Visiting Alberta--Cattail Marshes and Flyways

Big Lake, Alberta

Winter is settling in in Colorado. Some of our Canada geese have gone south, but others still sweep by overhead.

On the edge of Edmonton, Alberta, 1000 miles north of us, sits Big Lake, in the Lois Hole Centennial Provincial Park. (links: Prov.Park  Big Lake Support Soc. ) The lake is a critically important spot for birds migrating across North America.

Remembering visiting it in midsummer, I am reminded that neither plants nor wildfowl value the same things about places that people do.

The Range of Prairie Plants--Natives of Edmonton, Alberta

blanket flower Gaillardia aristida

"I know that plant!" I was 1200 miles almost due north of home, in Edmonton, Alberta at a Botanical Society meeting. I had never been that far north in Canada. There, a native garden at the Shaw Conference Centre featured plants important to the local Cree tribe. And most were plants I knew from Colorado. See blanket flowers, asters, monarda in Edmonton, below and in my "grow local natives" Denver Post article.