Friday is Canada Day, so I thought I’d used this week’s Walkabout post to share what the town has done to mark the day. We just have a little downtown, but it’s still decorated.

All the light poles have a flag and a pretty basket of red petunias.

The Petunias went up well before the flags did, so it’s hard to say if the red was chosen specifically for Canada Day, but it looks nice either way. And they aren’t just on the poles.

Any planter box/garden space owned by the town is awash in red petunias.

Including the birdhouse planters on the bridge. They look so nice now with the flowers! Now I will be keeping tabs to see if they change it up every year.

Elsewhere, of course, private gardens are blooming all over town, but so are the wild flowers… or weeds, depending on your perspective.

One of my absolute favourites, is Field Bindweed. I know… gardeners everywhere are cringing in horror right now. And I understand. I’m constantly pulling it from my own gardens… but out in a field, away from my yard… oh it’s just heavenly. The flowers are small (about the size of a quarter), but when there are a lot of them…. they smell so good. It’s one of those scents that takes me right back to my childhood. My grandparents’ house to be exact.

That said, it is invasive, and troublesome. Which is a shame. Because I love walking through a field that looks like this…

That field had other treasures too.

Birdfoot Trefoil. I used to call this wild snapdragon, but now I know it’s proper name (there is a wild snap dragon, but it’s a little different).

And I used to call these Bachelor Buttons, but I know now they are Chicory. Both of the above flowers were a common sight in the fields I played in growing up.

As were these.

These grew all over the sides of the road, and Mom would stop the car and we would pick them to fill a vase at home. We called them Phlox, and they are similar, except Phlox have five petals and these have four. These are actually called Dames Rocket. They come in all shades of purple and pink and are part of the mustard family.

And these of course, a very common site along Ontario roadsides (and in gardens) are orange Day Lilies…

Lots of people also call them Tiger Lilies, though I call them Ditch Lilies. Because you ALWAYS see them growing in ditches. These ones were no exception.

it was hard to get a good pic, because they were growing well down the side of a steep ravine. I have had these at every house I’ve ever lived at. I dig bring a clump from the townhouse for this garden, but just one clump, because they will multiply no problem (and I can always rob a roadside ditch if I want more!)

And last we turn to the trees. Most of the trees in the downtown are nice purple Norway Maples. But a couple are Bass Woods. The tree at the front of the townhouse was a Bass Wood. While it was a very dirty tree that dropped hard, round seed pods that hurt your bare feet… it was so pretty when it was in bloom.

And it smelled soooooo good.

The two in town were absolutely alive with honey bee activity. There’s a large honey producer on the outskirts of town, so the honey bee population here is very high. And as you can see, it’s a good town in which to be a bee!