St. Philip's Anglican Church on 10 July 2026

 

The garden on June 4, 2026

 

The hidden trail in February

It's been a very cold winter and it looks like it will continue being very cold until the end of March. Here are photographs from a walk on February 17, on the hidden trail; this winter, beginning in early November, has not been a time for any really pleasant walks. But we're Canadians, we endure. And we wait for spring.

Christmas Eve, 2025

Arriving home Christmas Eve. It was dark and cold and snowing. Even in winter the garden is a place of life, seeing a rabbit digging in the snow and eating some grass. The garden is an invitation to birds, insects, and urban wildlife.

St. Philip's Anglican Church on 22 November 2025

 

The Hidden Trail, 11 September 2025

 A sunny day, blue sky, and around 22 C. 

Henry David Thoreau on gardens and nature

 

The Hidden Trail, 2022

Photographs of the Hidden Trail

And then for my afternoon walks I have a garden, larger than any artificial garden that I have read of and far more attractive to me, -- mile after mile of embowered walks, such as no nobleman's grounds can boast, with animals running free and wild therein as from the first, -- varied with land and water prospect, and, above all, so retired that it is extremely rare that I meet a single wanderer in its mazes. No gardener is seen therein, no gates...You may wander away to solitary bowers and brooks and hills.

                                   —Henry David Thoreau, "Journal", 20 June 1850.

          

I long for wildness, a nature which I cannot put my foot through, woods where the wood thrush forever sings, where the hours are early morning ones, and there is dew on the grass, and the day is forever unproved, where I might have a fertile unknown for a soil about me. 

                        —Henry David Thoreau, "Journal", 22 June 1853       

         

A man is not to be measured by the virtue of his described actions or the wisdom of his expressed thoughts merely, but by that free character he is, and is felt to be, under all circumstances.
                       — Henry David Thoreau, "Sir Walter Raleigh"

                   

Canadian Cottage Garden on 6 August 2025

 This is the best the garden has ever been.