Tay Meadows Tidbit – Porcupine tree damage

Well, that whole orchid kick got a little away with me. I hadn’t really intended to turn it into four posts when I found the helleborine stalks in the woods. And I cut myself short: I’m sure I could have rambled for a week on the subject if I’d wanted to. But I’m moving on [...]

Orchids from elsewhere

It’s funny to think, but all those potted plants one sees for sale in the plant sections of places like Home Depot or the grocery store are native to somewhere. Many of them have become so common as houseplants that it’s hard to envision them growing out in the wild, in some steamy rainforest or [...]

Orchids and haworthia

While I’m on an orchid kick, here is 6/7ths of my orchid collection. I blame it on Julie Zickefoose, this newfound interest in orchids. To be fair, it probably isn’t completely her fault. I’ve always had a love for green things, and have a tendency to collect plants and fill my house with them. There [...]

More on native orchids

Inspired by the discovery of the dried Helleborine in the cedar grove, I did some poking about yesterday for info on wild orchids in Ontario. According to the Orchid Society of the Royal Botanical Gardens in Burlington, Ontario, there are 62 species of orchid that have been recorded in the province. They give the current [...]

Remains of summer

Back in August, I posted a photo in one of my Monday Miscellanies of an orchid that I’d noticed growing in the shade of the pines along the side of the driveway. The orchid was a Helleborine, Epipactis helleborine, a European species that was introduced to North America in the late 1800s. It was first [...]

Tay Meadows Tidbit – Asian Ladybug

This evening I spotted this guy (or gal) resting on a branch of one of my orchids. When I first saw it I thought it was eating something. I brought in a couple of cuttings from the garden in late fall, and noticed a short while later that there were some aphids on the tomato. [...]

Winterizing the brain

It’s that time of year, the transition between summer abundance and winter dearth. In the warm months it’s so easy to find something to blog about: life is everywhere. Insects, flowers, birds, green leaves everywhere you turn. The brain gets lazy, there’s no need for it to work overhard. Then come October and November, all [...]

November blog carnivals

Two blog carnivals to announce today. The first is The Moth and Me, a carnival I started up back in the March of this year to celebrate my second-favourite group of living organisms. This month’s edition is the final one of 2009, and was hosted by Susannah of Wanderin’ Weeta. Check out the excellent assortment [...]

Sunday Snapshots: Peruvian hummingbirds

As a continuation on the weekend’s theme presented by yesterday’s post, today I thought I’d do a snapshots of the different hummingbird species from the Manu region of Peru. There are currently 22 species of hummingbird listed on the checklist of birds of the Manu Wildlife Centre, and that’s just what’s been recorded at this [...]

Another plea for Peru

A year from today (approximately), on Saturday November 13, 2010, I hope to be stepping off a plane and breathing in the humid, tropical air of Peru. As regular readers know, I have been offered an opportunity to travel with Kolibri Expeditions to southeastern Peru. The trip is an 8 day birding tour of the [...]