Autumn's Golden Light

I got a new camera a couple of months ago. I wanted something small that would offer a better zoom feature than my old digital. I found one at The Source (which, in the States is still called Radio Shack, I think).

It's a Sony, like my old one, but offered many, many more features - even though it was last year's model. Because of that latter fact, it was on sale for less than $200. (If you're in the market, you might still find one. It's the Cybershot DSC-H10. It has 8.1 megapixels, a nice wide-angle lens, 10X optical zoom, a macro feature, makes HD videos and fits in a pocket.)

Anyhow, as most of you well know, I'm a techno dweeb and avoided uploading pictures from the new camera because then I'd be forced to deal with new software. Probably.

I finally bit the bullet and have spent the better part of the last three days sorting through almost 600 photos. Probably about 10% are worth sharing. (And I did indeed have to wrassle with new software.)

Don't panic! I'm not going to inflict 60-some pics on you in one swell foop. Nosirree Bob. I'll divide them up into bite-sized posts.

Here in southern Ontario we've enjoyed the first November in over 100 years without snow. But the days grow inevitably grayer and colder.

Here's a fond, pictorial farewell to autumn's golden light. (Click on each if you'd like to see them bigger.)

Some of you may recall my column/post about the Commemorative Forest. Well, that's it there on the right. The forest is now about 12 trees strong. Ish. Nice light across the creek though eh?

The wild rose's red hips are brighter than its blossoms were.

October morning light on the northern path.

 

The squirrels have been extremely active for the last two months, storing and stashing food for the winter. This grey has made good use of the peanuts I leave in his neck of the woods.

I posted a similar photo of the cottage outhouse a year or two ago. I'm pretending I've had requests to see another.

Fall's golden evening light lends beauty to a homely milkweed's seed pod.

It's not hard to imagine the plant enjoying the rays of the setting sun. Ben, ever vigilant, is much too absorbed to notice. The yard MUST remain free of squirrels.

It's this tree, and its immediate environs in our backyard, that Ben watches so keenly. For a time, even mourning doves, like the one roosting here in an upper branch, were sworn enemies. Now, he pretty much specializes in squirrels. By the way, those pie plates? They are yours truly's Anti-Squirrel Devices, designed to keep the bird feeder free of their thievery.

They worked for about an hour and a half.

I flat-out love cedar trees. There. I said it. I've outed myself.

More pics to come in a few days.

Releasing My Inner Artist (#208)

Since I was born without a jot of it, I have a deep admiration for anyone with artistic ability. I’m not being falsely modest. My stick men were, and probably still are, unrecognizable blobs. If fridge magnets had been invented in the 50s, my parents would have been mortified at the prospect of having to display my drawings. Early on in life, I sadly accepted the fact that words would be the only medium open to me for self-expression.

I guess in a way, you folks can blame my artistic inability for the fact you’re reading this.

Sorry.

Anyway... I love art and admire artists. Over the last few years, I’ve begun collecting pieces of various descriptions. Most of them have been purchased at yard sales or flea markets. A handful have come from galleries or directly from the artist. They have very little in common with each other except that many depict animals and each of them spoke to me on some level. Surrounding myself with these carvings and sculptures and paintings and photographs reawakened my long-dampened dream to become an artist myself.

Many years ago, I was tremendously impressed when I read about a sculptor who was asked how he fashioned such lifelike, detailed figures from rock and wood. He said something along the lines of: “If I’m carving a horse, I just remove the pieces of wood or stone that aren’t a horse.”

Simple, eh?

Understand, that at 58 I hold few illusions about myself, my abilities, or lack of same. I didn’t buy paints or modeling clay. Been there - totally sucked - you wouldn’t have wanted the t-shirt.

Nope. I bought myself a fine, three-bladed pocket knife.

This is what it looks like:

Yes, me and that beauty are going to carve ourselves some wood. Now, I’m not fool enough to set my artistic bar overly high. I’m not going to carve a wood nymph being ravished by satyr, much as I might like to contemplate the project. Not right from the get-go, at least. I’ll need a bit of practice.

