winter wonderland

I love winter, and the sad fact is that we don't see as much of it as I would like. 

We had a major snowstorm, the first one in a couple of years, this past week... and when we woke up today, the mist had crystalized on every available surface. 

Spectacular, and of course the photos (taken by a combination of fishy and myself) don't quite do it justice. 

butterflies in early March

zebra longwing

Yesterday was gross and rainy -- not good hiking weather. So we went for a walk indoors instead. There's something to be said for warmth, light and green at this time of year. I hadn't been to the Cambridge Butterfly Conservatory in years, so I thought it might be time for a revisit.

It's not a big place, but it's very pleasant. Outside the glasshouse there's a couple of spaces for exhibits; the permanent exhibit is about Insects of the World and there's a space for rotating exhibits. This one was on bats (woot!) and though not very large it was quite informative. My only complaint about their interpretation in both the galleries is that there's an awful lot of verbiage and it's often very small font. smallfry liked looking at the colourful insects under glass, though. She particularly liked looking at the live honeybees in the honeybee exhibit.

green!

The glasshouse is really pleasant. Lots of green, a comfortable humidity and a slightly tropical heat (around 24C). There's the constant sound of water running, thanks to two waterfalls and a little stream that runs around the entire place. There were others there, but it wasn't terribly crowded on a Thursday morning.

owl butterfly

There are butterflies everywhere. When we got there, sort of mid-morning, there weren't a lot flying around; don't know if the light wasn't right, or they're perhaps late risers? but by the time I left after the lunch hour, there were butterflies flying everywhere. It's a very pretty effect.

can't remember what this one is called, but they're one of my favourites

There are also many, many birds. They have ornamental finches in spades (who were collecting nesting material as I was there, so one expects there will be more ornamental finches at some point in the near future, unless staff find the nests) and there are a couple of quails, and new to me this time was a green-cheeked conure hanging out across from the hatching station.

his name, poor thing, is "Cheecho"

The hatching station is where the butterfly chrysalides are hung to hatch. The Conservatory gets all their chrysalides from farms in the tropics; I'm not sure whether any of the butterflies they already have ever lay eggs, and I didn't ask. One suspects that though the finches leave the [live, healthy] butterflies alone that caterpillars might not be so lucky. Not sure they have the right food plants for the butterfly species they have either. At any rate, they hatch from their well-travelled chrysalides in a special area open to the rest of the conservatory, where the staff have the chrysalides all labelled carefully and where you can watch the butterflies chilling out, pumping their wings full and resting before they flutter off into the wider conservatory.

the chrysalides hang from sticks in the middle panel

I didn't spend time talking to anyone; smallfry and I did a couple of circuits, I practiced with the camera (still need a lot more practice, I think) and then we sat for a while. A very nice way to spend a couple of hours on a rainy, windy March day.

she bakes, she bakes

More baking adventures. It appears that I have... well, not perfected, and not even mastered, but accomplished the art of a reasonable flatbread. First there was pizza dough, which I have made using Alton Brown's recipe (you may detect a theme here) and that has generally turned out. We've eaten a lot of pizza; each time I make the dough it gets better. So practice is clearly a component. Next up with pizza adventures: I'm going to try Alton's grilled flatbread pizza recipe. You know, because winter's such a great time for grilling.

I have also accomplished a reasonable facimile of a sort of mana'eesh, a Middle Eastern flatbread that is essentially a pizza with za'atar on it instead of tomato sauce and pepperoni. I'll make this one again, I think, and up the oven temperature from the 400 F the recipe called for; my mana'eesh didn't really brown, though they were quite tasty all the same. And very, very easy, except for the part where my pizza stone can only support two at a time.

also, za'atar is extremely delicious

Finally, today I accomplished homemade bagels. They're not beautiful, but wow are they tasty. I did them the traditional way, poaching them in boiling water with baking soda and malt syrup before baking. They weren't blatantly flavourful the way, say, a store-bought bagel is; they were better. The texture was flat-out awesome. They had a subtle flavour; something not quite sweet, not quite savoury. They were a fair bit of work; a pre-ferment, then mixing and kneading the dough, then another rise, then shaping them and leaving them in the fridge overnight, then poaching (which I could only do two at a time) and then baking (which I could only do four at a time.) And things are a little time-sensitive when it comes to the poaching-draining-baking thing, so I'm not sure I'll be doing much of them when I'm home alone with smallfry. But as a weekend baking activity I'll definitely pull this recipe out again. I may have been ruined by these bagels; I'm pretty sure I'll never be able to go back to store-bought.

