Doc

 Rest In Peace, Doc

Grow Old with Dogs

When I am old....

I will wear soft grey sweatshirts,

and a bandanna over my silver hair,

and I will spend my social security checks on wine and my dogs.

I will sit in my house on my well-worn chair and listen to my dogs breathing.

I will sneak out in the middle of a warm summer night

and take my dogs for a run,

if my old bones will allow.

When people come to call......

I will smile and nod as I show them my dogs......

and talk of them and about them;

the ones so beloved of the past

and the ones so beloved today.

I will still work hard cleaning after them, mopping and feeding them 

and whispering their names in a soft loving way.

I will wear the gleaming sweat on my throat, like a jewel

and I will be an embarrassment to all...especially my family....

who have not yet found the peace in being free to have dogs as your very best friends.

These friends who will always wait at any hour,

for your footfall....

and eagerly jump to their feet out of a sound sleep,

to greet you as if you are a God.

With warm eyes full of adoring love

and hope that you will always stay,

I'll hug their big strong necks.....

I'll kiss their dear sweet heads......

and whisper in their very special company.

I look in the Mirror...... ..And see I am getting old.

This is the kind of person I am and have always been.

Loving dogs is easy, they are part of me.

Please accept me for who I am.

My dogs appreciate my presence in their lives...

they love my presence in their lives.

When I am old, this will be important to me.

You will understand when you grow old......

if you have dogs to love too.

Thank you, Viv Billingham, for sharing this beautiful poem.

Don Cherry - What’s the Fuss?

Don Cherry - What’s the Fuss?

You people that come here … whatever it is, you love our way of life, you love our milk and honey. At least you could pay a couple of bucks for a poppy.” He then began pointing his finger at the camera, “These guys paid for your way of life, the life you enjoy in Canada. These guys paid the biggest price.” 

The moment I heard this on the TV news my first thought was “This man should be fired!” I was not alone. So many people complained to the Canadian Broadcasting Standards Council about Cherry, that it exceeded 'the CBSC’s technical processing capacities'. 

Don Cherry is thought of by many as a Canadian icon, but not all agree. Listening further to the news broadcast I was treated to many other misogynistic, racist, divisive, and heralded as perfectly acceptable statements of Cherry’s opinion aired on Hockey Night in Canada over the years. His views are supposedly harmless, just in fun, painting life as he sees it. But Canada is growing up and is, at least in the public eye, leaving people like Don Cherry behind.

Or are we? Does Don Cherry simply say out loud what many say and feel privately? There’s a swell of support out there, on Facebook, Twitter. Cherry, people are saying, is just an actor with an amusing commentary, almost a clown in his signature attire, shouldn’t be taken seriously. “What in the world is all the fuss about?” they say. “He’s harmless!” 

Is he?

In private conversations I have heard misogynistic, racist, and derogatory ethnic comments expressed by people I respect. If called to their attention they laugh, say “Lighten up, I was just joking!” But such conversation has the effect of reinforcing and perpetuating a culture of “us and them”. We might have a better chance of establishing amenable relations with people from different backgrounds if we are not armed with stereotypes in advance.

Immigrants come to this country for many reasons, to escape war, to better their economic position, to reunite with family already here. It takes time to adapt to a different way of looking at the world. We have very little understanding of how confusing and difficult it may be for an immigrant to question or alter his or her past learning, traditions, cultural and religious indoctrination, especially a first generation immigrant. Immigrants have good reasons to come to Canada, but it’s not necessarily an easy transition and they all leave a piece of themselves behind.  

The Canadian identity, which would be hard to define, is already quite diversified and it is changing. Twenty years ago not one word would have been said about Don Cherry’s “You people...” statement. Had it been said in private it wouldn’t have caused even a tiny ripple, especially coming from an old man. But Canada is made of slowly melding races, religions, and ethnicities, creating a rich tapestry. We differ in many respects, but we are all Canadians.

A friend commented on Facebook, “All old men say inappropriate things. It’s their right. It’s our right to ignore them.” True, we can roll our eyes and forgive grandpa, but maybe old men whose attitudes belong in the archives should no longer be given a public forum.