This is me sitting on the back porch steps with my first piece of raw material - a piece of wood:

Taking a leaf from the aforementioned artist’s book, I decide that what I will do is remove all the bits of wood which are NOT part of what I wish to carve.

After mulling creatively for a moment, I decided to turn this piece of wood into a stick. So, here’s me hard at work reshaping the wood into my artistic vision.

A minute later - told you it was a really good knife - voila! The finished product! A fine-looking stick.

Quite frankly, it wasn’t as difficult as it looks from the pictures.

I guess I’m epter than I thought as an artist. I just struggled for decades to find the right medium.

I’m mulling my next project now. It’s a three-inch long piece of wood about as big around as a pencil. Without hardly squinting at all, I’m pretty sure I see a toothpick in there, wanting to come out.

(All photos courtesy of Son #1)

The Renovator, The Ditherer & The Decider (#207)

There I was a couple of months ago, threatening you folks with more frequent postings and what happens?

Infrequent postings, that's what. Apparently, I fibbed.

Not on purpose, of course. My explanation/excuse is there's lots of work going on in the house. For the first time in 20-some years, much-needed repairs and decorating are transforming the place. But in the meantime, we’re living in chaos. I know, I know -- chaos describes most of the last 20-some years here. But this sort is different. This time there’s real hope for improvement on the other side of the mess. That light might not be an oncoming train at all. Could be a new fixture.

Let’s see...in the last two months I have replaced four sinks and a toilet. There’s new bathroom and kitchen floors and a new front door. The wreckroom ceiling is brand, spanking new. I replaced six light fixtures. As I write this, my living/dining room is about 1/3 hardwood floor, a beautiful, rich-looking, solid oak called “cognac.” (Which is what I want to drink a lot of after listening to a compressor and nail gun all day.)

By the way, I should mention I was using the royal “I” up there. My part in the renovations is swiping my credit card and writing cheques for the contractor. The actual work is being done by BillTheContractorGuy, assisted by Son #2.

(As longtime readers well know, I am not allowed to use power tools of any kind. I can hurt myself just fine with hand ones. Remarkably, #2 is adept with tools and eager to learn all aspects of repair and renovation, including using drills and saws and other lethal devices. DNA is weird, eh?)

Of course, my duties aren’t solely restricted to emptying my wallet. I also get to Frown Importantly while BillTheContractorGuy or a sales clerk from Home Depot are babbling about mortises or beveling or other equally incomprehensible contracting voodoo.

With apologies to George Bush, I am also The Decider. To me falls the burden of choosing flooring and fixtures and whatnot. I don’t know about you folks, but I’m the kind of Decider who prefers to have limited options. If there were only three colours, it would be darn sight easier to decorate.

Which brings me to giant warehouse stores.

I don’t much like giant warehouse stores. But apparently, nowadays, they are about the only places where contracting-type stuff is available.

Lots and lots and lots of it. Like, way more than three colours-worth.

When faced with too darn many choices, The Decider has a tendency to become The Ditherer. It’s difficult to select new light fixtures when there are many dozens to choose from. Especially when the person selecting has never, in his entire life, considered light fixtures beyond hoping they work when the switch is flipped.

Hilary offers a woman’s perspective when she’s here and something needs to be Decided. I always consider her counsel and have even been known to follow it. But she's only here for a couple of days every two weeks. So, more often than not, the burden of choice lies heavy on my shoulders alone.

Mine and the sales clerks from Home Depot.

Thank the gods many of those folks seem to know what they’re talking about! A nice lady helped me pick out the bathroom and kitchen floors and another helped with the front door. Yet another spent a half-hour giving me a crash course in hardwood flooring. She kindly paused whenever she noted my eyes glazing over, and would re-explain, using smaller words.

In any event, by the time all’s dithered and decided, I hope to have new windows, furnace and garage door too - perhaps even before winter sets in.

Unless, of course, there’s more than three kinds of windows, furnaces and garage doors.

I’ll keep you posted. Just not sure when, exactly.

