Status update

I have been sick now for over 10 days. Pretty sure it's not covid-19 but no way to know for sure as the only people being tested are recent arrivals from away or their contacts who display the typical symptoms, and I don't fall into either of those categories. Which is fine, I am practicing social distancing and washing my hands and all that, and a couple of neighbours have offered to do grocery shopping for me. I don't feel like I am mortally ill, just not very well.

One of the most bothersome things is the level of anxiety. The other night I started obsessing about symptoms, and whether or not I have the virus. I kept looking stuff up on the internet and at one point I looked up anxiety. Bingo! At least half of what I am experiencing could easily be attributed to anxiety. How do you separate out what is real illness and what is the physical effects of anxiety?

So now I am in effect social isolating. There are certain people who raise my level of anxiety so I am not calling or responding to calls from them. Not that I dislike them, I just can't handle how those conversations affect me right now. I think we all have to forgive friends and family for being less than perfect, but in trying times we also have to protect ourselves.

All parks are closed, including the Reservoir. So no walking the dog there. I miss all the other dogs, as does Hapi. Today we met one of her buddies out for a walk and the two dogs wanted to walk together. Ironically both dogs are large and both owners are small; it was a bit of a tug-of-war to separate them. The other dog whined at the injustice of it all and Hapi dug in her feet and refused to move. If I am not careful she can slip out of her collar because I can't tighten it up enough without choking her. She knows that.

Photo notes: someone hung a bunch of teeny weeny bird houses in the woods at the Reservoir. These pics are from before the park was closed and also before our latest big snow storm.

Hurrah for January

Yippee! It's January! I know I am supposed to make some new year's resolutions, or goals for the coming year or something like that, but I am so happy that December is now A Thing Of The Past that all I really want to do is wallow in that pleasure. It's over. I am happy. I just had a cup of tea reclined in my lounger reading The New Yorker. I am way behind in my reading so this is only the December 2nd issue, but it is rather nice to read about what made headlines in December knowing that they are now a thing of the past.

Last night I went for supper and card games at a neighbour's place. The weather was truly crappy but knowing that I did not have far to travel to get home made me feel quite secure. Of the seven women—myself included—I knew only three others and I think that was true for most of us, except our host who presumably knew us all otherwise why did she invite us? It was interesting to engage in conversation with women you knew and didn't know. When the conversation turned to cats I was bored (not a cat lover), and when it went to dogs no doubt the cat lovers were bored. But we all put on interested faces. None of us were born here and two of the women currently live in Alberta and the NWT. A bunch of us grew up in Ontario and one woman hails from Switzerland. Three women were sisters living in different parts of the country and enjoying an annual reunion. None of the sisters ever married or had children, they are known in their family as The Three Aunts and are apparently quite popular amongst the nieces and nephews.

One woman came in the throes of a cold, which I didn't realize until some time after I sat down beside her at the dinner table. At first I hoped it was just an allergy but eventually she confessed to feeling rotten and left the party muttering about wishing she were dead. Oh joy. But the food was excellent, and the rest of us managed to hang in there until midnight when the champagne was poured and we toasted the new year. These days staying awake that long is an accomplishment! Today I am dosing myself with vitamin C and Oil of Oregano (my go-to respiratory infection preventative).

A couple of days ago I got an email from my walking group saying that we would be walking at the Reservoir on New Year's Day. I wrote to our leader advising that the trails there were icy and maybe he could suggest to the group to bring ice grippers. He did not. This morning Hapi and I went early and walked a bit on the ravine bike trails before meeting the group near the ponds. Half of them did not have ice grippers, including the leader. 

I asked him if he got my email and he looked stunned. Yes, he got it but he didn't recognize my (new) name so he disregarded it! I stared at him. You ignored it because you didn't recognize my name? He said that he didn't recognize the name and thought whoever it was probably didn't know what they were talking about. If he had known it was me of course he would have relayed the information to everyone else. I rolled my eyes at him and suggested that perhaps next time he ought not to be so judgmental. 

The walk was cut off early because half the walkers were having a lot of difficulty with the ice without ice grippers. Hapi and I stayed on to walk with our eldest dogwalker (93 years old) who was fully equipped with ice grippers and ski poles. We laughed about it.

On the sad news front, one of the regular dogs has been diagnosed with what Hiro died of. His owner will bring him to the Reservoir as long as he is able, but his days are numbered. Already he is refusing to eat. He is one of my favourites, I tell people he is a cross between Ferdinand the Bull and Eeyore. Very sweet dog.

Pre-Christmas newsletter...

It's been a good news/bad news kind of week, but I guess that's normal for this time of year. Going shopping for the necessaries is torturous due to all of the seasonal gift shoppers out and about. I have kept my own gift shopping minimal; in one short hour I went on Amazon to pick out five gifts—four for grandchildren and one for a distant terminally ill long time friend—and had them gift wrapped and shipped to various parts of the country. Sons and their wives will get Amazon gift certificates on the 24th. Easy-peasy if a little ethically compromised. I'd just as soon skip the whole thing but right now might not be the time for it. Maybe next year…

Hapi is cruising along uneventfully, her limp comes and goes. She has discovered garbage which I suspect is deliberately being left out for her, someone out there likes to see her snooping around their back yard and is encouraging her illicit activities (the garbage was not only not in a bin but carefully placed in what looks like a dogfood bowl!). Now that there is a bit of snow on the ground I can track her and managed to catch her in the act, so now she is locked into my back yard. The picture above is her looking morose about her captivity.

After years of sending unreciprocated Xmas cards I decided to give it up this year, and then two of my dogwalking buddies gave me cards at the Reservoir. Now I am considering rushing out to buy cards to give back. Who knew we would become a little community of card-exchanging friends?

The ponds are now at their most dangerous, covered in ice that looks thick enough to walk on but really is not. Hapi learned her lesson long ago and avoids ice-covered bodies of water like the plague, but many younger dogs don't know any better. Then dog owners attempt to rescue their dogs with the not unexpected results, soaking wet and freezing cold humans and dogs.

