An Afternoon at the Park.

Little Stuff spent part of July with me while her parents were away, part of it with all of us at a cottage and a few days doing fun stuff with her parents.  In August her parents returned to work full time and her program was to be gymnastics three mornings a week and a local day care for the rest of the time.  But by the start of this last week, Little Stuff had had more than enough of the large, noisy and disorganized daycare where she had been spending her afternoons.  The friend she was counting on hanging around with was being cool to her, and while she was loving the gymnastics, the afternoons and especially the two full days at daycare were reducing her to tears.

The ED called me and asked if I could go in to the city for a couple of days and provide child care: she did not have to ask twice.  I picked up Little Stuff from her gym and took her back to her own house for lunch.  The last bite was not in her mouth when her chum from next door, who had been away visiting overseas for the whole summer, appeared at the door to the breakfast room.  There was a joyful reunion.  Little Friend is a year older than Little Stuff and a grade ahead of her at the same school, so they don’t spend too much time together at school, but they are the best of companions otherwise.  They asked if they could go to the park and feed the animals.  No problem there.  Little Friend went home to gather permission and provender, Little Stuff gathered up stale bread, peanuts and carrots, and we wandered off  to the park, which is a riverside park, very large and full of overfed animals and birds.

The girls chattered non-stop all the way to the park, most of it lost on me.  Little Friend speaks four languages but not one of them is English  - the two of them communicate in soft and idiomatic French and Little Stuff translates as needed.  Going to feed the birds and animals is a regular treat that they have both been doing since they were toddlers and they know just what to do.  In a very short time they were surrounded by pigeons 

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and, aside from Little Friend having a finger mistaken for a peanut, a very good time was had by all, including grama who was photographing like a mad woman.


They played in the park the whole afternoon, checking in with me only to let me know if they were going some distance away.  They climbed trees and giggled and collected weeds and giggled and showed off their new dance and gymnastics to each other 

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and giggled and ran and jumped and .... well, you get the idea.  It was probably the first unstructured afternoon either of them had spent for a long time.

Grama lured in the wildlife with some of the stale bread and took more photographs.  The wildlife gets fed a lot at that park.  

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Check out the tummy on the second squirrel, the grey one.  

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The river carried masses of ducks 

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and gulls, all with one eye for a handout, the park itself is full of squirrels and along the river bank live groundhogs and other small mammals.  When I finally decided that we had to go back (Grand-mere a besoin du cafe!), they were both rosy and exhausted and when we got back to the house they were glad to collapse in front of the TV and watch the Blue Planet video until supper time.

I’ve just described what appears to be a rather boring afternoon in excruciating detail.  It wasn’t boring to me, however; I had a beautiful day, a camera (should have taken a flask of coffee, though) and a happy, relaxed grandkid enjoying some truly unstructured time.

One of the main reasons I started this blog was to leave a record of who I am and how we related for Little Stuff.  She has just turned seven and if I died tomorrow she would remember me, I think, but probably only vaguely.  I was lucky to have one grandmother who lived until I was an adult with children of my own; of my other grandmother, who died when I was four, I have only scraps of memory and mementos.  I want Little Stuff to have much more than that available if, as an adult, she wants to know.  I wonder if she will remember this day, or the days at the cottage, as special, happy ones or if, like me, her memories of these very young years will be hazy at best.

If so, maybe this story and the photos will remind her.  I hope so.  It is always good to remember being loved.

I'm daffy too - at last

The whole blogosphere has been posting raptures to spring this last while, with gorgeous photos of spring flowers and flowering trees, lyrics to the sun and warmth, panegyrics to the spring.  Some of these posts have been up for over a month (you know who you are, down there in New Orleans!).  All of them have showed spring signs much more advanced than mine, even Anvilcloud, who lives north of me, for goodness sake.

Ten days ago, my bulb garden looked like this.  You can see its present glory up in the header.

The red maples have flowered and the tips of the leaves are now showing.  Even the buds on the oak, which is always late, are bulging.  The birds are singing their hearts out, all except the woodpecker who is doing his spring drumming on the metal chimney of a close neighbour.  Loud does not cover it.  In between the bouts of pounding I can sometimes hear a northern mockingbird, I think.  I haven't seen it but the string of borrowed song phrases is pretty certain.  I can see flower buds on the lilacs and when I look out across the woods,  I can see a haze of green everywhere.  Lovely!