A Winter Wine Makers Dilemma

It has been decided in our household that my husband, since he is the bee keeper, should be the mead maker. He made one batch in the summer but it was too good, and it has been difficult to save even two bottles to see how the wine will improve with age. Finally, last week he started another batch. When I checked the specific gravity 5 days later it had not changed at all! It wasn’t working. Had we killed the yeast somehow? We decided, after popping a thermometer into the primary fermenter, that it was just too cold. So we brought it out to the kitchen and set it by the stove. After a couple of days it began to work and the SG is slowly going down. Hopefully it’ll ready for the carboy in a few days.

In the meantime it appears like my raspberry wine is doing okay in our usual wine room (ie our small first floor once upon a time bedroom that has become our catch all space for anything we can’t find a place for). It’s still working - slowly. We are in a quandary as to wether the mead will continue to work if we put it in a carboy in that same room. On the other hand putting a glass carboy next to the kitchen heater could be a bit concerning as it’s a busy high traffic area - not just people, 4 dogs too! 

I have enough raspberries to make 2 more batches of raspberry wine, enough honey to make one more batch of mead. But, should I wait till spring???? If I don’t wait, will I have to fill my kitchen with wine jugs?

We do not have central heating. We have a propane space heater in our living/dining room and a wood stove in the kitchen, so the spare room is always a few degrees cooler. We could, for about $150, get an electric carboy heater and thermostat, but it obviously uses power and we try to avoid buying stuff that increases our electrical use. And we would need more than one! In winter the sun shines less making solar power less efficient and necessitating more diesel generator battery charging. So I’d rather solve this chilly air problem some other way. So far I’ve given my wine a blanket. Does this keep heat in or insulate it from the heat? Maybe I should heat up bricks in the fire (or a bean bag in the microwave) and place them inside the blanket?

Hopefully we can solve this winter wine makers dilemma... 

Apple Cider

If you have an apple tree you will be familiar with the problem of having too many apples. In my cellar I have plenty of jars of whole crab apples, crab apple jelly, applesauce, apple butter, apples with raspberries..... No need to make more.  

But we wanted to do something with this year’s apples. So, with the help of our neighbor who has an apple press, we had the pleasure of making pure apple cider (i.e. apple juice, not the alcoholic cider). We picked 4-5 gallon pails of apples, leaving the ones out of reach for the birds.

What an incredible, machine the apple press is! I’ve made juice by cooking apples down and squeezing through a jelly bag, but this was so easy, and made more enjoyable because it was done with the help of our friend and celebrated by a few drinks of apple juice and rum, a mighty tasty newly discovered beverage. 

Since the apples were small there was no need to cut them up. They did not need to be cored or stemmed. Just popped them into the grinder and then into the press. 

I could hardly believe how much juice we got! Our yield was one full pail of juice to the 4 pails of apples! And the juice (even without the rum) is delicious. I canned the juice (water bath - 20 minutes) as there was too much to consume fresh. 

Wow, thanks neighbor!

Earth’s Lament

Amidst all the climate hullabaloo flying around during this election time, 

Amidst all the promises waiting to be broken, 

Amidst all the apocalyptic prophisizing contrasted by all the denying,

Amidst all the bright answers,

Amidst all the individual and corporate greed, 

Amidst all the hope and all the despair and everything in between - 

Here’s an old poem of mine. If I looked back in my blog I’d likely find it there. I wrote it while looking out at a Parking Lot Sea, while waiting for my husband to reappear from shopping for something or other. It has been somewhat modified from the original...

Earth’s Lament

I am the earth and I need to breathe,

Feel the wind through my grasses and the leaves of my trees,

Wake fresh in the morning with dew on my chest,

Wrinkle, roll and stretch from the east to the west, 

Bathe in the rain and bask in the sun,

Shine in the moonlight when my workday is done.

I am the earth and I must see the sky,

Deprive me of this, I’ll get sick, I could die!

You paint me in black with asphalt on roads,

Reshape my body for diamonds and gold,

Draw fluid up from the depths of my bowels,

Dump sewage in water making it foul,

You harvest my lungs, pollute all my veins,

Smoke fills my air, acidifies my rain.