The park maintenance guys have been busy doing post-Dorion clean-up and over the past few weeks have come to know all the regular dogs. They stop their chipping machine when we walk by to chat and pet the dogs; the dogs have come to look forward to these little encounters. The other day one of the guys was asking after one dog in particular who they hadn't seen in a while and we realized that we hadn't either. The dog's health has been iffy lately so we wondered if something bad had happened. But that very same morning the dog showed up with his owner, who explained their absence as a happy event. They were off in PEI celebrating her 65th birthday.

The bad news is two-fold. One is finding out about the terminally ill friend mentioned previously. That was shocking. I have been debating going to see her (she lives on the opposite coast), but leaving Hapi behind is problematic and taking her with me is out of the question. So for now our relationship will be confined to the telephone.

The other is regular visits with B, who is in terrible shape. Can't move, can't breathe, can't sleep. All efforts to get her help have either failed, been put on hold due to the holiday season (!!!) or been sabotaged by B herself. It is so depressing and makes me so angry that I am almost beside myself after such visits. I fantasize about angry calls to various authorities but am afraid I will only make matters worse if I follow through on such fantasies. Three times in the past few weeks her son has called an ambulance to take her to Emerge because he can't move her himself. At $140 a pop it's an expensive proposition and they have no money. I said to him, well, they can't get blood from a turnip so keep those bills coming. Maybe someone will take notice of her if she becomes a regular ambulance user. He agrees.

Ice

A few days ago Hapi and I were on the trail where the ravens have been tearing up the pine tree branches. A raven in the woods whistled. Hapi responds to whistles (I can't whistle so I can't take advantage of that) so she went tearing off into the woods. She went right to the tree where the raven was perched but she did not look up, she didn't see the raven. The raven was looking down at her, kind of surprised I guess. He wasn't intending to call her. I thought Hapi would come back when she couldn't find the whistler but she did not, she went further into the forest where I couldn't see her. I continued walking, calling her occasionally so she would know where I was, and eventually she reappeared.

The next day I went into the woods where she had been the day before to see if I could find whatever had attracted her after the whistling raven. I found an area of trampled snow, lots of rabbit tracks. Hapi went into the midst of the rabbit tracks to sniff around and I looked to see how big the trampled area was. There were no other tracks, just the rabbit tracks. I'm guessing there is a warren in there somewhere. I mentioned it to a friend who asked if I saw coyote tracks as well but I didn't. The coyotes don't know about this yet.

Yesterday a major storm passed through here, coming from Toronto the day before. In the morning it snowed and was very cold, but since I knew it was going to rain later in the day I took Hapi to the park in the snow. At one point it was snowing so heavily that it was like fog, you could hardly see anything. I decided to walk across the long pond since it is well frozen and people have cleared a skating rink on it. Hapi doesn't like walking on the frozen pond, she knows the risks. She once went through the ice in the Wolfville harbour in January and had to walk home drenched in freezing water. Anyway, she came with me but made it clear she did not consider it safe. She started growling. Ahead of us on the other side of the pond I could just make out two human forms on the ice. Getting closer I saw that they were hardcore skaters with big shovels clearing the snow off the rink. That's what Hapi was growling at, she thought that was really suspect behaviour. I stopped to chat with them about the ice, they were hoping that if they cleared the snow then later when it rained nice smooth ice would form.

When I got home I shovelled the snow off my driveway in hopes that the rain would wash everything away and my driveway would be bare afterwards. But it did mean that it was very icy for awhile. After the snow transitioned to rain Hapi came indoors. She doesn't mind sleeping in the snow but the noise of rain on the deck roof bothers her. In the evening it warmed up dramatically. I went outside and left the door open, just to be in the open warm air. Could barely see the moon. If I had been able to stay awake past midnight I might have seen the lunar eclipse. Maybe. The forecast was for heavy rain through the night so the chances weren't great.

This morning most of the snow was gone. It was cooler than the previous evening but still above zero. We went to the park. The trails were totally icy and optimistically I had not brought my Icers. You could have skated on the trails! I met a couple of other dog walkers and we set out on one trail that didn't look too bad, however once out of sight of the parking lot it turned to a sheet of ice. The other walkers decided to turn back but one of them loaned me her walking stick to continue on.

There are two ways to walk on ice. One is the Old Lady Shuffle and the other is just sliding. I can slide on ice that is relatively smooth but if the ice is bumpy or has a lot of debris in it then the Old Lady Shuffle is best. Either way you have to go slowly. The stick helped. We made it all the way around both ponds but I did not dare go onto the bike trails because they are too steep. At one point I was walking uphill on ice toward the parking lot and the only decent foothold I could get was on some of the dog poop on the side of the trail. People are supposed to pick up after their dogs but obviously not everybody does that. Walking on it was better than trying to walk on the icy slope!

At the parking lot a friend arrived in her car with her big Pyrenees dog. Lulu is bigger and younger than Hapi and just wants to play; Hapi is not interested in playing but she does like the company of other big dogs. I told Lulu's owner E about the ice but she thought she'd try it anyway because she was wearing ice grippers. Not as good as the Icers though. We got a little ways down the trail before she gave up and we turned back to the parking lot.

It is supposed to get really cold tonight. The skaters will get their wish, the ice on the pond will be perfect. And I will not be forgetting to bring my Icers, it is going to be very icy for the foreseeable future.

Animal Control Bylaw

I'm slowly getting to the end of the 1998 road trip chronicle, there are only a couple of weeks' entries left and most of them are short. I am quite frankly bored with the process and looking forward to the end. The journey itself was wonderful but the writing about it is not. Oh well, nearly done!!

Last week my dog crossed the street in front of my house by herself, I did not see her go. She likes to sit on the front porch in the early morning and watch the world go by, and then she goes down behind a bush and sleeps in the grass until it is time for her morning walk. But last week was a little cooler than usual and I guess she was feeling a little friskier than usual so she crossed the road. There's a fire hydrant there that passing dogs leave little urine posts at, I guess she was checking the mail.