And, of course, the blackflies are here. While the rest of you are celebrating the sunshine with sandals and shorts, think of me with heavy socks pulled over my gardening trousers and sweltering in my bug shirt.  Thank goodness we have a screened porch where I can enjoy the bird song without being attacked.

I will have to get the hummingbird feeders up - the little guys will be here very soon now. And plant the gladiolas. 

It's not just the birds that are delirious with spring business.  But I have no intention of banging on the chimney.

PS There is now something more in my garden.  My most creative neighbours have decided to celebrate my birthday by hiding garden gnomes around the place.  I found one in the daffodil bed to-night, and I have  notice that two others are around somewhere.  Hilarious!

Sing a Song of Summer

The sun is shining. The air is dry. I am putting laundry on the line as fast as I can wash it, lest the weather deteriorate. Environment Canada's weather forecast is for possible rain tomorrow and then two days of sun. Unfortunately we had 3/4" of rain yesterday afternoon in as many minutes and so the door and decks that need paint and stain are too wet to work on. The rain also whomped my geraniums and the blooms are now all drooping or hanging their heads; I should really have dragged all the planters under the eaves when the sky turned black. Oh, well. More buds are popping up daily.

We have all been noticing how beautiful the wild flowers are this summer. The Queen Anne's lace is thicker than I have seen it since I was a child in Essex County, there are cornflowers and black-eyed Susan and buttercups and Canterbury bells and purple loose strife in quantities all along the roadsides, plus others that I do not know the names of; little yellow ones and big yellow ones and a spiky purple one and ....! Lots. And I am told the wild raspberries are good -- I will go and investigate after I get the wash line filled. A day in the sunshine, indeed.

Tomorrow I guess I will spend ironing. Such are the vagaries of housework in the land of little summer. At least we don't have forest fires this year. The newspaper has a photo of a house that was totally burned following a lightning strike yesterday, but I doubt you could get the forest to burn if you worked at it. Poor old B.C. has the opposite problem. I wish we could sent them a few days' worth of this waterfall we are having. I may also get at the windows since they haven't been washed yet this year, between my bad back and the weather. And vacuum the earwigs off the floors.

I don't know if earwigs are as much of a plague elsewhere as they are in southern and eastern Ontario. They are nasty, black crawly critters, mostly completely harmless but loathsome. They get into and under and between things and squish horribly when stepped on. I have bait out and am spraying poison into the dark, damp patches under the porches where they breed, but nothing stays through the rain and they can get into the house, I am not sure how. They also eat plant leaves, which plays hob with the landscaping. And they like toothpaste, for one. You haven't lived until you have picked up a toothbrush to put in your mouth and found an earwig clinging to it.

We also, of course, have biting bugs outside in huge quantities - mosquitoes love the rain and subsequent puddles. And we have deer flies in the bush and horseflies everywhere else. When I was a kid my parents had a cottage on Lake Erie, close to Point Pelee. In August the horseflies would arrive and the thing I hated most was that they would land on you when you were swimming and bite. I learned to be a champion underwater swimmer because of those flies. We don't have many of them close by, but we do have the smaller, vee shaped deer flies and they bite just as hard.

Deer flies will go for your hair and ears and the backside of your arms and your ankles and if you don't notice them land they take a noticeable chunk of flesh out and leave you cursing and bleeding. I am pretty well immune to mosquito bites - there is a mark for a few minutes and then it disappears - but the deer fly bites fester and itch for days. We have a neighbour who goes for walks with a butterfly net, waves it around himself, catches the deer fly and squishes it. You can also buy sticky strips which attach to your hat and the flies land and stick to the strip, buzzing and struggling until they finally die. Neither of these methods is perfect protection, but they do give the sufferer some satisfaction.

The biting flies will be gone in six weeks or so, but the mosquitoes last until frost, around Canadian Thanksgiving, if the summer has been wet. I don't want to live in the city but dwellers in the bush do pay a price for the absence of traffic noise, pollution and people. It is a price I am prepared to pay. I have two hummingbird feeders up and there is a newly fledged family at each of them, buzzing and cheeping and being chased off by the alpha male. There are also lots of American goldfinch around, blitzing the nyger feeder (a big bag of nyger seed costs about $80.00 but it's worth it.) We had a juvenile blue heron on the roof, of all places, on Monday. It flapped clumsily away and I hope it gets better flying skills soon. I love the birds, and that is only one of the joys of living 'in the bush'.

