Whoo!

We have an ancient apple tree that overhangs the bird feeders. This morning, this owl took up a post just above the feeders, waiting for an unwary mouse or other burrowing animal. It let me walk right up and take portraits.

This afternoon there was a hole in the snow and no owl. So I guess it got its lunch.

What IS that thing?

Well, it's a golden swamp monster dragon, strayed from its home swamp.

Why?

That is a long, but wonderful story.

Some years ago my best friend ever and her family invited my family to a New Year's Eve party at her home. The family group consisted then of the parents and two married sons, each with their own home on the property. The senior family's home was placed at the bottom of a hill on the concession road, across from the family sugar camp, and between the road and the house was a large wide and shallow ditch. I left the party briefly and as I was returning I took the downhill too fast and slid, slowly and irrevocably, into the ditch, ending with my car nose down, back wheels in the air.

The slide was so slow that neither the car nor I suffered any damage, but I sat there in the ditch for quite a while gathering my courage because I knew that the minute the family knew what I had done, I would be the target of a lot of laughter and that they would never, never let me live it down. And that was the case. One of the sons plucked me out of the ditch with his tractor, a lot of comments were made, I drowned my sorrows and the party ended.

Shortly thereafter, when I visited my friends' home, there was a hockey net across the bridge side nearest the ditch with a sign on it reading 'Stay out - Mary's swamp'. On another occasion, the side of the lane way was blocked with hay bales. On yet another, signs appeared on trees between our home and theirs, giving the distance to 'Mary's Swamp.' And the incident was mentioned. A lot.

Well, there had to be some response to this besides turning beet red and spluttering. At the start of the sugaring season, on a day when the snow was wet and packy, I climbed down into the ditch and built a swamp dragon out of snow  - crawling out of the ditch and heading toward the camp across the road. I coloured it with spray bottles of coloured water and it was a handsome concoction. I may have put up a sign saying 'beware of swamp monster' - I'm not sure about this. Although the family may have known I was there, they were busy and only when the left the camp was the full glory of the dragon perceived. And I was gone by then.

Over the years there have been other elaborate jokes between our families. There was a plague of ceramic garden gnomes. There was a night when our lane way was lit with ice lanterns. The best one might have been at a party for our 45th wedding anniversary when my friend tried out a recipe she had been given where, if you buried condoms in a cake pan of soil with a puck of some substance at the bottom and then watered the soil, the condoms were supposed to fill with air and poke out through the soil. It didn't work quite as planned, however, as the condoms would fill up and then lose air, droop over and then refill. To say it was funny is not really a good report of the resultant hilarity and comment.

Anyway, this brings us to our fiftieth wedding anniversary. We went in to the city to have a superb dinner with the family and as we turned into the gate on our arrival home we saw two gold painted sap pails with a 5 and a 0 on them, hanging on the maple tree at our gate. I had expected something, I must admit, and thought that our friends had been remarkably restrained.

Or I did, until I heard JG saying urgently to his brother, who had come to stay for the festivities, 'Turn on the back door lights!'. Then he called to me, in a somewhat shaken voice, 'Come and see this!'. We turned on the spotlight and there, in all its glory, was swamp monster, promoted to gold and fashioned, now, out of 50+ gold painted sap pails with a green monster head and staring eyes. It was sporting a 'No Parking' sign. It was a spectacular construction. I think it must have taken them days to put it all together. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry - friends like this make life a marvellous adventure.

Only, now it is my turn again. I do have some ideas, too.

Just For the Record

Fifty years married on Saturday

In February of 1963, JG and I went to a Valentine's Day dance. The next day, as well as I can remember, we were married. We were at Queen's (University at Kingston) at the time, and the dance, I think, was the 'Levana' formal.  We were married in the Chapel in the Old Arts building - my mother bought my dress and borrowed the hat from my cousin. That's champagne we are holding, and I was the only illegal drinker at the dinner my parents held for us.

