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Terwillegar Stella

Stella posing in front of sculpture
Part of Resonant Progression, by Royden Mills

Finally, a clear blue day. The last week has varied from shades of grey to orange. Mostly orange, thanks to the fires in BC. Most of those days, the sun has been a gold orb. You can stare right at it and not go blind. Sunday, however, the skies cleared. It was a spectacular day. Lots of wind, but I’ll take that over a burnt orange horizon.

Stella doesn’t care, although she loves her orange balls. We went to Terwillegar dog park because it’s a great walk, but also because the new public art installation has opened up – Resonant Progression by sculptor and UAlberta sculpture instructor Royden Mills. Interesting, but difficult to fully take in without some background. It’s interactive, interrelated and involves sound, but the only one who interacted with it was Stella. I will investigate further and return, ready to interact.

The walk was uneventful but beautiful, with some crispiness underfoot and a few daubs of yellow in the canopy. It’s inevitable. Autumn is on the way. Stella loved the river, as usual, and only lost her ball 5,000 times. A good day. A very good day.

11:00-12:00/20C (28C today!)

Wild Clematis

Wild Clematis before bee
Wild Clematis before bee

A magnificent afternoon walk in Whitemud Ravine. Walked down the powerline into the ravine, and then as far as the third bridge. Back the same route. Soon into my walk, I came across a lone wild clematis growing inexplicably among the poplars and the birch trees. It was kind of weird to see theĀ  unmistakable purple bells of a clematis, just like the flowers in my sister’s garden. And if that wasn’t enough, as soon as I started shooting a few photographs, a fat bumblebee flew into the flower. I didn’t get a perfectly sharp photo of the bee, but good enough.

Wild Clematis after bee
Wild Clematis after bee

I figured that this would probably be the highlight of this walk, and it was, but I think I also saw a bald eagle. I heard a strange gobbling sound in the air, and when I looked up, two birds, both dark but one had a white head. Could have been something else, I suppose. They were high in the sky, and I followed them for awhile, but no eagle. I did shoot about 50 photos of a dark bird far away in a tree, which I thought might have been the other bird I saw, but when I zoomed in, I discovered that I had wasted a roll of film (figuratively) on a raven. No offense to ravens.

Some type of particularly beautiful tree shoot
Some type of particularly beautiful tree shoot

I love this time of year. For one thing, it smells heavenly. Also, the trees and bushes are foliating rapidly, but the monkey trails are not yet overgrown. Even in the summer they are passable, but sometimes hard to see. And so, I’ve been following these footpaths when they look interesting, and today I walked along a flat part of the creek bed for quite awhile before the bank rose up again. Reminded me a bit of south Mill Creek. We’ve had very little rain (other than the snow), so the Whitemud is very low and murky. We could use a day or two, or three, of heavy rain.

View from a monkey trail
View from a monkey trail

White apple blossoms

12:40 to 3:00PM/17C