Detrashing

This truck mud flap has got to be the heaviest piece of wind blown trash I've ever found. It weighed about 20 pounds and was about 80m from the road in the middle of a thicket of buckthorn tangled up with a scrap of tarp. I figure it must have been blown there in the tornado last fall as there is no way a person would have carried it into that thicket.

This spring picking up trash suddenly became trendy. According to the Clean-up-the-Capital website, over a thousand groups organized clean-up events in and around Ottawa this spring. It is great to see this activity picking up popularity, and I feel like Ottawa really did an excellent job cleaning the place up after 5 long months of winter. I've been picking up trash for years along HuntClub Road and this May was the first time I came back with only a half full bag because there just wasn't enough trash.

A sparrow is raising a family in my birdhouse! I put up the birdhouse in the fall of 2016 and this spring is the first time I've noticed someone using it. I was walking by it today and the momma bird startled me by bursting out of the house just as I passed it. I heard the faint chirps of the chicks and quickly retreated. I was a bit surprised because I've been on the lookout for activity at this birdhouse and another that was put up last spring and thought that they weren't occupied. Perhaps I should go take a closer look at Katherine's birdhouse.

I spent a bit of time today pulling up Dog-strangling-vine from the patch at the end of Newhaven. I pulled up over 300 plants and there is at least as much still to be done. I've been attacking this patch for several years now and it keeps on coming back. I don't think I've let many go to seed but it doesn't seem to matter. They must be coming back from the roots.