Anyway as luck would have it a young woman who is terrified of dogs was walking by and encountered my dog. I did not see what happened but the net result is that the young woman complained vigourously to my neighbour and then later to the animal control officer (for brevity, 'aco' from here on out). My neighbour relayed the complaint to me, it was mostly about how dogs ought not to be allowed to run loose.

A couple of days ago the aco came by but Hapi and I were at the dog park so she left a note saying that my dog had been seen running loose and engaging in "annoying behaviour" and I should call her immediately. Which I did. It wasn't her actual phone number, so I had to leave a number for her to call me back. Which she did.

First I got the lecture about keeping my dog under control at all times (and have I read the dog bylaw?), and then about having my dog licensed (which she is, I duly gave the aco my dog's license number), and finally about her aggressive behaviour (and have I read the dog bylaw?). If I had been on the ball I would have asked what specifically my dog's "aggressive behaviour" was but I was not.

The aco said, She was barking?

I said, She's a malamute, she doesn't bark. Then I said, Have you met my dog? Do you even know what you are talking about?

She said, No but I would like to, are you home during the day?

I said, You'd have to call, we are in and out.

So she told me that she was giving me a warning, that she was writing up the complaint and it would be filed against my dog's name, and if there was another complaint, it would get serious. She didn't specify, other than to say, Have you read the dog bylaw?

So after the conversation I read the dog bylaw. I had read it before and it is not pleasant reading but I thought I better touch all bases. I read the damn thing.

If there is a bylaw more draconian and punitive, I don't know what it would be. Lots of references to "seize and destroy". Basically the aco has the authority to seize and destroy any dog she deems dangerous, without notifying the owner. "Dangerous" is defined as meaning among other things, capable of aggressive behaviour. No proof of actual behaviour is required, and there is certainly no recourse or appeal process.

I went down town and visited the post office and several stores, ran into lots of people I know and repeated the gist of the conversation. Without exception the reaction was, This dog? Are you sure they know what they are talking about? One merchant offered to start a petition if necessary, and admonished me never to read bylaws, it would utterly destroy my faith in humanity. Got that right.

I understand that in this world animals do not have rights, or nothing compared to human rights. But if you were to take the dog bylaw and substitute the word "Jew" or "Indian" for the word "dog" you would get an inkling of my terrified reaction to reading the bylaw. Our town bylaw was derived from the county bylaw which I also read and it is even worse. Among other things it doesn't say "seize and destroy", it says "kill on sight".

I know dogs don't have human rights, I know we humans run this world and we dictate how all other creatures shall be treated. Consider faith in humanity destroyed. How can we talk about saving endangered species when we can't even get it right with our pets?

The clincher for all this is that the contract for animal control bylaw enforcement in this county is held by the SPCA. The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Faith in humanity dead as a doornail.

Saturday June 20, 1998 - Yukon

Snafu Lake, from my bed in the back of the truck

Tatchin Creek - sunny to overcast

I woke at Snafu Lake to a fabulous view of the lake. But on the other side of my truck was a little Boler trailer, blocking the way out of my campsite. It must have arrived after I went to sleep. I had a leisurely breakfast of oatmeal and around 10.30 am said goodbye to Ray and Laurena who were headed out. We exchanged home addresses and they invited me to come visit them in Victoria when I got back from my cross-Canada trip. That felt far more complete than at Boya Lake and I haven't felt any regret or sadness since. They were keeping Sparky very close by because there was a large eagle that appeared to have its eye on the little dog. After Atlin they were going to Whitehorse to a clinic to get Ray's lungs checked out, he's been wheezing a lot which he blames on the cottonwood pollen. Then they were going to go to Alaska. Laurena thought we might run into each other again in Inuvik since we both hoped to go there.

The two women in the little Boler trailer did not get up until after Ray and Laurena had left. I chatted with them for a while and ended up exchanging addresses with them as well. They are teachers in Whitehorse and this is the last week of school. On Friday night they decided that they would go kayaking in Atlin over the weekend. But they didn't leave Whitehorse until after 1 am and arrived at Snafu Lake around 3 am. They also liked the campsite on the sandy hilltop and proceeded to back into it with the trailer, nearly hitting my truck which they didn't see there until the last moment. I slept through it and they decided to just stay there rather than find another spot. They showed me around their trailer, it had a double bed which converted to a dinette, a couch and a kitchenette. Very cute. They bought it in Ontario for $3000.

The old Montague Roadhouse on the Klondike Highway

After the women had their breakfast and were ready to leave I was able to get out too and head back up to Whitehorse. I got gas and headed up the Klondike Highway for Dawson.

Yukon River, from the Klondike Highway

Around 5.30 pm I stopped at Tatchun Creek, just past Carmacks. Almost immediately the two women in the next campsite, Charlotte and Nona, came over to ask for bug spray. Then they came back with beer. I met their two dogs, Snorri and Elsinor and got the tour of their trailer which was similar to the Boler at Snafu Lake. It was a Glendale which they bought for $500. They are on the Klondike Highway road crew, chipsealing the highway. Chipseal is a stabilized gravel road with a lot of calcite in it (which rots steel the same way road salt does). Charlotte is from Tagish and Nona from Carcross but in the summer they work on the road crew and live where they work. Right now they are working on the section of highway between Carmacks and Dawson.

Nona and Charlotte went across the highway to walk the dogs along the Yukon River. After I had my supper I headed down to the river too and found them with a couple of young German campers sharing their beer in honour of the summer solstice. The bugs were bad. At one point we heard a rockfall on a loose gravel and sand slope further down the river. Charlotte and Nona debated whether it was spontaneous or caused by someone or something walking on the cliff. A canoe went by, part of a race from Skagway to Dawson, and we greeted them. They must have wondered about five people on the shore in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere.