Incidentally, for those looking for a good mana'eesh or bagel recipe, I got both from Daniel Leader's Simply Great Breads book. My current copy is the library's but I'm pretty sure I'll be buying one. The failed bialys were from this book too, so my record with it is not perfect, but there are at least two recipes there that worked out well, and several more that I'd like to try (cider doughnuts being first on the list.)

I just ate another half-bagel, just to confirm that they really are that tasty. So. Good.

turkey tracks

Or I think they are.

Got out for a true winter walk today near my parents' house. They live across the road from a regional forest, and while it's perhaps not the most beautiful place in the world, it's familiar and a good snowfall, like the one we had last night, makes the whole place that much more lovely.

I quite enjoy poking around looking at tracks in the snow; aside from the usual people and dogs, today we had:

• voles
• deer mice
• grey squirrels
• red squirrels
• red fox
• turkeys I think

The turkey tracks are new for me. We haven't always had turkey in those woods, though they definitely are there now, and I was staring at the tracks wondering what bird could possibly be pottering around the wintery woods and leaving tracks like that. They were far too big to be grouse -- but once I had hit on grouse, the thought that they must be turkey hit not far behind. I wondered about a pheasant for a while, as those have been known to be there too, but... I am not sure. I am really leaning towards turkey. The toes seem a bit more splayed than pheasant toes apparently are.

The photos are taken with my dad's Blackberry, which I must say rather impressed me. We had it in case of smallfry meltdown; she has started making strange, so we left the house only when she was asleep and planned to return at speed if she woke up before we got back. She didn't.

We heard chickadees and a red-breasted nuthatch. Well, I am extrapolating a little here, as I'm good but I'm not good enough to tell red-breasted from white-breasted nuthatch songs in absense of both -- but white-breasted nuthatches are an exception there, where red-breasted are common as nails. Also had a pretty excellent look at a pair of golden-crowned kinglets.

All in all, a very pleasant saunter. If anyone thinks I've misidentified these tracks, drop me a comment. Otherwise I'll spend the rest of my life thinking they're turkey tracks.

teach a girl to bake

I have a problem.

I am a compulsive follower of recipes. I cannot not follow a recipe. And I'm not very good at cooking if I don't have a recipe to follow. This makes me a rather poor cook, but a pretty decent baker. I like baking and baking is a precise art. It's not so precise that a little slip-up here or there can't be recovered from, but it's precise enough that one should have a recipe and one should follow it. Usually a followed recipe when baking means a reasonably delicious outcome.

Unless, I am learning, the baked good is yeast breads. There is magic to yeast breads, and I haven't quite mastered it yet. My suspicion is that the problem has to do with my blind recipe-following and the fact that I'm not entirely sure of the reasons behind the recipe.

Take, for example, these attempted bialys.

we both think they look like onion-topped nipples; the resemblance is disturbing

I followed the recipe exactly, including the careful pricking of the centres so that they wouldn't do exactly what they did. They taste fine, but the experience of eating them is somewhat less than satisfying.

The thing I am realizing is that I need a little more understanding of the science behind baking. Chemistry was not my favourite subject in university, to say the least, but this is chemistry I can eat. And when it's taught to me by people like Alton Brown on Good Eats, well, I can get in to chemistry. Once I learn a bit more about why yeast breads do the magical things they do, I think I can follow -- or adapt, or embellish -- recipes with more confidence.

Project FeederWatch and Battle of the Squirrels

Bookwyrme (who has a fun spidery blog, btw) asks an excellent question: What is Project FeederWatch?

PFW is a citizen science program run jointly by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology (when I was a kid, my dream workplace, until I realized I wasn't really cut out for either academia or emigrating) and Bird Studies Canada. For a small fee (which goes towards program upkeep) anyone with bird feeders can pick two days/week to identify and count the bird species and individuals that show up to eat, then report their findings. It runs from November - April every year. I've been wanting to participate since I was a kid. Now that I'm off for the winter and spend a lot of time nursing a baby, I figured I could do most of my nursing in front of the window and thus count birds while I do it.

