You Grow Girl™

I recently returned from trip to a cottage "up north". The cottage was located on Crystal Lake which is a few hours north east of here. I was happy that we had to travel several kilometers down a windy, gravelly road to get to the cottage. It was nice and distanced from a main highway so it felt a little bit remote.

The first thing I noticed upon arriving was the smell. There were loads of huge pine trees and cedars littering the landscape so it smelled as if I had stuck my head inside a giant bag of cedar mulch. The landscape was a mix of wetland, and coniferous forest (with birch and maples thrown in the mix) with lots of mossy rocks, ferns and lichen. I saw species of fungi that I didn't know existed.

As I suspected there wasn't much in the way of flowers. We first arrived at around 10:30 pm so I couldn't see squat. My focus on the first night was on the sky rathger than the ground. We saw several shooting stars and the Northern Lights! On the following morning when I crawled out of my tent (I woke up at 5:30 am people!) and headed up the hill to the cottage, I was greeted by a sole black-eyed Susan flower (only one!) If it had been spring the forest floor would have been beautiful. I could recognize the foliage of several native wildflowers including loads of my favourite columbine (Aquilegia canadensis).

That first morning was spent exploring and surveying the landscape. I discovered that despite my brief education into poison ivy identification at High Park, I still don't have any confidence in picking it out from any other three-leaved plant. We were constantly worried about any plant that resembled it. I was sure to do most of my exploring in pants and sneakers. Eventually full body coverage became important due to the sheer numbers of mosquitos in the more dense areas. They somehow managed to get through socks and shoes!. As I write this I am scratching profusely at my toes and ankles which are COVERED in bites despite my best efforts. I discovered that tea tree oil does help to temporarily stop the itching, but it always comes back a few hours later.

So anyways, on our first morning we walked through the forest and down the long road and found some interesting things. I found a bush of gooseberries that have spiny fruit. The first time Davin and I saw them growing wild three years ago, we thought they were some strange poison berry but were informed by locals that they were indeed a type of gooseberry that are ripe when they turn a deep burgundy red. Another highlight of this walk was the discovery of the most bizzare lichen. At first I thought it was some kind of mushroom, but it was hard and crusty like a lichen.

On our second night at the cottage we met the strangest insect. I say "met" because it was a totally social insect. It bobbed its head about and seemed to look us over inquisitively. Beate touched each of its antennae with two of her fingers in a mock attempt to "communicate" with it. Oddly enough when most insects would be hightailing it out of there, our strange insect friend stuck around as if it was checking us out as much as we were checking it out. It became very interested in Beate and flew around following her. We couldn't determine if the insect was a carnivore or herbivore, because despite the mandibles that looked like they could do some serious damage, it never did try to bite anyone. Oddly enough we found the insect the next day hanging out inside Beate's tent. It stayed there for the duration of our trip and never made an attempt to escape. I couldn't figure out what it could have been eating because the tent was bugless. Alot of jokes were made that in touching antennae to finger, Beate had established communication and the insect was now attached to her psychically.

On our second day of the trip the mosquitos were out in greater numbers and the assault on my legs and feet increased exponentially. A bug hat was discovered and I gladly wore it on our further exploration of the area. It was a good thing too because further down the road we reached a swamp and the mosquitos were crazy. I should mention that mosquitos LOVE me and I tend to suffer the greatest number of bites. Davin commented that at one point I had swarms of them circling my head. Now I understand why settlers of this area might have gone insane. The buzzing around your ears alone is mind bending!

I am glad we went in that direction though (despite the fact that some people were afraid of crossing paths with a bear) because I came across the most interesting fern-like plant. It looked very prehistoric and may well have been a fern. One thing I learned from this trip is that I need a better plant identification guide (and an insect one too). The wildflower guide doesn't cut it when there are no flowers to identify. I need something that focusses on foliage. On our way back we travelled up another path and came across an abandoned cottage that creeped me out. Jokes had been made that the film "Friday the 13th" was set on Crystal Lake and if it was this Crystal Lake then this abandoned cottage would have to have been his lair. It was the kind of setting they look for when making horror movies right down to the rotting stairs, rusty chair and dilapitated boat house. Needless to say axe murders and bears were not seen on the trip. But I did spot a fairly large garter snake on the walk back! That and the largest chipmunk anyone has ever seen. I mistook it for a squirrel on first sight.

The abandoned cottage

On our third day at the cottage we decided to use the giant sunprints Beate and I had purchased at Efston Science before leaving Toronto. We each hiked around the area searching for materials for our prints. I had wanted to do some rather traditional "specimen-type" prints that were just leaves of interesting plants. My favourite ended up being a print of a large horsetail (Equisetum) stem. The long, thin leaves were very graphic. Beate did some really nice ones of a bunch of daisies and I was most impressed with one Davin did of a handful of birch bark. It looked like brush strokes done with a Japanese brush and ink.

Sadly our last morning at the cottage was cold and windy so there was no opportunity for a final swim in the lake. Even Beate, who will swim in any weather wasn't up to it. I ran around taking as many photos as I could up until the literal last minute before jumping into the car. Of course less then an hour into our ride home the sun came out and the temperature rose significantly.