 Four years later, we were obviously attending another party or dance, but for the life of me, I cannot recall what it was. I was pregnant at the time and had made my dress, that I do remember. As well as what a big nuisance long gloves were. It's 1967 and JG is all decked out in his Centennial beard.

Here we are a few months later, getting set up to visit the Montreal Expo '67. The passenger in the baby carrier is the YD, age 3 months or so.

  In this shot, we've just come back from a Canada Day parade. That's the YD on the left, ED with the balloon, and JG with his hair grown out.  I think this would be 1970 or 71.

 A few years later, 1975 or thereabouts. At 'The Farm' with a beagle named Bugle. The kids are now old enough to take photographs.

 This is 1980 ish. A holiday dinner at the house of some good friends. Again, one of our kids took this. It was really difficult to find photos of the two of us through these years - either I was behind the camera or part of a group shot.

 Here's one that the daughters insisted on taking to mark some kind of festival or anniversary. Or, maybe they noticed that there were not many photos of the two of us. This is 1990, we think. I am now sporting the highly permed 'poodle' hairdo that the YD hated.

 Kids have left home. Empty nesters got some good travelling time in. Here we are in Holland with JG's parents; I think his father took this. We are en route to Africa, I think in 1993.

It is 1995 and we are building our 'forever home'. My father took this one, and it is one of several where my backside is both large and prominent. But it is one of very few shots of both of us that I could find for this period. We have just walked that piece of framing, called a 'knee wall' up the ladders and are putting it in position.

 2004 at Stratford, at intermission of a Festival play. We're out in the grounds, and the ice cream in my hand is one of the reasons shots from behind make me wince. And my hair is back to its normal spider silk thinness.

2012. A Christmas party. I don't think this looks much like me, but the others are worse. It is good of JG who is post cataract surgery and no longer needs glasses.

This was just forwarded to me by the YD - Christmas 2012. Yum!

Catknip

I seem to put up an inordinate number of posts about my daughter's animals. And (here we go), indeed, here is another one.

The YD is besnowed in Washinton, after a business trip, and we are cat-and-dog sitting. Yesterday morning, as the snow poured down, both JG and the animals took the morning off. Check the close-up to find Callee cat.

Last evening, all rested up, Callee cat was not inclined to have a nice nap while I worked on the scarf I am making for my grandaughter. When I sit in that particular chair, she figures it is cat petting time. Not reading, knitting or napping time for Mary. She has been known to pat my face with a scimitar-equipped paw, if I try to do anything but pet her.

 The start of the scarf - four repeats needed.

 Need a good caption for this - something like ' wool is catknip, isn't it?' Only better.



So, poor grandkid will have to wait a little longer for her scarf.

A Little Business

I have just changed the comment settings for this blog to 'moderation'. Too many spam comments. Sorry, bogging buddies.

There's a fairly gentle but thick fall of snow accumulating outside my office window, covering the tree limbs with a soft white coating and beginning to pile up on railings and deck. And, after our spell of cold, cold mornings (the coldest was -32ºC = approx - 25ºF), it is fairly mild and windless. The birds are back at the feeders; during the cold spell we had a few spherical chickadees, but not much more. And I am contemplating a list of tasks that I should be doing but none of which seem urgent enough to cause me to stop typing and go and actually do them.

In truth, very little seems urgent to me today. Maybe it is having reached my three score and ten, or maybe it is only winter torpor, but I find that I am feeling accepting rather than caring, disengaged, distanced, from the alarums and excursions ? of this weird and wifi world. It's rather a nice feeling, as if hearing bagpipes from far away, echoing through fog. (We went to a Robbie Burns Dinner on Saturday and they piped the haggis into a hall with poor acoustics, right behind our table. Oy!)

Those two paragraphs were written earlier this week, but when I tried to go on with it from the bagpipe interjection, the post took off and went in an entirely different direction than I had wanted to send it. In fact, I have the start of several posts that have done this to me lately, ripping the reins out of my (admittedly loose) grasp and galloping off in all directions. Although I end up in intricate discussions with myself when this happens, I usually have no idea how to get back to anything coherent.

