Stopping to smell the roses

Yes, as idyllic as it sounds, the roads here are lined with roses! Well, in Clayton Park anyway. I'm not kidding. Dunbrack is lined on both sides and down the middle with wild (Alberta) roses for miles and miles. When you drive down Dumbrack in the summertime, make sure to roll down your windows because you can definitely smell the roses.

Before my walk this morning I made sure to pocket my SwissArmy knife so I could get a couple cuttings. At the end of my walk I took a few cuttings of both the white and fuschia roses, and arranged them in my new rose bowl.
About the rosebowl....it's been packed away in a box for almost a decade. It was one of many things my grandmother packed away in several boxes for me. The boxes were filled with all sorts of interesting things. I didn't bother to ship the boxes to Toronto because many of the things are fragile, and space was limited. Now that I'm closer I can actually use what's in the boxes, without worrying about breakage AND I have the space to store the semi-useless pieces.

I'll post photos of some of the other pieces as I start to use them.

I went home for the first time since I moved this past weekend, and had a glorious time. It really was a perfect weekend. Lots of time to enjoy with family, perfect weather - sunny, but with a cool breeze that kept the mosquitos and blackflies away, and lots of time to enjoy being outside.
While I was home Mom and I took a couple walks around the yard visiting various feathered friends. The first (above) was a mother owl who kept a very close eye on us while her young ones flew from branch to branch. If you look closely at the photo, you can see the owl - she's just a little below dead-centre. Mom had heard the owls and called me out to see them. We caught only brief glances of the young ones, but had a full-on view of mother owl. She wasn't about to move, unless we got closer to her young ....then she would've dive-bombed us.
These next photos show a nest Mom had found and pointed out to me when we crossed the brook. The photos aren't great, but we didn't want to be there too long. The nest is truly amazing. Mom determined it was a Solitary Vireo's nest. And when we first saw the nest mother bird was sitting on it. She didn't move even though we were within inches of her. She sat there as still as could be in her nest. When we went back later with the camera, she was gone, though after we had taken a couple photos we heard her hollering at us from another tree.

What I find truly amazing how such a little bird can construct something so complex as this nest. It's made from bark and grass and mud (I suppose) on a forked branch of this maple tree. It's quite secure and obviously requires architectual skill to construct. This just amazes me so I thought I would share it.