So far it's been a lot of fun. I like counting things. I especially like reporting things I've counted and watching the statistics pile up. I have always kept half-assed track of the birds I see in the backyard, but it's interesting to keep a detailed record and see what's really going on.

Thus far this year I've seen ten species at the feeder during count days. I've actually seen thirteen, but none of the the white-throated sparrow, field sparrow, or my favourite red-breasted nuthatches have shown up on a count day so I can't report them (actually, all three disappeared right around the time the program started, perversely). Weekly we average about eight species and roughly twenty-three individuals. Juncos used to be the most numerous species, but they've really dropped over the past few weeks (this week I only saw three at one time) and goldfinches have picked up the slack, with a record nine individuals at one time yesterday. I have some regulars -- a trio of chickadees, a pair of cardinals, a downey woodpecker -- and some birds who I know are there but don't always show up on count days, like the white-breasted nuthatches and the blue jays.

The worst trouble I have is an escalating battle with the squirrels. On a bad day, the squirrels go through most of my seed and keep the birds away, and on a really bad day they can break feeders. The feeder in the foreground of the photo has been the most resilient -- the only feeder I've owned for more than three years that hasn't been busted by squirrels in one way or another. Last year's new, expensive feeder was broken and useless in a week. That was purchased after my "squirrel proof" feeder (which actually really was squirrel proof for most of the time it was up) finally bit it when they broke the roof to get in to the seed.

I don't dislike squirrels, exactly, destructive little bastards though they are. They're cute and fascinating to watch, and watching them trying to figure out the latest baffle system is really interesting. But I don't like that they fatten up on our seed while the birds, whom we buy the seed for, go hungry waiting for the squirrels to finish stuffing themselves.

Thus the escalation in tactics -- the suet feeder is benefitting from the latest baffle design, with a long chain covered by a PVC pipe on top of a Swiss Chalet take-out lid. The PVC is to prevent the squirrels from hanging on their hind feet on the chain, pulling the baffle up and snorfing down the suet by hunks. The feeder in the foreground will shortly benefit from the same treatment, though that won't stop the squirrels from leaping from the trellis onto the feeder from the side (this is truly amazing to watch). It's not about making the feeders completely squirrel proof, because I honestly don't believe there's such a thing. What we are trying to do is make the cost of getting the seed directly from the feeder higher than the cost of sitting under the feeders eating what falls when the birds eat. I'll let you know how that goes.

Panama Trip 2: The Canal

Better late than never, right? At this rate, I'll get the third and final part of this recap up by September of next year.

Aaaanyway. After our four nights at Coral Lodge, it was time to head back to the city. For the first time since the night we arrived, it rained. The trip back took us along the coast by boat for 50 minutes or so to the Portobelo area, and then we hopped in a minibus and took the long trip along the canal back to Panama City and La Estancia, the bed and breakfast that was to be our base of operations for the rest of the trip.

Panoramic Panama is a tour agency that runs out of La Estancia, owned by the same people. So when we booked our room, we also booked two tours: a canal half-transit, and a birdwatching tour. In fact, when figuring out lodgings and so on, we arranged our trip around the canal transit, since they only happen on Saturdays, and it seemed somewhat ludicrous to go to Panama and not spend time on the Canal. Unfortunately, they only do full transits once a month, and the week we were there was not the full transit one. But that turns out to have been all right; the half-day trip was fascinating, and it left us time to visit Casco Viejo (old Panama City) in the evening and have our nicest dining experience of the trip.

But the Canal. Doing a half-transit allowed us to see some of the most interesting parts, go through a couple locks, and learn a rather insane number of statistics.

The day was somewhat rainy. The driver from La Estancia dropped us off at Isla Flamenco, one of the three islands connected by the Amador Causeway. From there, a bus took us to Gamboa, on the south shore of Lake Gatun, where we met our tour boat, the Pacific Queen. The tour guide spoke both English and Spanish, and kept up a running commentary throughout the trip.


