birds in it. 

This is the stone path in the front garden now.  The Irish heather looks very good, and the ornamental oregano on the path edge has been performing beautifully for the last month or two, with its lovely delicate pink blossoms. 

This morning I did a bit more work on the cement blocks that I have put around the water meter .. I dug out the plants that were growing up between the blocks and moved them to other areas around the garden.  These plants are tough, and floppy.  They have fuzzy grey green leaves and blue flowers.  They look good when there is a big clump of them.  I shall try to grow them with the montebresias that are a bright red.  We are having a nice soft rain now, and the garden is looking better already for having received some moisture.
I noticed that I now have 3 lilies up in the little rockery in the front garden.  They should be very nice next year.  The path is quite clean and free of weeds.  I would like to get that sicilian mint growing between the stones, now that they are free of clover and other weeds.  The violets are still popping up everywhere and I shall have to keep after them to get rid of them.  With the improvement of the clay soil the violets are much easier to pull out and get the whole root out now.  The moss garden needs weeding.  I managed to get a bit of weeding and deadheading done in the woodland garden and it looks not too bad.  The irises will need more weeding and a mulch of compost added.  Hopefully, they will bloom next year.  When they bloom I should thin them out so I get bigger plants growing.
Last night I made up 3 kinds of soup - cabbage/ham cream soup, borscht and carrot/ginger.  I have some of each for our lunches and one of each frozen for future lunches.  We are no longer buying canned soup, as it is just too salty.  Most of my soups are made with chicken stock.  I made up some fish stock a few days ago and did up a big pot of seafood chowder with it.  We have about 3 meals of that frozen.  So, I now have a good supply of frozen soups and a few other things I can just take out of the freezer and heat for a good meal. 

Just because I like it

This is from last spring on my walk in Panama Hill Park. Very simple.