Iain Leitch Photography

The Royal Botanical Gardens (RBG), located in Hamilton, Ontario, is designated a National Historic Site of Canada. I live only an hour and a half away from the RBG but yet I had never been until today. Today I took the trip down to the RBG and was wowed by the gardens. I went to three of the gardens today and each experience was a pleasant one. I started out exploring the Hendrie Park Gardens, which comprises a rose garden, statue garden (closed at the moment due to COVID-19) and a native plant garden among other themes gardens. The first two photos here are showing the rose garden in all its glory with full blooms and beautiful colours. The tall purple flowers seen in both photos are actually a type of onion that is planted among the roses to help them fight disease and pests. Moving on from the rose garden and into the native plant garden, I saw this beautiful yellow flower that I thought was perfect. Adding the overcast day, this made for an amazing photo in my opinion with the righ...

A couple of days ago I looked up into the sky and found this beautiful looking Waking Cresent Moon shining bright in the evening light. There was a light dusting of clouds at evening, but I feel as if they just made the photo better and added more depth. You can also check this photo out on my Instagram @iainwf Today I decide to go down to St Mary's just for something to do rather than just play around on my computer all day. St Mary's is known to have a great old rail-trail with a huge bridge. The first photo here is looking over the bridge at the start of the trail. On both ends of the bridge, there are thick tree canopies that add to a tunnel-like sense at both ends. This bridge use to run trains between Toronto and Sarnia up until 1988 when CN abandoned it.  The rail-trail bridge crosses the Northern branch of the Thames River which flows through the town. Here the river does a large bend as it flows into town, which is what this photo captured. On the left of this photo is...

In my backyard I recently had a family of Blue Jays move in. They seemed to be nesting in a neighbour's tree and would always come down to eat the seeds we put out for them. I had taken these photos a couple of weeks ago, but since then a third Blue Jay has appeared which makes me think they were successful in raising a family. I had seen on INaturalist that there had been a few sighting of Baltimore Orioles around town. This inspired me to cut up a couple oranges and set them out to see if I can get some in my backyard. After a couple of days without anything, I was almost set to give up when a group of three finally came one morning. I quickly found out that these birds are very skittish and are not a fan of being photographed. However, I still managed to take some okayish photos of these birds anyway. 

On the Avon Trail, a person will find a variety of different habitats, ranging from farmers' fields, woodlots, valleys, streams, and rivers. The most recent walk I went on, I passed through almost all of these habitats. The first photo is of an Eastern Chipmunk who I saw in among a bunch of Trout Lilies that were just coming up. This is a photo of a Trout Lily in full bloom. It is called a Trout Lily because the leaves of the plant have spots on them just like Trout does. This flower was in full bloom with all of the flower petals pulled back which is something distinct to the Trout Lily, but I could be wrong. The provincial flower of Ontario is the Trillium which is exactly what this photo is of. When I went for my walk the Trilliums were just starting to bloom with, only a couple actually out in full bloom. I like this photo due to the very green and natural background that draws your eyes in towards the white of the Trillium. This photo much like the previous one, is one ...

One day during the quarantine I decided to go for a drive out in the countryside. I ended up down some random dirt road where I found a bridge going over a branch of the Thames River. I pulled the car over once I had passed the bridge and walked back to check out the view from the bridge. What I found was a beautiful scene where the river was meandering along its course in a curvy snake-like fashion.  The bottom two photos are looking out at the same view but from different points on the bridge. The first photo is closer to one side of the bridge while the second photo is more from the middle of the bridge. Both of these photos were taken in early April hence the lack of life in the photos.