RBG 2010

We went to the Royal Botanical Gardens (RBG) on Sunday - the weather was perfect & the lilac festival is not to be missed! Up there is Pat, ready to go (look how excited he is!) - this is the first picture I take of him in his new car.

WARNING: LOTS OF PICTURES! I took advantage of the mosaic maker so that there would be less - go over to my Flickr if you want to see them all.

WARNING #2: SNAKE! I did see a couple of garter snakes & took pictures of the first one before my camera died - these are at the very end of this blog post, so don't scroll down all the way if you don't want to see. I'll give you a warning when we get close (mom).

This is just one shot of the lilac dell. It's much bigger than what you can see here, but you get the gist of it. A dell is a valley of sorts - shallow, wide & very green. The lilacs are all over. Leading into the dell is a path with all sorts of different varieties on either side. Here's a small sampling of them:
On top of the hill (towards the South, near the water), is a grove of dogwoods. I discovered last night that what I've been calling dogwoods are really redbuds (those pretty pink ones below)! I think they're my favourite - I love how the flowers look like the branches are powdered in pink. The white tree in the middle picture (below, right) is a dogwood - they have larger, flat flowers with rounded petals.
So we didn't spend that much time in the dell since I've seen it twice before, it's always crowded & Pat isn't all that interested in flowers (shocking, I know). So we took a path to the waterfront (Cootes Paradise, a protected sanctuary / wetlands off of Lake Ontario). There are a ton of trails to choose from & they're all picturesque & well-maintained:
We saw wildflowers, chipmunks & squirrels & tons of birds & insects.
What I loved the most was the texture of the forest:
Here we are at the waterfront (sorry about the bright sun & my distracting arm in our sunglasses):
WARNING: only 3 more pictures before the SNAKE!

There were waterfowl around too:
Like this goose & some small wading birds (you can't really see them, but they were darling!):
While crouching to get a picture of moss, I saw this little inchworm inching along (teehee, sorry, I think inchworms are cool):
SNAKE UP NEXT - go no further if you can't stand looking at pictures of them (mom)!

Can you spot the garter snake?
No? How about now?

Check out that beady, blue-ish eye!

Anyway, we spent about 2.5 hours walking the trails, taking in the forest & waterfront. My camera died after this snake, so I missed about 3/4 of what we saw. I had such a great time though! I love walking (& smelling) the forest - it reminds me of home (& gramma's cottage).