On Sunday, April 29, SONSI members met at the Walper Hotel in Kitchener for brunch and our Annual General Meeting. The buffet, the service, and the private room were all excellent! Detailed minutes from the meeting have been provided to members.
Following the meeting, we made our way to the City Hall Rotunda Gallery to take down our exhibit, a task made a bit complicated by crowds of chess tournament attendees, but it didn’t take us long to empty the walls and pack up our artwork.
A smaller group of us then drove over to Kitchener’s Huron Natural Area for a leisurely stroll. After taking a quick look at the interpretive signs near the front entrance (which I illustrated last year), we walked by the pond where we saw lots of painted turtles, including one log with about 10 of them piled on. In the woods, the white trilliums and trout lilies were at their peak. We spotted many butterflies, including mourning cloaks, red admirals, question marks, and painted ladies on their larval host plant, pussytoes. In a white pine we saw the home of a Pine Tube Moth, which Fiona later identified as Argyrotaenia pinatubana. On the way back to the parking lot, we admired a patch of red trilliums that included some pale yellow individuals.
Throughout the day: great conversations with interesting people and perfect weather. It couldn’t have been better!
-Emily