And so - today we have real fog. We also have a 'temperature inversion' that is causing the fog and melting the snow into slush that will freeze into slippery lumps when the weather inverts itself back to winter tomorrow. I keep hearing thumps as ice breaks off the roof and falls or is carried into the newly thawed down spouts. It is also windy and since this type of weather can cause a tree to fall onto the power lines, I am saving text almost as I type it, lest the power suddenly fail, and my computer noiselessly die.

I am rotating between watching the wood stove, pouring melt water from a pail under the down spout into my plant water containers and looking at the weather radar. A storm with cold green and blue arms and an orange heart is heading straight for here. I suspect that in a short time it will be pouring rain onto the slush that the warm wind has made of our snow. Am I obsessing about the weather? I'm Canadian - of course I am.

Did you know that when there's a weather inversion, it is very hard to make the wood stove draw properly? If you didn't, I think I envy you. And my feet are now wet because I was pouring ice cold water while wearing Birkenstocks and socks.

And there went my morning. Does anyone have any good advice as to how to get the most out of Kijiji?

Post Holiday Feeble Musings

There was a watercolour dawn this morning - faint pink wisps of cloud against a sky washed with pale, pale blue. Later, as the sun cleared the horizon (and I trekked down the lane way for the newspapers), all the trees wore glitter and gold, the gold reflecting from ice rime covering even the tiniest twigs. Unfortunately there is some (more!) snow forecast, and the sky is now a murky white and the snow is shadowless. The only colours are the dark green of the pines (where the needles show through puffs of snow) and some golden brown leaves that have clung to their parent tree through all of the storms of the last few weeks. I suppose it is truly a winter wonderland, but it would be fine with me if the heavy snow came off the trees and our electricity stopped flickering every time there is some wind.

Last winter we had ice, the walking was terrible, and I longed for big falls of snow. This winter we have had several heavy, heavy falls and, although I am not longing for ice, I am quite happy with what we have and (weather gods, are you paying attention?) would like some clear, snowless days, thank you very much. Poor JG is clearing the roofs with a snow rake and shovel and he has had to take the tractor loader to scrape compacted snow away from the garage. And there are a lot of trees and limbs of trees down everywhere.

I think I was muttering a while back that I did not want a Christmas tree and sounding like Scrooge incarnate. Then in came JG with the news that he had cut a tree and would I determine the height I wanted. It wasn't a bad shape as Chez G trees go, but I messed up a bit with the height, and we ended up with the angel ten feet in the air. I also ended up with two poinsettias (I am a certificated poinsettia killer), a Christmas bouquet from my darling godson, and lots of decorations everywhere. Plus the YD's ménage between Christmas and New Year's. Now this is mostly all cleaned up and packed away, I have removed dog spit and cat skid marks from the hardwood and the only ghosts of Christmas Passed are the two frail remnants of the damn poinsettias, dropping leaves in a sad circle around themselves.

I also have the remnants of a horrible head cold that has kept me doped up and sleeping every time I sat down for the last several days. Today my head is actually clearing, I can breathe (cheers!) and, maybe, tackle the piled up laundry and sew up the crotch of JG's chainsaw pants*.

After I get another cup of coffee and post this. Maybe in a few days my head will have cleared enough that I can actually write something sensible. In the meantime, though, Julie Pippert has a really thought-provoking post about young girlsand cyber bullying up on her site. Parents and grandparents, go take a look!

* For urban readers, chainsaw pants are a nylon and padding sort of apron that fastens around the waist and legs and are supposed to keep the chainsaw from slicing up the wearer, should it slip during use. They do not come with a fly, but JG likes his to have one and so I take the front seam apart and add a zipper, sewed by hand because the protective padding prevents it fitting through the sewing machine. Hand stitching has now pulled out and I need to get out my sailor's palm and put it back.

A foot and a half of snow, oh yeah.

