Snowy New Years

I came back from Christmas in rainy Vancouver and was greeted by this wonderful blanket of snow. It was almost up to my knees when I trudged through it to inspect the goings-on on the berm. Not much is happening. There were very few tracks in the snow except my own.

Around New Years is the latest sunrise of the year, coming up in Ottawa at 7:43AM. From this point on the days are getting longer by more than a minute a day.

Can hardly wait for spring.

Snowy December

Today is the earliest sunset of the year. Hopefully yesterday's snowfall stays around to brighten up the rest of the winter. I only learned last year that the length of the solar day varies over the course of a year due to the earth's axial tilt to the celestial equator. The solar apparent noon varies by as much as 16 minutes from noon over a semiannual cycle. In Ottawa, in November the solar noon is about a quarter of an hour before noon while in February it is about a quarter of an hour after noon. At the equator where there is always about 12 hours of sunlight, the earliest sunset occurs in early November, but because our hours of sunlight, this far north, are still shortening in November sunset continues to get earlier and earlier even as solar noon moves back towards the clock noon.

In the foreground of the above picture you can see several clumps of poplars that have sprung up on the north slope of the berm. These suckers have grown about 20 feet over the past four summers since the mower was banished from the slope. They are already starting to shade the trees planted on the slope in 2009. The planted trees may have to put up with some shade for a couple of decades, but that is the way of natural succession. The sugar maples will still be relatively spindly in 20 years time. The ones planted in 1995 still look like they could be toppled by a couple of blows with a good sharp ax. Poplars are very fast growing but short lived trees. you can see in the background of the above picture one of the parent poplars, planted in 1995, had already grown into a large substantial tree before it was blown down by a wind storm this summer.

Two-Spotted Grass Bugs

It was a very hot first day of summer today. We are in a bit of a heat wave the past couple of days. All the plants are growing vigorously but I'm sure they were water stressed in the mid-day sun. These Two-Spotted Grass Bugs were all over the Timothy this afternoon. They stayed in the shady side but scuttled over to the far side of the panicle whenever the camera came near. It seemed to be the motion that disturbed them. I could take the close-up shots by holding the camera steady and twisting the grass stem around to bring the bugs into view.

I've been slowly learning my grasses this week. Here is a useful grass identification document. I am making slow progress but I really wish there was the equivalent of the bugguide.net around for plants. The bug guide has dozens of very good pictures of the common bugs with which you can compare your specimen to the range of photographs taken by others. The Two-spotted Grass Bug for example seems to be quite variable in colouration; some are black with a bit of orange, like the one below, while others are more yellow with a bit of black. I have yet to find an online guide that would provide the equivalent image quality for grasses. I had been misidentifying Quack grass with Ryegrass until today because the identification photos online were so poor.

Winter Solstice

It was an icy day on the 21st when I took the above picture. You can see the crows are still passing by every evening on their way east. Not in as large numbers as before, perhaps a couple of hundred crows flew over my head as I was visiting the trees. Not much was moving on that icy day except the cars and the crows. Crows fly at about 40km/hr so they may have been the faster of the two. I hope the city didn't put salt on the roads or else it was just the sort of weather for the spray from the road to mingle with the misty freezing rain and cling to every surface of the trees. Hopefully the heavy rain that finished the day washed it all away.

It was looking like it was going to be a green Christmas until this morning of the 23rd when a light dusting of snow covered the ground. We just got the south western edge of a snowstorm set to hit the Maritimes tonight.