Family Day Fun at Terra Nova with Victory Gardens for Diversity!

What a glorious day we had for the launch of Victory Gardens for Diversity! Many thanks for the lovely time we had at the little red barn.

As we prepared the tables for some creative action, one honeybee from the Sharing Farm apiary was trying to be extra helpful.

One of the reasons I love collaborating is because I get to spend time with some of my favorite people: Lori Snyder, Jenn Pearson, Catherine Shapiro (in photos below) and Crystal Lee. Do check out their artist bios at the link on the right of this blog.

Using wind-fallen materials gathered by yours truly, we invited participants to create a "nest" or sculptural piece which would later be returned to the birds for them to use as nesting materials.

The "eggs" that you see were made out of playdough that Crystal Lee made with kitchen ingredients and dyed with carrots and beets!

There's the lovely Catherine Shapiro (on the front left) making her sculpture with our guests. Catherine is giving an artist talk at the library at VanDusen Gardens on April 15. Reservations recommended!

Lori Snyder suggested these nests could be attatched to an Alice band or ribbon and made into fascinators, which I think is an awesome idea!

The batting in the background is unbleached cotton. You can also put out human hair, string, yarn and raw wool for the birds, but make sure it is cut less that six inches in length so they don't get tangled in it. You can put materials out in a bowl, net bag, or suet feeder. Natural fibres are best.

Lori Snyder spoke about the important of making your own medicines from sustainable local sources. She has made her own incense from Christmas trees!

The fragrance of the powder used to create the incense was the essence of the forest itself!

Here's a peek at the barn owls I talked about on our tree walk.

Photo by Crystal Lee

Another honeybee came and visited the pot of rosehip tea Lori prepared for us!

Photo by Crystal Lee

Yours truly, Madame Beespeaker channeling Frieda Kahlo and Miss Frizzle from the Magic School Bus!

Lori Snyder is a member of the David Suzuki Butterfly Rangers and we'll be collaborating with them to add more butterfly habitat to the site!

Lori Snyder was separating medicinal milkweed seeds from their fluffy bits, so she gave us the chaff to add to the nests.

 

Participants also made impressions from the tree pieces with the natural play dough.

 We installed some of the nests in the nearby trellis. It was so cool to see everyone's unique creations!

Next, I lead a tree walk on the site, with the assistance of Lori Snyder, who always has amazing plant knowledge to share. We agree it's good medicine to hug a beautiful beech tree!

I hadn't noticed this fungus on the weeping birch in the archway on the west side of the farm. I'll have to ask Michael Griffith about that.

Pussywillows are blooming alongside the red osier dogwood!

The beaver lodge on the right is a formidable structure, but the inhabitants were being shy and hunkering away from human eyes.

Finally, leave it to the youngest person on our tree tour to discover a very cold bumblebee queen hunkered down in a purple crocus blossom! She'll have a drink of nectar and then find her spot under the ground to wait until it's warmer and there's more food available. You might keep some sugar dissolved in water (50/50) to feed queens that emerge prematurely.

Barn Owls, Beavers and Voles, Oh My!

The sky, the rocks and the water are composed of more than fifty shades of grey as I head east on the North Dyke Trail on my way to Terra Nova. I am heading to the Sharing Farm to go on a nature walk with City of Richmond naturalist and community programmer Richard Kenny.

If you're unfamiliar with the term 'eulachan'  (aka ooligan), it is a small oily fish (Thaleichthis pacificus) which was processed by coastal First Nations to produce a grease for food and medicine.

This sign explains the Fraser River Plume, created by silt carried by the Fraser River into the Salish Sea.

Today the horizon is a disappearing line, creating the surreal  illusion that the birds on the water are floating in the sky.

Fish gotta swim, and birds gotta fly, but being so close to the airpost, there needs to be some management of the flocks away from the flight path of the large birds arriving and leaving YVR.

I met the Nature School kids out playing in the snow, making muddy snowmen from the wet, soppy slush.

Ducks, herons, racoons and kids left their marks in the snow.

We're very excited to have the opportunity to plant some themed garden beds here by the red barn including dye plants, native bee plants, butterfly plants and heritage veggies. We're looking for volunteers to help us maintain these gardens. (More info coming soon!)

The beaver lodge was delineated with a skiff of snow, but the water was still and silent. Richard explained that ideally there is a protective buffer zone of shrubs around the edges of the pond to provide shade, and prevent the water from becoming too warm in the summer months.

Can you guess what Richard is up to here?  This plastic fish is part of a cryptic geocache game. You have to figure out clues to find the fish and then there is a clue written on the fish to find the log where you leave your name. But the log is disguised as part of the dock itself. Strewth!

Sadly, this green sludge is a problem in this pond and in the summer it needs to be scooped out by hand.

Native hardhack (Spirea douglassi) has thrived here because it likes wet feet, which is awesome news for bumblebees. I'm so excited to see this blooming in the summer. Richard says it can even outcompete blackberry and invasive canary reed grass! Apparently it can be propagated with stem cuttings like willow. That's great news!!!!!!

Here's an example of an area that was mowed down by accident (communication glitch) but the hardhack is coming back strong!

Richard says these yellow stems are from a kind of dogwood.

So excited to see some pussywillow catkins shyly emerging!

I fell in love with them and could haven stopped here for an hour taking photos!

Richard grew up in a small village in England exploring nature and mucking about in streams. He works with managing landscapes with a sensitivity towards the native flora and fauna, but especially the beautiful barn owls that roost and nest on the site. These are native rushes (Juncus effusus). 

The trick is to manage the land so that there will be a thick layer of grasses that voles can use as habitat. During the wet season, these little critters go to the high ground where it's dryer. The grasses, reed and rushes need to be given a special "stubble cut" at certain times of the year to optimize this habitat. There are about barn owl boxes on site. They are carefully monitored and cleaned out every year with the help of an ornithologist. Installing the large nesting boxes (6 ft across!) can be tricky. The best solution seems to be using a steel lighting pole embedded in concrete. Raccoons will cimb up wooden poles.

The tall canary reed grass (Phalaris arundinacea) in the back of this photo is invasive, but it does need to be left alone at certain times of the year when it is used by ground-nesting birds. This grass is highly invasive and left without management, this grass can choke out wetlands.

There are some exotic trees on the east side of the Sharing Farm, but there's an exciting new planting of native shrubs and trees that will act as a natural buffer zone between the farm and the suburban development next door. This will enrich the habitat for the fauna that live on the farm.

The red osier dogwood looks happy here, but it's a bit soggy for some of the young pine trees.

This is old-field habitat which is land that was once farmed, but is now being left in a more natural state. It contains a mix of native and non-native grasses and shrubs. It can be tricky to manage because of the particular challenges with invasive species in each micro site. Some of the farm was managed with an old system of furrows and ridges, a settler method of dealing with soggy soil. In dry years crops can be planted in the channels and the ridges and in wet years, only the plants on the higher ground will flourish.

The parents and children at the Nature School also helped build and maintain these new chickadee boxes. Rich was surprised to see a screw added to the design as a "perch" under the entry hole. That's going to need to be removed. It was lovely to meet Richard and I was moved by his care and enthusiasm. Thanks for looking after the owls and the voles and all the rest of the beautiful creatures here at Terra Nova!