This is a great time to enjoy the wildflowers in the Nova Scotia woods!
There is something blooming along every inch of the Balancing Rock Trail - many of the blossoms are quite small and you'll have to get up close (and/or use a magnifying glass) to really appreciate these intricate little splashes of colour.
The trail was very busy with hikers yesterday, especially in the afternoon when the sun came out. Many of the hikers were hurrying out to see the rock and hurrying back to their cars. But one couple from Germany was there in the drizzle with me in the morning and like me they were walking slowly and enjoying the shiny drizzle-washed greenery.
"It's like a rain forest, so lush," they said. Their favourite thing about the trail was how it cuts right through the wilderness - how it would be tough slogging without the trail to walk through bog and brush - but with the trail you get to see all the plants without the slogging.
It might be a fun game with the family to head out the trail and see how many different flowers or interesting plants you can find... I have put together a slideshow and a printable list of 15 wildflowers and interesting plants i saw at Balancing Rock yesterday. I'd love it if people would share with me what they are seeing out there. (Email: jriley@municipality.digby.ns.ca)
For more info and more fun like this, check out iNaturalist.

The Gulliver's Cove Trails Association, led by Wanda Van Tassell, is organizing a beach clean up at Gulliver’s Cove for June 4.
A class of Options and Opportunities students from DRHS are coming to help, plus and Wanda and I are hoping a good number of local people can also make it for some of the day.
“It’s going to be a big job,” says Van Tassell. “It must be five years since we’ve done a clean up here and this beach, the way it is structured, we’re one of those beaches that gets a lot of debris washing in.”
Wanda has seen a day of cleaning makes a big difference in the past.
“When it’s cleaned up, it’s pretty nice,” she says. “People come from all over to enjoy the shore here. They come looking for agates, for walks on the trails, they have picnics and lobster boils.”
The Gulliver’s Cove clean up is from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on June 4 - but as far as that goes, anytime you want to go the beach and start gathering it up, your help would be welcome.
Digby Salvage and Disposal is donating a dumpster and the Municipality of the District of Digby has waived the tipped fees. Clean Foundation will be providing gloves and garbage bags and the Municipality is hosting a BBQ to thank and fuel the volunteers.

Public invited to discuss plan for recreation at Haines Lake
Public information session at Digby East Fish and Game about the former DNR base in Hillgrove
Thursday, Feb. 8, from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m.

NORTH RANGE, N.S. - The Municipality of the District of Digby is inviting the public to discuss a proposed plan for their new recreation property on Haines Lake.
Municipal staff are hosting a public information session Thursday, Feb. 8 at the Digby East Fish and Game. Staff will be providing information about, and hoping to gather some feedback on, their ideas for the site of the former Natural Resources base in Hillgrove, which is a few hundred metres down the shore from the Fish and Game.
The plan for the Haines Lake recreation area is based for the most part part on feedback the municipality received at their open house in September.
More than 75 people attended the event Sept. 23, 2017. Staff offered tours of the property, answered questions about the site, listened to suggestions and feedback and collected 27 surveys about how people would like to see the property used.
“People at the open house told us clearly they wanted this to be a place for picnicking, enjoying nature, and accessing the water, whether that is swimming, canoeing or kayaking,” says Jimmy MacAlpine, Warden of the Municipality of the District of Digby. “Staff have been looking at ways to make some small improvements at the site to enable and enhance these activities.”
FOR MORE INFO: www.digbytrails.ca/haines-lake.html
Municipal staff have been looking at options for fixing up the waterfront and the buildings on site including using part of the former DNR offices for use as washrooms, change rooms and activity shelter.
The Digby Area Recreation Commission used the site last summer for kayak camps for youth and opened the site three evenings for anyone, young or old, to try kayaking.
The plan for 2018 is to continue with the same sort of programming with possible additions of other water-based or nature-oriented programs.
“We’re open to partnering with local groups or organizations who want to host or hold outdoor recreation or education programs,” says Bob Powell, recreation manager of DARC. “A public session like this is a great way for us to learn what kind of programming the public wants, and people can contact us anytime with suggestions.”
The Municipality bought the 20 acres on Haines Lake from the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) for $1,000 in early 2016. The property is about 15 minutes from town on the Ridge Road and has about 120 metres of lakefront.
 