Later we went back to camp, Nona crashed and Charlotte and I stayed up till 3 am talking around the fire. Charlotte lives alone in a log cabin she built in Tagish Lake. She's very independent and prides herself on being an eccentric Yukoner. She had a black eye acquired the day before at a baseball game. I gather this has been an intense week for her between that, crashing into the chipper truck, and an altercation with the boss's girlfriend. At 3 am Nona got up and they had their supper of sausage, hotdogs and salad. then we all went to bed, around 5 am. It's so easy to stay up late because of the light; it seemed a little dim but I had no idea of the time.

Dirt Tales

In the ravine

I spent last weekend hauling dirt. The local Big Box building supply place had "topsoil" (it's a mix of stuff so not really topsoil) on sale at $0.98 a bag. I could only get 20 bags in the car at a time so it involved numerous trips as I required about 2 cubic yards of the stuff. I was going to order real topsoil which would have been delivered loose by truck, but I did the math and figured that the bagged stuff was comparable in price and way more handy to move around. Just so you know, it takes 30.6 25-litre bags to make one cubic yard (Yay internet!). Volume-wise I could have fit more than 20 bags into the car, but weight-wise I couldn't.

I took Hapi along for the ride(s). Just so happens that the building supply place is dog-friendly so she could go inside on-leash and wander around outside off-leash while I got my dirt loaded. Lots of dog treats involved. On Saturday there was a hotdog stand outside the store and Hapi snagged a couple of hotdogs, which she much prefers over dog treats.

From the parking lot you can get into the ravine where I used to take Hapi regularly for walks. So at one point we did that too. Still some ice on the ground there though, so it was a bit tricky. I don't go there very often any more.

When I was walking through the store a woman came up behind me and said, "Is this Hapi?" I turned and looked at her, she looked vaguely familiar but I couldn't quite place her. "Bodhi," she said. Oh of course, she's the owner of the big black Great Dane named Bodhi! I used to run into her often in the ravine. I asked after Bodhi but sadly he had died at a young age; she now has two new Great Danes. Hapi was scared of Bodhi because he was so big, about the only dog Hapi was ever scared of. But Bodhi was very friendly, he'd lean up against you to be petted and just about knock you over he was so big. Like a small pony.

Funny how I remember dog names but not their owners, I still have no idea what that woman's name is.

The dirt was for filling in a couple of sinkholes left from the sewer line excavation in the front yard last fall. So in between trips to the dirt store I was dumping bags of dirt into the holes. Two days of that and it was exhausting, I'd come indoors at suppertime and collapse. But the new soaker tub and Epsom salts came in handy. I was planning to put in grass seed when the dirt settled but one passerby who stopped to watch me work suggested a garden in one of the holes instead and I think I will do that. Not that I need any more garden beds, but I have too many hosta in the back yard that desperately need dividing so some of them could move to the front yard.

I ended up with closer to 4 cubic yards of dirt and composted manure (also on sale) when all was said and done, a lot of that is still sitting in the driveway awaiting good ideas for how to use it. Just couldn't resist the sale price. But I got the holes filled just in time for a major rainstorm to settle it all in, so I was happy with that.

Old photos on a rainy day

(Storm over Balsam Lake, Ontario, late 1980s)

Today is Canada Day and it is pouring rain out. The summer season is always a very busy time for me and every day that it does not rain I have outdoor chores to take care of: yard work, gardening, firewood, dog walking, painting and repairs... So when a spate of rain happens I am grateful for the chance to cease all of that busyness. Why I'm here now.

(Leaving Yellowknife, 1973)

One of my sons recently started a new job flying medevac out of Yellowknife, specifically the Stanton Territorial Hospital, which is where he was born. My husband and I lived in YK for two summers and a winter; I got pregnant almost as soon as we arrived and we left a year and a bit later with a toddler and an infant (toddler came with us to YK as a soon-to-be-walking baby). Anyway, the grown son with the flying job works two weeks on and two weeks off, returning to his family in Alberta between shifts. When he's not actually in the air he spends a lot of time hanging out in YK, so he asked me for photos of what YK was like when I lived there. He wanted to revisit some of the locations and photograph what it looked like now. I have watched 'Arctic Air' on TV, an adventure show set in YK, so I know that there has been a lot of change. I recognize a few places and the general landscape but the town has grown and changed a lot.

(scanning...)

A couple of days ago I posted all the photos I had online to Facebook, then yesterday, also a rainy day, I went through my old print photo albums looking for more. Those albums are all higgledy piggledy because over time I have raided them for photos to scan to digital format and then neglected to return to their proper albums. I pulled out all the Yellowknife photos to scan, then posted some them on Facebook so my son could retrieve them. One of the photos was actually a postcard showing an aerial view of the town. I don't remember when I acquired that postcard, it may or may not have been when we actually lived there. But it's a pretty close approximation of what the town was like then. Unfortunately it does not show the part of YK we lived in over the winter and second summer.

(aerial view of Yellowknife, date unknown)

I'm looking forward to seeing his versions of those old photos. I know that our winter home was torn down to be replaced by a much fancier home by the new owner of the property. It was really a prime location, being one of the few residential places in the town with its own waterfront (we had a small dock and I did go for a brief swim there before the lake froze up, nearly drowning my son in the process).

(Pirelli the family dog, 1960s)

Since the YK photos were scattered through several albums I also got to sift through a lot of old photos which of course stirred many diverse memories. I posted a few of them just for fun. My oldest son with a junior high school 'girlfriend' who he is still in touch with. The now-dead parents of a Facebook friend from over thirty years ago. My youngest son as a toddler. A cat I used to have when I was pregnant with my oldest son. I've got a few more which I may or may not post.

(Mum and I a few months before she died, 2001)

Black Swan week

It is early morning as I write. I couldn't stay in bed any longer, my brain was whirring restlessly. Some folks can quiet that monkey mind at 5am, I cannot. Coffee and homemade sourdough toast and quince jam were calling.

Now that the coffee is drunk and the toast and jam eaten, I can open the laptop without fear of dumping coffee and crumbs into the keyboard. I have two readings on the go, an umpteen-volume fantasy story and Nassim Nicholas Taleb's "The Black Swan".

