Exactly 10 years ago today, I had one of my best spring garden visits anywhere. Except it just happened to be right here in Toronto at one of our biggest ‘tourist attractions’, Casa Loma. But back on May 12, 2011, I didn’t bother staying inside the castle (which I had toured many times) and instead went right out to the garden. I passed by the Asian-themed garden with its pretty azaleas…..
….. and walked down the slope past the bright-magenta Rhododendron dauricum. For geology fans, this hillside is actually the ancient shoreline of Lake Ontario’s Ice Age predecessor, Lake Iroquois.
I slowed down completely as I came to the staircase near the bottom, where native Virginia bluebells (Mertensia virginica) were at their very peak.
Virginia bluebells might be one of the northeast’s most splendid springtime sights! Like many of our native spring wildflowers, they’re ‘ephemeral’, meaning after they flower and set seed, they just die back completely… until next spring.
I had a destination in mind, and it was the Woodland Garden with its beautiful paper birches and a spectacular underplanting of some of the best spring natives, as well as a few delicate Asian groundcovers that added their own charms. Here we have Virginia bluebells with lots of lovely ostrich ferns (Matteucia struthiopteris).
An ascending path made from grit and flagstone slabs takes you back up the Iroquois shoreline so you can enjoy all the shade-lovers. Here we have the three principal actors: Virginia bluebell (M. virginica), yellow wood poppy (Stylophorum diphyllum) and ostrich ferns. (Note how much bigger the wood poppy’s flowers are than that confusing, weedy, invasive doppelgänger with the small yellow flowers, greater celandine, Chelidonium majus.)
I love yellow-with-blue in the garden, and this is one of the finest duos!
Ontario’s provincial floral emblem, shimmering-white, showy trilliums (T. grandiflorum) add to the display.
Virginia bluebells are also lovely with yellow merrybells (Uvularia grandiflora).
Out of all those that exist, some of them include headache, facial flushing, upset stomach etc. these are some methods & techniques used by the doctor to study the existence of ED: Past medical history generic levitra 5mg of sufferer:- The doctor will study and check the past medical record of the person. Just two pills a day can help you improve your sexual health, then you need to be very conscious about your body. india cheap cialis These drugs are made up of the Chemical dopamine, which induces the feeling of desire and pleasure. tadalafil super active http://djpaulkom.tv/crakd-best-valentine-sex-ever/ It has got the component named buy viagra pills Sildenafil Citrate which engages in inhibiting the PDE enzyme in the body.
I’ve never identified the buckeye seedlings that were popping up in this planting, but given it’s mostly native, perhaps Ohio buckeye (Aesculus glabra)?
There were also epimediums in this garden, like the red-flowered E. x rubrum you can see at the bottom left, below,
… and here, with Virginia bluebells.
Yellow-flowered Epimedium x versicolor ‘Sulphureum’ was featured in the woodland as well……
…. and orange-flowered Epimedium x warleyense ‘Orange Queen’.
Finally, a pure-white trillium with E. x versicolor ‘Sulphureum’.
Whoever said it was terrible to garden in shade?
*****
If you want to read more about spring designs for shade, have a look at my blog on the Montreal Botanical Garden’s fabulous Jardin d’Ombre, A Shade Garden Master Class.
For Tom Morrisey and Tina-May Luker, home is Lavender Hills Farm, a 25-acre property near Orillia in central Ontario, Canada.
Here, beautiful gardens….
….. and a custom-designed, bee-friendly, 2-acre tallgrass prairie meadow (seed-drilled ten years ago by their neighbors and friends Paul Jenkins and Miriam Goldberger of Wildflower Farm) supplement the natural softwood and hardwood forests and swamp that surround their farm.
Tom – who’s been a beekeeper for 40 years – tends 20 colonies at the farm, in addition to 110 colonies he manages in outyards in the region, for a total of 130 colonies. He calls himself a “sideline beekeeper”, but, of course, at one time he was a novice. He started out four decades ago working as part of the interpretive staff at a provincial park where the focus was agriculture and apple orchards. There was also a beehive under glass at the park – an observation hive – but no one on staff knew anything about bees. So Tom took a 5-day course at the University of Guelph (Ontario’s agricultural college) in order to explain to visitors the fine points about apple pollination. Later, he moved to the Orillia area and started working in adult education at a local college.
