Guelph University Arboretum

Guelph University Arboretum (Sept. 5th)

We spent a nice afternoon in the University of Guelph Arboretum. I think the arboretum is right up there with the other gardens I've seen in Canada (Montreal, Burlington, Ottawa). It offers a superb tree diversity (especially with regards to leaf trees and shrubs). Aside from the trees the arboretum has a variety of gardens. The most intriguing ones are the James Gosling wilderness gardens, at least in my opinion.

Above are pictures of the more cultivated (meaning with grass in between) tree areas. Other areas look different (prairie like with high grass or woody for example). There are walking and hiking paths everywhere.

Above is a portion of their teaching centre (at least I believe it is a building dedicated to teaching). It is well integrated into the landscape (some sort of japanese concrete style. At least that is the similar style I have seen) and also has a pond attached.

The arboretum has several gardens integrated within its area. The gardens are relative confined in terms of space but nice. There is an Italian garden (no picture), a (wilderness) rose garden (no picture). The English garden had lots of autumn flowers in full bloom.

There is also a Japanese garden with a small stone water feature and a real water pond to the right (not visible in the picture below). The bench there offered space for 2 people to simply sit and reflect.

The most impressive piece aside from the leaf tree areas were definitely the 5 James Gosling Wilderness Gardens. The idea behind the gardens is to give people an idea what can be achieved within normal gardens using native plants while also helping insects, birds and amphibians. To this end there is a fictive spot/place in every garden that models a back yard deck view into the wilderness garden.

Above is the entrance door into the first garden. To the left of me a portion of the first garden can be glimpsed in the shadow.

The above 2 pictures are taken in the The Butterfly, Moth and Hummingbird Garden (1st garden) It has a very neat pond and was in full bloom with lots of bees buzzing around.

Above is the The Native Plants Garden. It is an example of a wilderness garden without lawn. On the right side outside the picture is a miniature brook feature.

The next garden is an example of a Suburban Wilderness Garden. Its main feature is a fenced vegetable garden (in the middle of the picture) with a relatively large lawn. Large shrubs and trees create a natural garden boundary/fence.

The Small City Garden is the most interesting garden. While its area is the smallest its plant diversity and density is very high. Bees buzz around everywhere at the time. The garden has a water feature (visible in the middle of the picture) and a "contemplation" bench (barely visible in the picture: It is behind the shrub underneath the Japanese maple tree in the sunshine). The garden shows what can be done despite in a small back yard. Cool.

Afterwards we walked back towards the main area of the arboretum (the Gosling Gardens are located in a more "wild" corner of the arboretum.

Just a very nice afternoon.

Towards Paris, Kitchener and Lake Ontario

Towards Paris (Sept. 4th)

Gongyu on the beach one more time in the morning.

   
After an outdoor breakfast at the Harbor in Port Rowan we headed towards Coyle's in Tilsonburg. Coyle's is a mixture of a dried food/baking shop and some sort of art/lamp/vases (they call it giftware) type shop. It is large and we indeed discussed (and bought) several items. 

Our next destination was Gunn's Hill Artisan Cheese. I came across them in the Picton Cheese Festival earlier in the year. Their cheese making house and shop is in the middle of nowhere and our GPS was off by 1 or 2km but with the help of the house number system we found them. We bought their Handeck, 5-Brothers and Brie cheeses.

We had lunch in Paris, Ontario. Paris is a neat little town. Definitely worthwhile to spent a few hours. I only detected when back home by perusing "Going to Town: Architectural walking Tours in Southern Ontario" that we should have walked into several more areas and streets. But so what, it won't be the last time that we are going to visit the area given Margaret is down there.

The river above is the Grand River (flows also through Kitchener and Cambridge). It is no problem to find a decent place to eat/dine.

Kitchener (Sept. 4th and 5th)

We spent the next 2 days staying over night in Kitchener and visiting various places. Our most memorable evening was dining at MPC Public Kitchen & Bar. A small Spanish tapas style restaurant. It wasn't exactly cheap but their scallop on lobster sauce with rice, their pork taco and their roast salad were heavenly. They had an exhaustive wine selection as well. Definitely recommended. Other places we dined were Cameron Chinese Restaurant in downtown Kitchener (we had good dim-sum) and The Bauer Kitchen which is a bit like Milestone in terms of style and food (I was actually looking for a German style restaurant but this is not along that line despite is German name ;-). It is a place where you could also have a business dinner or lunch with a group of people).

In Kitchener itself we walked through a larger part of King-Street forward backward. King Street is the main down-town street there. It is a mix of small shops, some shopping malls and some administration buildings (city hall had a good new architecture). The majority of the street portion we walked consisted of small shops in older style houses. 

The St. Jacob market was also on the todo list. I liked the market but it has grown quite a bit compared to 18 years or so ago. Unfortunately the main market hall (a wooden structure) burnt down (a while ago?). The burnt remnants are still visible. I assume that is the reason why relatively few bakeries and butcheries were there. But the farm produce was plenty and varied (definitely more compared to anything in Ottawa). I ended up buying a lot of locally grown plums, peaches and apricots.

