This time of year

Still haven't heard the last of the medical mystery and I am abandoning the whole issue. It occurs to me that the shortage of medical isotopes due to Chalk River shutting down is impacting how fast they can schedule me for a CT scan; when I called the clinic they mentioned that they were triaging appointments so I'm guessing I am way down on the priority list. Personally I take that as good news, they must not think my situation is serious. Nor do I, so I am fine with skipping the whole thing.

The squirrels are having some drama. Not sure exactly, but I think they have another squirrel trying to move in on them. Lots of noise and teeth-clicking going on, and running in and out. They completely ignore me when I remind them of their promise to keep quiet.

With the truck I negotiated the minimum in repairs, which meant no undercoat, but then I changed my mind so now I have to go back for that. Annoying but my own fault.

I want to visit friends in Cape Breton, but their schedule is that they are too busy for visitors between Thursday and Sunday. The only window of opportunity is Monday to Wednesday, and it takes a day to drive there. I could have gone today, except that the only undercoating time slot I could get was either Tuesday or Wednesday of this week. Although after cancelling out on the Cape Breton trip they then told me I could come in on Tuesday of next week for the undercoating. That would have worked better, but it's too late now.

So I am still trying to figure out when to go back to Toronto. I could drive up to Cape Breton next Monday, stay for a couple of days and then leave from there, but that will add an extra day of driving to the trip to Toronto.

Or I could go to CB, return here, and then leave from here right around Hallowe'en.

NOT! If you need to know anything about Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, it's

You.Do.Not.Want.To.Be.On.The.Road.On.Hallowe'en.

No way, no how!

OK, more pics.

This is the little red maple tree in my 'front yard'. It lights the whole place up on the darkest dullest days.


One day the moon was up on a bright sunny day.


My outhouse (now why would I need a curtain? that reflection is curtain enough!)


The Fraser Brook (the other major brook in these woods) down in the vault...


...and up close, looking upstream...


...and down.


In a normal year this brook runs almost dry by August, but this year it has looked like these pics pretty much since July. Except for the yellow leaves of course, that's recent.

And a bright yellow shelf fungus on red rotting wood.


I'm glad I stayed here until now, in spite of the various frustrations. As the guy who delivered my firewood said, This time of year make's it all worthwhile. I've been repeating that comment to everyone I meet around here, it's become a bit of a joke now, people are starting to say it back to me.

This time of year makes it all worthwhile!

Squirrel tales

The female who gnaws the antlers and her mate (I'm assuming "mate", but who knows?) have moved into my porch, behind the stacked firewood. There is no way I can shoo them out of there. I see them coming in with great mouthfuls of nesting material, and I hear them chattering behind the firewood. Little buggers.

I made one last attempt to get them out yesterday and I do believe the verdict is in, it failed.

I could trap them but...

What I did yesterday morning was nail cedar shingles over the two major holes in the porch that they use regularly. They were quite upset by all the hammering, I threw in some extra hammering on the wall next to their nest, yelling, Get out! Get out! I don't want you here, get out! I could hear one or more of them indoors squeaking and scurrying about in what I believe was consternation, and another one of them sat in a tree watching me hammer, squeaking her dismay loudly.

Later, I caught the female gnawing on the antlers and shooed her away; she attempted to exit by her usual route and discovered the way blocked, went on to the second exit and found it also blocked. Then she looked a little panicked. She actually ran straight at me in a last desperate search for another hole, found one, and was gone. If there is one thing this porch has, it's holes, lots of 'em.

Still later in the day I heard two of them knocking around over by the shed (literally knocking around, I could hear things falling off shelves) and thought, Oh good, they are scouting out a new nest location. They can have the shed, I don't care about that.

I went away for a couple of hours and came back. I needed to pee and was crouching on the ground behind the house, when two squirrels approached me. They came down a tree trunk, one at a time, watching me the entire time. They stopped a few feet away from me and just stood there. It was very clear to me that they were begging for their old place back. They were promising to behave. They seemed very sincere but I don't know how much you can trust a squirrel, sincere or otherwise.

But at any rate they're back. And they do seem better behaved. They used to quarrel a lot and generally carry on noisily behind the stacked fire wood, now they are very quiet. They don't come near my stuff, but they do occasionally come out from behind the firewood and look at me. There's been no gnawing on the antlers.

Of course the trap is always an option. The trouble is that I will soon be gone and with all the holes in the porch, there is nothing preventing a return, or a new set of squirrels moving in. So what's the point.

And I counted three of them; I just don't even want to know what kind of arrangement they have going on back there.

Joy

This morning Wilfred delivered two cords of firewood to my place. He said he would arrive between 8.30 and 9am, but he was knocking on my door at 8.15am.