As he recalls now, he looked around at all the farms in the area and thought, “I don’t know anything about farming, but I know about beekeeping!” So he bought a couple of colonies and began keeping bees as a hobby. After working for a while in Ontario’s Ministry of Natural Resources, he went travelling internationally. When he returned to Canada, he met Tina-May Luker and told her he wanted a job where he could ride his bicycle to work. He knocked on the door of commercial beekeeper John Van Alten of Dutchman’s Gold Honey (and later president of the Ontario Beekeepers Association) and offered his services. Two days later, he was hired to help manage between 800-1200 hives.
When he and Tina-May moved back to the Orillia area seventeen years ago, they bought their farm and Tom began beekeeping in earnest, with 50 colonies the first year and another 50 a year later. His farm beeyard is adjacent to the tall-grass meadow and surrounded by electric fencing to deter black bears.
The remainder are situated in a half-dozen outyards within an hour’s drive, with between 10-30 hives at each location. The outyards include a commercial cranberry bog, below,……
…..and a wildflower farm. His honey house at the farm is a converted double garage several hundred feet from the beeyard and close to the driveway so the honey supers can easily be unloaded from his pickup truck after a trip to the outyards.
That brings us to one of Tom’s favorite beekeeping gadgets, and one he devised himself. “In my pickup I put a piece of plywood with a little bit of a rim around it, sort of like a picture frame, and put some loops of wire into that, and that allowed me to use straps to tie down all my frame. It’s terrific, and only cost fifty bucks for lumber.”
Tom has another favorite piece of equipment, his “Mr. Long Arm”. That’s an extendable painter’s pole at the end of which he has fashioned something like a butterfly net made of fence brace wire threaded through the seamed end of a heavy-duty plastic shopping bag. “When it’s extended its full length of twelve feet,” he says, “I can often retrieve swarms that have settled well above me in the branches near my beeyards. The bees can’t grip the smooth plastic so I just shake them out into a brood box on the ground. No more ladders for me!”
As for those swarms, he says: “You can use that whole impulse to swarm to make more colonies of bees, if you want them. If you don’t want them, then you’ve got to be very diligent to manage your colonies so they don’t get crowded.”
Tom started raising queens a few years ago and finds it an engrossing learning experience. “It’s not something a beginner usually tackles, but at some point you get enough confidence to try it, and it’s very interesting. The whole idea is to try to select bees that have the characteristics that I like working with and to give me a supply of queens early in the season when they’re very handy to have.”
In spring, his bees find willows and red maple in the plentiful swamps around one of the outyards, where thawing occurs earlier than other places. At the farm, local basswood trees (Tilia americana), below, provide a good flow and produce excellent honey about three out of five years.
Abundant staghorn sumac (Rhus typhina) feeds the bees and the red fruit clusters provide the fuel for Tom’s smoker.
There’s clover and alfalfa in neighboring farm fields and birdsfoot trefoil (Lotus corniculatus) and viper’s bugloss (Echium vulgare), below, growing wild along the country roads.
Tina-May’s borders and vegetable garden provide lots of nectar and pollen from plants like Oriental poppy (Papaver orientale), butterfly milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa), lavender (Lavandula angustifolia)……
….. and asparagus that’s gone to flower with its bright orange pollen.
In the designed meadow, masses of coreopsis give way to purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea), Culver’s root (Veronicastrum virginicum), blazing-star (Liatris pycnostachya and L. ligulistylis). The final act, lasting from August well into October, stars the goldenrods, and Tom and Tina-May grow four species including stiff goldenrod (Solidagorigida, syn. Oligoneuron rigidum), below,
The grapefruit should be totally avoided while a person is making love. viagra professional canada Such framework gives the effect of the Kamagra, the user should be sexually stimulated to develop an erection. levitra professional samplesviagra 25mg online Unless and until you do not have a “can do” attitude bring other employees down. Obesity like issues enhances the risks of vascular disease and the signal that a heart attack is coming in the not so distant future. cheap viagra deeprootsmag.org
…. rough-leaved goldenrod (Solidago rugosa)….
…..and the very late-flowering showy goldenrod (Solidago speciosa), below.
