Downward Dog

I have invented a new exercise routine, requiring no equipment purchase and guaranteed to improve balance and reach. I call it “downward dog” but it has no relationship to the yoga position of the same name. You need:

               1) a very large, quite old and arthritic Akbash dog,  

               2) and 3) two medium sized Border Collies, and

               4) one small but weighty, deaf Lhasa Apso, Jack Russell cross**.

These four pieces of household equipment simply need to remain in places of their own choosing, a position which seems to suit them quite well and requires no encouragement.

In my case dog number one will move but prefers not to, makes quite a show of creaking up to a standing position and lumbering out of the way. He stays in my kitchen (his size and copious quantities of shedding hair have made this a necessity), usually on one of the stress relief mats in front of the sink or stove or on the door mat, and he willingly accommodates my exercise program by always being exactly where I want to work. 

Dogs 2 and 3 are excellent contributors to the program. Anyone who has ever met a Border Collie knows that when focused on anything they sit very still, stare, sometimes tremble, and are absolutely oblivious to anything other than the subject of their focus.They are also affectionate, jealous of one another, and tend to vie for attention via soft frisbee, ear scratches, or jumping on chairs and laps.

The fourth dog - well he’s privileged. He knows it’s his right to sleep like a stone on the bed right where I’d like to move my legs, take his rightful position next to me when sitting, or reside under the footrest of my recliner.

The secret to this exercise routine is simple. Work around and/or over these immobile pieces of equipment. Stretch to reach household items without causing a disturbance, avoid tails and paws by delicately stepping between them in a ballet-like position, gently push bodies aside when absolutely necessary, and acquire a sort of sliding gait at night to avoid collision. This exercise routine can easily be practiced daily (and nightly) with no special set up on your part, no expensive exercise clothing or shoes, and is a spontaneous activity which has, at times, the ability to get your adrenaline pumping.

• Caution, this routine is not recommended for everyone. Extreme caution must be taken to avoid falls and/or strain from twisting into peculiar positions. And, as is always suggested before beginning any exercise routine, be sure to consult your doctor.
• ** Note: Other dog breeds may be substituted - perhaps an old Bullmastiff, a Cocker Spaniel and a couple of toy Poodles…

A Rant

            So I'm a "Trekkie" from way back, have watched every single Startrek episode over and over again. So I was excited to check out Startrek Discovery. Yuk! They turned it into just another war show, killing, more war. Clingons are the enemy, weaponizing  sentient beings... It stinks.      

            One of the major aspects of Startrek has always been that a moral dilemma is presented and a moral solution is sought. Not so on Startrek Discovery.

    An unfortunate new pattern has surfaced in American films. The "good guys" are also bad, just not as bad as the bad guys, or bad for a good reason. Heroes these days are killers, destroyers. You have to watch an Australian, British or Canadian film to see an actual good guy deal with a bad or difficult situation.

    Along with accepting bad for good reasons surfaces a "My country can do no wrong" mind set. If they appear to do wrong it's because they can not achieve their goal any other way, which somehow makes wrong right. This attitude justifies torture, assassinations, drones, support of drug cartels, election interference, weapons of mass destruction...

    Films reflect our society. They also influence society. In many ways the US has melded with Hollywood and neither of them is taking responsibility for their effect upon their own citizens or the rest of the world.

 

What a Difference a Day Makes!

I have been absent from my blogging world for nearly a month. A holiday you say? Hardly. I’ve been in Colorado helping out my older sister who had a catastrophic fall, breaking her hip. One little tilt, a wobble not recovered, an older frail woman with other contributing health issues loses her balance and a major disruption settles into her life…and mine as well. Suddenly a medical proxy, signed over 20 years ago, has a surgeon asking my permission for my sister to have a hip operation. “She will not survive without it,” he claims. “She will not be able to get up, pneumonia could easily be contracted. No operation will result in sure death.” Whew!

By the time I got to Colorado my sister had been in re-hab for a week. For awhile there was hope she’d be able to return to her apartment in a senior’s independent living complex. But hope gave way to reality - she had to move somewhere where she could get assistance with daily living. My sister could not wrap her mind around this fact. She wanted to “go home” to her apartment. She still does.

