Canadian Firefighters Memorial, June 15, 2014

The memorial site looked very lush and green today. The downy serviceberry tree that had maybe three leaves on it has filled up. It is not as full as the ones further in on the site but it's coming along. Overall the plant life on the site is doing very well. Having rain for the past four days hasn't hurt at all.

In this picture and some of the ones to come you can see some of the lower branches on the oak trees are without leaves. Other than that they appear to be coming along very well.

If you compare the downy serviceberry tree in this picture to the one taken of it two weeks previously, you will see that it has considerably more foliage on it now.

Compare the serviceberry tree on the left with the one on the right and you will see the difference in how they are faring.

From this and the next picture you can see how the oak trees are doing.

Canadian Firefighters Memorial, June 1, 2014

It looks like the plants on the outer perimeter, especially on the roadside, are not doing as well as the plants further in. This is probably due to the amount of salt used on the road in winter, which is in turn aerated by the passing traffic. Hopefully, over time those plants will establish themselves and become less affected by the environmental stress.

This downy serviceberry tree is just beginning to put out some leaves. You can see another downy serviceberry further away and to the right. It is further from the traffic of the road and it is full of leaves.

The sugar maple trees are doing quite well as are the blueberry bushes.

I noticed that this sign has a sticker over the QR code that says, "Coming Soon." My guess is that the National Capital Commission must be working on new web pages for the Ottawa memorials in its care.

It will be interesting to see how the plants near the road come ahead over the coming months.

Canadian Firefighters Memorial, May 19, 2014

Here's the Canadian Firefighters Memorial on Victoria Day, 2014. There is some vigorous growth in some of the landscaping while in other areas it looks like the plants are struggling and in some places expired. While I was there taking these pictures I saw someone come to pay their respects.

I tend to circle the memorial site in a clockwise direction. When the memorial was under construction I parked to the south and the south west corner was where I started taking pictures. Now I have to park on the street, so I tend to start at the north east corner.

I took photographs early on in the site's construction and they are posted on this blog site. If you haven't seen them I recommend that you go looking for them. It may take some looking around on the site but I think it will be worth your while.

You can see a number of seats arranged here. This area was designed to be a place where people could got and sit in quiet contemplation at the site.

It looks like the plants that were put in on this hill did not do well over the winter.

I try to go to the memorial at two week intervals now. I see from looking at the dates the last set of pictures were taken about a month ago. The next set should be early in June.