Speckled Swan Gourd

 

The well-named speckled swan gourd is a popular decorative gourd. Sometimes it is painted before being displayed. But it is pretty well never eaten. If a veggie is known as a gourd and not a squash, it is most likely considered inedible.

White pumpkins

 

Many white pumpkins are similar to the more well know orange variety in that these are edible as well. Apparently some white pumpkins are best used as a fall decoration but most are edible and delicious when baked om a manner similar to that used to cook other fall squash.

South western Ontario is farm country. Many areas have good topsoil, very rich. Team this with some of the best growing weather in Canada and one has great a land with great farming potential. Sadly, the good weather also attracts people and industry and this consumes land that many argue would be better used for farming. Send industry north, many argue.

Turk's turban heirloom squash -- maybe

 

These clearly two toned squashes are, I believe, all varieties of turk's turban heirloom winter squash. Many folk used these as fall decoration but if you should bake them, I understand they taste very much like the butternut and acorn squash with which we are all familiar.

Toad pumpkins are good carving pumpkins

 

It is officially fall and the weird pumpkins are beginning to appear. As a young boy I could never understand why so many pumpkins were grown and marketed simply for decoration. No one every ate these strange pumpkins. I decided it wasn't just pumpkins that were weird. Toad pumpkins, by the way, are excellent for carving.

New home in Italianate style

The large, squarish tower caught my attention. I stopped for a closer look. It is a new, red-brick home built in a style reminiscent of the Italianate architecture so popular in Ontario from about 1830 to 1900. I'm not all that knowledgeable when it comes to architecture but even I know the significance of the widow's walk feature.

A widow's walk is small rectangular platform, bound by a low railing. Inspired by the cupolas of Italian Renaissance homes, widow's walks were very popular for decades in Ontario. Even when the heritage homes are still standing, it is rare for the widow's walks to a have survived. It proved easier to remove them than spend money maintaining them.

The new home features more than a simple, idealized widow walk topping an Italianate tower with the numerous tall, narrow windows sporting tightly curved tops. For instance, note the robust eave brackets, the window shutters, the irregular roofline. I'm sure there's more but I'm not an expert.

It would be neat to have time machine to zip a hundred years into the future. Will this home still have shutters? Home in my area that once had faux shutters now have a clean look. The home owners removed the shutters rather than paint them and most folk think the homes look better.

And will the widow's walk still be present? Or will it disappear just as many of the original, heritage examples disappeared with the passage of time? (And, truth be told, the brick home is, to be accurate, actually brick veneer. The brick is real but it is only one brick thick. The home is actually wood-frame construction. A true brick home has an exterior wall constructed with a minimum of three brick depth and many have use an interlocking five brick design. And the true brick wall does not require the support of a wall-strengthening wood frame.)

Only memories of memories from summer of 2020

Fall is here. Summer is gone. And what memories do we have from the summer of 2020? Mostly we have memories of memories. My wife and I and our grandkids sat together, but socially distanced, and we all recalled stuff that we did in years past. With COVID-19 restricting travel, cottage country was out. I'm sure the sunsets were still beautiful and I'm sure there were folk standing at the water's edge taking in the view but it wasn't me nor my wife nor anyone I know. This is the first summer in 73 years that I did not get so much as out of the county. In fact, I hardly escaped the city. 

A European Immigrant to Canada

 

What can one say about a praying mantis? A lot, I've learned. First, the one shown is not native. Nope. It is a European immigrant that came to Canada via the States. There is also a Chinese mantis but it is found mainly in British Columbia in Canada.

There is one mantis that belongs here: the Carolina mantis. The native species gets too little respect. Why do I say that? Well the European praying mantis is the official state insect of Connecticut and not the  Carolina mantis. And when garden centres sell mantises to dine on destructive insects in our gardens, the mantis species sold is invariably the European. And the insects dined upon may even include our own native mantis. 

The European mantis may threaten the existence of the Carolina mantis. For this reason, some advise destroying the egg clusters of the European and Chinese mantises. I would think it awfully hard to differentiate. That said, there is cluster glued to the underside of the brickwork near where my granddaughter spotted today's example. I think I'd be safe in assuming this was left by the green-winged visitor.