Local Ecologist

Image: Red maple in Washington Square Park. Photo courtesy of Hubert J. Steed. Last year Dr. Leslie Day led a fall foliage tour of Washington Square Park. Although Dr. Day will not lead a tour in the park this fall, you can follow her route with this self-guided walk . Some of the autumnal color highlights of Washington Square Park are: The red maple , pictured above, which you should see diagonally from the northeast entrance. There is another red maple near the park entrance at University Place and Washington Place. Walk south to see the ginkgoes near the southeast entrance. From there, walk on a diagonal towards the fountain. You will see sweetgums and tulip trees near the small dog run. (Look out for fiery fall foliage -- that's the park's only Katsura .) There are a few Japanese pagoda trees (formerly sophora) on the west side of the fountain. Don't forget to visit the English elm at the northwest entrance. Let us know your highlights! Tag #Autumn

The sun mostly shone today and it was a welcome change after yesterday's low cloud cover and rain. The pleasant weather jogged my memory about our trip to Homestead Farm to pick apples (and a few pumpkins). That October Monday was perfect! We've been apple picking five out of the past seven years. The first two years we went with my brother and his family and our mother to Demarest Farms. Our grandmother accompanied us the first time we visited Demarest making the trip a four-generations outing! The second two years we went with Fiver's nursery school to Melick's Town Farm and Apple Orchard. In one of these years we doubled up,  taking a trip on our own . We skipped apple picking two years in a row, so we were excited to visit Homestead! Fruit picking is a great way to spend time as a family. You are outdoors, usually in good weather, with long vistas and space to run. If you are lucky to find an empty room you can on the grass for a spell. This was the f

The White House Garden Tour is the first "DC thing" I have done since moving to the area this August. The tour was like a garden party without the lawn games. The beautifully green and lush lawn areas were off limits. Lawns are so tempting to young children! This population would be much happier at the White House Easter Egg Roll which is literally held on the South Lawn. White House Garden Commemorative Plantings  The White House Garden Tour Fall 2012 book  The gardens on the tour were the Commemorative Plantings on the South Lawn, the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden, the Rose Garden, and the White House Kitchen Garden. The latter is curiously far away from the house. The Children's Garden established by Lady Bird Johnson in 1969 was not accessible. The entry process was straightforward and the line moved quickly. Here is what I saw. Enjoy! View all the photos from our tour in Garden - The White House Flickr album .

Travel is such an interesting state of mind. On the one hand, you want to do more where you are, while on the other, you are thinking about home and its comforts. We thoroughly enjoyed spending time with family in Whistler! However, we wanted to see a bit more of Vancouver and we knew that after Vancouver was home. (Well, one of us would have stayed in Whistler indefinitely, especially if a similar-aged cousin stayed, too.) We drove unto Granville Island. We did not have a specific itinerary but I wanted to visit the Granville Island Public Market.  Our first stop was Ron Basford Park.  Ron Bamford was a long-serving Canadian Cabinet Minister, and accodring to Wikipedia entry, "he was known as "Mr. Granville Island" for his support of the Granville Island redevelopment project in Vancouver." The park was adjacent to where we parked and after a long drive we wanted to be outdoors. The hill in the center of the park also beckoned! From there we walked along

The drive to Whistler was gorgeous. All bay and mountains. We stayed in Whistler Village in a VRBO condo. We liked our hotel in Vancouver but the condo in Whistler felt like a home stay. We made a lot of our own meals and instead of some of us sleeping on an "it's seen better days" pull out couch and in a roll away cot, most of us slept on real beds. The condo had a deck but we spent much of our time outdoors, so it was hardly used. We spent the morning of the first day at Whistler at Lost Lake, one of five lakes in Whistler. Lost Lake is in, can you guess, Lost Lake Park. From Whistler Village, you walk through wooded developments into the park. From the "beach" all you see is sky and forest. It's so easy to superlative when describing about BC! The water was warmer than I expected it to be but it was no bathtub soak - my preferred water temperature. The younger ones among us waded up to their knees. One cousin swam out to a swimming platform in the la

Unlike previous days in Vancouver, we didn't head out on our day's exploration until the afternoon. We walked clear across Vancouver, from Downtown to Sunset Beach. It was the classic uphill there and back! And it was a HOT day. Getting to the beach, kicking off our shoes, and wading in the cool water was refreshing. We walked on Thurlow passing the almost 3 acre Nelson Park. We spent some time admiring Arts & Crafts houses in the neighborhood. On and off Thurlow we saw several examples of traffic calming gardens such as the one above. As part of its Green Streets program, the City pays for the first planting. Volunteers maintain the gardens and provide additional plants. Thurlow is a residential street. We wanted to take a more dynamic route home, so we chose to return to the hotel via Burrard Street. I'm glad we did. We discovered the very large and verdant Davie Street Community Garden at the corner of Burrard and Davie, one of the West End's