You’ve put me in danger, I cannot forgive,

For I am the earth and I want to live!

I am the earth, please let me breathe,

Feel the wind through my grasses and the leaves of my trees,

Wake fresh in the morning with dew on my chest,

Wrinkle, roll and stretch from the east to the west, 

Bathe in the rain and bask in the sun,

Shine in the moonlight when my workday is done.

I am the earth, you live in my home,

Treat me with kindness, I won’t die alone.

Thinking About Greta Thunberg

Another cold rainy day. Nursing a summer cold, tired of being chilled to the bone and buried in blankets, I broke down and acknowledged the elements this morning by putting a fire on in the kitchen wood stove. I spent my early morning as usual, checking email, surfing Facebook, and playing Spider Solitaire on my iPad before making breakfast. But such a day is a day to write, and while washing dishes my mind was thinking about Greta Thunberg, the 16 year old climate change activist we are hearing much about. She is heading out now, on the Malizia II, a racing yacht that uses solar panels to power underwater turbines, to go to climate conferences in the US and Chile. Why is she taking the time to travel by “sailboat”? She believes air traffic is a huge contributor to climate change and the casual attitude we all, including myself, have of hopping a plane to get quickly from here to there should be reconsidered. But, but, but... (I can almost hear people’s minds rejecting this premise) Canada is such a huge country! It takes days to get across it! And we really need to escape the north sometimes, go to a sunny tropical paradise and soak up copious quantities of vitamin D. What about vehicle emissions! And the time! How could we get places in a reasonable amount of time without air travel? How could I go to my cousin's wedding back east? ...

A meme I saw on Facebook today. Not sure of it’s accuracy but I can see the point. 

I often wonder if  our global economy was a huge error in judgement. 

Hmmm. If you think that this climate change chatter is all a lot of BS, that the science behind the idea is skewed, that climate has always changed (which is quite true), that human activity has nothing to do with weather or excess carbon dioxide in our atmosphere, or that this excess is no problem, well, that’s a comfortable place to be, and a good excuse to do business as usual.

Climate change is such a contentious issue, and I know thinking people on both sides of the fence, so I tend to talk about global pollution instead. Pollution is something we can see, smell, feel, something we can all recognize as out of control, something we can agree on. Addressing the causes of pollution and finding solutions to clean up our environment are bound to be a good for planet earth. So I try to find positive news to forward on Facebook, breakthroughs in science and industry that may address pollution and still enable us to maintain our current lifestyle, with some modifications.

In those parts of the world where we live the “good life” we have no political or personal will to make changes that will lower our living standard. No one wants to live without electricity, cars, central heating (or air conditioning), washing machines, running water, indoor plumbing, supermarkets, internet, TV... I could go on and on with this list. If you have it you don’t want to give it up. We’re even quite willing to turn a blind eye to our exploitation of third world countries so we can obtain all these things, things which are desired but not always necessary. 

Most of us live in cities. Cities pollute. The industries located out in the hinterlands are producing products to keep the cities chugging along as usual. Farms are keeping cities fed. City people seem to find all sorts of ways to criticize those of us who are out in the country serving their needs, while conveniently ignoring their collusion in the whole scheme of things. Campaigns about cow farts and burps, dirty oil and pipelines, clear cutting the forest, keeping dogs in warm houses, etc. seem, on the surface, to be noble and sensible. But trucks are still lining the highways bringing products to the cities, planes are still delivering fresh lobster to our table, container ships still chug across the oceans filled with plastic junk to gift at Christmas time. Very few people are changing the way they live in any discernible way.

I understand this attitude. When I came to our bush farm 45 years ago with a baby on my back, almost no money, no power, no outhouse, no water, a tiny shack to live in and an outdoor kitchen with a wood cookstove, I had a dream and a desire to improve. And we did improve, slowly. Now I’d fight tooth and nail to keep the improvements we made. If something breaks down we don’t throw up our hands and say, oh well, we’ve done it before, we know we can do without. No, we fix it! So let’s do some sensible things we are able to do as individuals, and let’s encourage our governments to tackle the big things, support science and innovation to clean up the mess we never realized we were getting ourselves into. For this we need to light the fires of political will. This is accomplished through activism.

