A Walk in the Spring Woods

A walk in the spring woods on a day in early May is a delightful way to spend a Saturday especially when you have gotten up way too early to attend a plant sale where you buy your usual assortment of specimens that you know are going to die anyway because you’re just a plop-them-in-the-ground-and-hope-for-the-best-kind of gardener. Those horticultural society gardeners are serious folks, and early-risers too, (worse than garage sales), and usually by the time I get there everything is picked over and the half-price sale is on. They are quite horrified when I ask for something in pink, blue or lavender. The best they could come up with was some purple iris, a wilted Virginia bluebell, a day lily of unspecified colour, and a spinster gooseberry. (There was only one left, and the guy did warn me that his did not bear fruit because he didn’t have two, but hey that’s the way nature sometimes works.) He also tried to interest me in some leftover red and black currant bushes, but I passed on those as I remember having a row of those on the farm. Mainly because it was my job to pick them so my mother could make a red currant pie, which only my father ate as the currants were so sour. The birds ate the black currants. The single gooseberry bush did produce 2 or 3 berries occasionally, so I have faith.

Anyway, as the sale was winding down, several of my friends who belong to the Hort. Society invited me in for pizza, but I declined, because I didn’t really know the rest of the volunteers, and they might think I was just there for the free lunch, (people can be funny that way) so I went for a walk in a nearby park instead. It was a perfect spring day – sunny, a light breeze, not too hot, not too cold.

This particular park is about 100 acres in size and borders Lake Huron, and although I have been there many times – to the animal farm, the picnic pavilions, and of course the beach, I had never walked the densely wooded trail which is where these pictures were taken, (with my new camera which I am still figuring out). Early spring is best, when the trees are just starting to leaf out, and before tick season starts. The rest of the park contains more typical open areas, with lots of walking paths and tall trees. The wooded area is a favorite spot for birders, and there was certainly plenty of birdsong that morning, although I only saw two other people. Everyone else must have been out buying gifts for their mothers.

This area is an example of a Carolinian forest, a type of deciduous forest which spans the eastern US from Northern Carolina up into southern Ontario. (Wikepedia link) You can go either right or left on the trails, I chose right.

There were lots of pretty spring wildflowers in the woods.

And quite a bit of dead wood off the trails.

There were patches of white trilliums, which are our provincial flower, mostly seen on drivers licenses and heath cards, except for a few short weeks in the early spring. (These pictures were taken May 10). Trilliums have 3 flowers and 3 petals, hence the name, and also come in other colours. You are not supposed to pick the flowers, because they only have a few short weeks to store up enough energy and nutrients for the rest of the year, which is why they bloom in early spring when the tree canopy is lighter and sunshine is at the max.

Tree canopy – the only time of year you can see that particular shade of chartreuse green.

I remember the bush on the back of my parents farm being full of trilliums and one year my cousin and I picked masses of them and brought them up to the house for our mothers for Mother’s Day, only to be told by my dad that it was against the law to pick trilliums. I was about eight and had visions of the RCMP hunting us down! White trilliums are a favourite food of white tailed deer which is why the provincial parks often use annual trillium surveys to monitor the local deer population.

It is against the law to pick them in provincial parks, where they are so plentiful they probably deserve their own blog. Maybe next spring…

I didn’t do both trails, as like the trilliums I wanted to conserve enough energy to visit the turtles, so I drove the car around to the small lake in the middle of the park, and parked in front of it, (there were no signs – I checked). There were wild crab-apple trees along the path to the spot where the turtles like to hang out.

There’s nothing like the smell of apple blossoms.

The turtles like to sunbathe on a log that juts out into the mini-lake. They have their own fan club on sunny days. There are baby turtles too, but I didn’t see any that day. (I’m not sure why the water looks that shade?)

This was on the opposite side of the water so I was happy to have the camera with the 30X zoom lens, and the optical viewfinder so I can frame shots on sunny days. (It’s hard to find a digital camera with both – mine’s a Panasonic Lumix – Model DMC-ZS60 with a LCD rear view screen and a old-fashioned viewfinder in the top corner. I bought it in 2022, so there may be newer models out now.)

This turtle pond at a local nursery also has the same putrid looking water, but is home to 12 turtles waiting for their “forever pond.”

I’ll add one of mom’s paintings for old time’s sake. I really missed her on this first Mother’s Day without her, and the first time I hadn’t bought a card in fifty years.

When I returned to the car a group of nice young park rangers were gathered around it debating whether to ticket me for parking illegally but as they had not yet installed the warning signs, and I pleaded that I’d had heart surgery and couldn’t walk that far, I got off on a promise of good behaviour. (Really, that excuse could be good forever.) I concluded my walk with a short visit to the beach, because you know summer is just around the corner! Then I went home and had a two hour nap from all that fresh air!