October Is The Best Month Because (#206)

1- Summer’s heat is gone - replaced by pleasant days and cool, almost cold nights. The air smells cleaner and feels lighter.

2- All the major North American sports seasons overlap. On any given day one can watch baseball, hockey, basketball or football. Sometimes, in an eyeball-bending orgy of remote control button mashing, one can watch eight or more games a day. (Not recommended for the casual sports fan. Sprains are common and hernias not unheard of.)

3- Mosquitoes are history ‘til June.

4- The fall colours are spectacular. October is the month in which Mother Nature reverts to childhood and finger paints her world. The lush green of the past several months still exists but now it’s in patches, surrounded by gleeful splashes of yellow, orange, red and brown.

5- Rainbow trout (Steelhead) start staging at the mouths of creeks that empty into the Great Lakes. There are few prettier sights than a crimson-slashed, sliver slab of finned muscle leaping at the end of one’s line.

6- The crowds thin out along my favourite walking paths. The salmon run is over (finally!). Ben and I start having stretches of creek and field to ourselves again.

7- The falling leaves make bird-spotting an easier task.

8- Children are settled back into school. Adults (who don’t teach for a living) seem to be in better humour. Probably not a coincidence.

9- The cool, nearly-cold nights make sitting around a fire more than just a pleasant indulgence. It awakens ancient, dna-deep memories of huddling around flames when doing so was necessary to stay alive.

10- It’s a time of plenty. The last harvests are coming in. Mason jars and other canning equipment appear on store shelves. I don’t “put up” jams or tomatoes or that sort of thing myself but I like to think others are. It reminds me of my youth when my mother and grandmothers prepared goodies that would last through the winter months.

11- Halloween.

12- There’s still two full months before having to panic about Christmas shopping.

I Hab A Bad Code (#205)

But they’re the only kind I bother getting these days. Lemme s’plain.

Years ago, throughout my teens, 20s and 30s, I caught a lot of colds and every other one turned into a tonsil and/or sinus infection. Each bout of infection dragged on for weeks. Seemed I was always on antibiotics. Sometime in my late 30s I started taking garlic tablets daily along with vitamin C.

Back in the day, the famous Dr. Linus Pauling touted the benefits of mega doses of vitamin C. And somewhere I must have read something that convinced me to try garlic tablets as well.

I wasn’t about to emulate Pauling’s dosages of umpteen thousand milligrams a day, though. I started taking a daily dose of 500 mg of C and one garlic tablet (or capsule) which contained the equivalent of one garlic bulb’s goodness.

I haven’t had a sinus or tonsil infection since. Honest to Godfrey Daniel.

I also noticed I was getting fewer colds and found that doubling my dosage at the first sign of a tickly nose or slightly sore throat would often banish the symptoms entirely by the next day.

Although other factors could certainly have come into play, I believe that combination of agents helped eliminate (to date - touch wood!) my infections and prevent many colds.

In other words folks, for the last 20 years I’ve been packing a pretty darned impressive immune system. (Heart attacks don’t count.) When I swagger into a room, bacteria whimper and viruses flee. I radiate robustness.

Mostly.

The problem is, since my aforementioned Stupid Heart Attack (has it really been almost five years already?) I’ve had to take a bunch of pills every day. And I don’t like taking a bunch of pills every day.

Admittedly, it’s a relatively small price to pay for staying alive and I don’t begrudge it much but what happened is I started backing off on my daily garlic and C regimen. I just didn’t feel like adding more pills to the pile. Instead, I’d take a double dose at the first sign of something happening and still usually warded it off.

But alas, I am no longer invulnerable. The toughest, gnarliest, battle-hardened viruses now occasionally find a chink in my armour. The last few years, I’ve been getting a cold every year or eighteen months, almost like normal, non-robust people do.

This latest insidious virus slipped through a crack without triggering an alarm. Before I knew it, come last Sunday evening, I was righteously smote by viral vengeance. Yea, brothers and sisters, I was laid low.

