October 14 found us again in the Frontenac Arch, making another traverse of Fishing Lake Road. We stopped at this granite outcrop with Juniper to look for Skinks. The sun was warm and the Juniper's shadow was long. The season is too late for Skinks, however and the weather is cool. Fishing Lake Road runs at first through forests of Maple, Oak, and pine, and then rises to follow the crest of ridges cleared for a huge hydro power line - grassland with outcrops of granite, and scattered with Juniper bushes and patches of Sumac. Traveling Fishing Lake Road is a scenic treat. We have driven this road a few times in the course of surveying newly acquired tracts of Nature Conservancy land. Negotiating the narrow, hilly track is an adventure in itself. Both in the spring and in the fall, this particular Juniper bush on the granite ridge with distant forest behind, struck me as something I wanted to paint. Fred was occupied by a 20 metre patch of invasive Phragmites nearby, the only stand of invasive plant that we saw along the 8 kilometres of this road.