Says Tom: “Goldenrod is a good honey, very dark and somewhat strong tasting. The bees produce a bright yellow wax when they’re collecting goldenrod.” But this late flowering of the goldenrods and native asters also helps the health of the hive, as Tom explains. “There’s an expression that it’s really good to have ‘fat bees’ going into winter, meaning bees that are really well-fed. And being stimulated by a good flow of nectar and pollen allows them to make the physiological changes they need for winter. Bees in the summer, they’re flying around, they last six weeks, then they die. But in the winter, they have to sit in a hive, they don’t go out for six months, so their whole body, essentially, has to work in a different fashion.”
Most years, Tom’s colonies winter very well, with his survival rates matching or bettering the provincial average. “I make sure the bees are well fed, because that stimulates them to keep brooding up later in the season. So I feed them in the fall. And I make sure the mites are under control.” Here’s a little video* I made of Tom explaining how he checks for varroa mites. (*If you’re reading this on an android phone and cannot see the video, try switching from “mobile” to “desktop”. Not sure why that glitch occurs.)
Honey extraction begins in late July and extends well into October.
From time to time, Tom enlists the help of family members like brother-in-law Paul Campbell, seen assisting him below.
Here’s a video I made of Tom and Paul at this time in late summer moving the honey frames for extraction.
Over the years, Tom has automated his honey harvest to lighten the load, but it’s still hot, sticky, noisy work, with rock music blaring from speakers above the clatter of the hot knives of the decapping machine….
…..and the whirring of the horizontal extractor.
Here’s a video I made of the honey extraction process at Lavender Hills Farm. Because it’s hard to hear Tom over the machinery and the music, I put in a few subtitles.
Tom and Tina-May, below, are regulars at four farmers’ markets in the area….
….selling honey, mustard, honey butter, herbal soap, candles, and treats like honey straws that children love. “Farmers’ markets are a great place to get to know your customers and build a steady market for your product,” says Tom. “People want to know that you’re the beekeeper, and they want to hear stories about keeping bees, just like I’m telling stories now.”
It’s a demanding occupation with lots of tiring physical work and he gets stung “dozens of times a day, sometimes”. And the challenges are many now. “When I started,” he recalls, “There were no parasitic mites, viruses weren’t an issue, and agri-chemicals didn’t seem to be as big a factor. You could put a box of bees in the back of the farm, they’d winter all right, and you’d get a box of honey. It’s certainly changed in the past twenty years.”
One of the newest factors is small hive beetle, and though it’s been seen in the Niagara region, it hasn’t yet made it this far north. However he’s heard talk of beekeepers arranging refrigerated storage for their honey frames
But Tom is still enthralled with the whole thing. “Keeping bees is a very elemental occupation. The bees are subject to all the natural forces around them, from the plants to the weather and all the variations in between. It’s one expression of nature that you can roll up your sleeves and get right into. And that’s very enjoyable, because every year is different.”
If there’s one piece of advice he’d give to a new beekeeper, it’s this: “Get two hives, not just one, because of the chance of you either making a mistake or nature dealing you a blow that might take one of your hives, but you’ll always have another one.”
And that could be the beginning of a very long love affair.
***********
This story is a much-expanded version of an article that appeared earlier this year in a beekeeping magazine. It’s a joy to know both Tom Morrisey and Tina-May Luker, below, with me at the Gravenhurst Farmer’s Market on Lake Muskoka this summer.
When the newspaper cartoonist and trailblazing conservationist Ding (Jay Norwood) Darling (1876-1962) established the National Wildlife Federation in 1936, he had conservation as his goal. “Land, water and vegetation are just that dependent on one another. Without these three primary elements in natural balance, we can have neither fish nor game, wild flowers nor trees, labor nor capital, nor sustaining habitat for humans.” Ruthie Burrus’s Austin garden meets those critera, and an NWF sign proclaims her intention for all visitors to see.
But it’s not really necessary to read the words on the sign, for you can discern Ruthie’s intent based on the masses of pollinator-friendly plants flanking the long driveway at its start near the road…..
…. and the painted lady butterfly nectaring on the mealycup sage (Salvia farinacea)…..
…. and the honey bee foraging on the blanket flower (Gaillardia pulchella)…..
…. and the cottage garden-style matrix of self-seeding, mostly native wildflowers and grasses.
For structure, Ruthie has used the “it plant” that we saw in almost every Austin garden, the beautiful whale’s tongue agave (A. ovatifolia).
Not every plant is native – brilliant, bee-friendly corn poppies (Papaver rhoeas) have been incorporated, and self-seed regularly.
But the Texas natives do attract their share of pollinators, including this beautiful pipevine swallowtail butterfly nectaring on Hesperaloe parviflora, or red yucca.
