Regenerating Mind and Body.....

So we have this wonderful forested property with 30 acres of woodland trails and a wide variety of wild flowers, ferns and other plants and have only walked our trail once this spring! I feel guilty for not making use of such a resource that so many folks would love to have in their back yard, traditionally we always have a family hike on mothers day but with temperatures at just 3c and snow flurries it was hardly the pleasant walk normally enjoyed and we chickened out!

To say the month of May has been 'variable' weather wise is putting it mildly, even now beyond the normal 'frost date' we have had several nights with quite a hard frost, the hanging pots of geraniums overwintered in the greenhouse are getting dizzy from being taken in and out. We will no doubt loose some of the annuals planted out about a week ago when temperatures were in the upper 20s in our sheltered clearing. We have yet to see if the apples and pear trees managed to set fruit before the blossoms got frosted, the insects did not seem to be as abundant as in previous years and we have yet to see a bee.

When the weather is decent it seems that the number of 'projects' always outdoes the time and ambition to complete them, that my old bones are reluctant to cooperate at times does not help, but in that I am a firm believer of 'use it or loose it' I do try and keep busy. The long period over winter spent sitting on my arse just thinking about even more projects did not help with either the volume of work or the mobility of the old fart doing them! The grass needs cutting weekly this time of year, the trails need to be trimmed also, the pile of logs hauled out last fall for this years heating sit behind the barn saying 'time to block and split me' each time I walk past. Folks keep coming in with mowers to repair and whilst the extra pocket money is nice the culmination of all these thing bring me to the conclusion that somehow the 'list' must be thinned out if I am to keep up. It could not have anything to do with being another year older could it? They say you are as old as you feel and some days I feel ancient!

So today we will use those trails which I hope will help with the mobility of both bones and brain and not add to the list of 'things to do', I will take the camera along and encourage the Mrs to join me, the dog comes automatically as soon as I pick up the walking stick, and report back here later today.....

....Mission accomplished, after a late breakfast of french toast on the wood-fired BBQ we took a pleasant 1hr stroll around our trails. Whilst the Trout Lilies and Bellwort are all done flowering a few Trilliums and Violets are still showing some colour. The Baneberry is in flower and the Cohosh just starting to flower, all the ferns are greening up and we saw several quite large Snakes Tongue Ferns with their distinctive t ripple fronds. The regeneration of trees, shrubs and other undergrowth was quite extensive to the point where in spots it was hard to see where the trail was, looks like that w**k list just got longer. I always have to grit my teeth in the spring when it time to trim the trails, I hate cutting anything down but if the trails are not cleared spring and fall mother nature would quickly take over and hide all my hard work establishing set routes that avoid trampling plants at random.

I will leave you with this pic taken today of a Baneberry in flower which promises a fine showing of red or white (its hard to tell which variety it is at this time) berries come fall.