A summer day with a kind wind, some sun, some cloud, absence of mosquitoes, and a century-and-a-half-old log home set on its own 5-1/2-acre lot, situated on the Canadian Shield. What better venue to lovingly tend a country garden than this, surrounded by granite outcroppings, pines, cedars, and maples.
Behind and well below the house, a wetland full of aquatic plants, which in winter is transformed into a skating pond. On summer evenings bats flit about, during the day dragonflies. Orioles, goldfinches, woodpeckers, bluejays, cardinals, chickadees and nuthatches, and a host of other birds come to visit. Returning hummingbirds teach their young to trust the garden-tender, and their twists and turns in flight inches from her head are a living delight.
Chipmunks and squirrels come around regularly to raid the bird offerings. Deer come along to nibble at the apples hung on low branches. Black water snakes find comfortable resting places in the rock gardens. Foxes linger, undeterred by the presence of the gardener's many dogs. The two cats that also reside there, are house cats, tethered when outside, or content to lie in the sun in chipmunk-safe enclosures.
This, then is a Paradise. Welcome. Browse. Admire.
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