Greta Thunberg, child activist - GOOD for YOU! 

A Honey of a Summer

It’s July 28th under cloudy skies, intermittent rain, periods of sun, the plants and the ground are wet. This is a good weather day if you compare it to the torrential downpours we’ve had for the last month. The rivers, streams, dugouts and lakes are full to capacity, inches in some places from spilling over. But so far, in our little corner of the world, no flooding - at least not yet.

Summer has been busy and at the same time frustrating. We sat in the house doing other stuff while wishing we could be outside getting summer things done. My great plan to save seeds has been crushed. My peas failed to come out of the ground, maybe there’s 70 plants or so in two 25ft rows.  My beans were eaten by a critter. I replanted and covered the new planting with Reemay Cloth for protection which worked, but the plants are late and may not produce. Excessive rain and lack of sun has slowed progress of most plants, but potatoes and carrots seem to be doing well and they are the staples of our winter meals. Thank heavens we have sandy soil - it drains. Some of our neighbors, who have clay type soil, could make mud pies in their gardens.

Then there’s the bees. Bees don’t like cold, wet, rainy weather. They barely exit the hive, just cuddle up in there to stay warm, and deplete what little honey they have managed to make. While I was down in Colorado in early July visiting my sister my husband FaceTimed me with very glum news - the bees had swarmed. He was bummed right out because the swarm took off after he spotted it and he figured that was it. They were just gone. But next day they were back again, hanging over the lake’s edge on the chain link fence of what used to be our duck pen. So he and our neighbor, who is also attempting to raise bees, cut the wire and gently tapped them into a spare brood box. If they got the Queen it’ll be a new colony - for the neighbor. We are not set up for a second hive. In hindsight we should have made our enclosure larger, but we never were planning on more than one hive.

A couple of days ago our bee whisperer called us up. He’s the fellow from whom we purchased our bees and our human, as opposed to computer, source of all things related to bees. It’s time, he said, to harvest your honey if you plan to keep your bees over winter. (Honey production in August stays in the hive to provide winter feed.) So my husband donned a bee hat today and set up a jar to catch the honey flow. We thought, after the swarm, that there’d be no honey at all, but looks like we’ll get about 4 kg. The honey flow system works like a charm.

The honey wine (mead) we made together with our neighbor is all gone with the exception of one bottle. It was good, mild, sweeter than our other wines. We kept the one bottle because much of our research says it gets better with age. Aging can be difficult when you are excited and pleased with the product you produced and you want to share with your friends. I have 2 carboys of rhubarb wine on the go right now, one with added raisins and one with added strawberries. I haven’t tried making rhubarb wine for years, usually I make rhubarb juice. But my cellar still holds quite a few jars of juice from last year and the rhubarb plants keep going and going. I found some blueberries in the freezer. Blueberry/rhubarb jam is scrumptious. Guess my project for tomorrow is set.

August 8

It’s still raining. We have been getting some nice days, defined as cloudy with no rain, and some beautiful days, defined as sunny. But it rains nearly every night. Much of the garden is okay. Heat loving plants (cucumbers, squash) are a loss, but we dug some potatoes yesterday and they’re good. The rhubarb/raisin wine is ready to bottle, tomorrow’s project. Raspberries are happening. We’ve picked about 25 lbs so far. I’m going to make raspberry wine this weekend and I have 6 pints of jam so far.

My husband came in 2 days ago announcing we’d lost a lamb. Coyotes? North Country Cheviots are not a flocking breed, making it hard for the guardian dogs to be everywhere they are. Many of the lambs, now a good size, go grazing in a small group without their mothers. Maybe early morning fog created an opportunity - who knows. So tightening up fences, some patrolling, and putting the sheep in the barn overnight has been added to the chore list. A new beaver dam, which appeared between our place and our neighbor to the east a few years ago, is threatening, with all this rain, to overtake the low areas of the east pasture. The corner post is in such soft wet ground it was threatening to topple - another hard job. And, as the rain falls, the hay continues to stand. We buy ours from a friend. He cannot get out into his saturated field. Hopefully the rain will stop soon or... The sheep need winter feed. All the grazers do. The crops are drowning. Disaster areas are being declared. Rain, rain, go away.

mltipton.blogspot.com, https://www.facebook.com/Northof543/, Aug 8, 2019

Dandelions and Bees

“Good heavens! I’ve got to get out there and cut the grass!” I said to my husband. “This is ridiculous, it’s getting way too long.”