With the suddenness of a summer storm, I was beset by chills, a sore throat, runny nose and streaming eyes. Knowing it was too late, I nevertheless gobbled down a garlic and C, almost - lapsed Catholic that I am - like a desperate Act of Contrition.

I was not saved.

Over the next 48 hours my initial symptoms were joined by headaches, congestion, an overproduction of phlegm and a painfully strained rib cage muscle (an unwelcome and unpleasant byproduct of coughing).

I bought a chicken and fixin’s and made soup. My only other medication was an occasional acetaminophen washed down with a hot toddy. Or maybe three hot toddies. My memory is a tad hazy because I was delirious.

Anyway, today, following a pretty good night’s sleep, I’m happy to report feeling quite a bit better.

And I’ve decided to renew my garlic and C habit. There aren’t that many heart meds, really. I’m down to five a day, from seven, so I really have no excuse.

It may well be that I’ll never get a cold again.

Although, those toddies were good. Kinda like a tonic. Hmm...might be helpful to add them to the garlic and C preventative strategy....

Yes folks, yet again, your kindly servant is prepared to sacrifice himself on the bleeding edge of medical research in order to learn Important Things which he will then, of course, pass on to you.

You’re very welcome.

###

Hot Toddy Recipe: Fill 2/3rds of a large mug (mine holds about 16 ounces or half a litre) with hot/boiling water. Add a capful of lemon juice concentrate, a teaspoon of honey and a generous splash of whisky, spiced rum, or my new favourite, Alpenbitter No. 7. Mix well and sip slowly. Reheat and repeat as necessary.

Yep, Another Excerpt From: Walking With Benny (#204)

First, a bit of background about Jack Russell Terriers, of which Benny is one: Reverend John Russell, of Devonshire, England, originated the breed in the mid-late 1800s. He wanted the perfect dog for hunting foxes. And he pretty much got it. They are compact, strong, agile and intelligent. (Debate, in some circles, still rages over the latter characteristic.) However, most of today's JRTs aren't getting much fox action at all. It's been my experience, via Benny, that they have happily adapted to chasing squirrels as their primary raison d'etre.

9/20/09

There’s a sleek, young-looking black squirrel at the top end of the grove who has begun waiting for me every morning. Or more properly, waiting for my peanuts. I leave two in his territory, one on each of two adjoining cedars. At first I’d rarely see him, but on the return portion of our walk some 20 minutes later, the two peanuts were nearly always gone.

Sometimes I’d spot him on our way back, usually higher up in one of the cedars. But recently, on a couple of occasions, he appeared to shadow me as I walked through the grove, hopping from tree to tree alongside me, some 10-15 feet away. It dawned on me that the little beggar recognized me now and, having stashed or eaten the first two peanuts, was hoping for another for the road.

I’ve always believed diligence should be rewarded. I told him so and left one.

So for about the last week, as Ben and I were on the home leg of our morning walk, there he’d be - all but checking his watch and tapping his foot - awaiting his third peanut.

Unfortunately, a couple of days ago, Ben cottoned on to this. Usually, he’s 30-50 feet ahead of me and intent upon his nose’s business. But on this day, he happened to turn and saw the little guy scurry down the tree trunk to get his bonus treat. So, both yesterday and today, Ben has dashed ahead to those trees, looking for the squirrel who is looking for me. (Okay, my peanut.) As the squirrel clambers down a tree at my approach, Ben tries to clamber up it to meet him. The squirrel is not at all fond of this game and retreats a foot or two.

Ben, of course, interprets this as him winning! So, he redoubles his tree-climbing efforts.

Party pooper that I am, I call a halt to the proceedings by leaving a peanut and calling Ben away.

###

Many of the folks I meet on our walks, especially those who profess familiarity with terriers in general and JRTs in particular, comment on how well Ben listens when off the leash. I adopt an appropriately modest expression and mutter something about it taking a lot of work. And that’s no lie. But I think one practice in particular has helped.

Ben eats two smallish meals a day, morning and evening, and I always walk him before he’s eaten. I theorized that a hungry dog is more apt to want to stay in touch with his meal ticket.