Each ship that passes through the canal, be it our tiny tour boat Pacific Queen, a Panamax freighter, or a luxury yacht like the one above, has to pay a toll. The toll is determined by several factors, including what the cargo is; the largest toll ever paid was paid by a cruise ship, at over $417 000 for the full transit, as humans are considered the "most precious cargo." Most ships going through the canal, the big Panamax freighters, only pay around $100 000 per trip. This toll doesn't include incidental costs, such as the mandatory nanny tug or the mandatory canal pilot, who captains the ship for the duration of its trip through the canal. Even our little tour boat had a canal pilot.


We saw a couple of these creatures on the canal; I believe there are four in operation at all times. This barge drills holes in the bottom of the canal, which is hard-packed silt and rock. Once the holes are drilled, they're packed with explosives. The explosives are detonated and another giant machine comes in to dredge the canal bottom, to keep it deep enough for Panamax ships, and one assumes, eventually post-Panamax ships. The ship below is one of the dredgers, a little further down the canal:

So, all of this constructiony activity explains the muddy condition of the water, as does the fact that it's all freshwater constantly being stirred by enormous amounts of shipping traffic. It also explains why the corporation that owns the Canal charges so much for a transit; maintenance costs must be insane. Consider the amount of money just one of those drills or dredgers must cost, when something like the little locomotives that guide large ships through the locks cost over $2 million apiece.

Our little tour boat didn't need these locomotives, which are attached to ships by linesmen whose sole job it is to attach lines from big ships to the locomotives so that the ships don't bash the walls of the locks to pieces when entering, exiting, or sitting in the lock -- the tension has to be just right on each of the lines. I believe it also helps prevent the ships from running into the lock doors, though the doors we saw had dents in them. That was only the inner set, though, as all the locks have two sets. We didn't stand much of a chance of bashing the walls or the doors too badly, so the locomotives and the linesmen didn't bother with us.

The Panama Canal locks, when they were built in the early 1900s, were the first major structure to make use of the new building material concrete. Nothing on the scale of the Canal had ever been done, and engineers weren't sure how much concrete would be needed -- there's a lot of pressure on the middle wall when the lock on one side of the wall is full, and the other is empty. So they decided to play it safe, and the concrete wall separating the locks from each other is 50 feet thick. Which is massive.

Now, having spent some time in Thorold, living close enough to the Welland Canal to be able to see the lakers from the top of the hill on our street, the experience of going down the locks wasn't terribly novel for me. But the scale of these structures is something, and the amount of fresh water used every time the lock steps up or down a level is staggering. I was there, and I still couldn't really grasp the real, tangible amount. Luckily, Panama gets enough rainfall that they need to actually let it drain elsewhere, rather than jealously guard it to make sure that the Canal can keep running -- but they track their water usage very carefully, and we were lucky to not have to wait for a bunch of other smaller ships to join us in the locks.

The little boat behind us was the Isla Morada, the oldest continuously-running ship on the Canal. Apparently possibly owned by Al Capone at one point, currently used for ferrying tourists like us up and down the Panama Canal. It was a rather pretty little wooden boat. Behind the Isla Morada you can just see the bridge of a Panamax ship going the other direction, up a level as we were going down.

The shipyard in Panama City at the mouth of the Canal is huge. One thing I thought was pretty cool was that when the Canal was built, each lock could hold six of the largest ocean-faring ships at a time. Currently, about 20% of the world's shipping fleet is too large to fit in these locks. They're building a whole new set parallel to the current system.

Shipping companies can get around the Canal by offloading the cargo that needs to go through the Canal at either mouth, transferring it to the Panama Canal Company's dedicated railway, and picking it up with another ship at the other end. The equipment at this transfer point is pretty impressive and astonishing in its scale, too. There is so. much. stuff. in those containers. From all over the world.

Upon ending our transit, our canal pilot left via launch pulling itself alongside our tour boat (the leap from one to the other was a crowd-pleaser; everyone applauded), and we made our way back to harbour, then back to La Estancia.