While she remained in re-hab, trying to stand, trying to walk, and having a hard time staying positive, I began searching for a place for her, touring facilities from nursing homes, to assisted living apartments, to what is referred to as “memory care”.  At night I began packing her possessions. One fact was clear, she would have to downsize to a one bedroom apartment, to a studio apartment, or possibly to what is essentially a hospital room. Just 8 months ago she moved from her large house to this two bedroom suite. That move was difficult, a hard decision for her to make, a life’s worth of accumulated memories filling every nook and cranny of the home she’d lived in for decades. Eight months, such a short time.

So I did my best to keep what would be cosy and familiar and find places to distribute the rest, making judgement calls on what should be kept and what should not. It was not a role I enjoyed. I had help though, lots of it, both in hard work and understanding. My sister has a fine group of friends. A cousin even showed up from back east. I couldn’t have managed without them.

For now things are doing okay. I’m home. My sister’s in her new home. Our connection for now is the phone.

While I was in Colorado a young friend was in a terrible vehicle accident. What a difference that day is making for her. Yesterday another friend fell down the stairs and is now in hospital, and another was in a motorcycle accident also with life changing results.

What can a person do when life flips over like this? Some would say pray, but prayer is passive. It puts the shoe on the other foot, a foot not even of this world. So what do we do? We rally - as the one directly affected, as a family member, as a friend, as a community. We rally because we must, because life is sometimes hard. We rally because we love our friends, our families, our community. We do whatever we can do. We do the best we can.

The Purrrfect Visitor

“Holy cow” I said, “there’s a cat outside!” The surprise and concern reflected in my voice came from the sure knowledge that cats do not survive on our farm. Josie, our lovable and watchful sheep guardian dog, hates cats, hates cats so much that she deals out an instant sentence of death the moment she sees one. Fortunately Josie was not at home. She was off at another farm doing the mating dance with a handsome male Guardian dog. My husband said, “So what are we supposed to do with a cat? Leave it alone, just let it wander off.”

The cat slipped out of my view. I secretly hoped she had moved on. But no, I went outside for some wood (we were suffering from an unseasonable cold snap or perhaps a seasonable warning sign to tell us it's time to prepare for the coming winter) and there she was, digging a wee bed in the wood chips and purring. She (actually he) did not run away. I walked right up to him and picked him up. He immediately cuddled in, rubbed against me like cats will do, and said in his little cat way, “Love me! Aren’t I just the cutest little orange kitten you ever did see!”

Now what…. My husband didn’t look too happy when I walked back in with the cat. We wondered where in the world the cat had come from, our nearest neighbour being over a mile away. “Maybe it’s Charlie’s cat,” I said. But no, a phone call negated that possibility. “I bet it belongs to Frank,” I said. “Maybe he jumped in the truck when you were over there last time.”  I went to the storage shed, found a small kennel, and my husband took the kitten over to Frank’s place and dropped him off with all the other cats at their shelter. Frank was not at home to identify the cat.

A day later my husband was chatting with the fellow who owns Josie’s mate. “By the way,” he said, “You haven't seen a little orange kitten, have you?”

Whoops…! The kitten, it turned out, belonged to his children and must have hitched a ride when my husband took Josie down to be bred.

So my husband went over to the neighbour’s place to fetch the kitten back. “I wondered where that cat came from,” the neighbour said. “I have a few kittens around but didn't remember this one, and he's so friendly! Most of my cats are pretty wild. He got a good meal though.”

The cat stayed with us for three days until we could get organized to take him home. It turned out that one of our Border Collies treated the cat like he was a demon straight from the bowels of hell, so, for his own safety the cat was banished to the bathroom for his stay. I forgot how three dimensional cats are. Having no kitty litter on hand, I gave him a box of dirt for his litter box. Before he went home there were little brown paw prints on every level surface of the bathroom! But I didn’t mind. He purred his way into my heart the moment I first picked him up.

My goodness, how happy those kids, and that kitten, were when he got home! He took many a whirling trip around the house first, and was playing happily in the barn when my husband left for home.

Buttercup Squash

I wonder, if summer never stopped - would this one squash plant take over our whole yard?

Enough for winter and still producing, but soon a fall frost will put an end to that!