There was lovely pink evening primrose (Oenothera speciosa)….
And Engelmann’s daisy (Engelmannia peristenia)…
And lemon beebalm (Monarda citriodora…
And rock rose (Pavonia lasiopetala).
The curving driveway’s retaining wall is draped with bee-friendly rosemary. But, none of them are as effective as Zyban, but at a fraction of the cost. canadian cialis mastercard What these drugs do exactly is that they relax the buy viagra online smooth muscles around the penile region thereby allowing increased blood flow to get a powerful erection. Bananas Bananas are superb foods order viagra india that increases libido, boosts energy and attributes to healthy sperms in the testicles. And in order to do that, men must stay away from the consequences which are occurred to him due to erectile dysfunction. viagra without prescription canada is suggested only to the people who will replace her, because they too will have no nasty side-effects.Kamagra can be obtained in tablet and jelly form, making it suitable for most to take, depending on personal preference.
When we reached the top of the driveway, we were treated to a tamer garden surrounding the Burrus’s lovely limestone home.
Ruthie Burrus was waiting for us there, ready to tour us around.
But even here, the plant palette was chosen to attract pollinators, like the honey bee on Salvia guaranitica ‘Amistad’, below.
In the shade, surrounded by ferns, was a water trough fountain with a slow-trickling stream of water cascading to the plantings below, then recirculated.
This was Texas hill country, and the view st the back of the house over the pool to downtown Austin was spectacular.
I loved the outdoor living room, protected from Texas gullywashers by a roof, and featuring a fireplace for cool evenings.
Beautiful succulent designs filled pots and troughs outdoors.
Many homeowners are including woodburning pizza ovens in their landscapes these days, and Ruthie’s was beautifully landscaped with Phlomis and agaves.
Nearby was a sweet building that Ruthie calls her garden haus.
A large cistern — one of two on the property — gathers rainwater channelled to it via a system of drains. A pump then facilitates irrigation of the garden.
We were just leaving when I heard excited voices at the front of the house. Looking up, I saw a huge tarantula on the cool limestone wall. At the risk of anthrpomorphizing a little, it seemed to be saying, “I’m a Texas native insect too, and there’s room for all of us here!”
Last week, I performed what has become for me a ‘rite of November’: cutting down the meadows at our cottage on Lake Muskoka, a few hours north of Toronto. I have to admit, it isn’t my favourite chore of the year, though I acknowledge I don’t actually have a lot of “chores” up there, given the naturalistic way I garden. But it’s definitely the most labour-intensive – amidst the least pleasant weather conditions of autumn, as it usually turns out. This year it was blowing a gale as I assembled my wardrobe and tools: hedge shears, rake, cart, bundling cloth and ropes, rubber boots, extra layers under my waterproof jacket and fleece band to keep my ears warm. I started out with the big bluestem (Andropogon gerardii), the tallest of my prairie grasses, at 7 feet with its turkey-foot flowers. Considering it’s growing in shallow soil atop the ancient rock of the Canadian Precambrian shield, rather than the deep loam of the tallgrass prairie where its roots can extend far down, I think it’s rather happy at the cottage, and I took a selfie of us together before I chopped off its head!
Since my meadows and beds likely measure only about 1600 square feet or so, it’s not a lot to hand-cut with the hedge shears. People wonder why I don’t use a string trimmer, but I find that holding the weight of a trimmer just above ground is harder on my back than bending over and chopping the stems manually. I understand you can buy a harness for the trimmer, so that might be an improvement – but there’s something hypnotically satisfying about working with the shears.
As I work, I rake and pile the stems into windrows near the cart where I’ll eventually pack them up into bundles to carry by hand up the hill behind the cottage to a place out of sight where they can break down. It’s important to leave some strong stems standing up to 12-18 inches (30-45 cm) so native ‘pith-nesting’ bees find them in order to lay their eggs.
If I don’t cut the meadows, the heavy snows of winter will soon bend down the grasses and forb stems, but the thatch that accumulates makes it less attractive for self-seeding wildflowers and daffodils emerging in spring. So if I want the scene below in mid-summer, it pays to prepare for it by cutting old growth.
And if I leave the switch grass (Panicum virgatum) standing after it turns colour in fall….
…. it will look like this in May.
So I remove all the above ground growth in November.