We just got the electricity back on, after two days in the dark. Not cold, because we heat, at this time of year, with two woodstoves, but very, very dark. We lost the power at about 10:00 am on the 21st, with about a foot of snow down. And it just kept snowing, wet and heavy and the trees bent further and further and the poor Hydro repair crews couldn't even get down the roads. Our repair time kept getting put back. Finally, this afternoon the crews arrived, just behind the plough, and unloaded a snow machine to follow the line through the bush to the break. And now we have light, and hot water and the internet (our node is at the top of a pine tree and it boggles my mind that it made it through, but it did).

Not great photos, but here is a bit of a sequence. I was using the barbeque on the back deck for a measure.

 About noon, the first day.

 Later that same evening

Across the field back of our house after about half the snow was down.

I'm dreaming of a white Christmas into which no more snow will fall.

Enough, already!

Oh, Christmas Tree?

It has been a cold, wet, icy day, dark, damp, dismal. And productive. I have been doing my Christmas shopping list online, and getting assured delivery dates with a minimum of hassle. Sometimes I love the internet. Poor JG has been in the city all day - a meeting, a medical appointment and (shudder) shopping in stores. However, so poor has the weather been that he probably did not have as much of a hassle as I imagine. One wonderful year we slithered over to the nearest shopping centre in the midst of an icy blizzard and did a whole evening's worth of spending in solitary splendour. I did feel sorry for the staffs, who had to be on duty until closing time, weather or no.

Another year the YD came home just short of Christmas with a guest from sub-Saharan Africa. On Christmas Eve (this is when we lived in a city) in -18ºC weather, she took the guest to the shopping centre to buy long underwear and other equipment for a Lanark Christmas. They could not find a parking spot in the whole mass of parking garages that surround the place. In fact they could have probably walked it faster from where we lived then, except for the fast-frozen visitor. Who loved, loved! the snow, never having seen much before, and leapt out of bed every morning to shovel and marvel. Me, I shovel and whine.

Other than smugness about the online coups, I do not feel very Christmassy this year. I horribilifed the YD by saying I was not really enthusiastic about putting up a tree. This afternoon I am off to the Hall to help pull together a Christmas feast for 25, which we will serve tomorrow. A two day marathon. Our Hall committee is very small at present, but we have to keep events going or we will have no money for heating, power and necessary small repairs. And the Hall is our contribution to the community. So, two days of cooking, two fat birds, three sweet desserts and dish pan hands in perpetuity. I should not be complaining - I enjoy working at the Hall, and it keeps me in touch with lots of friends. But it is hard, this year, with Marion gone.

It is a gorgeous winter day, today. Blue sky, sparkling snow, crisp breeze, sun pouring in to all the windows. It's the first bright day in a while. The little birds are swarming the feeders, and I have to get the suet up pronto. The YD's animals have gone back to the city and I can now clean the footprints off the hardwood floors - my cleaner came yesterday and together we de-haired the place. Cat and dog hair accumulates in the most unexpected places. We have a wood stove in the living room that you can burn with the door open, with a separate screen to put across to keep the sparks in. I keep the screen stored behind the stove. It was absolutely stuck full of hair yesterday. And the YD's dog, she avers, is one that does not shed. In fact, Shammy is not bad, compared to the dogs we had while the kids were growing up.

This nonsense has taken me two days to put together and I now have to quit. I have to assemble ingredients for aspic to take to the Hall, make several lists, do a bunch of mail, drop stuff off to a neighbour and be at the Hall by 1:00 pm. It is now 11:00 am. And I thought that when I quit the major board I was a member of, I would have lots more time.

Bah, humbug.

Columbia Icefields

JG and I have done a lot of driving around over the years, have followed a lot of the roads identified in a National Geographic handbook of scenic drives, have explored byways and rutted trails to no where and have, for the most part, been awed and delighted by the scenery encountered. But I think our favourite road is the one between Banff and the Columbia Icefields. It has been improved over the years and now contains only one section where I want to grope for the anti-panic pills in my purse (see previous post). In any kind of weather, it is a drive well worth doing.

JG is also fascinated by the glaciers of the Columbia ice fields and has made three trips over the years to see them. ( I have made two.) While driving out onto the glacier itself is a bit of a mixed adventure (mega steep approach!), it is also pretty spectacular. And the obligatory photographs give you a marvellous reference about what has changed over fifty years.