I walked with him out to where his truck full of firewood was, I said how lovely the weather was and he said, Yes, September and October are the best months of the year. They make it all worthwhile.

A surprising response but I kind of agree. this time of year makes it all worthwhile. There's a crispness, the air seems clearer and colours so much brighter, it's cold in the morning and cold in the evening and in between it's just right.

The mosquitoes are gone! Over the weekend they all disappeared! I can sit outside and read a book! And I love the nip in the air, it's invigorating and the smell of the woods is sharper. I love setting the fire in the evening and then in the morning waking up in the cold and quickly getting out of bed and downstairs to set a match to the waiting kindling.

I just feel a quiet joy, I haven't felt that in a while. It's wonderful.

The hummingbirds are gone too, alas, I suppose they have all headed south for the winter. But the blue jays are active, I enjoy their flashing blue in my dooryard.

I once went to an exhibit at the ROM of fossil dinosaurs from China, and they had fossils of primitive birds, half way between dinosaurs and modern birds. There was a mock-up of what one of them might have looked like alive, it was a bird with four wings! Both its forelegs and its hindlegs were great feathered wings. The model was shown with blue feathers, it was quite pretty. And these blue jays remind me of that ancient four-winged bird. Seeing them flitting through the yard makes me think of the very first birds.

Wilfred chatted about having delivered firewood here for over twenty years, he rhymed off the names of some of the people who have lived here, most of whom I knew. He asked me what I did, was I a writer? An artist? I said, No, I don't do anything. He said, Oh that's good! Very good! Then he told me about someone he just met who was a pea picker. He makes $20 an hour picking peas. That's impressive. Wilfred then said this same guy makes $100 a day picking blueberries. Highbush blueberries, you don't have to bend down. I said, Good to know, always good to hear about ways to make money, just in case.

The mother squirrel who gnaws on the antlers I am sure is either pregnant or lactating.

We've gotten fairly friendly, she occasionally calls out to me and we "chat". When she's gnawing the antlers I get within a couple of feet of her, but outdoors she prefers I stay about 10 feet away. Two of her youngsters from the previous litter are still around, one of them was throwing pine cones at me this morning. Well, I don't think he was aiming for me, but for some reason he had decided to throw a whole bunch of them down where I happened to be walking.

Yesterday I bought more stuff for the outhouse, some battens and screws. But the screws were the wrong size so I had to go back today to get the proper size. And of course, when I got to the hardware store and picked out the right screws and took them to the cashier, I realized I had forgotten my wallet.

The cashier laughed and said, Know anybody whose account you could charge it to? Well, actually I do, but I didn't think they'd be impressed. But I had an emergency credit card and used that instead.

I have this one credit card I only use when I have no other choice, I keep it separate from my wallet and it has come in handy a few times under exactly these circumstances. I happen to dislike this particular credit card company so I don't like to give them my business, but having this card has proven a godsend enough times that I have been reluctant to get rid of it altogether.

Tomorrow Nancy and I are going paddling on Black River Lake. I was planning to do some repairs on my kayak, but I guess I'll postpone that to another time. This will be a wonderful time to go paddling.

The squirrels, the antlers and me

For some strange reason the squirrels around here are becoming quite tame. I don't think I am encouraging it, but I admit I have not tried to trap or poison them so maybe they take that as a friendly sign. But when I go to use the facilities outdoors, invariably one of them is watching me from a tree. They usually talk to me (in squirrel language) and sometimes I talk back. Today a squirrel halfway up a nearby tree came all the way down to the lowest limb, about four feet off the ground, to talk to me. No idea what he was on about. Didn't seem upset or anything, just chatting. I think he realized I hadn't a clue what he was talking about, after a minute or so he went back up the tree and disappeared. It might be one of the youngsters, I'm pretty sure it wasn't the mother.

They still come into the porch to gnaw on the deer antlers. Every time I hear one of them I go out there and yell at it, although these days I don't even have to yell, I just open the door and look at it. The antlers are on the wall right beside the door.

So, they have this funny routine. When I first open the door the squirrel jumps off the antlers and scurries along a high shelf and out a hole in the wall above the outside door. Before its last leg has disappeared out the hole, the damn thing turns around and comes back! Comes right back to the antlers. I just stand there staring at it, it pauses to think about the wisdom of its actions, then it actually dithers, trying to decide whether to run away or go back to the antlers.

At which point I usually say something like, What, are you nuts? Get out of here! And it does.

This happens two or three times a day. Maybe twenty or thirty seconds a day of gnawing on antlers are all they need, what do I know. In any case the antlers are showing a bit of wear but they are still intact. I can always bring them indoors if it gets bad, but so far I am reluctant to find out what they'll go after if the antlers disappear.