The fantasy story is slow-moving and I have read it before so sometimes I get bored with it, I wish it were faster-paced. But that makes it excellent middle-of-the-night reading, at a certain point sleeplessness looks less boring than the book. It's also good first thing in the morning when I'm not up to more mentally challenging entertainment.

Can't say the same of The Black Swan, this book is a bit of a feast. Taleb is a philosopher expounding on a novel idea, every other sentence is a zinger. Sometimes I have to put it down just to appreciate the last sentence I read. I have just read the Prologue and Chapter One and already he has changed my thinking about nationalism, the (so-called) Middle East and the financial world. And those aren't even his main topics, just prefatory remarks about his own background. I just read something he said about personal libraries. I have always felt a little guilty about how many books I have around that I have never read, as if I shouldn't have those books if I am not going to read them. Taleb says that the more unread books in one's personal library the better; they remind us of how much we don't know and the more we know about how much we don't know the better. I guess I'm doing pretty good on that score.

My writing group meets in a few hours. Yesterday afternoon I was working on having something to read at the meeting, so I feel like my homework is done and I can write whatever now. I have badly organized my week thus far, what started out looking like a busy week became less and less so as various events got sidelined. I was going to work in the garden but decided to postpone until after the expected deluge this weekend as there is no point planting stuff that is just going to drown. I had two events scheduled yesterday and decided to cancel one; the other cancelled itself and I regretted cancelling the first. I had a doctor's appointment that the doctor's office postponed. Went shopping for an item that was supposed to be on sale, the store had not received the item in the latest shipment so I went home empty-handed feeling like it was a waste of gas (the store is in the next town over). It went on like that.

I walked Hapi to her friend Eva's place yesterday morning and had coffee with Eva's owners. Friendship among dogs is a funny thing, Hapi is always eager to see Eva but after a few minutes of greeting Eva and checking out her yard for hidden food Hapi is ready to move on. If we happen to meet on a walk then the two will greet each other and then seem not to be interested anymore. They are both old ladies who have known each other for half their lives, I guess they've said all there is to be said to each other. Eva's owners are old friends of mine as well (40 years and counting), we nevertheless seem to find endless topics of conversation. Hapi just stares at me like: are you done yet? Can we go home now?

Tonight I am ushering, my one and only volunteer job. I have gotten fed up with volunteering, too often I end up frustrated and pissy; I say something I shouldn't and that bridge is burnt. But ushering is basically getting to listen to a concert or watch a theatrical production for free. I don't even have to speak to anyone, although I usually do. One chats with other ushers and exchanges a few words with the folks being ushered. Tonight I am ushering at a concert of a musician I have never heard of. He apparently has a string of sold-out concerts behind him on his current national tour, but there has been no local advertising. I did check him out on Youtube but I fail to understand the phenomenon. I'll find out tonight I guess. Unless it gets cancelled.

And tomorrow the deluge.

Little house in the woods

I am house-sitting/dog-sitting. Murph is a 13-year-old labradoodle who has a lot of difficulty standing and walking due to arthritis. But he really likes Hapi and that motivates him to stand up and walk. His owner tells me that in his heyday he'd be mounting her and she wouldn't like that, but getting up on his hind legs is a bit beyond him now so Hapi likes him.

When I first arrived I brought along a cooler of food, including some pork for Hapi's dinner. Then I went out to visit a neighbour, leaving the cooler in the house with Murph. Bad idea. He opened the cooler and ate all the pork. So I'm a little more careful about leaving food where he can get at it, the cooler is now in the car. Murph likes chewing bones but he doesn't eat them. After he's done chewing Hapi takes the bone and eats it. Murph is okay with that.

We went for two walks today, once up the road and once down the road. Murph does his best to keep up but he's an even slower walker than I am. Hapi leaves us both in the dust. On the walk down the road, Hapi crawled into a culvert under the road. She loves culverts and if they are big enough she crawls in. I'm scared she's somehow going to end up trapped under the road but so far it hasn't happened. Murph thought it was interesting but he wasn't about to follow her. We got to a stream and I went off the road to look at the stream, the dogs followed. Then Murph started barking, there was a woman walking down the stream towards us. I thought she looked familiar and sure enough it was someone I knew. Here I am in the middle of nowhere and a friend comes out of the woods towards me. She told me that there was a waterfall further up the stream out of sight from the road and it was a favourite place of hers to just go and sit. I'd have liked to go see but I didn't think Murph would make it so another time I guess.

We walked back to the house I was staying at. My friend said she thought it was a cute house, at least from the outside. I said it was cute inside too, I was quite enjoying staying there.

Tomorrow I go home. It's going to be cold and my car battery is old so I don't know if it will start. We'll see.

Same place as shown in previous blog post.

A day in the city

I finished the weaving project on my loom at home a few days ago. Took it off the loom, knotted the fringe and cleaned up the loose ends. The loom is empty and ready for a new project. I'm thinking another rug, wider but maybe not as long, not sure yet. I can use at least two more rugs in the house, one for the bathroom and one for the hallway. This one I think will go on the floor of the loom room. And if there is still yarn left, then maybe another one for the bedside in the basement (true confessions: I sleep in the basement because it is dark and cool and it is my dog's preferred sleeping room).

Yesterday I went to the Big City to do some weaving. I realized that I was not going to complete my project by the end of the last class (next Wednesday) and was going to have to come in another day to do that, but parking is only free weekends and evenings and all my weekends in December are spoken for, so that meant I either had to come in the evening or this weekend. I hate driving home late at night, it is the one thing I loathe about going to the city for this class. And Sunday (today) the weather was supposed to be bad, so by process of elimination I had to go yesterday, on Saturday.

I took Hapi with me. She had to stay in the car while I did my weaving, which took about three hours, by the time that I got a snack at the Farmers' Market next door and waited for the centre's doors to open at 11.00 am (the website said 10.00 am so I arrived at 10.30). I got enough weaving done that I think I will be able to finish my project on Wednesday. If not, then I don't know whether I will find time to finish before 2017.

