List

Today's blog post is a list of the notable creatures I saw on my walk yesterday.  Tuesdays shall hereforth be committed from my blogging for reason that I work late.
The following list reveals perhaps more about me than it does my environment.  It is by no means systematic, far from comprehensive and the only guiding principle is that these creatures caught my eye.  So unscientific; but nonetheless a window into my soul, and hopefully I can share the appreciation I felt at meeting the fourlegged or winged friends I saw yesterday with you, my reader.
An unscientific but nonetheless revelatory list of creatures I saw yesterday:
A strange looking bee I don't think was a honeybee.  How my heart skipped a beat when I saw it!  Native bee pollinators are an endless source of fascination to me.  Alas, they fly quickly.  I didn't get a good look, but its pattern stood out to me; it had two dark black blotches in the meeting place of the first and second thorax.  Its wings were dark.

I saw the frog again, in that impossibly small pond I more think of as a puddle in my parents backyard.  However in that very puddle I have seen what I believe is both frogs and bull frogs.  Further observations will have to follow for me to truly identify these creatures.
I saw multiple wildflowers, including what was either a lemon balm or a wild bergamot.  Either way I ate a leaf; it was more like broccoli than mint so perhaps that means bergamot?
The real highlight yesterday though was I finally solved a mystery about one of my river friends.
I have a cedar tree where I sit every time I take this walk in order to look at the river.  Lately I've been watching with interest as a small furry friend swims its way up and down the water.  I've been trying hard to figure out if it's a muskrat or a beaver and yesterday the mystery was finally solved!  I saw its long thin tail as it dived at my sudden movement, confirming it is indeed a muskrat.
Curiously a week ago I saw it swimming with a much larger and square headed mammal.  Was that one a beaver?  A male?  There are mysteries yet to be solved on the river.

Update Monday June 11

I have become quite overwhelmed by the scope of this blog without even really getting started.
Write about what I see I thought.
Reflect on it and ask yourself questions I thought.
Ha.
What shall I reflect on?
What shall I describe?
The mammals?
The wildflowers?
The trees?
The birds, bugs, bees?
All of it, I naively thought just mere hours ago.
That was before my walk.
On my walk I realized an entire book could be written about one's experiences with just one tree.
And then there's the issue of context.
How do I even describe my environment adequately?
Hanover, a small town of approximately 7000 people in rural Southwestern Ontario.
Home to the crossing place and intersection of several parts of the Saugeen river.
Oh and then there is my general ignorance about proper terminology.
Intersection-- that sounds like something for cars, not for rivers.
And the ignorance about terminology also means I don't actually understand all of what I'm seeing, the ways the water flows and feeds and interacts with the land and with the rivers.
Do I live near a marsh?
A bog?
A fen?
A bayou?
A stream?
A river?
How do I describe the places where springs come up out of the ground and puddle into the foundation of my Dads unfortunately placed barn?
And then if we dig a trench and the water drains into my garden how do I explain the place where the water spreads out and is covered by bullrushes and other reeds?
And what about how in some of those reeds a stream starts to snake through it and connect to other streams?  What is happening there and why?
And eventually those streams connect to the river?
And I sing to the river and the streams every walk I go on...
Water you are sacred
Water thank you
Because Water is life
Because Nibi bimidiziwin

And how do I even begin to explain how I came to the place where I've started to say nibi bimidiziwin?

I'm so ignorant that I don't really know which aspects of my environment are only the way they are because of human intervention.
Would there be more or less standing water in my backyard without human intervention?

And as I was walking I was thinking "the land will teach you" and so of course part of this blog will be documenting my learning experience.

So let me ignorantly explain the context of what I see on my walk....

There seem to be multiple different sources of water which lead to the river.

I'll start with my literal backyard.

There is a spring which wells up from the ground and someone was once silly enough to build a barn on top of it, before my parents bought this place.

The barn used to be sitting in about a foot of standing water.  By now the foundation has become cracked and there is a large hole from the bottom corner of the barn.  My Dad decided to dig a trench and lead this water out of the barn and into our garden.  Eventually he stopped digging, and so the water meanders throughout our garden, not coalescing into a stream nor creating a huge marsh.  It's just wet.

On the (presumably less human intervened) property just next to us is a large field of reeds.  I think k most of them are bullrushes.  When it was earlier in spring and the reeds weren't growing yet it looked like a dry dead field of nothing much.  But then swamp flowers started to grow

Now the reeds are shoulder height on me.

I see neither standing water or any streams in this field.

However, there is a path through this yard that I suspect may have been slightly built up (and therefore disrupts the way water flows through the lamdscape).

On the downslope (West side) of this path, it seems that streams are coalescing.  There are both reeds and plenty of willow trees in this area.

I don't walk back in this area for fear of trampling on too many important species, not to mention, getting wet feet.

This whole area is classified as a flood plain.

I used to think it is the river that floods the plain.

But now I wonder if this entire area is a water table, slowly feeding the river rather than the other way around.

And of course the water levels change with the seasons so I have seen the river flood the plains and in this way feed the marsh with all the melted snow from the spring melt off.

The path I walk on out of my backyard may have been slightly built up.  But outside of my backyard is a public path that has certainly been built up; it's an old railway path that the town has converted to walking trails.  There are culverts placed at presumably thoughtful intervals to drain the aforementioned streams into the further downslope towards the river.

So there are two areas running parallel to the river which have been built up in a way which disrupts how the water would naturally flow.

I have noticed this creates multiple different kinds of water environments (ponds, puddles, streams) and I don't know how many of these environments would naturally be there.

Different plants grow in all of these different environments.  Some of them may be natural but I also suspect that some of the flowering bushes beside the railway trail have been planted there for aesthetic value.

So many complex relationships to reflect on!

Monday

Today I saw a bull frog that always hangs out in my parents pond (a natural pond not a created one).
But-- was it the same bull frog I've seen before?
How do naturalists tell such things apart?
I will have to hone my observational skills.
I'm also learning to recognize plants with a wonderful plant app called, appropriately pl@ntnet
What I've learned so far is that an app is not a replacement for experience.  The smells, tastes, sensations of a plant leaf often help me to identify the plant more than memorizing the contours of the leaves.  It's the whole that helps to make sense of the parts; and context, the size, place of a plant also helps me to first identify it and then understand it better.
A dear mentor who has great knowledge of plants once told me that if I wanted to get to know the medicine of a plant well I had to spend time with the plant.  Learn about how it grows differently in different conditions, learn to ask myself questions about where it is likely to be found, the different ways the plant presents itself. And to use the medicine as many different ways as possible to understand and come to know it in many contexts.
This deep knowledge is experiential and not something that can be conferred by an app.
This should perhaps lead me to wax eloquent about the importance of preserving traditional knowledge, but-- I have a path to walk.  Another part of this project is to walk the same length of path at the same time of day and then report on my results.
To the river path!

My neighbours

Recently I have decided to walk the same approximate 2.0 km path on the trail behind my house every day and blog about what I see.  Why?  You ask.
Because creatures are awesome.  Because I am fortunate enough to live in a town that has actually protected it's riparian areas.  Ooh look at that.  Riparian.  I have learned a new word!
That means the areas by rivers.
My town has managed to not drain or destroy the wetlands by the rivers, and as a result  I see awesome creatures all the time. 
Proof; this blog.
Further concepts which may or may not be added at a layer date, depending on the author's whims... interviews with my grandparents wherein I engage in reflective interviewing about what I've seen (this of course, depends on both my grandparents cooperation and my own will to record such an interview).