A plan for Haines lake recreation area
Date: Thursday, Feb. 8
Time: 6:30 to 7:30 p.m.
Where: Digby East Fish and Game
For more info: www.digbytrails.ca/haines-lake.html

For information or questions, concerns or comments,
please contact:
Jonathan Riley
Trails and Open Space Coordinator
902-245-2861
jriley@municipality.digby.ns.ca

Bob Powell
Recreation Manager
902-245-1884
bobp@ns.aliantzinc.ca

Fabulous Fundy flakes favour southwest Nova

Digby is the snow capital of the province right now and aren't we lucky.
Judging by the tracks at the Digby Pines golf course, the Acacia Valley Trails, at Van Tassel Lake, and on the railbed, a lot of people have been out and enjoying the wonderful wintry weather.
It has been snowing in Digby for a week and the light and fluffy flurries have really piled up. The snow has been a little wispy letting skis and snowshoes sink through to the ground underneath but the last few days it has started to thicken up and get some real base to it.
If you’ve never tried snowshoeing, this is a great time to borrow a pair from Digby Area Recreation and head out to the Pines to play in the snow. Snowshoeing is super easy to learn – it is just walking with extra big shoes.
Snowshoeing isn’t necessarily faster than walking in boots but if you take your time, it saves you sinking to your knees or waist, and gives you a little more traction and stability.
Snowshoe hikes and trails
A group of people on Digby Neck have an easy hike to a winter waterfall planned for Wednesday, Jan. 3. They are meeting at 1 p.m. on the Wharf Road in Sandy Cove, parking there and then hiking to TR Falls. The route is mostly along a snow-covered gravel road with just a short scamper through the woods to the falls at the end.
Other local options include the Acacia Valley Trails on Mill Road in Hillgrove. The Department of Transportation and Infrastructure Renewal keeps this gravel road well plowed but the steep section near the bottom can be slippery depending on snowfall and ice.
Beginners can stick to the wide, level trail and the adventurous can roam off on the single track trails to the Hardwood Ridge, Picnic Rock, and Tupper’s Deadwater or even connect into the miles and miles of logging road on the neighbouring Crown lands.
The Van Tassel Lake Trails are also a great place to snowshoe with easy walks to the lake, a rougher but beautiful loop around the lake or the demanding hike to the look off with a stunning view of the snow-covered uplands.
For more information on the trails in the Municipality of the District of Digby go to digbytrails.ca.
#FUNDYFLAKES
As trail coordinator for the Municipality of the District of Digby, I want to share with everyone just how beautiful and fun it is here right now.
I’d really appreciate it if Digby County folk could share their best fun-in-the-snow photos of sledding, skiing, snow sculptures, forts and snowmobiling.
You can email me the photos at jriley@municipality.digby.ns.ca or message me on Facebook or just post them on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter with the hashtag #fundyflakes
FUNDY ERRATICS WINTER HIKES
The Fundy Erratics also have a series of winter snowshoe hikes planned Jan. 20, Feb. 17 and March 24.
Jan. 20 - Railbed
The first hike will be relatively easy. The plan is to snowshoe 7.5 km on the railbed from Jordantown to the airport. This hike is intended to introduce people to the fun of snowshoeing on relatively even and level terrain but also to show you some of the winter beauty out there along our railbed.
Feb. 17 – Acacia Valley
In February we will try something a little more aerobically demanding on the Acacia Valley Trail on the Mill Road in Hillgrove. The plan is again 7 or 8 km but the terrain, while not hilly, is a uneven and wild. We’ll plan on following Aunt Sarah’s Brook by several frozen pools to Tuppers Deadwater and then over to Picnic Rock for a little bonfire.
March 24 – Gulliver’s Cove
And in March, we’re planning a strenuous climb to a couple of spectacular lookoffs above Gulliver’s Cove. The hike is only 5 or 6 km but parts are very steep. We’ve scheduled this one for late in the season so you have lots of time to get in snowshoe shape.

The Municipality of the District of Digby and the Digby County ATV Club wants to make people aware of construction about to begin on the abandoned railbed in Marshalltown where it intersects with Hwy 101.
The Nova Scotia Department of Transportation and Infrastructure Renewal alerted the municipality that construction on an overpass to carry trail users over the new section of Hwy 101 will begin Monday, Dec. 18.
Because of that construction, the railbed will be closed to all users between the Dump Road (Upper Cross Road) and the Jordantown Road for most of the winter. The overpass project is expected to be completed by March 31.
When complete, the new bridge will allow trail users to cross the Hwy 101 safely. The bridge will connect the main stretch of trail leading to Weymouth with Conway and downtown Digby.