From there we took a cab to the old city, of which we unfortunately have no photos; we didn't feel like taking the camera and being singled out as tourists, though I'm sure my perpetual trying-to-understand-Spanish-without-its-"s"s squint was a bit of a giveaway. We ended up at a lovely little restaurant called Ego on one of the squares, where we ate waaaay too much food and drank at least a little too much sangria, and felt very provincial and sophisticated sitting outside in the warm Panama evening. It was lovely, and I wish I'd gotten up the energy and courage to do it again, though we only had one more night left.

If you're curious about the canal, the Canal Authority's website is pretty good, and there are even real-time webcams trained on the locks. We waved at them when we were going through the Miraflores locks.

Next: La Estancia, birdwatching, and a final walk. Coming sometime in the new year, I swear.

this is what became of the single, tiny pumpkin i grew this year

Hope everyone had a happy Hallowe'en!

Panama Trip 1: Coral Lodge

We started talking about this trip six months ago. The idea was to try to combine our love of complete relaxation and lying on the beach with a book, and our love of birdwatching. At this time of year, birdwatching is fine in Canada, but the beach-reading, not so much, so we figured we'd have to go elsewhere.

I was inspired to investigate Panama as an option by Birdchick, who spent time at the absolutely incredible Canopy Tower, the premiere birding ecolodge in Panama. Her photographs, plus her enthusiastic commentary on how awesome her trip was, convinced me I had to check it out. Unfortunately, there was a stumbling block: being an old US Army radar tower mostly made out of metal, Canopy Tower isn't so much on the relaxing privacy. It's more on the "you will need earplugs to sleep at night and the howler monkeys start at 5am" side of the spectrum. Someday we may still go, but it wasn't quite what we needed right now. So, we started widening the field.


Our first four nights of the week were spent at Coral Lodge, a very remote little ecolodge at the north end of Panama, along the Caribbean. Remote means a 2.5 hour drive and 45 minute boat ride to and from the place. It's right on the very edge, on the Panama side, of Comarca Kuna Yala, which is essentially a separate nation run by the indigenous Kuna people. There's not a lot around, and the lodge itself is pretty tiny. Because of its remoteness and tininess, the new owners are having to do a fair bit of work to make it economically sustainable, including adding more rooms. Right now there are only six.

But they are awesome.


And as advertised, the coral is also awesome. We did a lot of swimming and snorkling. There were sea turtles, stingrays, puffer fish, young barraccuda, lionfish (a long way away -- they're gorgeous, and exceedingly poisonous) and many, many, many gorgeous reef fish of all sizes and colours, right off our own little deck. The water was generally quite clear, though less so when things were windy. But I expect the diving here is spectacular, though I am too claustrophobic to try.


We went for a rainforest walk that ended with fresh coconut right off the tree. AND we saw monkeys! My first time ever seeing them in the wild. They're pretty darn charming, howler monkeys, even at 5:30am when they're booming away. The ones we saw were pretty high, so there was no way to get a good photo. So instead, me on the beach with my coconut, gazing out at a trio of whimbrels.


The food was very good, and service very attentive. The weather was absolutely stunning, with most of the time as you see above; it was raining just a little bit as we left. Not bad for the rainy season. As one of only two couples there, we did feel a little exposed at times. And there were fewer birds than we might have expected, although we picked up about 40 species between the airport, lodge, and our return to Panama City. Overall, it was a really lovely start to our trip.

squash blossom

I was doing the morning rounds in the garden -- I tend to do this while my tea is steeping, before I come up here to the computer to check email -- and discovered that the squash has started to bloom. It's a perfect blossom, bright yellow, and unexpected. I thought I might expect blossoms this weekend, not as early as today.

If I had to pick a favourite plant for the vegetable garden, it might be squash. I love tomatoes, and always feel good about my herbs and the garlic. But it's squash that has a special place in my heart. It's the treasure hunt. I love the great, curly, crazy vines, and the hidden little squash plants at the base of the flowers; I love watching them grow over the course of the summer from flower to itty bitty squash to full-blown-keep-me-in-the-cold-cellar-for-the-winter big squashes. This is the first time since I was a kid that I've grown squash in my own garden, and I am absolutely thrilled with it.

progress update: a little bit of everything

Hello, green blog. It appears I have been neglecting you something awful lately. It's not because nothing is happening in the garden -- it's because there's too much and when it's a choice between weeding or writing, I'll be weeding every time.

