Thursday, November 17, 2016

York Road beaver pond

I've never seen any beavers in the bit of pond that borders the road; I've never seen a hint of the dam. But every time I pass by, I stop, just in case.

This visit, there were misty reflections and wet grasses to reward me.

Something down below is bubbling, making circles on the water.

Common rush seed head, soaking wet.

Tule and grasses and their angled reflections.

Just wet grass, dry on the inside, wet outside.

Wet winter grasses, in ditches, crispy and cold; so tempting! Oh, to be a kid again, in rubber boots and a wool jacket that Mom would hang over the wood stove to drip dry when I came home!

I've been remembering a cold winter afternoon, years and years ago, when I was a kid in school in White Rock. My brother and I took a "shortcut" home from school. (These shortcuts usually took much longer than the usual roads, of course.) Our route involved walking down the ditch, and through a culvert under the road. The ditch was full of dead grass, pale yellow-brown, glittering with frost in the shadows, dripping wet where the winter sun had reached it; it rustled icily as we passed through. There was a smell of soggy mud, with overtones of rotting hay. So much more inspiring than the boring sidewalks and picket fences of the street!

Zooming in on those dead grasses.

York Road. I do love these country roads!

4 comments:

  1. Growing up in the city I never had that kind of experience walking home from school, but when I was very young the Los Angeles River was not a cement channel. I remember going there on weekends to ride horses with my dad. There was a small flowing river (even if it got most of its water from nearby streets), sandy spots to hunt horned toads, clusters of willows to explore, and of course, horses to enjoy for just a moment. When I was in high school it was a long, deep cement strip with a tiny trickle in the middle deep in slime. Unless there was a big rain storm, then it would fill to the top and become a scary torrent. - Margy

    ReplyDelete
  2. my shortcut home from school in grades 1&2 in coastal Connecticut was a trampled path through 3m high invasive Phragmites - which have now come north to Ontario - http://doingnaturalhistory.blogspot.ca/2016/05/giant-grass-may-come-under-control_16.html

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks for the link. Interesting article. I see I'll have to pay more attention to the characteristics of the grasses I find.

      Delete

I'm having to moderate all comments because Blogger seems to have a problem notifying me. Sorry about that. I will review them several times daily, though, until this issue is fixed.

Also, I have word verification on, because I found out that not only do I get spam without it, but it gets passed on to anyone commenting in that thread. Not cool!

Powered By Blogger