Walk with me on the neighborhood trails

kansuze (63)in #walkwithme • 6 years ago

One day in the early fall, I set out with my camera for a walk around the nearby trails. We're lucky in our region to have a pretty extensive trail system and they range from easy paved ones to more challenging. In winter, some of them are even set with cross-country ski tracks. On this day, it was just a short walk on the neighborhood trails.

I like to look at the plant life as I walk. It's a combination of what the city planted and what was left natural. So I followed the sidewalk and ducked in behind the basketball court and found myself in the small bush - you might say forest.

A few trails zigzag through it. Here, a tree has fallen across the path and it is riddled with woodpecker holes. A little further and let's take the paved path up the hill.

Surprise! It brings us out behind the old S.S. No. 1 March township schoolhouse. Built in 1886, it was a one room public school until 1963. Later, it was a children's art center and now it is a heritage site and meeting place.

The school house was located on an old country road almost out in the middle of nowhere. For the next photo, I stood on what used to be the old road bed. City planners decided to turn the old road into a linear park.

Beside its parking lot, is this an ancient flower bed or a new one?

Here is a view down the linear park. It runs between people's backyards and it is a nice scenic way to the nearby malls and my favorite deli.

There are flowers along the path under these sumac trees. In the spring, there are daffodils here. The ribbon of trees separates the linear park from the soccer field.

I'm heading back in the other direction and skirting the forest, here is a big old oak tree.

Now we're back beside the main road and I loved that there were still roses out. We have some that were developed specifically for this climate but I'm not sure if those are these ones. Our native ones are much like these but are pale pink and single. Here we have two colors.

Along the road where the shrubs had been cut back, I found wild grapes growing. This grape is one of the ancestors of the Concord grape. You can make juice out of them and if you add enough sugar, it tastes like Concord grape juice. The birds will handle these ones.

I picked up another section of trail through the spruce trees before walking back along the road side.

There were rose hips and different types of berries that I didn't recognize.

Last photo, the ever present sumac. We have several varieties here, this one being the stag horn type and it is displaying its red berries. They are a native plant that was planted here by the city.