"Out & About" Photo Blog: Oshawa 2nd Marsh </br> May 31st & June 12th, 2013

The marsh is awash in green this year. We may not thrive in rain, but plants sure do. The grasses are head-high along the berm and growth is lush everywhere.

This was something different. A turtle apparently decided that the berm was the perfect place for her to lay her eggs. Someone obviously found & reported it and a local Conservation Authority put the protective cover over it.

Dwarf Yellow Ladyslippers - one of my favourite early spring wildflowers. The slippers might hold your small toe.

A threesome strolling through the woods sporting their curly pigtails.

Delicate & beautiful.

All the rain we've had has replenished the vernal pools.

They offer some eye-catching reflections.

And provide a habitat for frogs and other small creatures. The refraction of the water here makes this frog look disembodied.

The Mayapples are taller this year. That makes it easier to spot the single blossom that they display under the leaves, in the crotch of the Y-junction in their stems.

They're a very soft, delicate shade of yellow.

The 'apple' is still obvious here.

Snails don't get much attention but they're often colorful, and even interesting in their own way.

Dame's Rocket (known to some as Wild Phlox) is generously sprinkled throughout the marsh now.

Dandelions aren't all that common in the marsh.

A tree full of 'cotton'... a Willow.

If you get lost in the woods and have a headache, and there are willow trees around, boil some bark and make some tea. It really works apparently. The basis of Aspirin comes from willow bark-- or did once at least. I think I'd just let the headache run its course.

Doesn't everyone like Daisies?

There's nothing particularly exciting in this bunch of images from the marsh but I'm still trying to show how things progress there as the months go by, even if the progress isn't exciting.

I'd love to see more animals at the marsh than I do, but that means getting up early, which I'm not good at, or dropping by at dusk, which I don't seem to do either. I need more animals that will keep my hours.

The Friends of Second Marsh web site...