I have often wondered what some of the little dots on my road map just north of Toronto look like. On this day, I found out:
LEMONVILLE
BETHESDA
RINGWOOD
What is left of the former Ringwood is mostly abandoned.
ALMIRA
VICTORIA SQUARE
and right across the street:
DICKSON HILL
Some nearby botany:
Nearby sights:
Birds I was able to photograph:
NATURE POETRY
In the springtime: April violets glow
In wayside nooks, close clustering into groups,
Like shy elves hiding from traveller’s eye. – Thomas Buchanan Read (1822–72)
Miles Hearn
Thank you Miles. Your posts are rays of sunshine during these difficult times. Today’s crow and the egg was especially welcome, and made me laugh.
Miles, many thanks for these amazing posts and the tremendous effort you put in to them. Today’s post touched me in so many ways. As in the last many posts, the disappearance of life in these tiny hamlets is very sad but some of the signs of renewed or adapted life in the area is quite welcome, as is the case with the former Presbyterian church and its Chinese Baptist rebirth and the Buddhist temple across the street. (BTW, Melville is what I used to call Toronto under former Mayor, Mr. Lastman!)
A couple of other pics took me back to my youth. At this time of year we used to harvest watercress from a few ice-cold creeks along the lakeshore near Grafton and those Rhode Island Reds remind me of the chickens and bantam roosters my grandfather used to raise in Cobourg.
And I’m very curious about the raven with the egg in its beak. It’s a very large egg and I was trying to figure out if it was relocating one of its own eggs or whether it had scored an egg-sucking lunch from another species.
Much appreciation for your devotion to your craft.
Beautiful. I had no idea that this type of community and history exist within a short distance of Toronto.
You have shown me new places to explore.
I look forward to restarting our weekly walks
It just gets better and better. Absolutely fabulous.
I’m sorry about the beautiful buildings that are boarded up. They all seem worth preserving, somehow.
And that egg. Not the bird’s own egg, surely! Another bird’s? A human’s lunch?
Thank you Miles– you’ve done it again!
I agree with the comments above – your posts take us along with you, explorations that many of us aren’t able to conduct (and if we did, we’d be without your flora & fauna knowledge base). I appreciate your sensitivity to historical traces as much as your visual storytelling – your photo’s speak to your connection with the environment and understanding the value of the everyday. Thank you for sharing your tales/trails. And yes, that crow, and that egg. And Lemonville.