This little bugger tried to steal my lunch at Métro Côte-des-Neiges.

Just a quick note to say thanks to all our readers, especially those who take the time to share your thoughts, memories, critiques and inspirations on the blog. Your comments are what make Spacing Montreal worth writing and reading. Happy holidays!

"City pigeons are the product of domestication – but exist somewhere between tame and wild. Their traces in wet cement remind us that human and non-human animals share the city together. The sidewalk was once a meeting place – not just a passageway.  Pigeons still use it that way." - Pigeon Tracks blog Jennifer Roberts is an Art History grad student who studies the timeless interaction between pigeons and wet cement. She tracks pigeon tracks - and dog and cat and squirrel tracks too - all as part of an ...

Walnuts are trees of the Gods. It's right there in the name: Juglans means the nut, or acorn (as in the French, gland), of Jupiter, top God of the Romans. And the tree carries itself like royalty, spreading its long, strong branches almost as wide as high. Think of the tallest tree in the Redpath Dell, the hollow immediately to the east of the Redpath Museum on the McGill University campus. What you see here in this photo are the fruit of the black walnut (Juglans nigra, Noyer noir).  The edible nut is within the shell encased in this lime green husk. But this is not the fruit of the great walnut of the McGill campus, circa 1882, nor of any other establishment of 19th century, institutional Montreal. I took this photo yesterday in a post-industrial vacant lot. Not the sort of place you expect to find the regal Juglans, a tree that in this part of the world generally needs good soil and a certain amount of pampering, being a little north of its usual territory in Canada, which is the Carolinian zone of southwestern Ontario. So, what was Jupiter  doing in the Mile End Meadow (my name for the old Canadian Pacific railyard where Henri-Julien street meets the tracks, across the street from the Carmelite Monastery), growing amongst such hobos as the cottonwood poplar, sumac and Manitoba maple? It's easy to identify the source of the original nut planted, from which this walnut -- and its numerous sibling trees in the vicinity -- sprang. When I first began frequenting this meadow, in preparation for a guided tree walk, I could see that many of the tree species originated in the Carmelite garden where there is an orchard of fruit trees and numerous century old broadleaf trees, including silver maples, honey locusts and ... an enormous black walnut. Clearly, squirrels had crossed the Great Wall and planted the fruit. Still, I was mystified by the location of the five or six young trees I had spotted, all growing on the periphery of the field, along one wire fence or another. One morning last fall, waiting for my group to arrive, I sat quietly and observed a squirrel with an enormous -- at least relative to the size of the squirrel -- walnut in its mouth. After crossing Henri-Julien street, it dashed to the nearest bit of metal, mesh fencing. Squirrels don't like to travel on the ground; there are too many potential predators, such as dogs, and their short legs aren't meant for tall grasses. Fencetops, therefore, comprise an important element in their channels of transportation. The Mile End Meadow (MEM) is fenced, in intervals, by several long stretches of Frosst fence, and I watched as the squirrel traveled adeptly along the fencetops with the large load in her mouth. Finally, I lost sight of her at the end of western stretch of fencing, a point where there just happens to be a trio of young walnuts. So, I surmised, the squirrel either drops the fruit at the end of the fence or buries it there. And, given that the lawnmowers, which periodically  trim all that grows in the field, including young trees, can't get too close to the fence, the walnuts -- and numerous other plants -- thrive within the grace of the margins. Of course, it's not only the mowers that can't get too close to the fence, it's the walkers and cyclists too. So, all the vegetation that grows close to  fences, and buildings too, have a greater chance of survival than those in open. What's good for the squirrel is good for the walnut. I am fascinated  by the self-seeding trees, those that "escape from gardens," as we say. None, of course, escape on their own except those whose roots pass under fences and walls and send up new shoots, such as sumacs and black locusts. The self-seeders, are, in fact, seeded either by wind, water, birds or mammals. They depend on disturbed, open soil in which their seeds may fall or --in the case of the animal-seeded -- be buried. At this time of year, for instance, in my alley near des Pins and St-Denis streets, there are always a few cottonwood seedlings, sent by the wind from the next alley over where a Titanesque lady cottonwood literally casts her fate to the wind in the form of millions of tiny seeds attached to threads of cotton-like fibre. So far, none have survived more than the summer. There is likely too much competition in the narrow line of opportunity where the curb meets the asphalt.

A ferry whisks 12 bicycles and their riders across the St-Lawrence river to the Boucherville Islands provincial park. On your typical STM map of Montreal, the Boucherville Islands are just peeking out from under the legend, and so for many years they remained under my radar. Turns out the are actually the site of a provincial park, just minutes away from Montreal. Here's one sweet way to escape the city that doesn't involve getting stuck in bridge traffic... The best part about a trip to the Boucherville Islands is how bike-friendly it is. Its beyond bike-friendly, the park is designed for cyclists. For $7 you and your bicycle can get a round-trip ferry to the Ile Ste-Marguerite, from which you can access the rest of the archipelago. This overhead includes the entrance fee to the provincial park and was the only cash I dished out all day.