Photo Assignment: Buttertubs Marsh

But first....let's take a moment to remember those who have fallen and those still among us who have made all the difference. Thank you.
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Tuesday morning, bright and early, I headed off to Buttertubs Marsh for our latest Photo Assignment Nanaimo. I thought that if I was there early enough, that I could smuggle a certain somebody in with me...because what's a walk without a dog... I mean, if you're a dog person, right?

The signage was pretty clear what the Parks Department thinks of dogs and cats here at Buttertubs. However, I wasn't the only one out there with a dog...hmmmn. And I don't think the dogs left the size twelve bootprints heading out into the marsh and a trail of crumpled cattails and broken branches behind OR the copious amounts of McDonald's litter. But I could be wrong. So, leashed tightly together and armed with an abundance of poo bags, we crept around the fringes of Buttertubs.

We used this entrance...there are a couple of entrances and maybe the other folks with dogs felt more comfortable marching in because they didn't walk past this building with Parks workers already there. Shhhhh.

I don't know how anyone sees anything here. Cattails as high as your eye march right up to the path....

and then go on forever. Surreal and glorious. A world unknown.

On the other side of the path was this grove of Hawthorn trees with hardly a leaf left, but absolutely brilliant in berries.

Bedazzling.

I would have liked to live here. I wonder who did have their house here on the edge of the marsh. Did they love waking to the ducks and songbirds each morning? Or sometimes when the sun was rising in summer, was it just too damn loud with all that singing at 4 am? I wonder where they went, and when, and why they took their whole house with them....

but left this behind. And although I know this is an auger of some sort, I do wonder what it was used for here in the marshy-marshiness of Buttertubs Marsh.

I didn't make it around the whole marsh. I still had Eemer with me and didn't want to press my luck . Also, I do understand the need to keep dogs out of sanctuaries for wildlife. It's because of irresponsible owners. I get it. I do. And I don't want to make things any tougher on us responsible dog owners by thumbing my nose at these ordinances(at least not all the time.)

So I turned around here and headed back to the car, picking up litter along the way and tucking it into poobags because it is not just some dog owners who are irresponsible in a wildlife sanctuary.

I saw ducks but they didn't come in close for photos, and I heard the rustle of hundreds of smaller birds through the dead leaves, the rushes, the hawthorn branches...but they did not come sit for photos, either. That's how it works sometimes. Nature keeps her own schedule.

And that's about it for me...next week something new...the downtown Nanaimo waterfront. What a treat.