Honey Flow Hive

An update on the Honey Flow Hive system.  We never got a chance to see for ourselves because our hive was slow starting and the bees only managed to make sufficient honey for their winter food, but many have asked us if this Australian hive invention will work in Canada's cold climate. I read this statement on a Honey Flow site.

For those with questions about using Flow in cold climates, you may be interested in this experience from Alaska: 

"I am an Alaskan beekeeper. We just got our first batch of honey from the flow hive. It worked JUST like in your pictures......20 minutes for a frame to empty.

I had seen a comment on a web site about the fact that this may not work in cold climates. It works VERY well....considering the hive keeps the temperature ~90 degrees, the honey flows out just like in Australia!

If anyone is concerned about using it in northern climates where it is cold, it very DEFINITELY works as advertised and makes recovery on the honey SO much easier." - Kathy, Kenai Peninsula, Alaska

Apples, Apples, Apples...

Apples, apples, more apples. Crab apples, Norton apples, applesauce, apple jelly, apples and strawberries. Apples for me, apples for you, and you, and you. Apples for the sheep. 

We now have the rams and some wethers at home on enough pasture for a couple of hundred sheep, can hardly see them in the tall grass. My husband actually went out and mowed the field in front of the house so the sheep could see an approaching coyote - and the coyotes are here nightly, singing their hearts out while Josie the Guardian barks and protects. The rams love garden treats - pea pods, carrot tops, beet tops (yes, we eat them too), extra zucchini, vines of anything that’s finished producing, and this year - apples!

        I’ve done all I can with apples. The peas are filling out now, the cukes are happening, beets…  a busy, busy time.

       …and an update on the bees. Our bee master found time to visit, gotta love this man. He and my husband had a good look at our colony. They are healthy, active, filling up the second brood chamber with a winter’s supply of food. But honey for us won’t be happening this year. We don’t know why but we learned, once again, more about bees. They may have swarmed. The queen may have been weak. The bees may not have liked the queen for whatever reason - pheromones, weak?? If they decide the queen must go they surround her in a tight ball, so tight you’d have a hard time breaking it up, essentially smother her, boot her out of the hive and make another queen.

So, as we always say in Alberta, this is next year’s country. We will protect the hive as best we can (time now apparently to insert strips to kill mites) from the winter’s extreme weather conditions, and hopefully have a strong, healthy colony come spring and many kilos of honey next fall.

Waiting (Not So) Patiently for Something to Happen

Every day my husband walks down to the bee hive to have a look. He sees bees coming in and out and it seems like all is well. We keep looking at flowers, both wild and cultivated. My husband nearly had a stroke when I wanted to cut the lawn because so many clover flowers had bloomed. We compromised and I left two large sections uncut.

He added a second brood box, at the same time checking the health of the hive and the “busyness” of the bees in both bee and honey production. Again, things looked good. Our bee supplier and local honey-master told us they needed to fill this second brood box with honey for the winter. 

        He added the super, the top box, the place where “our” honey will be produced, the box with the special HoneyFlow mechanisms for retrieving honey with a spout rather than using an extractor. He placed a queen inhibitor between the 2nd box and the top box. This is a sort of screen which prevents the larger queen from going into the top box to lay eggs. 

        He built a shelf of varying heights to hold the jars while they fill with honey. And, last but not least, he enlisted the help of our neighbor to fall some trees that were shading the hive.

We watched, we waited, we are still waiting. 

        But hold on here! A fellow honey producer told us she has already collected several pounds of honey. Is something wrong??? We phoned our honey-master and yes, he said we should have honey by now and that we’d better check the hive and see what was up. We spoke to a neighbor, also a bee keeper novice, and he hasn't extracted any honey yet either, so he and my husband got together to check their hives. 

        Our honey-master said they might be “honey bound”, that maybe the queen inhibitor was keeping bees from entering the top box. Be aware, he said, that when checking the middle box (2nd brood box) it could be full to the brim with honey and extremely heavy.

        But it wasn’t heavy. It was only partly filled with honey. There were quite a few bees in the top box though so they decided the queen inhibitor is not the problem. Not enough flowers around? Did they swarm at some point without our knowledge? Were those trees shading the hive so much they were inactive much of the day? 

