There are Still Flowers

Sunday 9 November

2025 Garden Bird List Update: A single Redpoll showed up for the count.
Now at 96 species for this year. Will we make the century?

… and, this is the start week when begin our winter “duties” at the nearby bird banding station for the next four to five months. Basically this means filling the feeders and then walking/snowshoeing the trails to record the presence of birds, regardless of low temperature and snow depth. Best part of every year!

As we enter the cold months (it’s going to snow today and tomorrow hereabouts) and as, inevitably, there are fewer wild creatures and plants to notice as we go out walking I am going to lead each Sunday newsletter with a seasonally relevant photograph. I hope that you will enjoy them.

J’s winter garden flower list

Three decades ago when we lived in England, it was an annual routine to go out on Christmas Day and make a note of all the plants in the garden that still had flowers on them. There were a surprisingly large number. Flowers in midwinter - you don’t expect it, but they are there. These days, because flowers on Christmas Day in Montreal are quite probably buried on to several feet of snow (it’s actually snowing today), we have taken to enumerating the flowering plants to be seen on 1 November as a compromise. For those gardeners who might be interested, and we know you are there, this is the list of 20 species that J put together this year - mostly natives.

Rudbeckia lanceolata (seven feet tall and bright yellow), Lavender, Wolfbane/Monkshood (a glorious blue), Zinnia, Canna “lily”, Cuphea hybrid, Bidens, Perennial geranium, Yarrow, Toadflax, Pearly everlasting, Sedum, Autumn Crocus, Tansy, Scabious, Garden phlox, Greater celendine, Wild carrot, Black-eyed Susan, Petunias.

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Introducing nature to children

I am not sure if the link that follows might be hidden behind a paywall or not, or if you can access it without having the Substack app installed on your device. It’s quite short. It carries a very important message I think, and it also references one of my favourite books … so I hope the author (Jen Eden) will not object if I cut and paste her note here for those who might not be able to follow the link …

Years ago, when I was still teaching English and working as a literacy intervention specialist, I was working with a small group of eleven year olds, all of whom struggled to read and write even the most basic things, including their own names. My job was to bring those skills up to a level that would enable them to participate in their education. But the main thing I wanted to do was make sure they didn’t feel like failures (as our education system tends to do) and to show them that reading and writing could bring them joy.

There are two classes I taught this group that I will never, ever forget. In the first, we were reading a story that opened with a beautiful description of nature surrounding a house. It was whilst reading and talking about this passage that I learned that not a single child in that group knew what an owl was. Or holly. In fact the only natural things they recognised in all the descriptions were ‘grass’ and ‘trees’. My heart broke for them.

The next time I taught that class, I abandoned the curriculum and the planned lesson progression. Instead, I brought in my copy of The Lost Words by Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris (this is a wonderful book, if you have not seen it, do seek a copy). And I spent an hour teaching them about nature. About bluebells and acorns and conkers and ravens and otters. I showed them the exquisite illustrations and read them the poems and told them that all these wonderful things lived in our parks and woods and even in the middle of our cities.

I have never seen a group of children so filled with wonder as those eleven year olds were. They asked if we could go find a dragonfly right now or look for ivy on the playing fields. One boy quietly came to me as we were finishing our lesson to ask me if I thought his dad might take him to the park to look for acorns if he asked really nicely.

Nature matters. Our connection to it is absolutely vital, and that should start young.

• Here is a link to the author, if you’d like to pursue the original further :

Living as I do in a fairly leafy suburb, it’s sometimes hard to realize that for quite a number of families, nature and green things, if they are close to home at all, probably don’t consist of much more than a closely mown small bit of parkland in the shade between buildings. Not surprising then that some of those children knew grass and trees, but did not know what an owl was, or holly … or so much else for that matter.

… on the same theme, I was reading about what can be seen on trail cameras (link in the following button) in the French countryside - wolves for one. This brief paragraph which ties in nicely with the above quotes. The videos of wildlife are really interesting too:

If you can demonstrate to children that nature is a marvel, that they are a part of it, then good things will follow. And, to be honest, children already know this at a very, very young age—it is only through what they later learn that they begin to go against nature. Just watch any child examining a beetle, or collecting leaves, or hopping like a frog, or squatting to peer into a burrow or den—it’s all there, already. And there lies the hope.

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Seen this week:

American red squirrel / Paper wasp nest

Greater burdock seed heads / Bathing Pileated Woodpecker

Coopers Hawk / Sunset at the end of the road

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You might want a larger than normal mug of tea to accompany you to the end of this lengthier piece, but it’s quite thought provoking.

The Theater in the Forest

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Not forgetting Larry the Cat …

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/nov/08/a-rats-to-riches-story-larry-the-downing-street-cat-finds-place-in-tv-spotlight

Larry the Cat lives at No. 10 Downing Street where “he’s on his sixth prime minister, has watched presidents and princes walk through the black door of No 10, and will soon become the longest continuous resident of Downing Street since Pitt the Younger. Noe he is to star in his one documentary. A bit of fun for Sunday morning.

He even has his own website: https://www.gov.uk/government/history/10-downing-street#larry-chief-mouser-to-the-cabinet-office

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Then - while doing a final proof-read, I noticed that this is the 300th post about things noticed “Whilst out Walking”.

Thanks for coming along … this link is to the first post in July of 2023, things on that meadow have not improved. One day it will be developed … sadly.