The first trip JG took was in the summer of 1962. Here he is in a typical young adult pose and here is what he rode onto the glacier inside. Although I have not done this myself, I am assured by several sources that it was one of the noisiest vehicles you could imagine.

Here is what the hanging glacier on the left(east) side of the Columbia Ice field looked like in the summer of '62.

In September of 1999 we did the trip again. We rode in onto the glacier in dignity in a big, high-wheeled bus, a bus only partly filled with mostly, as I recall, North American tourists. It was easy to get a good photo of the main glacier and the hanging east side glacier. There was a lot less of it.

Hanging glacier

Main glacier

Our third trip was last month, September of 2012, just a little over 50 years since JG's first trip. The machine he rode in on the first trip is now painted up and parked in the interpretation centre as an interesting antique. You have to drive a good bit farther to reach the main ice field and we were driven in a series of two huge buses, one of a string of buses taking tourists out, most crammed with tourists from Japan, China and Korea interspersed with a few North Americans.

When we reached the glacier it was swarmed by tourists collecting melt water and having lots of photos taken with a Canadian flag. I did manage, however to get a photo of the east hanging glacier, shrunken even further.

Hanging glacier.

Main glacier

Here is the antique snow machine. Notice, I am not making any other comments on antiquity.

We stayed overnight at the hotel that forms the third floor of the interpretation centre. I highly recommend doing this as you have an exceptional view of the main glacier in varied lighting conditions. This photo was taken from the patio at dawn - long exposure, no tripod, but not too much shake. The glacier shown is the west one - Icedome.

It's very much a case of good-bye glacier. Of course, photographer and subject are a bit eroded too.

One more photo, this one from '99.

Thoughts from the Road

JG and I have just completed a five week car trip from our home in Eastern Ontario to Vancouver and return. Although we did shorter driving days (average 6hr 30 minutes) and stayed in Vancouver for five days, we found the trip more tiring than previous similar long driving vacations. I am finding that passing three score and ten does tend to slow one down a bit. But we had fun and we had incredible luck with the weather. 

 I find myself taking unplanned naps, still dreaming of roads unrolling (and from time to time unravelling) before me. Since I have now done a first run through my photographs, here are some roads we travelled.

 Sun Across the Prairies

 The Icefields Parkway (between Banff and Lake Louise)

 More Icefields Parkway

 The top of Mount Revelstoke (we walked this one)

 Heading for Lillooet BC

 The Frank Slide (faint line is the road in the distance)

Chaplin, Saskatchewan

Leaving on Sept 21st after visiting JG's mother, we drove up to Tober Moray and took the ferry across to Manitoulin Island, then drove up to 17 (the Trans Canada Highway, friends from the US of A) and headed west and north and west and .......... All of the time from Sault Ste Marie until we re-entered Ontario on the homeward journey was almost completely rain free and sunny and frequently warm. The worst we encountered was some fog in the mornings and a few clouds, notably at Roger's Pass in BC, spoiling my last chance of great mountain photographs and causing me to miss the one group of mountain goats we saw (low visibility = no place to stop). And when we got back to Ontario on October 24th, the leaves were mostly still on the trees in their gold and crimson and ochre glory. Of course they came down with a whump two days later.

The most annoying thing about this trip is that, given the weather, all of the provinces had closed their interpretation centres, most of their parks and a good number of their wayside rest facilities. It is more than a little disconcerting to drive up to a marked wayside rest stop and find a gate across the entrance and the washrooms locked. Blessings on Manitoba, who, while closing down their western interpretation centre, left the bathrooms open. Blessings on whatever district administrator in Northern Ontario decided to leave the rest stops around the north shore of Lake Superior both open and clean. All through our trip you saw the occasional driver out of his (note, HIS) car standing dreamily, legs akimbo, beside the edge of the road. It's a long, long time between gas stations and fast food outlets in northern Ontario and across the prairies.

But I got lots of roadside photos.