“Wait” he said, “you have to wait a little longer....for the dandelions....you can’t cut the dandelions, not yet.”

I must to be one of the few women out there whose mate is intent on preserving dandelions on the lawn. He wants to make sure I don’t cut them down and wishes we had more of them! Why? It’s the bees. Dandelions are one of their first foods after emerging from the hive in the spring. 

It does seem pretty precarious for the bees in May. The slowly arriving spring isn’t quick to provide them with an abundance of food. We even observed the bees searching for nectar on the sawdust and newly split firewood from a recently bucked aspen tree our beavers fell for us. They must have been drawn to the sweet sap in the freshly fallen tree. We do give them a needed boost by providing them with sugar water and pollen patties, but, like deciding when to wean a bottle lamb, you eventually have to stop feeding them and let them forage for themselves. It’s the withdrawal of the sugar water that prompted the obsession with dandelions.

Our sheep graze our lawn every morning. This is a great way to clip (and fertilize) the grass that I’m not allowed to mow because of the dandelions and the bees. The flock looks beautiful out there. I love looking at the moms with their little lambs and never tire of watching our majestic guardian dogs, Loki and Thor, trotting along with them. But this worked a lot better when we had over a hundred sheep with their lambs. Now we don’t have enough sheep to trim the grass to a nice comfortable length (defined by me as short enough to walk through in the early morning dew without getting your pant legs soaked). There’s also the problem of taste. Some grasses apparently taste better than others and the not-so-yummy ones get passed by giving the lawn a shaggy hummocky appearance. Really, I’m not super fussy, but a ragged lawn upsets my sense of balance somehow, like a crooked painting, it just puts me off. I really was getting anxious to cut the grass.

We would drive down the road and see fields riddled with dandelions, some so full it looked like they were the planted crop.  “I just don’t understand it! Why don’t we have more dandelions?” my husband would lament. “Did you see that? They’re everywhere except our place!” 

It turns out our dandelions were a bit later to bloom, maybe because we’re surrounded by bush. Our apple tree was later to bloom as well. But still, we do seem to have a nearly dandelion-less lawn. I don’t know why for certain. I have certainly made no effort for this to be, but I do have a suspicion as to the cause. I was watching the sheep out the kitchen window at breakfast one day while they were grazing away on our over-long lawn. Along came a ewe, munching away, passing up the grass and moving from dandelion to dandelion, daintily clipping off each scrumptious yellow flower one by one. I felt compelled to point this out to my husband. “No wonder,” I said, “they’re a sheep treat! We’ll never get any dandelions for the bees if the sheep are going to eat them - I guess I may as well cut the lawn today.”

“Not yet,” my husband said.

I finally was allowed to cut the grass. I bargained by limiting the area I would cut, leaving a large section to the west of the house for the sheep and the dandelions. After I cut the grass the dandelions seemed to multiply. And the second time I cut it I swear they ducked when the mower came by, then shot straight up a couple days later to air their puffy seed heads in the wind and ensure their survival for next year. Now it’s mid June and it’s rain that keeps me from cutting grass. The dandelions and the bees are doing fine.

mltipton.blogspot.com , https://www.facebook.com/Northof543/, June 17, 2019

Old Stuff

Last month while doing my laundry a large puddle began to spread silently across the floor. I, of course, reacted in my usual manner to unforeseen catastrophes, I hollered for my husband. So he performed his normal hard water maintenance routine to descale bits and pieces of the machine, looked at everything he could get at to see if he could find the leak - all to no avail. We called the repair guy, figured out it would probably take two trips out to our farm, one to find the problem, the other to bring the parts to fix it, and between mileage and hourly rates it was looking costly. So we started inquiring about new machines. We truly wanted to shop local but we could not afford local prices, so off to the city we went. One good thing, we ran into a “no interest for 18 months” deal, so we can pay our new washer off bit by bit. They make it extremely easy to spend money you don’t have these days! 