And if I’m travelling during this late autumn window (as we have on a few occasions), the daffodils will still come up in the meadow the following spring, but it’s a bit of a struggle.
In short, if I want this…..
…I have to do this.
And if I want this…..
….I have to do this.
The tablets are conventional method to cure your adrenal fatigue order cheap viagra problem. Whether an buy levitra in uk ED patient has healthy heart or not, in every case one needs to follow some guidelines just to lead an effective and safe treatment. Acai supports heart health http://downtownsault.org/canadian-maple-opens-on-portage-avenue/ buy cheapest viagra by reducing stress on your heart (this is because if acai’s anthocynanin content, especially 3-glucoside, which stimulates circulation easing nitric oxide production by endothelial cells). It can buy levitra no prescription occur before or shortly after sexual penetration.
I could hold off on the cutting until late winter or very early spring, when the ground is still frozen (as I do in my city meadow), but timing doesn’t always work that well up here and a fast thaw means I’m cutting on mucky soil. And since most of the seed-eating birds have flown south and those that remain seem adept at picking up seed from the ground, I’m happy to clear out this…..
…. in order to enjoy this next summer.
Beyond the chores of this month, I love the varied browns of November. I’ve even blogged about Beguiling Brown in the Garden. And I enjoy inspecting all the seedheads as the plants complete their life cycles. Plants like showy goldenrod (Solidago speciosa), its white panicled seedheads shown below alongside the charcoal autumn foliage of false indigo (Baptisia australis). (Incidentally, though these plants flower at the opposite ends of summer, they’re among the best for bumble bee foraging.)
Here is the candelabra-like seedhead of culver’s root (Veronicastrum virginicum) with the ubiquitous button-like seedheads of wild beebalm (Monarda fistulosa).
Those seedheads above, of course, are proof that the attractive summer flowers, shown below, attracted the pollination services of the appropriate wild bees.
And the late summer-autumn season has also allowed the various grasses to shine, below, including – apart from the big bluestem – Indian grass (Sorghastrum nutans) and switch grass (Panicum virgatum).
November is the perfect time for dormant seeding native wildflowers, so as I’m chopping the stems, I also do some fast sowing into the meadows, using my boot toe to kick little bare spots into the soil, then grinding some of the seeds just below the surface, while leaving others exposed. I do this with New York ironweed (Vernonia noveboracensis), below.
Chopping, raking, piling, carrying. Chopping, raking, piling, carrying. After a good day-and-a-half in blustery wind and intermittent cold rain, I manage to take 8 tied bundles of stems up the back hill to a spot on top of the pile of blast rock that was cleared when we built our home here on this waterbound peninsula 16 years ago. In time, the vegetation will decompose amidst the staghorn sumac pioneers and create a more complex meadow planting here.
Finally, as I finish washing out the cart, coiling the garden hoses, cleaning my tools, bringing everything indoors and preparing to drive back to the city in the waning light of the third day, I gather up a handful of the stems I’ve put aside in my cutting. Because apart from enjoying vases filled with summer flowers in July…..
….. it feels virtuous, somehow, to accord these plants the same respect in November.
To capture a little of the atmosphere of what it’s like to perform this task in November, I’ve made a short video to enjoy here. (Please excuse the wind – it was impossible to find quiet moments.) The good news? My back and I are still on speaking terms!
For thousands of years, the Plains Cree peoples called the place I was born Kaminasaskwatominaskwak, “the place where many saskatoon berry bushes grow”. It was named for the native shrub Amelanchier alnifolia, below, found throughout the Canadian prairies and called “misaskwatomin” by the Cree, for whom saskatoon berries were essential to their diet and often incorporated into the protein-rich meat-fat mixture (traditionally made with bison) called “pemmican”. My birth certificate says I was born in Saskatoon – a less tongue-twisting word for non-natives, beginning with English fur trader Henry Kelsey, the first European to arrive in the area in 1690.
My parents left Saskatchewan for Victoria, British Columbia when I was just 6 weeks old, so I never really gave much thought to the etymology of my home town’s name. When I was a little girl, my dad called our summer vacations to my Irish-born grandpa’s house in Saskatoon trips to “Saskabush” – and it would be decades before I knew there really was a ‘bush’ there, a special bush with a cloud of white flowers in spring and succulent reddish-blue summer fruit.