30 thoughts on “A Walk in the Spring Woods”

  3. ruthsoaper says:
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    ruthsoaper's avatar

    Thanks for the lovely walk, Joni. Trilliums were one of my mom’s favorite flowers. In the last 14 years since she passed, I’ve gone from missing card shopping to spending some time looking for trilliums on Mother’s Day.
    I love the turtle pictures, including your mom’s. We have noticed a lot (as many as 5) turtles sunning on the banks of our pond. We only see them from a distance because they slip into the water as we approach. My camera doesn’t zoom far enough to get good pictures.
    Glad your car didn’t get ticketed.

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    • Joni says:
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      Joni's avatar

      Thanks Anne! It was a delightful day, and we’ve had cold and rainy weather ever since. 9 C today when it should be twice that….and no warmth in sight.

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  7. Linda Schaub says:
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    Linda Schaub's avatar

    I enjoyed everything about your walk Joni, from start to finish and this would be a walk right up my alley. I like all the pictures and I am glad you caught a break at the end. 🙂

    I am glad you got to see the turtles you mentioned to me when you saw my recent turtle post … in both places no less and I didn’t realize when you mentioned the nursery turtles they were there waiting to be purchased as pets or for a pond. I liked seeing the trilliums too and I just mentioned to Ruth in her recent post with trillium pics that some Canadian I am, as I’ve never seen a trillium. Your trilliums are like our American Lotuses – they are protected plants.

    It is good to see your mother’s artwork gracing your blog again – the turtle was cute and the bouquet of flowers is pretty. Keep her memory alive by posting her paintings. I always enjoyed seeing them. I am sure the first Mother’s Day was difficult for you … I remember mine was too, but it will get easier. I thought the same as you when my mom’s birthday, just two weeks after her passing, arrived. Then it was Mother’s Day and that is just one more bittersweet heartache of losing someone you love and are close to.

    Keep walking and using that camera – at least it was nice weather, something we have not seen much of this week. I have taken advantage of the rain as I have painting the last few days and now my assignments are done and just have to be sent to the teacher.

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    • Joni says:
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      Joni's avatar

      Thanks Linda! I’m glad you enjoyed it. But keep in mind we only have one such park here, where you have dozens! I would walk there more often if it was closer to me, but it’s a half hour drive. I think the day I took those photos was the last really nice warm day we had. I should ask how much a turtle cost? I assume they were there for sale, as there were 12 of them, in a pond with a waterfall. I don’t go to that nursery very often as they are too expensive, but I had to buy the dogwood bushes there. I haven’t been to any of the provincial parks as they are too far away, but I see people who post photos from the parks or from people’s private woods and they are really a lot of them, in many colors, so that might be a future post next year.

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      • Linda Schaub says:
        Linda Schaub's avatar

        For your provincial parks do you have to get a yearly pass? Our Metroparks are like that but I get a senior discount, so it is cheaper which is nice and it is good for 13 Metroparks. I am a half-hour drive from Lake Erie Metropark, but I don’t take the expressway, just surface streets, but it is two main highways at 45-55 mph so that is a good run for the car … I don’t like expressways anymore. They drive way over the speed limit and there are random shootings all the time. I have spent all afternoon and early evening sorting through my May pics and have a few more to do here but am taking a break. I am at the old computer, my first laptop from 2009, where I store all my photos and I can’t remember my password for Comcast. It is already late … I don’t know where the time goes. I had to photograph and send my photos of the paintings at the assignment link, so got that done. I apologize for being late to respond to you by e-mail, but now that the class is over, the next class has no assignments, so working at my own speed. It was cold this morning!

        Liked by 1 person

      • Joni says:
        Joni's avatar

        I’m not sure….I think you can just get a day pass. There are only two near me, and they are an hour’s drive away, farther up along the lake, so a seasonal pass wouldn’t be worth it. I like to stay closer to home. We have smaller parks but nothing really photo-worthy. I didn’t get to Reader tonight….will try tomorrow. I bought 6 more Knock Out rose bushes, which will need planting this week – most of mine were at the end of their 10-12 year lifespan and had gotten woody looking. Now we just need some sun, but the forecast does not look good this week either…..more rain.

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      • Linda Schaub says:
        Linda Schaub's avatar

        An hour is too far to drive – I agree. We have a state park, Sterling State Park, which is undergoing big renovations this Summer – it needs it as all the trails have overgrown tree roots, especially bad for walking in Fall with leaves covering the broken or raised asphalt. That is a fee on your driver’s license. The Metroparks have 13 Metroparks but I only go to two of them and Oakwoods not so much as their trails are raggedy and we have ticks already – be careful with ticks Joni. Ours did not die off in this cold Winter as they thought they would. Sterling State Park is a 60-mile round trip for me. Most of the other Metroparks are nowhere near me and I don’t want to take the expressway.