We had to replace our mattress about a year ago. My aching back was causing me to sleep on our recliner most of the night. A couple days ago the mechanism on our love-seat recliner broke, for about the third time. Previously that handy man of mine welded something together and made it work again - not this time. Tears in the upholstery have been patched with glued on leather, now there’s tears next to the patches. We’ve been on-line browsing to replace it, also our ratty couch that we bought over 25 years ago. Another large expenditure, in many ways expected but largely ignored by putting it off for years.

I could gripe about planned obsolescence, which is, I think, very real, but I have to say we’ve gotten good use out of most of our household appliances and furniture. Nothing lasts forever. As you age, so does your stuff!

Food, shelter and clothing - the basic necessities of life. Really? There’s a lot more to it than that. There’s tons of stuff you need, or think you need, or have become accustomed to, that may not make it through your retirement years. Even if you think you’ve planned for every possible twist and turn of events, you may eventually have to get inventive to find the dollars to keep all the stuff you own functioning and in good shape. Yesterday we saved a few dollars by grooming my dog at home. He was beginning to look like a mop and collecting debris by the pound every time he went outside. Ted didn’t appreciate our fur snipping, toenail clipping and bathing operation, but doesn’t he look fine now? 

Saving Seeds

Ahh, SPRING! Here I sit with my back aching, an ice tea in hand, and the majority of my garden planted. There’s not a cloud in the sky and the winds haven’t held still for days, stirring concern for wildfires. Moisture, we need more of it ... never satisfied. But today it’s 18C and climbing - it was the first day my husband and I felt like having our morning coffee outside. And in the late afternoon, well it’s gin and tonic weather once again. Yippie!

I love the seasons. The cold and snow of winter make you ever so grateful for the warmth of summer, and by the end of summer you are so tired of preparing for winter you’re happy to see the snow falling! Gardening and preserving occupies much of my time in summer (along with BBQs, music jams and bottle feeding a few lambs) so early spring finds me checking my seed stash and buying the ones I’m low on. Have any of you noticed what’s happening in the seed market? Some packets have only a few seeds in them, others seem to have less than before and the prices are higher. So this is the year I am determined to save my own seeds. 

Every year I ask myself, “Why in the world don’t I save seeds for the upcoming season, at least the ones that are easy to save?” I tell myself to remember to mark off a never-pick section of peas and beans to retain for seed, these being the easiest plants to save seed from. You just need to let them mature well beyond the point you would normally pick them. And cucumbers - just let one or two grow big and begin to turn yellow. Zucchini, squash, peppers, tomatoes and many flower seeds are easy to keep as well. It’s a matter of taking the time to dry and store them. I started my own tomatoes this year simply by keeping the seeds from a nice vine ripened one. I kept quite a few flower seeds too (columbine, poppy, marigold, scarlet runner) and have discovered that the sunflower seeds you feed the birds all winter germinate just fine. I find sunflowers growing all over the place, not necessarily where I’d like them to be. Some plants are incredibly accommodating when it come to producing seed, spinach and some lettuces go to seed before you want them to!

The difficult seeds to save are the ones that take two years - carrots, beets. I don’t grow the brassicas (cabbage, turnips, Brussels sprouts, broccoli, radish), those wee worms that always seem to find their way into them, along with garden space, deter me. I buy the odd veggie in that family at a farmers market or the grocery store now and then and that seems to satisfy my culinary desires along those lines. But I have tried to make carrot seed before. I got carrot flowers but the seed did not mature. I’m trying  again this year, planted 5 carrots from the cellar that had growth on top. We’ll see what happens.

2019 will be the year I keep seeds. I have a “How-To” book I got at Lee Valley in the city on seed saving. I’ll dig it out and see if they overcomplicate things the way books sometimes do. If you come to my garden to snatch a fresh bean or a few of those yummy fresh raw peas, just make sure you  stay away from the “DO NOT PICK” sections. 