My favourite spot this time of year is our screened porch. It sits a storey above ground and is surrounded by trees, making you feel as if you are in a tree house. Nuthatches run up and down the adjacent tree trunks, the wind makes a wonderful noise in the leaves and cools you as you sit in the shade. And all the wretched flies are outside, frustrated.

I had planned on adding a lot of pics to this post, but the laundry machines are buzzing and it is almost lunch time. I may get back to it, she said, laughing.

Life with Little Stuff

I honestly don't know how you young mothers find time to write a blog while dealing with kids, household and all the other bits of stuff and fluff that are needed to keep a family going. And hold down a job, many of you. I have had one six year old for ten days and I am a wreck. Not only that, I did not put finger to keyboard for the whole ten days, other than to write (at Little Stuff's dictation) emails to her parents detailing what frogs she had caught each day, what she had painted/made/baked, and how far she was with the latest jig saw puzzle. We went through two 500+ piece jig saws.

It would have been easier if it had not rained just about every blessed day. We did get out a bit between rain showers, mostly to the beaver pond or the marsh to collect the latest in the frog study. We had promised her the beach and a fishing trip in the big boat and neither of these treats happened. 'I guess we aren't going to the beach today Grama, are we?' she would say, small nose pressed to the rain washed window. Luckily the birds were not deterred by the wet and we had a hummingbird show every day on the screen porch. We also reduced the chipmunk population by live trapping the little wretches that were tunnelling in the septic tile bed and releasing them far, far away.

Grama is tired. Grama is tired, mostly, because Little Stuff usually spends 8:30 to 5:30 five days a week in either school or daycare. Her parents try to make her weekends fun to make up to her for lack of time during the week and what this boils down to is that she expects to be entertained or provided with things to do. 'What can I do now, Grama?' was heard a lot chez G this last while. Words to strike terror into the heart of any grandmother trying to make the visit fun so that the parents can relax and know their child will be happy while they are away. I will say for her that, given a craft or toy, she has good concentration and a long attention span. Grandpa taught her to play 'Doe, a deer' etc. on his keyboard and she practised it for hours. She worked at the jigsaws for up to an hour at a time, if someone was doing it with her.

Someone, meaning me or Grandpa. More often, me. I have created a couple of games that are ongoing, one being Spider and the other being a similar pretend game with two china birds that sit on the windowsill near the kitchen table. Spider appears at bath time and at tea parties, the china bird game is requested for each snack time and sometimes the birds join Roo and Spider at the tea parties. I get very tired of them and struggle to come up with new jokes and scripts but Little Stuff loves the game and I am not hopeful that she will tire of it soon. Spider is now almost two years old and the bird game has gone on almost as long.

Grandpa takes her out in the punt we keep on the beaver pond. They got a bullfrog into the punt but it escaped before they could tie down the screen over the top of the old drywall pail that was being used as a holding pen. He comes back wiped out, staggering into the house preceded by a pink cheeked, bright eyed Little Stuff full of stories about their adventures. They were not able to catch a garter snake either. I am thankful for small mercies. Two tree frogs, a leopard frog, a pickerel frog and assorted dragonflies and moths were quite enough.

We also took her to a local conservation area where there are a lot of showy lady slippers in bloom. I loved watching her; in between photographing the flowers she regularly peered under the board walk in search of amphibians and any other goodies that might be present. Looking, in her sundress and straw hat, like something out of a Victorian drawing. You've got to give her credit for perseverance anyway.

I now have two events for the Seniors' group I belong to; preparing and working in a booth to explain our programs and helping organize games at a picnic. One is on Sunday, one on Tuesday. Rain, of course, is forecast. After I get these two obligations out of the way, I may sit down and write something sensible for a change. And there are all of you, with all you do, writing thoughtful and wonderfully funny and fascinating stuff. But if anyone mentions a frog in the next little while, I may scream.

Running Deer

Playing with the new camera; got this by accident. Whee. Wait until I get the book read. And get an angle that does not include the satellite dish. Oh, well.

