Karstad Biodiversity Paintings: adventures in the colour of Canada

31 July i s the last day of the one-week special clearance sale of my miniature Biodiversity Paintings, in support of the 30 Years Later Expedition.  On Monday I will contact the highest bidders to confirm their bids and make arrangement for payment and shipping. Next week will find us packing for the 5 August departure to Jacquet River Gorge, New Brunswick, to participate in a two-week Bio-blitz (an all-taxon survey of biodiversity).  The Maritime leg of the 30 Years Later Expedition will have us in the field for two months, re-visiting places we've been before in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, and if we're lucky we may get to Newfoundland.  I am excited about doing daily paintings all through the trip. Let me know if there are any places you'd like us to visit along the way ...and support the Expedition by placing your bid before midnight today!   You may wish to review the earlier posts on this blog (click the "Older Posts" link at the bottom of each page)

20 July finds us in Heber Down Conservation Area, Whitby, Ontario, and I am sitting in front of the largest Cedar tree I've seen east of British Columbia.  Fred, who had wandered off exploring as we set up camp, returned saying "get out your black paint". At his direction, I stepped from the mowed lawn of Group Campsite #2 into the entrance of a little trail.  As soon as I saw the old Cedar I was awestruck, and then appalled as the scene turned from romantic to gothic. The venerable giant is surrounded and caged by five Buckthorns - bushes that have grown into trees, stretching up to steal the light from its canopy, leaning, vine-like on its outstretched limbs. Reaching the sunlight, the oval coins of their leaves displace the dark feathery Cedar foliage - each year a little more.

19 July finds us at the mouth of Lynde Creek on Lake Ontario, 2 km southwest of Port Whitby.  This is the place where we observed little Alewives struggling to cross the shallow bar to the lake in 1994. Since then the lake has breached the bar, and sloshes in and out like a quick little tide called a seiche, now flowing into the marsh from the lake, running against us as we paddle out.

17 July finds me on an old bridge over the Moira River near its mouth, east south east of Madoc, Ontario. The riverbank Maples are turning silver sides to the wind, and grey clouds are threatening rain - but it doesn't.   Thunder rumbles intermittently in the distance, and a blue Damselfly darts out from an overhanging Maple bough and then mysteriously back in again as if snapped at the end of an elastic thread.  I watch the spot in puzzlement for it to happen again, but the next movement to catch my eye is closer to the water, as a Phoebe lands on a broken branch, wags its tail, and says "Peep" repeatedly.  There is something in its beak - perhaps the Damselfly I saw being snapped back to the branch - in the beak of a tiny bird that was perhaps too quick and too neutral coloured for my eye to detect!   A little later, as I lean on the concrete wall at the other side of the bridge, photographing dark red Cardinal Flowers among tall grasses and Joe Pye Weed, the lit

10 July finds us on a farm south of Almonte Ontario.  We come here every year, and I always enjoy the vista across this field, especially when someone is walking along the track, as people seem so small and precious in this big wide-open space. In fact, a diversity of small things are becoming more precious here, as I learned when the farmer, whose pigs I was admiring, told me with pleasure that he'd noticed many red and black bugs on a Milkweed plant and takes it as a good sign - insects are coming back, in the third year after he took over the farm.  He has changed the operations to pesticide-free, according to his farming practice in Alberta. It is sunny, breezy, and 27C. Walking the path, we see a work in progress.  On the south side low Corn grows among other Grasses and especially Lambsquarters (Chenopodium album). These are all pale from lack of nitrogen. On the north side, crusty bare soil supports a massive germination of Lambsquarters, among scattered big plants of

6 July finds us cooling our heels in the Rideau River at Andrewsville.  I am perched on the north west bridge abutment to paint the interesting swirls of the floating bubbles from the river's cascade over the weir. Fred is wading upstream and the others are swimming where the current has washed a deep hole just where it passes the corner of the concrete abutment.  The afternoon has cooled to 29 degrees C and the water temperature is 27. There is a path that runs along the shore through the thick riparian forest on this side of the river, behind the trees in my painting.  The path is pretty well lined with Poison Ivy, so the safest way for some folks to go upstream is by wading. Adam and Claire have been wading barefoot, and they've come back with cuts on their feet from the Zebra Mussels that finally killed off the populations of big old native mussels beginning in 2005. The big old clams that we'd always admired here inspired the feeling that some individuals may ha

3 July finds us spending a day in the field, on a summer Saturday evening in Glengarry Park, east of Cornwall, Ontario.  The air is filled with the voices of picnickers talking and laughing, and swimmers shouting to each other - an interesting mix of languages, rich in the Spanish tongue of seasonal farm workers. A stately old Ash tree stands on the edge of the lawn a few feet above the windy, choppy St. Lawrence River. The top of a picnic table is almost awash a little way off shore and I sit by the tree to paint. The wind blows wisps of my hair against my cheeks, the westering sun is shining into the side of my right eye, and it's hard to keep the canvas in the shade of my shoulder, so today painting is not easy.  Adam is sitting on the grass beside me, making a fine ink drawing of an Eregion aster whose yellow centres are haloed with hair-thin magenta petals.  Fred walks the sandy beach, picking up drift and searching for evidence of Crayfish.  Reporting for supper, he anno