After I completed the weaving I took Hapi for a walk through the city downtown to the NSCAD art supply store to see if they had yarn I could use for weaving at a good price. Specifically, I was looking for 2/8 cotton thread. They did indeed have it but in a limited range of colours. I bought seven half-pound spools.

Hapi pranced regally the whole way, garnering lots of stares. She is a large proud dog, beautiful and she knows it. We returned to the car via the waterfront walkway. Then I drove to Point Pleasant Park, a very large park on a peninsula with views of the harbour and out to sea. The interior of the park is wooded with lots of off-leash trails. In fact, the only place dogs are required to be on leash is the trail along the shore of the park, the rest is pretty much an off leash area. It is wonderful, in my opinion as a dog owner. Dogs run around free and there are many of them of all shapes and sizes. Hapi had never been there and was I think quite amazed. So many dogs, so little time! They all have to check each other out and Hapi was zigzagging from one dog to the next. Lots of garbage bins for disposing of doggie-do, which makes the walk so civilized for owners. Dogs off leash are happy and the whole space has such a joyful air. I can appreciate that non-dog-lovers might not appreciate this but I do.

Finally, to complete the Big City trip, I stopped at the Lebanese Bakery to pick up some food items available only there. The aroma of spices that greets you when you first open the door is wonderful, I browse the shelves slowly to enjoy the scent as long as possible. Since it was late in the day some of the items I wanted were sold out but I expected that. Will have to go back another time, not a hardship. Across the street from the bakery is a Latin cafe that sells Mexican food in a tiny grocery attached to the restaurant. I picked up two packages of frozen corn tortillas, one for me and one for a friend (if she doesn't want the package then I will have to eat them myself, also not a hardship).

I got everything done that I wanted, and I think I made it up to Hapi for having to sit in the car for three hours with a prance through downtown and a social outing in the park. I went home and had pizza and beer to cap off a perfect day.

Ellie Mae, Hapi and Danny crossing the brook

The Peony Rule and a Host of other things

Last night I went to a friend's place to play Carcassonne, I took a couple of peony flowers from my garden with me. I don't have my peonies properly propped up and I am told that the Rule of Peonies is, don't let them touch the ground, cut them and bring them indoors. I have four blooms in my living room that smell up the whole house, I can't bring any more in or I will have to say "stink up" the whole house. I love flower scents, but I find them a bit overwhelming indoors, so I am happy to leave them outdoors. But I was informed by a friend of the Peony Rule, so I am trying to conform.

My friend won the game, a first for her. It was getting boring always winning and a bit of a change to get soundly trounced. My excuse is that it was well past my usual bedtime. I like Carcassonne, and I am not usually a fan of board games. But "the board" in Carcassonne is always different, and you never really know who wins until you count up the points at the end. My friend was sure that I had won yet again until we actually counted up all our points. She left me in the dust.

Hapi and I were in the Kentville Ravine yesterday morning, she had such a great time. We ran into a young yellow lab who wanted to romp with Hapi in the brook, and then later two more labs, a yellow and a chocolate, showed up to join the fun. It was a lab fest. The four dogs, Hapi as honourary lab, ran in circles in and out of the water and around our legs. There are fish in the brook, they stayed clear of all the doglegs.

Hapi and I go "fishing" almost every evening at the goldfish pond in the nearby woods. I think the fish see Hapi better than she sees them, at least they always manage to be on the opposite side of the pond from her. She can see them if they move suddenly close to the surface, but if they move slowly or sink to the bottom she has a hard time finding them.

There are a tonne of trout in the old Wolfville reservoir, and they seem to be quite tame. I stand in an opening in the trees near the bank and when one swims by, it pauses to look at me, often swimming in closer for a better look. Is someone feeding them? I've even seen them approach Hapi, although they think better of that soon enough.

On Tuesday I went into the city with a friend to have lunch with another friend who lives there. Our City Friend is in declining health, she moved to the city for medical care and does not know many people there. She lives a rather isolated life as she has mobility issues. If not for the phone she would be very isolated indeed.

We picked her up at her apartment building and drove to an upscale Italian restaurant well beyond the budget of the two of us from the country, and way too noisy to carry on conversation. But City Friend doesn't get out much and we could hardly say No to her request. So for two hours we yelled at each other across the table. Not quite two hours, the din did die down in the last half hour or so.

It was kind of funny, both of my friends are blind and I serve as their seeing eye dog and chauffeur, but I do not know the city that well so I have to ask directions from my blind companions. They rely on their memories to tell me where to go, and sometimes their memories do not quite match up with current realities of road repair, relocated businesses, newly created one way streets, disappeared parking lots. Plus I have a disability of my own, I cannot tell left from right. Shouting Turn Right! in my ear does little more than put me into a panic.

After our leisurely bank-breaking lunch I asked City Friend if she had had enough and she said Not, I asked if there was anything else she wanted to do and she had no suggestions.

I said, Then in that case I would like to go to the Lebanese Bakery to buy some pistachio halvah, and she quickly agreed that that would be fun.

The Lebanese Bakery is truly a lot of fun, so much to look at, so many things to sample, and the staff are very friendly and funny. One young man had a smile to die for, we vied with each other to make him laugh and smile some more.

We bought pistachio halvah and chocolate halvah, grenadine molasses, pita bread, Bulgarian sheep feta, I forget what kind of olives, several different kinds of some savoury pastry (fatayer?), and a small container of tabouli. The young man with the smile gave us samples of the different fetas, in the process managed to hit his funny bone and danced around for a few minutes shaking his arm and grinning painfully.

Afterward we crossed the street (I took the arms of my two blind friends and we strode across waving white canes at the cars) to the Mexican grocery store. The lady who runs that tiny shop is the personality opposite of the Lebanese Bakery people, she sits behind the counter looking very bored and impatient with her gringo customers.

We oohed and ahhed over the many kinds of mole and salsa, I don't know if she actually rolled her eyes but I imagine that she wanted to. A few purchases there and then we crossed back to our parked car with more cane waving at the cars.