Let the rains come, I’m ready, spring is singing it’s let's-get-to-work tune. Plans are made and some, at least, will be fulfilled.

I’ll conclude with the chorus of a song I wrote several years back, called “Talking About the Weather”.

When country folk all get together

They always talk about the weather

And if it’s dry they’ll ywish it wetter

And if it’s wet they’ll want sunshine.

They all remember years gone by

When it was cold, or wet or dry,

When lightening creased the southern sky

And snow lay deep among the pines.

Waiting for this....

To turn into this!

mltipton.blogspot.com, https://www.facebook.com/Northof543/, May 19, 2019

Tree Geese

If there’s one thing that will lift the spirits of any Canadian it’s seeing and hearing  the return of the Canada geese in the spring. The geese practically shout at us, “Winter’s over, winter’s over!” In the fall when we see them heading south we hear, “Hurry, hurry, not much time left, winter’s coming, winter’s coming!”

I call the Canada geese who live on our lake ours because I know they come back to the same nesting place year after year, and, after updating my goose knowledge on the Internet, I confirmed my suspicion that their offspring also return to their original home.

Nothing that I read prepared me for a picture my son sent to me though. He lives near a river and often walks in its flood plain. One day he heard that typical goose honking sound but none were flying overhead or swimming on the river. They were roosting, yes roosting, in the trees. Go figure.

These pics are not photoshopped.

From Hinterland Who’s Who

http://www.hww.ca/en/wildlife/birds/canada-goose.html 

      Canada Geese are readily recognized by their irregular “V” formation as they pass overhead in spring and fall. They can often be heard as well, since there is usually a steady chorus of honking. Their calls range from the deep ka-lunk of the medium and large races to the high-pitched cackling voices of smaller races. Researchers have determined that Canada Geese have about 13 different calls ranging from loud greeting and alarm calls to the low clucks and murmurs of feeding geese. 

Goslings begin communicating with their h while still in the egg. Their calls are limited to greeting “peeps,” distress calls, and high-pitched trills signalling contentment. Goslings respond in different ways to different adult calls, indicating that the adults use a variety of calls with a range of meanings to communicate with their young.

Habitat and Habits

You can find Canada Geese on almost any type of wetland, from smell ponds to large lakes and rivers. However, Canada Geese spend as much or more time on land as they do in water. 

Canada Geese breed in a wide range of habitats. They prefer low-lying areas with great expanses of wet grassy meadows and an abundance of ponds and lakes that serve as refuges from foxes and other land predators. The most northerly geese breed on the treeless tundra of the Arctic. Below the treeline, the geese nest in the open boreal forest, with its scattered stands of stunted spruce and tamarack. In southern Canada and throughout the United States, nesting Canada Geese are at home in many places, from sheltered mountain streams and prairie pothole ponds to golf courses and urban parks. During fall and winter, Canada Geese favour agricultural land where vast fields of cereal grains and other crops provide abundant food and relative safety from predators.

Family bonds are strong in Canada Geese—goslings stay with their parents for a full year, returning to the breeding grounds with them after their first winter. Migrating flocks in fall and spring thus consist of a number of families travelling together. 

While most Canada Geese are territorial during the nesting period, they congregate in flocks of several hundred to several thousand when they are migrating or are on the wintering areas. 

____________________________________________________________________________________

mltipton.blogspot.com,https://www.facebook.com/Northof543/, April 14, 2019

The Conrad Caper

Our relationship with the RCMP has been very minimal. My husband’s Dad always said, “Avoid the police, lawyers and the court system if at all possible, they can mess up your life!” Good advice. The best way to accomplish this is to obey the law to the letter, and of course all of us do that - right? On the other side of the coin though, we want the police to be available when we need them. But in rural Alberta, due to large distances from the RCMP detachment to the scattered farms in their area of control, they’re just too far away to be of much help in any sort of an emergency. 

