Pods and squirrel

One of the plants in the garden is showing pods — must be some kind of pea type plant, I figure?

Kinda makes me want edamame.

Been seeing a lot of squirrels out enjoying the heat/all the crap people leave in the trash bins in the park.  This guy was, instead, digging up bulbs and such in the garden.

Beautiful day, depressing statues

These are the statues down at Ireland Park off Éireann Quay.  The captions aren't any official names, but just what I call them in my own head.

Girl.

Dead.

Desperate.

Haranguing.

Pregnant.

I have been waiting for that ugly chain link fence to come down or be replaced by something less horrible, but that doesn't seem like it's going to happen any time remotely soon.

July flowers

July really brings out a lot of flowers in the Music Garden.

These are all around the maypole area of the garden:

Homegrown National Park

This blue canoe sits in Little Norway Park, labelled "Homegrown National Park":

I always want to insert "over" between "home and "grown".

Foggy day, with flowers.

It's a pretty foggy day again out there — 97% humidity as the weather report says.  Blech.

On the other hand, the flowers in the garden seem to love it.

These thistle are doing their thing up in the Spadina Wetlands area.

Nearby are these (prairie sundrops, I think):

And next to them, this little tree has started to produce berries.  Some kind of hawthorn?  I'm not sure:

On the street edge are these purple flowers:

Turning west, toward the more manicured section of the garden, these yellow flowers are in bloom.  Their name is "The Rocket" - yes really (Ligularia przewalskii):

And across the way from those are these:

And the flowers near the maypole are going just gangbusters:

A coded message.

Someone had left a note in the Music Garden, held in place by a wee pig.

I need to leave more notes like this.

Over near the maypole were some new flowers, but I do not know what they are:

Chicory

Chicory in the weedy lot by the malting silo:

More flowers? Yes, more flowers.

Nothing terribly exciting today — I'm finding that the dog is increasingly impatient of my pauses to take photos.  I'm wearing on a chihuahua's nerves.

Anyway, this purple daisy thing was pretty on the south side of the garden:

This yellow columbine is kind of blurry (for which you can blame the tugging on the leash).

Drunk boat ... and more flowers.

The midsummer drunk boat season is well underway.  Any weekend day (or night) is full of the massively amplified whump-whump-whump music that the natives who board these things seem to prefer.

But the garden is still nice to look at.  I used to think these were dandelions — turns out, not so much.

This is sow thistle.  It's actually edible — best when young (bfore it grows any spikes) and decent in a salad.  Nearby were these:

I'm not yet sure what those are, but I'll keep an eye on them.  The children's garden there has a bunch of these taller than I am (which is no real feat):

And there are still many daisy-like things in bloom:

The shorter spikey purple flowers I spotted earlier in the week are a little more open now:

Liatris spiacata, aka Prairie Gay Feather
or Dense Blazing Star

And these trollius (globe flowers) are still in bloom, too:

Indian strawberries

Another dim day out there, and these little things were hiding in the shade of a large tree.

Indian Strawberries/Mock Strawberries

Lilies

It was pretty cloudy out today and I didn't see much new, but I did notice these lilies over near the gazebo and thought they were worth a shot.

I like the pink ones particularly.

A new signal

I noticed a new traffic signal up today — but not one for cars.  This one is just for the bicycles:

I know it's ungracious of me to see it and think "you did this to yourselves" but mostly I'm just hoping for one to be put in down at my end of the street too.  Here, the footpath narrows to a very constricted choke-point, and while there are those blue "trail ends or is shared" markers like in the photo, along with signs instructing the cyclists to dismount through that area, I have not seen a single cyclist do it.

What I have seen is cyclists speeding through there oblivious to the danger they're posing to others.  Some have even squealed with fear as they weaved in and out of the pedestrians while going way too fast.  In the last two weeks, I've had a number of close calls myself, and I'm getting more than a little frustrated with it.  But dismounting is for pansies, apparently.

Breathe in.  Breathe out.

These pretty yellow foxtail lilies (aka Eremerus) are up near the maypole:

They get absolutely covered in happy bees on a sunny day.

Asters

Today the Garden had a lot of things from the aster family in bloom.

They didn't seem that wilted while I was there.  Perhaps it was just me standing over them, all intimidating like.

The daisies are in full flower:

Another Dead Fish

So I keep seeing these around the marinas this year.  Never noticed this going on before, so I'm not sure what's really up.

These are pretty large fish — longer than my forearm.

Over by the airport, nightshade has grown up in the cracks.

And it's starting to show its berries:

Meanwhile, Norway Park has summer-ized its planters:

Flowers from the garden

We had a beautiful moon last night, and I tried my phone at capturing it without much success:

Meanwhile, today, I took a slow walk through the Toronto Music Garden today, and noticed several new flowers here in the early part of July.

These, frankly, stink, but at least they're pretty to look at:

Great Masterwort (Astrantia Major)

Nearby, these are starting to come into bloom, so I'll try to get more photos as they fully open.

These are in the shady areas, some in white and others in pink:

Astilbe (False Goat's Beard)

And lilies are still blooming along the gazebo walkway:

Day Lilies?

There are roses behind them:

And around the gazebo are these pretty white flowers:

And, finally, it sort of looks like the garden might have some opium poppies, but I'm sure that's not it.  Almost sure.