Days of Gold

 Er, Happy Canadian Thanksgiving, that is. We had the big turkey dinner yesterday, in weather so warm that I had all the windows open. This is unusual for this part of eastern Ontario: there have been years when we had snow. But yesterday was glorious and so was today and so tomorrow is forecast to be. Even though the colour is not marvellous this year - too dry in August and September.

 The red maples in front of our house are just about as bright as we have anywhere in our bush. Having rushed madly about doing turkey and fixings yesterday, today I put everything away and then turned the oven on to self-clean and escaped outside. JG and I went roaming around the place, he introducing me to various bits of trail that he has cleared out this summer, mostly very bumpy bits going up or down or sideways. But in spite of the lack of red, all of the bush is very beautiful. A lot of the leaves are already down and that wonderful scent of dry leaves rose everywhere we went.


This shot is typical of what the woods looked like today. If you look carefully you can see two tire tracks through the leaves. That's the trail, in fact that is one of the better parts of the off road network we have maintained over the years. You can see a lot of smaller diameter trunks. Some of them are saplings and a few are older, ironwood and such, that will live under the canopy but do not thrive and therefore grow very slowly. JG and a couple of his friends are doing an improvement cut in this part - turning damaged trees into firewood.

As you can see, this was what my family calls a 'blue' day - sky so glaringly cerulean that you seem to be suspended in light and space. This kind of weather is rare in October, when you are more likely to get the 'smokey hills' of the infamous poem we all had to learn in grade school.

Along the line of smokey hills the crimson forest stands,
And all the day the blue jay calls throughout the autumn lands.

There is more, but I will spare you. I did link it to the poem, just in case you want the rest of it.

In fact, the jays are not calling at present, because their beaks are stuffed full with either corn or sunflower seeds that they are abstracting in quantity from the bird feeder and the deer feeding station and stuffing into other locations to eat this winter.

When we got back to the house, most of the odour of burnt turkey fat had dissipated and we ordered in pizza for supper. Tomorrow we have another Thanksgiving feast to attend.

I seem to myself to be writing very dull and somewhat didactic posts. Apologies to all of you who have found me better fun in the past. I am hoping to get back into the groove again soon.