Our first contact with the RCMP was early on in our back-to-the-land experiment, probably in the late 70’s. A RCMP simply drove into our yard one day, to introduce himself, to see what was going on I suppose. Our goats immediately welcomed him by joyously bounding onto the hood of his cruiser, then the top, then the back. Goats are amazingly sure footed critters. Did you know they can walk along that little ledge at the top of a car door, with the window closed, and not fall off? 

Besides our nimble nanny goats we had a billy named Conrad. He had a rack of horns that made him intimidating to most folks, even us. Our son used to “fight the monster” with wooden sword and shield which probably didn’t help to foster his softer side. Conrad added his welcome to the RCMP constable by pinning him up against the house. We apologized for Conrad's manners, rescued the  RCMP and after a short but polite conversation he left. We never experienced any unsolicited interaction after that.

But we did raise the alarm when our horse harness was stolen. This was a big deal for us. We got our firewood using horses and we used them in logging both fence posts and trees for income. We could hardly believe anyone would do such a thing! But there was no doubt that it was gone from the shed where we kept it hung. So we called the RCMP to report the theft. The constable arrived the same day we called and was polite and understanding as he took our statement, but we had little hope that our harness thief would ever be found and arrested.

We worried and fretted as to what we could do. Our harness was old, not fancy but serviceable, and we needed it! Finding another affordable set would not be easy. A few fretful days passed, then one sunny afternoon when my husband wandered out behind the barn to take a pee he noticed some straps hanging from a tree several yards away...... Uh oh. There was our “stolen” harness! We deduced that Conrad was the culprit. He must have gotten wrapped up in the harness while using its hanging rack for a scratching post, carried it off tangled in his horns and rubbed it off on the tree. With no small amount of embarrassment we called the RCMP detachment to update the “case”.

We later heard that the infamous “Conrad Caper” was recorded in the detachments’s newsletter, no doubt to ensure that future RCMP investigators would be properly prepared for the real possibility that horned thieves could be hiding in central Alberta.

mltipton.blogspot.com, https://www.facebook.com/Northof543/, 

April 14, 2019

Squats

Like nearly everyone who has lived long enough, I have a bad back which can colour my day gray sometimes. Basically, if I use my back, it hurts. If I fully support it in my recliner it doesn’t hurt, but it doesn’t help either. My son casts a worrisome glance at his mother now and then and, being an energetic fitness enthusiast, he’s offered up suggestions on some simple exercises I could do to preserve my well being as I tread gradually toward old age. He’s suggested some easy stretches and lately he’s talking a lot about strength, suggesting some standing push-ups and squats done quite slowly. It’s the reps and the slowness that builds the strength (and bones).

I’m not saying I’m doing these things regularly but I do think he’s right. My intentions are in the right place. I also recently had a chat with a physiotherapist who purported that the reason so many North Americans have bad backs is that we don’t squat. The knees should bend every time you do anything toward, near or on the ground. That means when you pick up your dogs dish to fill it, when you get a pot from a lower cupboard, when you pick up clothing tossed on the floor ... every single time you bend over you should instead be squatting, either partially or all the way down. Whew!

Well yeah, great idea but when I squat there’s a distinct chance I’m going to have trouble getting back up! (First excuse coming from my lazy body and brain.) But I’m guessing that if I made a habit change I’d slowly get stronger. I have been consciously noticing how often I bend my back instead of my knees, it’s dozens of times a day! I even weed my garden just leaning over most of the time. Yikes, I’m doing myself in!

Lots of people who work hard physically will tell you they’re getting enough exercise already, but quite often, even though the muscles they are using get stronger, the repeated motions they’re doing in their work can eventually cause problems, and lack of tone in associated muscles can contribute to a breakdown. Also work related muscle use is often sporadic, done cold without warming up the muscles required to do the work, done just enough to over-strain. How many hard working people do you know with a bad back? 

I think this Physiotherapist and my son are onto something. So, I guess it’s time to pry myself from my comfy recliner and do some squatting. Could also stand to lose some (lots) of weight, eat less sweets, walk more, read less, get off the internet, get creative, deep clean my house.... Whoa! Little steps, don’t want to bury myself in lofty goals. Squatting instead of bending - this I can do.

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mltipton.blogspot.com, https://www.facebook.com/Northof543/, April 6, 2019