By this time rush hour was beginning so our drive back to City Friend's apartment was slow and tortuous, due to traffic and to my unfamiliarity with the city and frequent panics (Turn Right! Turn Left! No you're going the wrong way!).

We had a half hour to kill before picking Country Friend's Husband up at his place of work, so we went to the Black Market. Hardly had I parked when I heard a thump and looked up to see a young skateboarder grinning down at me. He ran into our parked car! No harm done, his board hit the tire.

He skated off and we headed into Market. It's a throwback to hippie days, incense wafting out and bright coloured intricate paint designs all over. Inside creaking old wooden floors, and tonnes and tonnes of beads and multi-coloured skirts and silver jewelry. I don't know what the music was that was playing, but it was quite pleasant. I mused about making Country Friend's Husband walk over so we could stay a little longer.

Note to self, longer visit to the Black Market next time.

Country Friend bought a freshwater pearl mala (a kind of bracelet) and I contemplated genie pants made from a recycled sari.

After picking up Husband we stopped at Costco on the way out of the city, I bought dogfood and they bought pizzas and Clif bars. We were in and out in less than half an hour, the quickest visit to Costco I've ever been on.

A very busy morning

Busy morning today. Got up early to go to the sawmill, I had called them a couple of weeks ago about getting lumber for new garden frames and was told that the guys are in the woods all day and if I want to talk to them I have to come early. I hate early. So today, two weeks later, I finally drag myself out there at 8am. Took Hapi with me so she wouldn't howl while I was gone, but had to put her in the front of the truck so there'd be room for the lumber in the back. And I couldn't let her out once we got to the sawmill due to the big black sawmill dog and the mud. Even if she managed not to get into a fight with the sawmill dog she would still have tracked mud into the truck cab. Mud in the back is one thing, mud in the front quite another.

They cut up some boards for me and loaded them into the truck. While that was happening the sawmill owner senior enquired as to my marital status, he opined that it was good for a single woman to have a Big Dog. I wondered if the big black sawmill dog was a statement about his own marital status or what.

I was home by 8.30am and Hapi never got out of the truck until then, I don't think she was impressed. After unloading the boards into the shed I put her back in the truck, this time in the back, and headed off to New Minas for errands and the Kentville Ravine for her walk.

The first stop was to pick up duck eggs for Easter Egg painting. Duck eggs are very good for this purpose because they are much smoother than chicken eggs. White chicken eggs are hard to come by these days, the ones in the grocery stores are all stamped and people who sell farm eggs these days only sell brown eggs.

The duck egg lady also sells dog food, she came out to give Hapi treats. Hapi busted the screen on one of the truck cap windows last year so she can poke her head out, I haven't bothered to repair it. So, the duck egg lady hands Hapi a dog treat and Hapi takes it delicately in her mouth and pulls her head in and deposits the treat on the floor and sticks her head out again for more. In this way she soon had a pile of almost a dozen dog treats before the duck lady stopped handing them out.

Next stop was Sobey's, where I hoped to use a raincheque to purchase my favourite chocolate bar but they still don't have them in yet. Then on to Cleve's to exchange a defective pair of hiking shoes for new ones, and Staples to get instructions for a screen kit I bought there a couple of weeks ago. The kit comes from Quebec and the installation instructions, four pages of them, are only in French. I can sort of read them, but I figured with four pages I should probably try to get the English instructions because somehow a four-page instruction set sounds complicated to me.

The Customer Service lady is amazed at the lack of English instructions. They have one more kit still on the shelf and it only has French instructions too. Customer Service lady calls someone from out back who is also amazed, but she goes on the internet and finds English instructions on the manufacturer's website. She prints off a copy for me. It is one page long, the actual instructions taking up less than half a page. We are all amazed. This kit is easier to install in English than in French?

After that my errands are done, so we head to the ravine. I let Hapi out and another truck pulls up too. Hapi and I head to the trail down into the ravine and I look back to see if I recognize the people in the other truck. It appears to be a couple without a dog, a third person is running to catch up with them. We head into the ravine and at the bottom of the hill I give Hapi one of her treats. She buries it by the brook.

Shortly we meet a lady with a young Nova Scotia Duck Toller, the duck toller is keen to play but Hapi does her usual growly aloof thing and walks away. The duck toller's owner asks if my dog dislikes puppies and I say No, she actually likes to play with young dogs but it takes her a long time to warm up. Hardly the words were out of my mouth and Hapi makes a liar of me, she turns and immediately starts chasing the young toller.

I used to have a duck toller so I am familiar with the breed, for those of you who are not they kind of look like a small golden retriever but are a little more hyper. Mine had white markings on his feet, face, chest and tail tip, but this one is all red.

The couple I had seen earlier catch up and I realize that the third person I thought I saw with them was actually their dog, a big black Great Dane. The Great Dane joins Hapi and the toller in play, but now the little toller is kind of freaked out at being chased by two very large dogs. He immediately lies down belly up. The two big dogs sniff him and back away. They stand there waiting, and eventually the toller gets up and runs off, the two big dogs in pursuit once again. They repeat this routine a couple of times and then the toller is more at ease and they just chase each other all around in circles.

Eventually we part company and I follow the folks with the Great Dane to the end of the ravine and then up through a junk yard and loop back down into the ravine on the other side. Hapi and the Great Dane are content just to explore and sniff things, although Hapi manages to chase a couple of squirrels. By the time we return to our trucks the two dogs are quite muddy.

While walking we were chatting about this that and t'other thing, and something they told me is that the coyotes around here were actually introduced by the provincial government. Apparently they introduced them to control the rabbits! That sounds beyond stupid. Don't know how one would check it out though.

I was going to stop at the hardware store to pick up hardware for the garden frames but by the time I was halfway home I decided I had done enough and it could wait for another day. Hapi and I got home again shortly after noon and that was a busy enough day for me!

