The Annual General Meeting and 20th anniversary was featured in the Orillia Packet & Times.
Seeking a Better Way for Pits and Quarries
If you live in Severn Township, Oro-Medonte, Ramara, or Carden, chances are good that you are familiar with a gravel pit or stone quarry in your neighbourhood.
Mourning Doves: our year-round visitors
Although we do have many different species of birds visit us all winter long, we can always depend on three species to stay around our property year-round: White breasted Nuthatch, Black-capped chickadee and one other favourite, especially in the winter, The Mourning Dove.
Tamarack: A different conifer
The name tamarack comes from an Algonkian word meaning “wood to make snowshoes”, telling us just how important this tree species was to the First Nation community.
Scarlet Sumac Comes in Two Forms
On the Carden Alvar, a different form of sumac takes over where the thin soils over limestone bedrock create more difficult growing conditions. Fragrant sumac, as its name suggests, releases a pleasant citrus-like aroma when its young leaves are crushed. This species turns red in the autumn as well, but a somewhat softer, rosier shade than its staghorn cousin.
The Black-capped chickadee
The Black-capped chickadee, the species found in our area, has been described variously as sociable, industrious, agile, inquisitive, gregarious, trusting and acrobatic, and while they are all true, none of these adjectives fully describe this little bundle of cheerfulness.
Stewardship now includes battling thieves
Ranchers, private land owners and the Couchiching Conservancy have had a dozen steel gates, and most of a solar well system; stolen from the properties on the Carden Plain. Police are investigating the late August thefts, but more than $5,000 in equipment is probably gone for good.
Trilliums; symbolic woodland beauties
There are four species of trilliums growing in our area; white trilliums, red trillium, which are both widespread, while the painted trillium and nodding trillium are both rare and uncommon.
White trilliums bloom in early spring in forested areas before the trees above them leaf out and block the sunlight. Spring forest flowers take advantage of the time between the thawing of the soil and the unfurling of tree leaves when the forest floor is warm enabling the flowers to grow very rapidly.