Breakfast & shopping in Shellbrook - Clouded Sulphurs and Cabbage Whites at the farm.

Today we will plant volunteer spruce from the farm here at the cabin as beaver (supposedly) will not eat them. To be clear the spruce did not volunteer to be replanted, but rather escaped the confines of the shelter belt in a mad dash for freedom. I blame the caragana, they are the bad seeeds.

"It has to be loved the way a laundress loves her linens,
the way she moves her hands caressing the fine muslins
knowing their warp and woof,
like a lover coaxing, or a mother praising.
It has to be loved as if it were embroidered
with flowers and birds and two joined hearts upon it.
It has to be stretched and stroked.
It has to be celebrated.
O this great beloved world and all the creatures in it.
It has to be spread out, the skin of this planet."

from Planet Earth
by P.K. Page

Spring Azure?

"We have not heard the music of the spheres,

The song of star to star, but there are sounds

More deep than human joy and human tears,

That Nature uses in her common rounds"

from Voices of the Earth

by Archibald Lampman

Flight

"When the time of sorrow is come?

They will take the goat's path, and the fox's home,

Fleeing from the foreign faces and the foreign swords."

from A Song for Simeon

by T.S. Eliot

“If you take away all the prairie dogs, there will be no one to cry for the rain.” 

Terry Tempest Williams

Since we have cancelled our fall trip to the cabin to

deal with some issues here I have decided to look

at some of the photos from our trip in July. On our

way to visit some friends we stopped at Oyen. We 

did not visit the town we only stopped at the visitor

center.  This a beautiful old thresher.

This is a Richardson's Ground Squirrel this is the most common

ground squirrel found in Alberta. Erroneously referred to as gophers

and much maligned in agricultural areas they still persist even 

occupying areas within the city and sadly, dead gophers beside the

highway are a sure sign of Spring in Alberta. 

Pearl Crescent

"Men learn from other men what they know of themselves,

of the world in which they must live. and of the world in 

which they would like to live."

                                                                       Dangerous Visions

                                                                             Harlan Ellison

“It is necessary to write, if the days are not to slip emptily by.

How else, indeed, to clap the net over the butterfly of the

moment? For the moment passes, it is forgotten; the mood

is gone; life itself is gone. That is where the writer scores

over his fellows: he catches the changes of his mind on the hop. “

                                      Vita Sackville-West

 

I have often posted photos of the pond by my office but

until last week it had never occurred to me to take the dogs

there, so this weekend the whole family sans Max the cat were

off. It proved to be quite a nice spot for a walk with critters to

see, benches to rest on, lots of smells and even a puppy to meet.

 

So here it is Sunday in the park.

 

 

The insect catching Waxwings that nest on the small island
and spend the day feeding over the pond.

 

 

 

Clouded Sulphur Butterfly?

 

“To be whole. To be complete. Wildness reminds us what it means

to be human, what we are connected to rather than what we are

separate from.”

Terry Tempest Williams

Some more photos from our July trip to

the farm and cabin. I was watching a program

featuring a entomologist in India. He said each

child goes through an insect phase and mine never 

ended. Mine has not ended, I want to know

the name and habits of every insect and plant I see.

Something I saw when I did not have my camera was

beautiful metallic green Dogbane Beetles. The sight 

of them reassured me that when I can spend more

time at the cabin boredom should not be a problem.

My identifications are based on my best guess, feel

free to correct me.

"The butterfly counts not months 

but moments, and has time enough."

Rabindranath Tagore

White Clover

Fritillary not sure which kind?

Wild Vetch

Common Wood Nymph

Vetch?

Pearl Crescent

Clover?

Canadian Tiger Swallowtail with bits missing.

"Do ye not comprehend that we are worms,
Born to bring forth the angelic butterfly
That flieth unto judgment without screen?"

Dante Alighieri

These pictures of the Mourning Cloak butterfly ~ Nymphalis antiopa

were taken a couple of weeks ago  in the garden. It is an interesting

butterfly, they emerge in July, enter a short dormancy and emerge

again in fall. They hibernate in the winter under bark etc. and might

emerge if the temperature becomes warm enough. They can live up

to a year.

        

Bugs of Alberta

                          Acorn & Sheldon

We also encountered one on our recent trip to the

mountains.

" The beauty of things was born before eyes

and sufficient to itself; the heart - breaking beauty

Will remain when there is no heart to break for it."

                                                Credo

                                                   Robinson Jeffers