If, as some philosophers believe, your birthplace imprints itself in your subconscious, I suppose it’s no surprise that I have always been drawn to prairie, whether the tallgrass of the American Central Plains or our own mixed-grass Northern Plains. So when I was in Saskatoon earlier in September for a family funeral, I paid two visits to Wanuskewin Heritage Park. The last time I saw it was the last time I was in Saskatoon in 1996, 4 years after its opening. It has evidently weathered some institutional gales in its 25 years, but has found smoother seas now and is the recent recipient of generous funding that will see its facilities improved and its mandate increased. It has also applied for UNESCO designation.
This is farming country and Wanuskewin is in the midst of it.
Across the road from the park is a wheat field and, in the distance, the big grain elevators of Richardson Pioneer Ltd.
Though Wanuskewin boasts myriad pre-contact archaeological sites representing 6000 years of Plains First Nations occupation, the land is not virgin prairie. In the early 1900s, it was homesteaded by the Penner family, whose name is still on the road sign nearby. They sold it in 1934 to the Vitkowski family, who farmed parts of it for almost a half-century before selling it in 1982 to the City of Saskatoon, which three years earlier had commissioned a 100-year master plan for the Meewasin Valley Authority (MVA) from Toronto architect Raymond Moriyama. Saskatoon transferred it to the MVA the following year and it was named a Provincial Heritage Property. In 1987, Queen Elizabeth visited Wanuskewin, designating it a National Historic Site; the interpretive centre and trails were opened in 1992. It is working now to fulfil the necessary criteria to receive the UNESCO World Heritage designation.
Friday, September 8, 2017
Wanuskewin is Cree for “seeking peace of mind” and it was with this gentle objective on my first visit that I drove my rental car down the driveway to the entrance.
I walked around the handsome Visitors’ Centre, a “Northern Plains Indians cultural interpretive centre” covering the seven First Nations in this part of Saskatchewan. I saw displays of clothing on the wall,…..
…a display case explaining the relationship of spring-flowering prairie crocus (Anemone patens) or “mostos otci” to the bison in First Nations natural history.
A tipi had been set up in the presentation lounge, just one of many interpretive programs, lessons and tours offered at Wanuskewin.
There was an impressive gathering of iconic bison nearby. A little boy visiting felt a tail and declared it “so soft!”
I read that a small bison herd is going to be returning to Wanuskewin soon – and are invoked in the park’s recent $40 million fundraising initiative #thunderingahead. Having been to the Nature Conservancy’s Tallgrass Prairie Preserve in the Osage Nation of northeast Oklahoma a decade ago, I know the powerful symbolism of these magnificent beasts, especially to the indigenous peoples whose ancestors co-existed with them, venerating them as they harvested them for food, shelter and clothing. The bison below, part of an introduced herd of 2500, was standing in big bluestem (Andropogon gerardii), one of the keystone species of tallgrass prairie.
Wanuskewin’s reintroduced bison, on the other hand, will ultimately find a diet of mixed native prairie grasses (many newly introduced to meet the animals’ needs) and a few invasive interlopers, like smooth brome grass (Bromus inermis). They will find 240 hectares (600 acres) of plains and valley hugging the west bank of the winding South Saskatchewan River, about 5 kilometres north of Saskatoon. And they will share the prairie with hundreds of thousands of visitors each year who, like me, set out on a trek of discovery.
Out I went into the late summer prairie heat, taking a trail that led past the recreation of an ancient buffalo pound once located at this spot….
……down into the valley to the Tipi Village in a grove of trembling aspens..
I carried on up the hill behind the tipis, passing a few vivid painted reminders of the Plains people who might have camped here at one time…..
…… or planted crops and gathered grain.
From the top of the hill, I looked back at the Visitors’ Centre. Designed by the architecture farm aodbt, Its roof peaks are intended to suggest tipis.
And up here, I had my first glimpse of one of the distinctive plants of the Central Plains: wolf willow (Eleaegnus commutata). Some people call this suckering shrub ‘silverberry’ for the fruit that follows the small, fragrant, yellow flowers. It feeds grouse and songbirds, but it has also fed the imagination of artists and writers.