Family break-up

I went away for a couple of days and apparently the squirrel family has split up. Mama must have weaned the babies, she doesn't come around to gnaw on the antlers anymore, but the older youngster has moved in with me. On my porch that is. This morning when I went outdoors to pee, he was sitting up in a tree and tried to bonk me with a pinecone! Little brat!

I'd shoo him away but I can't get at him, he's moved in behind the firewood, roll roofing and 2x4s, and he took the nesting material with him. I tried to reach in there with a mop handle, but it didn't faze him, I could hear him skittering around to avoid getting hit but he never came out. I notice he's been chewing the cardboard wrappers on the roofing material. I don't think he'll chew the roofing or 2x4s, but there's a couple of pairs of snowshoes he might get interested in. That would be bad, they're handmade by Mike.

God gave us rain to get things done

Yet another tropical storm moving through here, we had a great downpour on Tuesday but this one is supposed to be even heavier. We can expect to see daylight on Sunday, whoopee.

The squirrel family has vacated the premises, however the mother returns periodically to gnaw on a set of deer antlers hung in the porch. Crazy squirrel. I have left a message with the owners of the house, asking how important those antlers are to them anyway, should I be protecting them with my life or can I let her gnaw away to her heart's content?

[Mike tells me that rodents eat discarded antlers for the calcium; it makes sense that a nursing mother would be gnawing on these antlers, even trying to make her nest nearby! However he says best to discourage her, it can only end badly if I end up having to resort to desperate measures to keep her out of the house]

The blue jay population here has exploded, all of a sudden I have eight at a time arriving at the feeder. They are remarkably civilized though, the finches and juncoes continue to use the feeder unmolested by the jays.

Today I had to take down the hummingbird feeder to replenish the syrup, and I saw one of the hummers investigating the seed feeder while it was down. There was a goldfinch in the seed feeder, the hummer came right up to the goldfinch and hung in the air inches away from it for several seconds, as if speculating on whether it was worth chasing off the goldfinch for the sake of seeds it can't eat. Those little hummers are crazy!

Sheila and I managed to get in a dog walk before the rain got really heavy, it may be a couple of days before we get out again. Sheila says her brother used to say, God gave us rain so we could get things done. Well, with all this rain, She sure must want a lot done!

Anyway. The big news is that I have more or less gotten the go-ahead to start building a tiny house on a flatbed trailer. I have a source for a trailer (kind of) lined up, thanks to Sheila's husband Alden, and a location to build at, thanks to Mike and Fritz. Basically the same place as where I built the kayak last year, the Garden House. So today in the rain I have been doodling plans.

I am thinking about getting a trailer custom made, which Alden tells me will only be a bit more expensive than buying one new. I suppose I could buy a used trailer but I don't really want to mess around hunting down the exact trailer I want. I don't know yet if it is doable or if the cost is really reasonable, but that is the next thing on my list, talk to people who know such things.

I came up with this idea well over a year ago, almost two years ago, and at the time there was a little bit of information on the internet but not a lot. One guy, Jay Shafer, building them on the west coast, and another guy, Kevin Rose, who built one in Vermont. Since then the idea has really taken off and there are all kinds of websites devoted to the idea and implementation. I've mentioned the idea to a lot of people and several have actually known what I was talking about. An idea whose time has come I guess.

There are lots of pros and cons to the idea but it is something I just want to do, something I have wanted to do for awhile. Of course buying a ready-made trailer home would probably be cheaper, but this is not about the money. I just want to do it.

For what it would cost to build this house on a trailer, I could probably build a larger cabin, the fact that it is on a trailer makes it cost more; below a certain size there are no cost savings in going small. But it is portable. But I will need a bigger stronger vehicle than I have to move it. Alden points out that it will not be all that stable on highways, it will be vulnerable to big winds and buffeting by passing semis. But I don't plan to spend a lot of time on highways with it. I like that it is tiny, I've been slowly downsizing for a number of years and this seems like the next logical step. In the past 15 years I've gone from a 3-bedroom rowhouse to a 2-bedroom condo to a 1-bedroom walk-up, why not a trailer next?

This past winter I've been doing some internet research on materials and furnishings for this trailer, and since arriving here I've been browsing around for tiny fridges and freezers and so forth. You can get tiny composting toilets, even tiny hand-run washing machines! Marine stores are good sources for stuff for tiny living spaces.

So God gave us rain to get things done, I am using the rain to doodle my tiny house on a trailer.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
For a really comprehensive source on the tiny house "movement", go to the Tiny House Blog.

Kevin Rose's tiny house.

