Our Halloween Event, Wild Things, took place in the Nature Park on Saturday. Coast Capital supported it so that it was a free event this year and they provided staff who did face-painting, not to mention the beloved Coast Capital Orca. We also had a great team of volunteers who helped with every aspect of it, taking on the roles - and costumes - of some of the animal and other characters, coaching those characters, carving pumpkins, circulating to help out with any problems, set up and take down. Kin's Farm supplied us with the pumpkins which were carved on Friday and then set out along the boardwalk, and others for the public to carve on Saturday.

Océ , a company specialising in industrial-sized imaging and graphics machines, printed and donated two ten-foot banners on vinyl for the event and two six-foot posters on paper.

The Nature Park Society Board plus volunteers Kuo Wong and Judy Yang, donated time and expertise throughout the months leading up to the event to organise and co-ordinate everything. 

Need I say more? 

Well, I probably don't need to, but I will.  

The Fall colours are the true colours of the leaves. When Spring comes, we talk about her taking on her mantle of green, and that is fairly accurate if rather poetic.

The green chloroplasts cover the colours beneath until the tree or shrub needs to stop production of sugars for the dormant winter period. Then, for that brief spell before the leaves drop, we have a spectacular show of coppers, golds, russets and reds.

This week we are preparing the Nature House for Halloween. We have our witches' house up and we have started the Halloween School Program, 'Halloween Howl.' From now until the end of October, we'll be celebrating the time in Nature's Cycle when plants and animals are at their least active, in the case of many insects, laying their eggs before dying.

In Celtic traditions, from which Halloween sprang, the 31st of October was the night of the final harvest, not just of plants, but also of cattle and livestock which must be slaughtered and the meat preserved to see the communities through the winter. It was probably not much of a stretch for people to believe in the harvest of human souls.

The cranberries are ripe in the Nature Park, just as they are in the fields in Richmond.

There seem to be more around the Park this year than there have been for the past couple of years at least.

This Friday we will be bagging cranberries that have been donated by Ocean Spray, ready for the Cranberry Sale at the Nature Park on Saturday.

The bluerry bushes, spectacular at all times of the year, are taking on their Fall colours of deep red.

The School Programmes have started now, and we are also preparing for one of our most important Special Events of the year, the Halloween Programme, 'Wild Things '.