More tags, but this time Vim didn't do a thing on the thick, silvery paint. Neither did an alcohol swab. Any suggestions? Maybe something grittier? Sand?

I spent a solid hour and a half just pulling out thistle after thistle, with some motherwort for variety. Thistle on the right, motherwort on the left:

A lot of the thistles are about my height, or maybe a little taller:

See how they're beginning to flower? I got here just in time. I carted them off by the sheetload. ;)

After:

Better, but I'm not done yet.

(It was hard to capture that in pictures. Trust me, there's a lot of thistle added to that compost pile.)

Daylilies with motherwort and grapevine:

The lilies aren't supposed to be there either, but I have bigger fish to fry at the moment.

I see that Rick Bébout has died. I didn't know him, or anything about him, but I came across his history of the Don River very recently, and enjoyed reading it. You might too.

There's always been poison ivy alongside the path on the way to Beechwood, but I haven't seen any on the site yet. Today, however, I found some getting dangerously close.

I pulled tansy and Queen Anne's lace for an hour or more, stopping to talk to several people who wondered what I was up to. This peachy little moth was resting on a tansy stalk:

Looks like a leafcutter bee (or a bunch of them) has been busy. I saw several little roses like this one:

After I'd hauled away a few loads of tansy I decided I'd wrap up my visit by having a look around the site. I've spent so much time in one spot lately, working on the tansy invasion, that I have no idea what's going on anywhere else. (Beechwood doesn't seem like a very big place when I describe it to people, but just try to keep on top of it by yourself!)

Near the equipment box I spied a few motherwort plants (wonderful pictures on that page, go have a look) and thought I'd pull them out while I had a moment.

This one was engaged in a struggle with a grapevine:

Motherwort is not a big problem at Beechwood, but it doesn't hurt to stay on top of these things. It's easy to pull, with the roots coming out smoothly along with a clump of earth. I pulled the few I saw, then looked around and saw a few more. That led to a few more, and another little clump over there, and oh, there's a whole stand of it, and that brought me to the base of our big old bur oak, where I discovered a whole forest of thistles. The number of thistles was unbelievable, unimaginable, unprecedented, ungodly, unheard of ...

I fell to work at once and pulled steadily for half an hour or so, making only a small dent in the thistle patch. This is a particularly ant-infested area, making invasives-removal even better exercise than usual due to the amount of dancing around and foot-stamping required. I hauled a few bedsheet-loads of thistles to the dumping pile and resolved to return another day. I also found a number of burdock plants here, so I'll be cutting the tops off those to keep them from reproducing. The tansy will just have to wait a while, as will my walkabout to see what's going on everywhere else.

Another plant I've tackled lately is crown vetch:

As usual, this is a lovely thing, but if you let it get established ...

We don't have much at Beechwood but I've noticed more this year than in the past, so I thought I'd better deal with it now. The plan was to spend a few minutes pulling it out before I got back to my "real" work. Ha! I spent one whole visit ousting crown vetch and there's still more waiting for me.

On my way home this morning I noticed the mystery steward has been to the Pottery Road hill again. Some more DSV has been removed and this burdock has been topped:

Way to go, mystery steward!

Happy Canada Day! The weather is nicer than predicted, so I took advantage and got some work done at Beechwood. A few cedar waxwings were also working, flying back and forth with bits of nesting material. The kingfisher was rattling around as usual, but it left when I went over to the pond to evict a lone spike of purple loosestrife I'd spotted:

Such a beautiful thing:

Such a tragic end:

But now, a confession: having got home and looked up some info about purple loosestrife, I'm afraid I may in fact have uprooted a nice specimen of the native swamp loosestrife in my stewardship zeal. *Hanging head in shame* Any experts care to weigh in here?

While I was by the pond I pulled a big armful of thistles -- they sure do love that pond -- as well as a load of ... anyone? Yes, more tansy. It may keep me busy for the rest of the summer.

This ant was exploring a black-eyed Susan ...

... while these were cleaning out a snail shell left on a fencepost, probably by a bird:

A bumblebee getting acrobatic on some cow parsnip:

This cow parsnip is under attack from dog-strangling vine:

Plume moth on milkweed. I'm cheating a bit -- this was taken in my garden today. But see what kind of cool things you can attract if you plant milkweed in your garden?

This will be a little picture-heavy today. It was a lovely morning and sometimes the light does amazing things by the pond:

Another view of some pond plants:

I cleaned up the rest of the party remnants -- hot dogs and corn, pickle jar and pickles, mustard container, binder rings, half-burned papers -- then pulled plants for a while. A few little treasures appeared, like this columbine (hmm, is it columbine? Maybe it's meadowrue?) ...

... and this nice caterpillar:

Black-eyed Susans:

There were more snails climbing trees:

The spotted sandpipers were by the river again ...

... and I saw the indigo bunting for the second day in a row at Todmorden Mills. I wish I could get a good picture. Here's most of him!

Common milkweed is flowering now. If you get a chance, go sniff some. Delightful! You can check underneath the leaves for monarch butterfly eggs or teeny caterpillars.

Sigh. An end-of-school party, apparently. Hot dogs, corn, chips, pop, beer, marshmallows, cookies. What, no baby carrots? It was still smouldering so I couldn't do much but spread it out a bit and wait for the rain we're expecting today. At least they didn't write on the signs. It's too bad those police officers don't walk their dogs along here on a Friday or Saturday night.

If anyone knows Emil, I'd like a word with him ...

Having tidied up what I could, I returned to the tansy patch and cleared out a section. By the time I've laid waste to the tansy, Queen Anne's Lace and thistles, there's not much left in places.

(There are some little sumacs getting started in there, and fleabane and a few other things that belong, so maybe they'll have a better chance now.)

Those of my readers who aren't in the Toronto area may not know we're in week one of a strike by the garbage collectors. I expect there will soon be a lot of illegal dumping in the valley. So far it's at a level I can tolerate ...

... until the animals rip those bags apart and scatter the contents, of course. Also involved in the strike are city-run museums like Todmorden Mills, city daycares and daycamps, ferry service to the islands, and park permits for things like wedding photos and the upcoming Canada Day celebrations. (BTW, if you were hoping to attend the local Environment Day at Riverdale Park, it's been postponed to October 17.) Oh, and one more thing that hadn't even crossed my mind until Don Watcher mentioned it -- the stewardship program is on hold. Of course, as a "guerrilla steward" I'm not affected. Now not only am I the only steward at Beechwood, I'm the only game in town! Well, perhaps some of the others have turned rogue as well and are continuing work at their sites -- I wouldn't like to speculate. The dog-strangling vine is not going to wait around while we resolve labour disputes.

News from farther afield: common reed, or Phragmites australis, is threatening shoreline and wetlands in Lake Huron and Georgian Bay. It's another of the invaders at Beechwood.