Today I'm trying to figure out how best to deal with the basket-of-gold (Alyssum saxatile) in the front garden. It's nearly done blooming and I know from experience that it looks like hell if I don't clean it up, but I don't want to damage the plant because it really does wonderfully. I don't know that I have any pictures of it blooming -- I'll have to get some next year -- but it's been absolutely spectacular every year, no matter the weather. Everything I've seen suggests pruning back hard after flowering -- cutting back 3 inches of growth -- so I think I'll try that this year and see how it goes. I do worry that though they seem to like the neglect, they might get sick of it after three years and up and die on me at any time now.

My other major garden task for today is compost maintenance. I tried to do it last week and it poured all day Thursday, so today looks good. The vermicomposter is going to be emptied entirely, and about 2/3 of the worms placed in new homes in the various compost piles. The rest will get new bedding in the vermicomposter, and "fresh" food from the veggie crisper in the fridge (yum!) and then hopefully they'll be good for another year. The castings I'm going to use in some of the house plants, but most of it will go into the composter to enrich the compost there. Castings dry out into extremely hard pellets, so they don't make great mulch. I don't think.

The other composters need to be turned, and I'm hoping that some of the leaf mulch from the new yard waste bin is going to be ready for mulching the garlic bed, which will be another plan for today if it is ready. Um, and re-potting tomatoes into their big containers. If I can find the soil. And transplanting the asters. And the pepper.

And since I've been saying I'll post photos of the square foot bed (which is really working very well so far):

drowning in the purple sea

Hooray for rain! It has done wonders for the garden. And the weeds, but nevermind. I had a bean plant sprout and grow two inches in less than two days! And the beets are all up. The squash and pumpkins, cucumbers... everything except the fennel and the brussels sprouts are up and happy. I am assuming neither the fennel nor the brussels sprouts are unhappy, just not up yet.

fishy and I spent part of this afternoon drifting around one of our local nurseries, picking up plants for the garden. We decided on a plan for the front boxes, and picked up two more (different) hostas, some 'May Night' salvia, an interesting little perennial ornamental grass, a few more herbs, marigolds for around the square foot bed, creeping thyme for around the front flagstones, a lovely yellow potentilla shrub, and four foxglove plants. I managed to plant the grass and the foxgloves before the thunderstorm hit, so they're in and well watered now. Everything else will be fine for a day or three as we get organized.

(also: unuseable as cut flowers because they smell just awful)

We're hosting a shower here in about five weeks, is the thing. And I am feeling a little nervous about that. I don't mind people we know well coming in and seeing that the garden is pretty okay, but that some of the beds desperately need weeding and renovation. I do mind a whole enormous group of people I don't know coming in and having a garden party in the garden, in the state it is now. The major problem, I think, aside from the weeds (yes yes) are the giant alliums, which are growing dangerously close to the "weed" category in my books. They are bloody everywhere, including many places they shouldn't be. They are taking over. I am on the warpath. I pulled up a bunch today and I'll do more tomorrow, too. I'm not sure where they should be, or how to use them effectively. Right now I'd be happy to never see another one, I'm that sick of them, although they are really quite striking and take no care whatsoever. They thrive on neglect... which should be just my kind of plant.

Friday Photo, and 100 posts!

Just sayin'. The fact that I've managed to keep this blog going impresses even me. Actually, I'm pretty easily impressed, but still. I am really pleased with the fact that I've really started keeping up the entries again. We'll see how it gets once I'm into the busy summer season again, but I'm feeling pretty good.

For today's photo, a pretty little moss having a party on the back lawn:


I am not one of those people who thinks a lawn should be perfectly even grass. The back of the lawn is more of a meadow, really. This moss is entirely welcome to stay.

Friday Photo

The forsythia is in bloom, and the sky is ominous. It must be spring!


Happy Friday, everyone!

Friday Photo

Here's what's happening out in the garden this week:


I love the early irises. Many of the later irises I could do without, but this little patch requires nothing of me and offers these beautiful, early season (we don't even have daffodils yet) blooms. I love how they bring colour to the otherwise brown and grey landscape of the back gardens.

Friday Photo

I think I maybe don't post enough of photos of my garden on here. So today, I thought I'd show off my little rhubarb:

Cute, huh?