       Another call to our honey-master. Thank heavens for his help. There is so much to learn! Just being able to tell the difference between worker bees, the queen, the larval cells, the honey cells - gleep. To a novice, none of these things are all that obvious. But our honey-master, surprise, surprise, is currently busy harvesting honey, so we’ll have to wait and see how it goes. Will update when we know more.

Bumper Crop

Buckets #11 and 12. Twelve gallons of raspberries picked now (13 if I count the one a friend picked and took home), 6 to make 10 Gallons of wine, 4 to make 18 pints of jam. These 2 buckets will be made into juice concentrate, some of which I will use to make jelly for a few friends who hate seeds. Next picking will be frozen in packets for winter treats and whatever is left will go for more juice.

So that’s what’s happening out here in the woods…

Kind Hearts

In February I had a plane ticket to Denver in hand, planning to go south to help my sister move, when what we now describe as a series of unfortunate events began to unfold. First I got a letter from the agency that brings the mobile mammogram unit to town, saying further investigation was required and that my family doctor would contact me. I planned to ignore all that until I returned from my trip but no, suddenly I had an appointment at the Cross Cancer Institute for further testing. This ended in a biopsy (negative), a procedure that really wasn't all that big of a deal except that I experienced sharp pains in the area of my breast where they stuck the needle until just recently, and this gave me cause for concern. This concern was inconsequential according to the Cross Institute people and my doctor, but not so inconsequential to me. And getting travel insurance for my trip when the results of this test were as yet unavailable? No way. Pre-existing condition, they said. Actually it seems like you can’t have anything wrong with you at all and get travel insurance, at least from Blue Cross.

As it turned out I didn't need travel insurance anyhow. I never made that trip in February. Why? It all started with treacherously icy ground conditions causing both myself and my husband to fall. I, having a layer of biological padding to protect my body, didn't hurt myself. My husband, though, broke 4 ribs. Thus began our (mostly his) series of unfortunate events. Several days after X-rays and gaining the knowledge that the ribs were broken, an injury that only time will repair, he began to experience acute abdominal pain. Off we went to emergency in the early morning only to be sent home with a diagnosis of constipation and a powerful laxative which did not work, then back to emergency the same afternoon and off to the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Edmonton via ambulance. Obstructed bowel. Immediate surgery (very successful), long hospital stay, recovery. 

In the meantime, my sister’s move was still on the agenda. She has Parkinson’s Disease with accompanying health and mobility problems. She is unmarried. I’m her only sibling. She was feeling pressured by health care practitioners, by the decisions required when downsizing from a huge home to a small apartment, and everyone involved suddenly decided I was the one to take care of it all. Her friends helped her pack and I orchestrated the move right down to hiring the movers - all from 1500 miles away. Needless to say I spent hours on the phone.

With all the X-rays and CT scans done for the ribs and obstructed bowel, an older injury requiring surgery, probably made worse by the fall, was discovered - a hole in the diaphragm (hernia) that was so large that organs were residing in wrong places in the body cavity. It was suggested that it was best to recover from operation number one before having operation number two - perhaps wait until late summer or fall.

But this blog is not about the series of unfortunate events, its about the kindness of friends. A good friend drove me to Cross Cancer, a friend who had been there before, who was both knowledgeable, supportive and knew her way through the city to the other side. I have a fear of city driving unless I know exactly where I’m going. I have consistent paths to follow to places I go and off path driving makes me nervous. Add winter to that equation and my comfort level is severely compromised. I’m fine with local driving, partly because I know I can stay home if the weather is nasty. But when you have an appointment, well, you pretty well gotta go, bad weather or not. 

With my husband in hospital winter city driving became a necessity. I think I only drove once. Every other time someone kindly drove me in, paid for the gas, visited with my husband, and kept me company. 

One day I came home and there was a stack of split firewood piled up next to the house. 

Another day my entire wood pile got split, even leaving a special stack of easy to split blocks for making kindling. Neighbors I seldom see called and offered help!

A good friend came with a stock trailer and picked up our flock of sheep and one guardian dog. He and his wife lambed them out for us in late March and April, got them sheared and are still caring for them right down to selling the lambs. They are bringing them back in breeding season (November), and we’re hoping to have another batch of guardian pups from Josie in the fall. This has been a tremendous help, we couldn't have managed with the sheep at home.