It's Still Winter Here

Here are some more photos of winter in Eastern Ontario, just for the fun of it. The first one is Little Stuff's mother, the ED, tapping a 'spile' into a tree in maple syrup season. A very long ago maple syrup season. I think she was around twelve in this shot.
Here is a shot of the trails the deer make when they come in to feed on the corn and 'deer ration' we spread out for them.
And here is Little Stuff on her spandy new high tech snowshoes. This was a different day than the one when she took off running across the field in them, caught a snowshoe and had her little red clad foot pull out of the snowshoe and boot. She lay on her back with the red foot up in the air like a danger flag and laughed and laughed. Until I waded out to her and shoved the foot back into the boot, snow and all. 'That's COLD Grama' she shrieked. We went back inside.
I'm really thrilled to be posting at Canada Moms Blog and have just put up my first post there which references this one, or would if I had not typed the link improperly. I will try to figure out how to get the button attachement for this site onto my blog --- as soon as I recover from my first experience with Typepad. This recovery may take a while and some black coffee and maybe some chocolate. But the Canada Moms Blog is a really neat concept and has some super good bloggers on it (besides me, of course. Erm?). Take a look if you can.

Monday Mission - Screenporch Symphony

Today's assignment was to do CD liner notes. Pages 1 through 6 follow.

Crunch!

I live way out in the country, at the end of a gravel road. To get anywhere, I have to travel what are called in Eastern Ontario the 'county roads', roads that are paved, but are narrow two lane strips with ditches and uncut verges. From the weeds and small trees, which are a uniform brown/grey at dusk, deer appear at unpredictable times and often at great speed. It is deer hunting season, which spooks the poor things and makes them even more unpredictable. And so, as I was driving home at dusk last night, proceeding at a moderate speed and scanning the sides of the road as well as I could, a deer materialized directly in front of me, and I hit it with a sickening thud.

The deer and I both kept going. It disappeared into the bush by the roadside and I kept driving as I was climbing a hill with a narrow shoulder. I pulled off into a parking spot by a bank of mail boxes, as the panic light came on on the dashboard and steam started to escape from under the hood. Luckily a neighbour saw me do it and she picked me up and drove me the 5 kilometres home. JG and I went back to the site where there was no sign at all of the deer and only my licence plate and a trail of antifreeze fluid to mark the spot.

This morning we did the usual things; report to the OPP, call the insurance company, call a tow truck and repair place. They know us at the repair shop. This is the third time we have turned in a car for repair after a deer collision. Once, the deer died instantly after my husband's truck crunched it. The other times the deer disappeared at top speed. I hate that; there is no easy way you can track the animal through the almost impenetrable scrub bush where we live, and no way at all to do it after dark. And given the state of my car's front end, the deer has to be injured. I can only hope that one of the multitude of hunters stalking deer in our neighbourhood will find it and put it out of its misery.

I hate this! I hate thinking of an injured animal, an injury I have caused, suffering and probably dying. I feel stupid and inept and angry with myself, even though there was really no way I could have been more careful than I was. My Jeep will cost a lot of money to repair, even with insurance, and I am probably going to be car-less for a week to ten days, and thus dependent on my husband and neighbours for transportation. Which is a big nuisance, to say the least.

When we first bought the land here, in the mid seventies, there were very few deer around. Slowly the population has increased and now they are abundant. Even though a lot of deer hunting licences are now available and a lot of people hunt, the area is probably carrying more deer than it can easily support. Farmers complain of deer depredation on their crops. There are deer to be seen all along the roads. And in the fall, in rutting and hunting season, there are frequent accidents on the roads. Pretty well everyone I know has a deer collision story. Part of the price of rural living, I guess. A least it wasn't a moose, or I wouldn't be writing this. We have them, too, and skunks and porcupines.

If I were God, I would redesign deer with flashing red noses, Rudolph style, fluorescing zebra stripes and an aversion to roadside ditches.

The Bird Feeder

Monday's Mission is to write a post in the style of a movie synopsis.

January 14th, 2008

The Bird Feeder


The Bird Feeder chronicles the winter life of a varied cast of feathered friends. Featuring Charles Chicadee, Harriette Woodpecker and Natalie Nuthatch, playing themselves, with a host of relatives and peers, stuffing their beaks at the Chez G sunflower dispenser and suet ball. An ongoing subplot brings in the antics of the Chez G bluejays who both visit at the feeder with Charles and Natalie et al. and compete with the squirrels below for bread and nuts. As a contrast, the varied visitors to Little Stuff's Christmas gift feeder in the city are briefly featured.