Our last place in Kitchener was Sproll's Fine German Bakery. The place is in the outskirts of Kitchener (supposedly they are also in St. Jacob at the market but I did not see them there). With hindsight 5 days later in Ottawa I have to say their rye-bread with caraway and their bretzels are definitely worthwhile. I bought enough bretzels but I should have bought 4 loaves of bread instead of one ;-).

Port Hope and Coburg on Lake Ontario (Sept. 6th)

We headed homewards on Friday via breaks in Port Hope and Coburg. Unfortunately we have no pics from Port Hope (Gongyu thought I messed up bring the camera along when walking through town while I assumed she accidentally deleted the pics when back in Ottawa. But I think now that she is correct). Anyway Port Hope is worth a visit.

After spending about 90min in Port Hope we went to Coburg. Again this is a worthwhile town to visit. Both towns are described nicely in the "Going to Town: Architectural walking Tours in Southern Ontario". I ear-marked both towns as future break places for dinner and lunch when heading back from Toronto to Ottawa. Below some pics from Coburg with their beach, down-town and harbor areas as backgrounds.

We had lunch at the The Dutch Oven. The elder ladies there offered a very decent simple meals (will go there again). Their sign is visible to the right of Gongyu.

I plan to provide another post for the Guelph Arboretum. It deserves a post of its own.
Aside from that next time I would peruse the "Going to town" book before heading out and not simply look online at its table of content. We did not make it to Stratford and its Shakespeare festival either. That is also ear-marked for another time. Same for Goodrich and the area north of the 401.

Long Point and Point Pelee

London - Long Point (Sept. 2nd)

We had a late lunch in London downtown after dropping Margaret at her dorm. The restaurant selection was a bit of a bummer because only one place that looked reasonable the rest in downtown London was mostly closed because of Labor Day holiday. "The Works" offer a reasonable selection of burgers.<br>

Afterwards we drove to Long Point Provincial Park. We arrived there at about 6pm. The camp ground office was already closed but a sheet of paper simply advised to pick a site and register the next morning. There were a number of superb sites available (definitely post season after Labor day). I think the Long Point camp ground was the best car accessible camp ground I've seen in Quebec/Ontario. Basically we had the dune with the beach behind in front of us and a big marsh behind us.

 Above picture shows our camp ground. It was the very last one. No others were beyond it on the right side of our picture. You can see through the trees a portion of the marsh area. Gongyu was happy after she figured out how to upload files from her laptop via her cell phone.

Here is the view from the top of the dune towards the marsh area. Our camp ground is just behind the tree on the left.

This is the view from the top of the dune towards Lake Erie west-ward. It is possible to walk along the beach for the next 10 to 20km. It is just a protected wilderness area. We had a walk in the evening of our arrival of about 3 to 5km one way. It was beautiful.

More beach walk impressions and views from the top of the dune. The night sky on Sept. 3rd was one of the most beautiful I recall seeing. I was standing on top of the dune and had a view over Lake Erie and the marsh field on the opposite site. It was a moon less and crystal clear night with a tremendous amount of stars in the night sky.

Long Point - Point Pelee - Long Point (Sept. 3rd)

On Sept. 3rd after dealing with the camp ground office (they opened late and we were asked to move our camp site to another beach site) we drove to Point Pelee mostly along the Lake Erie Waterfront. The drive was enjoyable. The area has a lot of different crops and orchards. We bought apples, appricots, peaches and cucumbers on the way. We had lunch in Port Stanley restaurant near the harbour. Gongyu's soup of the day and my Lake Erie fish were good. Finally we arrived at Point Pelee. Initially Pelee doesn't look like a National Park at all with its galore of cottage beach houses. But ultimately the nature is a bit protected (they removed over 300 cottage houses from the park in the 1970's or so according to info provided at the park center). We took the "train" towards the tip of the peninsula and walked the remaining 10min to the very tip.

The tip is beautiful and according to other visitors changes after a few monthes because of strong currents. There were a lot of birds and we also so Monarch butterflies heading south. The tip was also full of dragon flies. Afterwords we headed for the Marsh walk.

The path is easy due to the wooden plank walk way. It offers nice views in various forms of the marsh. There is also a tower offering a view over the whole area. The marsh offered all sorts of green colour. Around 6pm we were heading back to Long Point. Unfortunately the fruit stands were closed and we also had difficulty to find a place for dinner (my trip preparation could have been better in that regards).<br>

Next time I would try to make it to Delhaven Orchards in time. We also want to visit Rondeau Provincial Park in the future and possibly do the full walk along Long Point beach to its tip. Figuring out possible places for dinner would have been good. The restaurants weren't obvious along the trail. I mostly relied on the Lake Erie Water Front and Southwest Ontario web-pages for ideas and information.