My son came from southern Alberta to build an enclosure for our bee hive, and came once again with his family, built a railing on our balcony, and then we celebrated his and my younger granddaughter’s birthday.

While in recovery from the first operation my husband made a quick trip to Seattle to see his sister who also had Parkinson’s and whose health was failing rapidly. She died a few days after he returned home.

In early June I did finally make that trip to Colorado to help my sister out. I helped to get her better settled in her new place after “springing” her from a rehabilitation home where she was placed after a fall that she incurred several days before I was due to fly. She was quite depressed, hated the rehab place, just wanted to get back to her life but was caught in the health care system. While in Colorado I was able to see what a great place my sister chose to live, a senior friendly environment with many extra  services available as required, where she can keep her cat, and which has delicious food! I worked with her realtor to remove the remainder of the furniture and what-nots from my sister’s now unoccupied house to make it ready to place on the market. Pending some inspections, as far as I know the house has sold, securing my sister’s financial future.

My husband decided he wanted to get the second operation over with in the summer time - a better time to recover and, if complications occurred, a better time to drive to the city. So, two days after my return from Colorado he had the diaphragm operation and is currently in recovery mode. By June of course, the weather posed no driving problems, and I now know about 6 different paths to get to the hospital. Friends continue to call, offering any help we may need. 

Now that my husband is at home recovering, and unable to lift, push or pull anything heavier than 10 pounds for at least 2 months, I’ve become chief chore person. I cannot handle our garden tiller, it is heavy and hard to control. The other day two friends arrived with a tiller and a hoe. My gardens are now looking exceptionally beautiful, weed free, and the potatoes are hilled. Our next door neighbor has bees and has offered to help with any lifting required in honey production.

On another point, during both hospital stays, though occasionally somewhat chaotic in a four person ward giving rise to some tales to tell, my husband received excellent care. The surgeons who operated were attentive and outstandingly qualified. The nurses were efficient and most were pleasant. Because of our health care system, we incurred no costs but parking and gas. I can’t imagine how terrible it would be to have a financial burden added to our series of unfortunate events. 

I am so grateful. Throughout all this I occasionally felt overwhelmed but I never felt alone, I didn't feel like I had to handle everything by myself, and I am super appreciative of the fact that people had, and still have, a genuine desire to help out. Even though it seems a lot happened all at once it has been wonderful to experience the generosity of our friends and neighbors. Perhaps some day we’ll have an opportunity to pay it forward. 

Growing Season

Remember those mosquitoes? In an attempt to control them, that is keep their numbers down close to home, we keep our grass cut. This is no small feat during prime growing season. We have over time expanded our yard to nearly 1/2 acre. It takes almost 2  hours on a riding mower once a week to keep it a reasonable length. 

But mosquitoes aren't the only reason for our industrious grass cutting marathon, there's other equally important things - like beauty, fire protection, keeping the dew on the long grass from soaking your pants to the knees, making it easy to see things you wouldn't want to step on ( dog poop, frogs, bees, sharp twigs), keeping weeds under control… 

Believe it or not, I really enjoy mowing grass! I used to be quite proud of myself for walking behind a gas self-propelled mower, good exercise and all that. But in those days I was a bit younger and I had my sheep to help. 

Our sheep are currently living elsewhere until body repairs allow us to work with them once again, so for now it's up to us humans to cut the grass. The sheep on the lawn served a twofold purpose, fertilization and mowing. Because of them we  took the mower out far less frequently, and a plus side to this was how much they kept the long grass in the adjacent bush cut down. So, do we miss our sheep? You bet we do…especially the lambs. It's like we missed a whole season - lambing season - that season that heralds spring, the one before garden planting season. Now we’re into growing season (weeding, mowing, tilling), soon it’ll be harvest season (picking, canning, freezing), then winter prep season (firewood, hay, straw, butchering), then wine making season (I make my wine with frozen berries, not enough time during harvest), then breeding season (that's when we hope to be bring our flock back home), and finally, winter (the time we reap what we have sown). Then the seasonal cycle begins all over again.

