by Suzanne Stengl | Sep 21, 2021 | Nature
Earlier this month, Rolf and I hiked to Boom Lake. We’ve done this trip several times over the years. I wrote about one trip here. Since the last time we did the trail, this new boardwalk has been added.
Clear blue skies today!
Lots of wildflowers along the trail. This is Bunchberry Dogwood.
To the west, Mount Quadra . . .
. . . and to east, the “boom” – where an old moraine touches the surface of the water in a crescent to catch driftwood floating past, as if it were a lumber boom.
Here I am at the lake.
The sparkling waters of Boom Lake!
This is a favourite September hike. We had perfect weather and finished off the day with dinner in Banff. Can’t ask for more!
by Suzanne Stengl | Jun 27, 2021 | Nature
On Wednesday, Rolf and I drove to Bow Valley Provincial Park and hiked the Many Springs Trail. Well, it wasn’t exactly a hike. It’s more of a walk. The Many Springs Trail is flat and well-groomed and quite short. Only 1.6 km. (That’s about a mile.) It’s also famous for its wildflowers.
Here’s the map of the trail, which is a loop.
At the junction, there’s a sign pointing you to the right. You follow along and reach the boardwalk. The actual loop is only about 1.3 km.
Most of the Bow Valley is dry, grassy meadows with stands of aspen and evergreen. But the Many Springs Trail is a lush wetland fed by, you guessed it, many springs.
At this time of year, lots of people come looking for the Yellow Lady Slipper Orchid.
Yellow Lady Slipper Orchid
The first time you see one, you get all excited and take about a million pictures. And then you realize it is everywhere along the trail.
The Wood Lily is here too.
Wood Lily
And, of course, there’s the Prickly Rose.
Prickly Rose aka the floral emblem of Alberta
Prickly Rose aka the floral emblem of Alberta
Where the trail opens up, there are some peaceful views of the mountains.
Creeping Juniper with berries
Limber Honeysuckle
boardwalk
Meadow Zizia
Red-osier Dogwood
Mount Yamnuska
Purple Clematis
And everywhere there is Silverberry.
Silverberry
It was a morning walk with lots of time for pictures. We drove on the 1A instead of the busier TransCanada, which meant that we went through Cochrane. So, on the way back, we stopped in Cochrane at McKay’s Ice Cream.
Always a good way to end a trip!
by Suzanne Stengl | Jun 30, 2017 | Travel
The Tuesday Café is rather quiet these days. You may have noticed that I’ve only been posting monthly for the last little while.
That’s because I’m hard at work on the next book in my WEDDING series. This one should be available by October 1st. It is the prequel to ON THE WAY TO A WEDDING. I’m just wrapping up the final chapter and then I’ll let it simmer for a bit before sending it off to my editor. Next, the fun will begin with choosing a cover.
Besides writing, I’ve been doing some traveling. At the beginning of June, I spent a week in Regina and the Saskatchewan countryside.
Nothing but prairie for miles and miles.
Here is the grain elevator in the little town of Limerick. The hotel in this town makes the best chicken wings in the world.
Saskatchewan’s provincial flower is the western red lily, also known as the wood lily or prairie lily.
western red lily
Last week, I was in Ontario for the annual family reunion. We are fortunate to have a great photographer in the group who happens to have a “drone” and so we even got some aerial shots this year.
Everybody wave!
One of the farms I visited had peaches ripening in the beautiful Ontario sunshine.
peach tree
As usual, I visited Pinecroft for lunch with some of my cousins. And I bought an art card of trilliums, Ontario’s provincial flower. I’m holding the card here.
at Pinecroft
I intend to frame it, maybe with a double mat, some white and a bit of green. Trilliums have three large white petals and they bloom in the springtime. Here’s a picture of trilliums up close. My sister has some in her backyard. I wish I could grow them in Alberta but we don’t have the climate for it.
trillium
Alberta’s provincial flower is the resilient Rosa acicularis, otherwise known as the prickly rose, the wild rose and the Arctic rose.
Alberta Rose
This little flower starts blooming in late May and will often continue to bloom into August.
Do you know what your provincial (or state) flower is? Got any growing in your backyard? Do you have an annual family reunion?
Ontario trillium from bigstockphoto #164564648
Saskatchewan western red lily from bigstockphoto #164564648
Alberta rose from depositphotos #47112519_l-2015
by Suzanne Stengl | Aug 30, 2015 | Miscellaneous Moments
I grew up on a mixed farm in Southwestern Ontario.