JORDANTOWN - The railbed trail looks a whole lot better for about 10 kilometres west of Digby.
Two dozen volunteers spent Sunday morning, Dec. 3 crawling up and down steep banks and fighting through thorny brush, to pick up other people’s garbage.
In the end they had gathered enough junk to fill to overflowing a 30-yard dumpster and then some – two couches and a fridge wouldn’t fit in the dumpster and went straight to Digby Salvage and Disposal on the Upper Cross Road, plus volunteers planned to get two more couches to the dump Monday.
Greg Thomas of Digby Salvage and Disposal says the garbage weighed a total 3.5 metric tons.
“This was an awesome turnout and it was great to see all that garbage in the dumpster instead of on the side of the trail,” said JJ Scott, treasurer with the Digby County ATV Club. “This is a great improvement but we still need to trim some limbs back and get the road surface graded but things are definitely going in the right direction.”
Volunteers combed the brush on both sides of the railbed for four hours, from Hwy 101 to Jordantown through to Bloomfield and a ways into North Range.
They used winches to drag up dozens of tires, fridges, stoves and a dozen mattresses. They filled heavy duty garbage bags with countless cans, bottles, coffee cups and every imaginable piece of junk.
The volunteers then loaded the trash onto trucks, side by sides, ATVs and trailers and hauled it to a dumpster set up in Jordantown.
“I was really grateful to see so many from the Digby County ATV Club and others, young and old, men and women, ATVers and hikers, all working together to clean up this community trail,” said Jimmy MacAlpine, Warden of the Municipality of the District of Digby. “This is a big trail and we’re going to need the community’s help to keep it in good shape.”
The Municipality waived the tipping fees - Digby Salvage and Disposal donated the use, delivery and pick up of the 30-yard dumpster, and Greg Thomas even came out to open the construction and demolition site on a Sunday afternoon so the volunteers could unload a truckful that just wouldn’t fit in the dumpster.
The Digby County ATV Club and the Municipality of the District of Digby organized the clean up as part of their efforts to develop the railbed corridor into a multi-use trail. The Municipality is in the process of applying for a letter of authority to develop, maintain and promote over 40 km of trail from Smiths Cove to Weymouth.
“That first section looks so much better,” said Jonathan Riley, Trails and Open Space Coordinator with the Municipality. “We’ve got lots more to do but when you see that dumpster full of trash, you know you’ve done something. It feels pretty good.”

Railbed garbage
statue of bears at a waterfall
orange glass Christmas tree topper
cap gun
fish tank
cast iron floor lamp
cans, bottles, coffee cups
stubby beer bottles
shoes, sneakers, boots, sandals
plastic sheeting, garbage bags
dozens of TVs
dozens of tires
vacuum cleaners
buckets
tent
indescribable filth
nerf football
8 or 9 couches
mattress springs
hockey skates
hockey pads
cassette tapes
VHS tapes
6" floppy disks
pig skull
dog skeleton

I love the little yellow larch. I love it more because it has so many names – how many do you know? My list is at the bottom of this article but see how many you can come up with before you get there...

The fall colours started with some bright and spectacular reds this year – especially on the shores of the rivers and lakes a little further inland – now most of those reds and oranges are gone, ripped from the trees by the strong winds of late.
[See a collection of photos from around the Digby area at www.digbytrails.ca/fallingfordigby.html ]
Now we are into the brown oaks and beeches, some yellow birches and poplars and the last of the yellow maples. But trailing at the end of the colour parade is a showy little final hurrah, a splash of golden yellow like an exclamation point on the season of fall colours.

The larch is the only conifer native to Nova Scotia that loses all its needles at once and before it drops those needles, they turn a bright almost luminescent green and followed by a deep golden yellow.
I love to paddle the stillwaters and lakes of Digby County this time of year just to look at the larches along the shore. The top of the Wallace Branch is particularly pretty with some tall straight larches in the range of 10 and 15 metres tall. The stillwater on Lake Franklin Brook is also picturesque but the larches there are smaller, more of the twisted expressive variety.

A group of us ran to the look off at the top of the Van Tassel Lake trails this week and the big patch of yellow larches on the swamp that is the source of Bud’s Brook is just about the only colour left on the hills up there.
If you keep your eyes open you will see this beautiful yellow tree everywhere right now. The swamp at the front of the municipality’s property on Haines Lake is full of them and I saw a nice big yellow stand at the start of the road to Southville right where it meets the 340.
What’s your favourite place to admire the larches?
Share some photos with us by email to jriley@municipality.digby.ns.ca, find me on FB or simply add #FALLingforDIGBY in the comments when you post on FB or Instagram, and I’ll find them and add them to our collection at www.digbytrails.ca/fallingfordigby.html.

Names for the larch
In Latin, the larch that grows in Nova Scotia is called larix laricina.
Tamarack, Hackmatack are both common names, undoubtedly of Aboriginal origin. Many here call it juniper as well, but juniper is actually a totally different plant, a bush actually. Along the same lines, some people refer to hemlock as tree juniper.
Our kind of larch grows right across a big swath of this continent, mostly in the north, even in Alaska and in other places it is called the eastern larch, black larch, red larch and even American larch and Alaskan larch.
In Acadian it is called violon because it does resemble a violin or fiddle in shape, but other French speakers call it mélèze and according to one source online the Mi’kmaw word is apu’tam’kie’jit.
Do you know any other names for larch that I’ve missed?