The film provides audiences a rare opportunity to experience Charlie and his team as they travel to and from the feeders and performa dawn to dusk show every day. Charlie and his team bring their unique styles and perspectives to watchers at every window.Through rousing onfeeder performances and behind-the-scenes caching, this engaging film breaks down the true essence of each bird's feeding habits and the personal and professional challenges that unite legions of fans from Hollywood to the Heartland.


Release Date: January , 2008

Genre: Comedy and Documentary

Running Time: dawn to dusk.

Distributor(s): Canadian Winter

MPAA Rating: R for pervasive language and some sex-related humor.
Director: Helmet Hawk

Producer: George Goldfinch

Movie Casts:Charles Chicadee- Himself

Harriette Woodpecker- Herself

Natalie Nuthatch- Herself

Guest appearences: Mr and Mrs Urban Cardinal; Bruno Blue Jay; Sara TreeSparrow, Janey Junco; Norvo Nuthatch, Guilliame Grosbeak, Hamish R Hawk;
Cameo: The Flying Squirrels

There's usually a thaw in January. We're having one today -- temperatures of +5ºC and fog - and it is expected to last until Thursday. In consequence, the snow load being very heavy this year, there are horrible scrunching and bumping sounds coming from my roof, as three stalwart local lads shovel the majority of the heavy wet stuff off onto the ground. And onto the deck, and the porch and the parking pad. JG spent most of Saturday shoveling the deck clear so that it would not collapse with the weight of the extra snow. He spent Sunday up on the roof of the barn and the cabin, clearing the power masts and chimneys so that when the snow slides (these roofs are metal) it will not bend them out of shape. Unfortunately the house roof has asphalt shingles; I expect a lot of the shingles will be pretty bent by the time the crew finishes. But it is better than a waterfall in the front hall, any day.

Ten years ago we had a thaw that turned out to be the weather event of the century around here, even beating out the huge snowfall of '72 that broke the backs of barns and arenas all around Eastern Ontario. As the temperature hovered just below freezing, it began to rain and it continued to rain for four long days. Hydro towers crumpled as they were coated in thick ice, cars crumpled as they skidded into poles and trees or were hit by falling branches, people huddled around their fireplaces or stoves, in candlelight, or moved to improvised shelters where generators could be found.

Out here in the highlands, we're prepared. At chez G we even had a generator, although it was a kilometre downhill at the sugar camp and it took us the better part of two days to hack our way down to it and bring it up on the tractor. It was dark, however, and noisy. The noise came from trees creaking under the weight of the ice, cracking, breaking, falling. They fell in piles and windrows and heaps. The tree lined roads were all but impassable, the laneways giant games of spillikins. Our sugar bush lost 60% of the crowns of the trees and was almost impossible to navigate. The snaps, crackles and pops went on day and night.

The most horrible thing of all was how beautiful it was. The first day that the skies cleared we tried to walk out to assess the damage. We got lost, so many landmarks were gone or obscured. But this is what it looked like.

Some confused residents.

The field behind the house -- same view as the first photo.

The main road to the sugar camp.

The Canadian government sent in the army. It poured millions of dollars into cleanup and help for the farmers who had lost cattle, maple bushes, Christmas tree farms and buildings. But it will be a generation or longer before the forest recovers.

October Song

This is the first time in over a week that I have had a chance to write a post, and I can hear thunder in the distance, signaling that I may have to shut down the computer or that I may lose the satellite signal that connects me to my virtual world. Bummer. In the meantime, though, it's beautiful. We still have a lot of gold and bronze leaves on the trees and the rain and wind are knocking them off -- they're swirling past my window, high contrast against the grey/black storm cloud to the south. There's a soft sibilance as the rain hits them and tiny splatting noises as they hit the deck. And as a counterpoint to that, there's the sound of clucking and squawking as a flock of fifteen turkeys straggles past the open window, chattering among themselves. As I write this, the sky is getting brighter and the gold leaves are glowing. No more thunder; I may even get this done and up.