My dad rotated crops of corn, wheat, beans and occasionally sunflowers. My mother grew a garden of carrots, asparagus, string beans, leaf lettuce and a few tomato plants. There was a flower garden right in front of the living room windows with lots of petunias and morning glories. Mom used to put strings in front of the windows and “train” the morning glories to climb.
One year I saw her sprinkle morning glory seeds at the base of an upright juniper beside the lane. The morning glories topped the trees by the end of the season.
Everything grows well in the rich soil of Southwestern Ontario. Across the road, a few yards away from our lane, there was a ditch filled with orange daylilies. They are not technically wildflowers, but somehow they got started there. Since they are very hardy, they don’t need a lot of care. They manage to survive the intense heat of the summer even if there is little rain. They’re not fussy about the soil and the bugs don’t seem to bother them. And they bloom from early spring until the frost comes in the fall.
Notice that is one word. Daylilies.
The scientific name for these flowers is Hemerocallis. This comes from the Greek words hemera (day) and kallos (beauty). An appropriate name, since these perennials only bloom for a day, opening in the early morning sun and withering by nightfall.
Although they look like lilies, they are not of the lily family. True lilies grow from bulbs and daylilies have tuberous rootstocks. And, of course, the cut blooms of real lilies can last a week or more.
As children, we would pick bunches of daylilies and bring them home where they sat in mason jars and wilted by nightfall. Still, we kept picking them and our mother kept putting them in jars.
Also across the road, and down about a quarter mile, was another farm where the bachelor Gordon lived. He was a soldier from WWII who had taken up farming and, like many farmers, he supplemented his income by working at the steel factory in the city about 30 miles away. He didn’t have a phone so if the factory needed to get a message to him, they phoned our farm and one of my brothers or sisters delivered the message.
Every Christmas, the factory gave him a huge turkey. Since he lived alone, he gave the turkey to my mother and she cooked it and invited him to dinner.
Gordon also had a pear tree—a single pear tree that stood in the middle of a field. He must have liked that pear tree because he drove his tractor around it as he worked the land. Each October, that tree produced the most beautiful yellow pears I have ever seen. We would go across the road and bring back bushel baskets of the pears. We ate a lot of them and my mother canned some.
I was back in the area this summer, and I drove past the old farm. The pear tree is gone. Maybe because the new owner didn’t like the inefficiency of driving around that single tree. Or maybe the tree died.
But in the ditch, although not as abundant as I remember, the daylilies are still there.
Daylilies from MorgueFile
Mason jars from Bigstockphoto #9102760
Pears from Bigstockphoto#98820719
Daylilies from Bigstockphoto #95722331
by Suzanne Stengl | May 6, 2014 | Nature
Every spring, the Prairie Crocus is the first plant to bloom on the prairie—even when it’s still snowing, like it has been in Calgary.
The Prairie Crocus has many names. I’ve been looking through my four plant identification books and, while they all refer to the Prairie Crocus, they don’t seem to agree on a botanical name. Some say Pulsatilla patens. Some say Anemone patens.
The Prairie Crocus is also called Cutleaf Anemone, Prairie Anemone, and Pasqueflower. But in Calgary, we call it the Prairie Crocus.
The flowers are usually pale blue or mauve but sometimes they are white or light yellow. When they open they are 1 ½ inches to 2 ½ inches in diameter.
Generally, flowers have Sepals and Petals. A sepal is the outer part of the flower. And the petals are within the sepals. Sepals are usually green and their job is to protect the tender petals inside.
In the case of the Prairie Crocus, there are no petals, only sepals, 5 to 7 sepals. These sepals, of course, are not green. They are the showy colours we see on the brown prairie hillsides.
Each stem holds one bloom. The stems are about 4 inches high and they are “hairy” or “woolly” as though Mother Nature decided to dress them warmly so they can tolerate the cold spring.
In fact, the Prairie Crocus knows a lot about staying warm. The sepals create a saucer shape, allowing the crocus to direct the sunlight on the inner stamens and pistils. Not only that, this intelligent plant follows the sun as it crosses the sky, collecting warmth all day long. The warmth helps the pollen and seeds develop, and provides a warm place for insects on a chilly spring day.
The Prairie Crocus is found in the dry prairie grasslands throughout the Prairie Provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta. Manitoba has adopted the flower as its floral emblem, and it appears on this stamp with Manitoba’s coat of arms.
Do you have Prairie Crocuses where you live? Is that what you call them? Or do you give them a different name?
Crocuses from Rolf Stengl
Stamp from Canstockphoto.com #6572872