I was walking to the look off in Gulliver's Cove earlier this week and met two ladies who were surprised to see me in a bright ORANGE vest and hat.
"Is it hunting season?" they asked.
Actually it's been hunting season for more than a month now - deer hunters with bow and muzzleloaders and bear hunters have all been in the woods since Sept. 11 but today, Friday, Oct. 27, is the start of the general deer hunt - the big hunt.
Last year DNR issued 45,836 deer licenses and 10,748 archery and muzzleloader stamps; so roughly four times as many hunters will be actually hunting this weekend compared to the few who have been in so far.
I firmly believe the general public can safely frequent the woods throughout the hunting season but they have to be aware and take a few precautions.
Most importantly: GET YOUR ORANGE ON. By law only hunters and those accompanying hunters have to wear orange, but for safety sake, everyone in the woods should wear an orange hat and an orange vest or jacket.
Travelling in a group will also make you more visible and less likely to be confused with a deer.
It's also more important this time of year to know the land you're on - who owns it? do you have permission to be there? do the owners hunt or allow others to hunt there?
If you've been in the woods lately, you might have a pretty good idea of some places hunters are setting up or frequenting. Starting today they can actually pull the trigger on their rifles, but many have been in the woods for weeks, busy scouting game trails, setting up and checking game cameras, building blinds and stands and of course supplying bait stations.
Those are places it is just as easy to avoid for the next month (until Dec. 2 at least when the big hunt ends).
I also tend to avoid the early morning and late afternoon hours as much as possible - those are the hours where hunters are out in bigger numbers, before and after work, and also when visibility is at its worst.
Hunting is only allowed on the first two Sundays: Oct. 29 and Nov. 5 but no other Sundays so you should definitely get out and enjoy the woods Nov. 12, 19 and 26.
Another option for complete peace of mind is to visit a national park like Kejimkujik or provincial parks like Central Grove, Savary Park, Mickey Hill, Smugglers Cove and Mavillette.
For example, the Fundy Erratics hiking club usually schedule their November hikes for the national park: this year they are hiking from Jakes Landing to Merrymakedge and Grafton Lake on Nov. 18.
The fall is a wonderful time to be outdoors: just GET YOUR ORANGE ON.
For more on hunting regulations and safety advice see: https://novascotia.ca/natr/hunt/.
For a list of the 2017-2018 hunting and trapping seasons, see:
https://novascotia.ca/natr/hunt/pdf/SeasonDates_Web_2017.pdf

The Gulliver’s Cove trails should be a lot easier to find and follow, thanks to the work of a great group of volunteers.
Wanda VanTassel, chair of the Gulliver’s Cove Trails Association (GCTA), organized a trail clearing party for Oct. 14 and an enthusiastic group of 23 volunteers spent the day clearing the upper trail of alders and errant branches and brush. The Bay of Fundy Discovery Centre provided brush cutting equipment for the project.
The Trailgate party was held in conjunction with the Municipality of the District of Digby, the Fundy Erratics hiking club, Hike Nova Scotia, and the Government of Canada through the Canada 150 fund.
The federal funding paid for hotdogs and cake and some of the money left over was spent on signage to indicate parking areas and signs showing the way to the upper trails. The GCTA plans to add more signage and maps as they continue to develop and improve the trail system.
There are now a few parking spaces cleared at the end of the Gullivers Cove Road where the old fish sheds used to be. The lower trail (~800m) follows the shoreline to a rest area and look off with picnic tables and benches. The trail surface is mostly grass, mown regularly but in a few small sections there are roots, rocks and some small puddles.
Another smaller parking space has been mowed out on the right of the gravel road leading up the hill for people wanting to access the newly cleared upper trail. It is a steep strenuous climb of about 1 km to reach the upper trails.
From the start of the trail itself, it is another 1.2 km through the woods to the upper look off. The trail surface is wide and clear with many roots and rocks. The look off gives a breathtaking view eastward along the wild shoreline of Digby Neck, directly below is lower look off and further southwards one can see the beach and some of the houses of Gulliver’s Cove.
The GCTA was officially formed in August this year to develop, maintain and manage a network of trails in and around the Gulliver’s Cove area for hiking, walking, snowshoeing and cross country skiing. The GCTA is in the process of formalizing agreements with the private landowners who have graciously agreed to allow the trails on their land.
The GCTA hopes to see you out and about on these community trails, enjoying the views, the fresh sea air and getting a little exercise too.
For more information and a map of the trails, see www.digbytrails.ca/gullivers-cove.html.