The trees and bushes are in flower and I went out with a new (to me) camera to try it out.
The trilliums that were planted back in 2009 haven't expanded very much, this year there were 10 blooms.
This past weekend I saw both a turkey and a turkey vulture flying along the berm. I startled the turkey in the field north of the berm; it lumbered into the sky and flew off getting no higher than the rooftops of the bungalows along Kelvin. A couple of days later I saw the turkey vulture in the same spot (well 100 feet higher up) soaring effortlessly. Both turkeys and turkey vultures are relatively recent arrivals to Ottawa. I remember around 2000 hearing reports of turkeys just to the south in Leeds-Grenville and being excited as I hadn't seen one yet in Eastern Ontario. As it happens, this weekend I also got my first taste of wild Eastern Ontario turkey and I'm happy to see them on my plate as well as in the field.
I took advantage of the heavy rain this weekend to transplant a couple of seedlings into the berm area to fill in some gaps. One of them was a seedling of the white spruce I had to take out of my back yard a couple of years ago. The other was a small Manitoba maple that wasn't welcome in the flower bed. I also tried sticking a few willow twigs in the ground to see if they would take. I've heard that is supposed to work but I have my doubts.
It snowed a bit on Sunday but hopefully that is the last of winter for us. I figure the last of the chill left the ground a little over three weeks ago. I snapped this picture of a garter snake three weeks ago as I was picking up garbage in Ben Franklin Wood. I was surprised to see him as it wasn't exactly warm yet, but I guess it was warm enough for him in the strong spring sun.