I am currently reading Wallace Stegner’s classic Wolf Willow (1955), centred on the Tom Sawyer-like years of his childhood spent in the town of Whitemud (Eastend) in Saskatchewan’s western Cypress Hills where his parents had a small home in the village and homesteaded a 320-acre wheat farm near the Montana border. I love Stegner’s thoughtful prose (he became head of the Creative Writing department at Stanford and a respected author of books about the American west) and while the multi-faceted literary approach he uses in Wolf Willow in exploring his own evolution as a person is brilliant and has generated a trove of critical analysis, what he failed to find in digging into his past — though he traces the history of the Métis masterfully — is what Wanuskewin is all about. It is here to tell a great story about the people Stegner barely noticed, other than the little Métis boys he played with, the people who can trace their lineage on the prairie for thousands of years before Europeans arrived to raise cattle and grow wheat.
From the high vantage point, I gazed down onto Opimihaw Creek through a leafy bouquet of Saskatoon berry already taking on its tired autumn hues of rose and gold. Flowing through the valley from the mighty South Saskatchewan river nearby, Opimihaw has given sustenance to this place and its people and wildlife for millennia.
As I walked along the rise, I saw lichen-spangled rocks nestled in the tawny prairie grasses like sculpture.
Rock, of course, was an essential part of life for Plains Indians, who used basalt, granite and schist to fashion the implements that have been found in archaeological digs at Wanuskewin and nearby, as shown in these donated artifacts in the Visitors’ Centre.
I climbed back down into the valley, surprising a great blue heron that had been fishing in the creek.
I looked up and saw robins conferring noisily in the branches of a dead tree.
In the damp valley near the creek were sandbar willow (Salix interior)…..
….. and snowberry (Symphoricarpos albus) which is one of the dominant shrubs at Wanuskewin in both damp and dry places.
There were lots of rose hips; these are likely from Rosa acicularis, but low prairie rose (R. arkansana) and Woods’ rose (R. woodsii) also grow here.
I gazed back at the Visitors’ Centre through the changing fall leaves of Manitoba maple or box elder (Acer negundo), one of the principal tree species in the valley….
…. and past the crimson fruit of firebelly hawthorn (Crataegus chrysocarpa)…
…. and silver buffaloberry (Shepherdia argentea). Like wolf willow, this shrub is a member of the Oleaster family, Elaeagnaceae.
The Saskatchewan prairie, like the rest of North America, has not escaped the invasion of buckthorn (Rhamnus cathartica), which was introduced from Europe in the early 19th century.
After studying the behaviors and impacts of many hypertensive remedies the physicians recommended the implementation of Toprol as the extensive solution to this dysfunction. order cialis from canada click now Hence, as a first step, one can adopt a healthy lifestyle rather than inviting health problems cialis 10 mg in men and women both. Storages : Keep away from light and moisture and also store at 68 to tadalafil 20mg for sale 77 degrees at room temperature. After taking a test you can then go ahead with the medicine. greyandgrey.com buy levitra online does not include much of its procedure.
I climbed back up the rise onto the dry prairie and looked out through a scrim of fall-coloured shrubs and trees at the South Saskatchewan River flowing away from me. It flows 1392 kilometres (865 miles), originating at the confluence of the Bow and Oldman Rivers in Alberta with their Rocky Mountain glacial water. It flows under multiple bridges in Saskatoon, beneath Wanuskewin’s tall bluffs and eventually joins with the North Saskatchewan River about 40 miles east of Prince Albert to form the Saskatchewan River.
I was now on the ancient Trail of the Bison, and though ‘civilization’ lay just across the river, I marveled at the ‘bigness’ and ’emptiness’ of the prairie behind me. I turned and looked the other way down the river towards Saskatoon, at the undulating bluffs and the grassy floodplain flats on the shore.
It had been a hot summer and the vegetation was parched, but here and there I saw the odd wildflower, like spotted blazing star (Liatris punctata)….
….and prairie coneflower (Ratibida columnifera)…
….and tiny rush-pink (Stephanomeria runcinata) with its wiry stems.
I saw the cottony seedheads of long-fruited thimbleweed (Anemone cylindrica).
But it had been a long day, beginning with my 4:30 am wakeup in Toronto, the flight to Saskatoon, and three hours tramping the prairie. I was tiring and ready to head to the hotel. As l made my way down the trail to the Opimihaw Valley and back towards the Visitors’ Centre, I was careful not to step off the path, because those red leaves with the telltale “three leaves let it be” were the prairie variety of poison ivy (Rhus radicans var. rydbergii).
I was sad not to have seen the famous Medicine Wheel, but vowed to try to return after the weekend. As I was leaving, a staff member came up and told me there was about to be a hoop dance performance. I met young Lawrence Roy Jr., below, in the Visitors’ Centre lobby and decided to head out to the amphitheatre to watch him.