        I thought you told me you thought you had to buy more Knock Out rosebushes as some were getting old. My Home Run shrub roses came back, but after all the brutal cold and a Polar Vortex they do not look stellar and I do see green leaves but no buds yet. The groundhog ate my Twist-and-Shout Hydrangea Bush back in September 2022, then made a huge burrow at the back of the house. He was never caught though the trap was out about three weeks and the pest control service was out multiple times to cart off opossums and release them ($75.00 each time to retrieve, then put them in a wooded setting five miles away humanely). I have lost my love of the backyard for so many reasons.

        I went out yesterday – I will only go out on the middle day of a holiday weekend when I figure everyone is at their destination by then. It was pretty today and if it is nice tomorrow, I’ll go again, though it may be too cloudy. I intended to work in the yard today but it was too hot. I wanted to use this new weed killer (Spruce) which is safe to use and kills weeds in an hour … I have weeds in the areas where new landscape fabric was not put down, but it was too windy yesterday and today as well, so they advised it has to be put down in sunny, above-60 temps with no rain forecast, but no wind due to “drift”. Now we have rain Tuesday evening through Friday. Miserable weather for sure.

        Liked by 1 person

      • Joni says:
        Joni's avatar

        today was nice and sunny but I had an eye appointment and missed most of it….tomorrow should be okay and I hope to get some gardening done, but then it’s rain the rest of the week here too. What a disappointing May we’ve had and it was always my favorite month. Oh well – it’s been good writing weather! I’ll have to check into Spruce – as I have creeping charlie all over my lawn and they don’t sell toxic weedkillers here anymore, just the stuff that contains iron and doesn’t really work well.

        Liked by 1 person

      • Linda Schaub says:
        Linda Schaub's avatar

        I hate when it’s a nice day and you have an appointment. That happened several times already, so you can’t make plans except that and if I have an appointment of some type (like allergy shots every three weeks), I just turn it into an errand day or grocery shopping day to “waste” less days. I like Fall best, but I like May as you’re done with the April showers … or used to be. We also have three days of rain coming up and then very hot next week. I have not used the Spruce because it has been too windy – we have high winds every day. I could use it in the morning when winds are lighter, but it has to be warm enough, sunny enough and no chance of rain. This is safe for pets and humans and supposed to get rid of weeds in one hour. Yes, good writing weather – for me the painting and now this free/bonus 130 artist videos I thought was starting on the 3rd of June, it starts tomorrow. Different artists for different media types – I will try it these three rainy days, but when to catch up with everything else and I took more pictures Sunday and today.

        Liked by 1 person

  8. J P says:
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    J P's avatar

    It’s a good thing you didn’t walk up to the rangers with a big bunch of trilliums in your hand! Between that and the illegal parking, we might have gotten a post about a brief encounter with your justice system! 😛

    Liked by 1 person

    • Joni says:
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      Joni's avatar

      HA! They were just teenagers working a summer job, (part of which is taking care of the animal farm) so they probably didn’t have any real authority! The thing is a guy walking past had said to me, you can’t park there, so I knew, but i was only going to be ten minutes and there were no signs up, so I could have challenged it in court!

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  9. annieasksyou says:
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    annieasksyou's avatar

    Lovely, Joni; it’s so good to have you back. And seeing your mom’s paintings was so poignant; I almost felt I’d known her through your blog and her art work. It’s great that you have her artistry.

    Take good care!

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  11. Dave says:
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    Dave's avatar

    I prefer to see my flowers on “a walk in the spring woods” instead of in a garden I might try to plant. I have never had green thumbs nor the desire for them. On the other hand, I’m a huge fan of turtles. My wife and I happened to be in two local parks in the past week where turtles were in abundance (must be the season?) In one park they were swimming around in a pond and we were captivated for a good long time. Glad to see a few from your locale as well.

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    • Joni says:
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      Joni's avatar

      They are fun to watch, even if they are just sleeping. I wonder how they stay so motionless. I saw them swimming in the nursery pond, and they all decided to enter the water at the same time – they must have some kind of turtle language! I just posted a book review on Jodi Picoult’s latest – By Any Other Name – it came out around Christmas last year. Have you read it?

      Liked by 1 person

      • Dave says:
        Dave's avatar

        I’ve read several Jodi Picoult books (“The Storyteller” remains my favorite). She delves into quite the variety of topics. The book you reviewed is not my sort of thing, but I’ll keep an eye out for her future releases.

        Liked by 1 person

      • Joni says:
        Joni's avatar

        I really like “Small Great Things” that’s probably my favourite of hers. I liked it better when she involved a court case, forget the romance. That’s why I like John Grisham.

        Liked by 1 person

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