I mean, if a full-bellied, content dog happens upon a really interesting scent that went WAY over thataway, why should he heed that vaguely familiar voice receding in the distance? What the heck does he need you for now?! We’re talking a really interesting scent, possibly a skunk!

So, there’s one of the secrets to becoming a Jack Russell whisperer and I suspect it’s applicable to every breed: Walk a hungry dog.

Sure, he’s going to swallow every rotten salmon egg he comes across but the occasional bit of barfing is better than chasing him all over heck’s half-acre.

Autumn & Arboreal Appreciation (#203)

Well, I wasn’t fibbing. Hilary and I went to the cottage last week and had a fine time. There’s something to love about every time of year up there but autumn is my favourite. Days are still warm, nights cool and refreshing. The surrounding woods are busy with squirrels, chipmunks, raccoons and birds looking to fatten up before weathering winter’s chill, or heading south ahead of it.

The fishing is generally poor but being bathed in warm, golden September sun while keeping an eye out for eagles and other wildlife makes up for it.

And best of all...the mosquitoes are history. Hallelujah and pass the wieners! I love sitting around a fire in the evening but hordes of skitters make doing so unpleasant in the summer months (unless we get a rare, strongish, on-shore evening breeze).

I can’t think of a finer way to celebrate the passing of a beautiful day than sitting around a fire, sipping a soothing beverage, admiring the stars and listening to loons calling goodnight to each other.

So, I spent a portion of every day gathering firewood for that evening’s fire. This involved trundling up the driveway with a wheelbarrow and sorting through the deadfall which blankets the surrounding forest floor.

Much of the wood is punky, having lain too long against the ground and absorbing too much water but a lot of it is fine. Most of my focus is on birch, maple or oak limbs about as big around as my fist but I also gather a lot of finger-width kindling and a handful of wire-thin twigs for starter fuel.

Some of the pieces of wood are up to 12 feet long. The thinner ones I snap with my hands or across my knee. The thicker ones I prop against the wheelbarrow or tree trunk and break with a kick.

Benny, who rarely lets me out of his sight, no longer accompanies me on these missions. I finally scolded him VERY severely one day a couple of years ago. I got fed up with having to wrestle with him for every single piece of wood I touched. Now, he stays with Hilary when I fetch the wheelbarrow.

It takes about a half-hour to 40 minutes to gather a load of wood that will keep burning for a few hours. A half-hour to 40 minutes of bending, stretching, dragging and stomping. It didn’t used to take so long. But apparently gravity’s gotten stronger over the years, resulting in each piece of wood getting slightly heavier and increased effort being required to straighten up again after bending and lifting. I can only surmise that all the scientists are too darn busy focusing on global warming to notice this new threat.

On my third gathering foray, my lower back started yelling at me. It had muttered a tad the day before but I found it easy enough to tune out -- like when your Significant Other is talking about something non sports-related.

There was no ignoring it this time, though. It went from a dull ache to an ouchy cramp in no time. I needed to rest it somewhere for a minute or three.

A nearby poplar, about as big around as me, was listing at about a 25 degree angle. Chances are, it will join its brethren on the forest floor in 10-15 years. For now though, it still had a goodly grip on the soil. I found I could brace my feet on its protruding roots, skootch down a smidge and lean back against its trunk, easing my discomfort considerably.

Greatly appreciative, I thanked the tree and rested against it. Then I began to consider all that trees do for us.

They provide shelter, food, medicine and protection for animals and man. As if that isn’t enough, while they’re at it, they produce oxygen for the whole planet. We use them to build houses and furniture, to make newspapers and toilet tissue. We gather their broken limbs to warm us and cook food and keep us safe against the things that go bump in the night.

We climb them for adventure, enjoy their shade on hot summer days and string hammocks between their trunks.

And sometimes we lean against them to soothe a sore back.

While doing so, and several times since, I tried to think of another form of life nearly so beneficent to mankind. Couldn’t.

Still can’t.

Have you thanked a tree today?