This is my video of Lawrence’s performance (with a little wind interference – it’s hard to capture sound at Wanuskewin without the relentless wind):
And then it was back to the hotel and family.
Monday September 11, 2017:
When I returned to Wanuskewin, the wind was whipping the prairie so fiercely, I put my sun hat back in the car for fear it would fly away. Fortunately, it wasn’t sunny as I set out on the Circle of Harmony trail towards the Medicine Wheel. What you cannot appreciate from the photo below is how that expanse of grass was rippling like a storm-tossed ocean, and the sound of it was violent and thrilling at the same time. (If you read my blog to the end, you can view a video I made to try to capture the rhythmic movement of the grasses.)
As I walked along a steep embankment with a spectacular view of the Opimihaw Valley (sometimes spelled Opamihaw) and the high point opposite where I’d stood a few days earlier overlooking the river, I realized I was standing on the site of the ancient buffalo jump.
Can you imagine, some 2300 years ago, being somewhere nearby as young ‘buffalo runners’, who had channelled herds of these massive animals along ‘drive lines’ of rocks and brush (the driveway into Wanuskewin is situated on the drive line), often for a mile or more, aiming the terrified animals at this cliff where they stampeded them over its edge into the valley? Other members of the band waited in a clearing below to kill those bison that had not died in the crush of the fall, before skinning them to utilize the hide, meat and bones. Life at Wanuskewin revolved around the bison.
Before long, I came upon the ancient Sunburn Tipi Rings site, with its magnificent 360-degree views.
As the interpretive sign says, it was an excellent place for a summer encampment, its position on the plateau offering cooling winds in summer and a commanding view of the river.
Not far away was the Medicine Wheel, arguably the most important archaeological find at Wanuskewin. This arrangement of boulders has been dated to more than 1500 B.P. and is one of just 70 documented medicine wheels in the northern U.S. and southern Canada (and considered to be the most northerly wheel in existence).
Each is different, some with a single hoop arrangement of boulders; others with a double hoop or spokes emanating from the centre. Some refer to astronomy (like Wyoming’s Medicine Mountain wheel which measures the 28 days of the lunar cycle); others attach different symbolic meaning to the four directional quadrants. Wanuskewin’s Medicine Wheel, whose boulders (below) were mapped c. 1964 , is still used for sacred ceremonial gatherings.
I decided to walk down the trail to the valley, through the aspen forest and along the river. Damming of the South Saskatchewan over the decades has lowered the water level, so that some of the sandbars are now permanent.
With my telephoto lens I could see the wind-whipped whitecaps as the river curved under the bluffs.
The view of the Visitors’ Centre from the valley was spectacular. I realized I was hungry, and decided it was time to head back there again.
I was windswept, sunburnt and happy – time for a photo to remember the mood! And I was very ready for some lunch!
As I approached the centre, I decided to pay a visit to the adjacent 7 Sisters Garden.
An interpretive display in the centre explains the identity of the seven sisters….
….which I’ve arranged in a montage below. Clockwise from upper left, 1) sunroot (Jerusalem artichoke); 2) corn; 3) beans; 4) tobacco; 5) sunflower; 6) squash; and 7) as the young woman in the centre said to me: “Us!” (I’ve taken the liberty of using the painted figure near the Tipi Village to illustrate ‘Us!’.)
Out in the garden itself, I was interested in the traditional 3 Sisters method of planting: using a combination of dent corn, beans and squash. Given its modern iteration, the heat and drought meant that a sprinkler was watering the tall corn. Goldfinches darted from sunflower to sunflower, eating the seeds that had started to ripen.
Cornstalk as a bean trellis! Isn’t this a wonderful idea?
Inside, I ate a delicious lunch of chicken & rice soup with bannock and a steaming cup of Saskatoon berry tea.
As I finished, I heard jingling bells and walked to the presentation lounge to watch T.J. Warren, originally from Arizona’s Diné nation, now working as an ambassador for First Nations culture in Saskatoon, perform a traditional Prairie Chicken Dance.
This is the video I made of T.J. dancing and talking about the components of his regalia.
And, finally, this is my video incorporating elements of both days at Wanuskewin. I hope that if you visit Saskatoon, you will find the time to walk its plains and valley. I promise it will bring you ‘peace of mind’.