I have just been playing around with Facebook, a toy world which the YD seduced me into several weeks ago. It's a champion time waster at the moment, but it is allowing me to get my trip photographs up and indexed so that the friends we went with can see them. I had meant to do a travel post, but this is easier. I may still get the post done as well because I have some really good pictures. Or at least so says my BIL, who is an amazing photographer and whose opinion I value highly. Plus he's a tech whiz and I now know how to shrink my photos to easily loadable sizes without hauling them through a photo paint program. Well, I'll get it done if I can refrain from adding things like Visual Bookshelf to my Facebook page -- fun but a real time eater.

Do they give out championships for procrastination? Is there a twelve step program? Timewasters R Us? Although I don't count time looking out the window at the world as wasted, exactly, it isn't getting the laundry done. Nor the six or seven documents sitting on my desktop waiting to be edited. Nor the letter for the Hall Committee. Nor the fundraising phone calls. I've got a pile of sewing and mending including Little Stuff's Hallowe'en cat costume. If it would ever stop raining, there are flowerbeds to put to sleep, and a lot of tidying up around the house. Wednesday morning it did stop and we raked leaves. You would never know it. But here I am, eating cookies and typing and thinking about the old joke about work. 'I'm not afraid of work! I can sit right here beside it and do nothing.'

Posting, for me, is not work. It's my virtual window to the world and time spent looking through it is not wasted. How I love to read about what all of you are doing and thinking. Pause there while I took some photos of the leaves pattering down. The big sugar maple by the corner of the deck has a circle of gold below it and the wind is whisking more off all the time. And the sky is darkening again. More thunder. More rain now. There's a pair of soggy blue jays vacuuming up the corn that the turkeys left behind. And I have to stop for a minute and close the windows since it is really raining hard now. Wonderful. I get back and the satellite is now down.

Well that gives me time to download and edit the leaf pictures I just ran out in the rain to take so that I could illustrate this post. And to think about the flying feet of time, since I have just spent the morning writing this, playing with it and dealing with a series of phone calls. eheu! fugaces labuntur anni. Not to mention minutes, seconds and hours. I don't want to stop time. Nor even turn it back. But I would love to have more of it. Time to do things well, without scanting other things. Time to look out of the window without worrying about the unwashed clothes. Time to write really good posts about meaningful things, instead of babbling on. Well, this babble will have to do as the satellite is now back up and I have to get back to the real world. Always vowing to do better next time. To stop squandering the time I have. Hollow laughter. And that's not a noise the turkeys are making.

More from the Island

We have had a Sad Event. Queenie the Banana Slug, having been displaced from her position under the picnic table by a group of students dissecting starfish, got too hot in the sun and expired. A few salty tears were shed.

On the other hand, Little Stuff now has her very own touch tank, courtesy of by-catch and all sorts of donors who turn up with cute little living critters. She is enjoying it thoroughly, especially when the starfish pigged out on salmon this morning (they evert their stomachs to eat -- too much information?) and is now hiding under a kelp strand, doing the starfish equivalent of burping a lot and dosing on antacids. Little Stuff says that she will return them all to the ocean before we leave, but that she is going to leave them with a supply of salmon to eat until they relearn how to find food for themselves. The kid is four, for pity's sake.

We also went out in a boat to look at seals. And the seals had a good look at us. They were bored; we had fun.

I have several dozen more sunset pics, but I'll spare you for now until I edit them, at any rate. I only get onto the computer when Little Stuff's mother doesn't need it and Little Stuff is otherwise employed. Since I am here to keep her out of her mom's hair, that isn't often. We are doing a lot of baking and flower picking and beachcombing, weather permitting. I have had her up to her neck in the surf and sitting in the waves, so I am quite pleased. The water is not exactly warm. In fact, b rrr.

More about Slugs

Meet Queenie, the Banana Slug. Little Stuff spotted her yesterday afternoon, and we gathered her up on a leaf and stored her in a cardboard box with the top folded shut. Came back half an hour later with food and there was no slug in the box. She was almost all the way down the outside and headed for freedom. LS grabbed her firmly around the middle and we transferred her to a plastic container with a tight top. Then LS tried to wash her hand clean of the slug slime. No go. Soap and water, soaking, rubbing with a wet cloth, no go. LS said sadly, 'Will we ever get it all off?' Grama, in desperation, applied vinegar, while LS said 'Yuck' lots. Hand came clean. We are now handling Queenie on a leaf as pictured above. She likes apples and poops a lot.

Here is Grandma working hard at child minding. Life falls in hard places, no?

Is this a nice place, or what?