Cohabitation

A few days ago I heard noises apparently coming from a cupboard in my kitchen, and at first I thought it might be a mouse or some other rodent. But it turned out to be a squirrel on the outside of the house. I scared it off and wondered what exactly it was doing, the noise it made sounded like digging or scratching.

Today I surprised her inside my porch and she screeched and carried on for some time about that, then I saw that she had a youngster with her and he was actually between her and me so I guess she was trying to distract me and at the same time instruct him to move to a safer location.

Eventually the two squirrels retreated into a tree and the noise died down.

Then I saw the nest that she had built on top of a cupboard in the porch. Half leaves, half pink insulation, I now know what all that digging and scratching was about. She had found or made a hole into the wall and was helping herself to nesting material.

I thought that I did not want squirrels living in the porch so I started scraping the nest off the cupboard. Turns out the youngster was in the nest and he totally freaked. He tried to hide behind the cupboard. He thought I couldn't see him, but his bum was hanging down below the cupboard, inches from my face.

Then the mother appeared, with a large furry bundle in her mouth and wrapped over her shoulder, a small tail hanging down like a man's tie. She took in the scene, the nest scattered on the floor, the youngster screeching behind the cupboard and me standing there with a file in hand that I had been using to destroy the nest.

She turned and ran with her little bundle. I followed her out and watched her leap into a tree and then from tree to tree until she disappeared into the forest with her little bundle.

At that point I began to rethink the whole thing. Here she is, one youngster trapped in the porch and the other in her mouth; for some reason she has abandoned or had to abandon her old nest for this new one in my porch, but things are not working out too well and now she can't rescue one youngster without abandoning the other.

I thought, is there a good reason why I don't want that nest in my porch?

Well, I don't want her digging holes in the insulation, but obviously that is already a done deal, and I don't want her digging around in my food (and clothing). But I don't think there is anything in the porch that she can damage. If one of them were to try to get into the house proper that would be another thing, but for now, there really is no good reason to keep her out of the porch. And she knows I'm right there and aware of her, not about to move away.

So I rebuilt the nest. Some time later I saw two of them up on the cupboard watching me, then later none. I'm not sure whether she has decided it's too risky or not, but I have seen her return to the nest. I don't know if the youngsters are there, they are staying quietly under cover if they are.

I snapped some pictures of her and the nest, I think the repeated flash has scared or annoyed her away for now. The one youngster seems bold and independent enough to fend for himself, the other I am not sure about, all I saw of him was his bum and tail wrapped around the mother's neck like a lopsided stole.

Rambling on in the rain

All that stuff about a typical day? I take it back. That's only typical if IT'S NOT RAINING. And that's not typical.

Bah humbug.

Gotta hand it to those blue jays though, they come regular as clockwork, rain or shine. I'm pretty sure now that they are a parent and two offspring, they are always together and one is always in charge. I never see just one blue jay anymore, or even just two blue jays. Always the three of them together.

Today I'm getting ready for a kayak trip tomorrow. Put the kayak on the truck roof. Remembered that something I've been meaning to do before the next kayak trip is to put handles on the rope loops at the bow and stern, and it just so happens there's some tubing in the shed that will be perfect for that. So I was going to make the handles. Do you think I could find that darn tubing?

When I first saw it, it was hanging on the wall inside the shed with just enough garbage and junk between me and it for me not to be able to reach it. So I spent a whole day clearing out that shed and rearranging stuff in there and getting rid of the garbage, all so I could reach that tubing.

So today, when I finally decide to use it, it's not there. I figure I must have moved it when I cleared out the shed, makes sense that I would move it to the house in preparation for using it, right? But it's not in the house and it's not in the shed. Well, actually it was in the shed but it took three trips back and forth (in the rain...) looking for it before I finally saw it in another location in the shed. For some reason I moved it, but not to any place useful, just another location. Mutter, mutter, grumble. Bah humbug.

I found Malcolm Gladwell's website and I've been reading some of his New Yorker essays. He keeps pounding home the same message:

We tell ourselves that skill is the precious resource and effort is the commodity. It's the other way around. Effort can trump ability ... because relentless effort is in fact something rarer than the ability to engage in some finely tuned act of [skill].

~"How David Beats Goliath", May 11 2009

That's what his book Outliers says too, putting in the time and effort is what makes a genius, not innate skill. He even gives it a number: 10,000 hours.

That idea pleases me no end.

White squirrels of Trinity Bellwoods

On my birthday last weekend we went to the Dakota Tavern for Bluegrass Brunch, and then afterwards we went for a walk in Trinity Bellwoods Park.

There are some albino squirrels living there and Isaac managed to get a couple of photos of one that we saw. Here's the best picture.






It kind of looks like a white rat, until you see the tail.