I enjoy the balance seasons bring to life. I welcome each season when it arrives, and yet am never sad to see one season replaced by the next. I would not enjoy living in a place where the word “seasonal” meant nothing, where the words “unseasonable weather” meant nothing, or where the winter solstice didn’t make me sigh with relief because the days are beginning to lengthen and the summer solstice didn't signal a happy celebration of long summer days. Change makes sense to me, beginnings, processes, endings, life’s rhythm. Like the song written by Pete Seeger, using words from the Bible, and later recorded by the Byrds (and many others) - 

There is a season, turn, turn, turn,

And a time, to every purpose under heaven.

The

imply "Turn! Turn! Turn!", is a song written"Turn! Turn! Turn! (To Everything There Is a Season)", or simply "Turn! Turn! Turn!", is a song writ the late 1950s. The lyrics, except for the title, which is repeated throughout the song and the final two lines, are adapted word-for-word from the English version of the first eight verses of t in the late 1950s. The lyrics, except for the title, which is repeated throughout the song and the final two lines, are adapted word-for-word from the English version of the first

A time to kill, a time to heal

A time to laugh, a time to weep

To everything (turn, turn, turn)

There is a season (turn, turn, turn)

And a time to every purpose, under heaven

A time to build up, a time to break down

A time to dance, a time to mourn

A time to cast away stones, a time to gather stones together

To everything (turn, turn, turn)

There is a season (turn, turn, turn)

And a time to every purpose, under heaven

A time of love, a time of hate

A time of war, a time of peace

A time you may embrace, a time to refrain from embracing

To everything (turn, turn, turn)

There is a season (turn, turn, turn)

And a time to every purpose, under heaven

A time to gain, a time to lose

A time to rend, a time to sew

A time for love, a time for hate

A time for peace, I swear it's 

Bzzzz, Bzzzz

 

If you've been reading my blog you'll realize we have a small lake in our front yard. Many, many years of drought has caused the water level on this lake and its attached beaver pond to slowly recede. After eating themselves out of house and home our resident beavers moved upstream to more plentiful "pastures", so dam maintenance ceased to be done allowing the lake to drain even more. Our 55' deep bored well (as opposed to the deep wells many folks around here have), which is probably fed underground from the lake, has also been affected by drought; we've had to control our use to some extent these past few years.

Our lake provides a fabulous habitat for water foul and an endless source of beauty for us to lay our eyes on every day. It is part of a large water-shed that meanders its way through the Boreal forest in a series of small lakes, creeks and beaver ponds. We have depended on our lake ever since our arrival here in 1974. We have bathed in it, drunk its water, watered our livestock, irrigated our garden, and, in winter skied, walked and ice skated on it. In every way our lake is a blessing. But this blessing has a down side, one we had nearly forgotten about in these dry years.

When I first arrived here with my 6 week old baby I was afraid to get out of the truck. There were so many mosquitoes I thought they'd eat us alive! Over the years we managed to control the population somewhat by clearing out the trees around our house and barnyard and by keeping the grass cut. With the aid of our drying climate, the nasty little blood suckers eventually thinned out to a tolerable level. I had almost forgotten how bad they could be - until now.

In early spring it snowed and rained and snowed some more. We've been oo-ing and ahh-ing about the rising lake level for a month or so. It's now nearly as high as it was when we first came here and at least one beaver has moved back in. Rather than going out 20' to find water deep enough to feed our water pump, this year it's located just over the bank. We watered the garden twice, trying to encourage germination. Then, just like days gone by, the June rains arrived. Now it seems to rain some every day. And the mosquitoes, my god are they ever plentiful! I have these sticky fly catchers strips on lots of my windows. I'm not catching flies, I'm catching mosquitoes! They buzzz, buzzz and dive bomb while we try to sleep, covered up to our chins despite the heat. I've seriously considered buying or making a mosquito canopy over the bed so I can finally have a peaceful night.

 

One of us walks our dogs every morning. Along with gloves, jeans, boots and long sleeves, our newly acquired bee bonnet has become essential. It's either the bonnet or copious quantities of bug repellant, and I hate putting that stuff on my skin. Here's some pics from today's walk, mosquitoes buzzing around my head while I stopped to smell the roses.

 

Safe in my bee bonnet.

 

The Alberta wild rose.

 
 I've always loved the moss, looks like a lawn outside a leprechaun's house.

 

Bee food.