Early spring playtime

This past week has been record-breaking warm here, downright hot (break out the shorts and T's time) on Thursday. Silly Nova Scotians who went south this week regretted it, the best of Florida was no better than here. Although I bet you could go swimming at the beach there; I don't think I would have chanced it here. We are almost back to "seasonable" now though, big high of +8C today ("seasonable" is +5C). For a couple of days it was cooler indoors than outdoors, I didn't run the furnace or light the fire for several days because the house never cooled off overnight.

I've been getting estimates on cutting down some trees on my property, a line of spruces along the south side, because they block the sun. It turns out that my neighbour on that side is very keen to see those trees gone and has gone so far as to offer to pay part of the cost. However most of the work will have to be done on their property, it is harder to get at those trees from my side than their side, so I am giving them a few days to think about that.

I am actually sitting on the fence on this issue, I like the trees and like the sound of the wind in them and the way that birds can hide in them. I have a feeling that if I cut them down I will discover that they contribute unforeseen benefits by their presence. Will I miss their shade? But having uninterrupted sun all summer long on my garden area would be nice. Presently no part of the back yard qualifies as "in full sun". I wish I could just trim those trees down to half-size, but that is just not doable. In the summer they provide shade for my house during the first half of the morning, I don't know how much of a difference that makes to the heating up of the house then. They don't provide any privacy.

Last night four of us went out for dinner and local theatre: a lovely little restaurant called Pizzazz Bistro and then on to Centrestage Theatre to see "Twelve Angry Jurors", a take-off on Twelve Angry Men. They had a mixed-gender jury.

The restaurant was truly excellent, we all ordered different things and we were all pleased with our food, we would have ordered different wines but ended up drinking the same wine, an Argentinian Malbec. For dessert two of us had cheesecake and two of us had apple cake. The desserts were all circular, and you could order a half-piece and get a semi-circular dessert instead. So many times I have split a dessert with someone that it is kind of nice that the restaurant provides half desserts.

The play was great, they did a great job of adapting it I thought. But I am not one to judge, having never seen the original. The theatre is tiny, I don't think it seats more than 80 or 90 patrons. It is very much a local theatre operation, the theatre staff, actors and many of the audience know each other and joke around (the instructions in case of fire were half serious half silly). All in all it was a most pleasant evening out: good company, good food, good theatre.

Earlier in the day I took Hapi out on the dikes and we met a lady walking her golden retriever. The retriever was young and wanted to play with Hapi, but she was all aloof and growly with the young dog. The woman recognized Hapi and told me her dog's name, Duncan. I remembered meeting her and her dog in the Kentville Ravine several months ago, before winter. Duncan was smaller then, not quite his full size. But I remembered that Duncan and Hapi had very much enjoyed each other, in fact it was the best dogplay Hapi had had since Hiro left.

After 20 minutes of ignoring Duncan Hapi suddenly decided she was ready to play with him, I think she even took Duncan by surprise since he had kind of given up on her by then. But they took off, chasing each other and running through the mud of the tidal flats and drainage ditches. It was a pleasure to watch, although Duncan's owner was concerned about having to load the muddy stinky dog into her car afterward. I suggested we take them to the "Duck Pond" in a nearby park to wash off. The pond is posted with No Dogs Allowed signs, but at this time of year I doubted anyone would accost us.

We got the dogs to the park and they leaped into the pond and had great fun play fighting in the water. They got so hyper that it was near impossible to recapture them and get them leashed up to go our separate ways. Afterward I realized I should have got contact info to organize future play dates for the dogs. Oh well, hopefully another time. At his full adult size Duncan looks smaller than Hapi but he weighs as much as she does. His coat is not nearly as fluffy as hers.

In spite of the wash in the pond, Hapi still stunk of the dike mud. It's not as bad as rolling in manure, but close. Good thing she is an outdoors dog.

The smelt are running

Today I was shopping at Sobey's, I went because they had my favourite chocolate bar on sale but I also checked out their seafood counter. They had smelt. I asked about them, the fish lady said this was their first batch, the run has just started. Smelt from Sobey's is not quite the same thing as eating them fresh from the river, but still, I asked for one meal's worth.

The best way to eat smelt is right by the river, fresh caught and fried up in butter. They are small enough that you pick one up by the tail and just eat it from your fingers. There are hardly any bones. When they are running, there are so many of them in the river that you can catch them in baskets.

Sunday night we were supposed we were supposed to get 5 cm of snow, but by morning it was obviously a bit more than that. More like 15 cm. It looked beautiful, light and fluffy, piled up on all the tree branches. Monday afternoon we got another 10 cm. but it didn't get much deeper because it was fairly warm and the snow was damp and packing down.

Today I took Hapi down to the Kentville ravine. We haven't been down there very much lately because the one public trail in has been a sheet of ice. It is so steep that it is impassable when it is icy. There is another trail, an 'authorized-personnel-only' trail which is not so steep or icy, but on weekdays the authorized personnel are out in force. I've gone down that trail on weekends with good luck.

Anyway, today the ravine was beautiful in the snow. Hapi ran through the snow looking very happy. She does figure eights around me and I swing my walking poles at her; she ducks and swerves and disappears into the woods, reappearing suddenly a few minutes later running straight at me.

A young couple with three pre-school-aged kids followed us down the trail into the ravine. The oldest girl was nervous of Hapi and kept her mother between her and the dog, but the littlest boy, just barely walking, marched up to Hapi and said, Woof! Woof! Hapi backed up and looked at me, uncertain whether she should be scared of him or not.

After the walk in the ravine and shopping at Sobey's I took Hapi to visit her little admirer, Sidney the King Charles Cavalier spaniel. Sidney is so funny, he really is completely enamored of Hapi and Hapi hardly knows he exists. Today Hapi was lying on the floor and Sidney came up and was sniffing her ear. He was literally blowing in her ear and she kept shaking her head and looking at him, What are you doing!?! She can't figure him out.

I've been having trouble with my knee lately. It started some time ago, I noticed that my knee hurt going up the basement stairs with a load of firewood. Then a couple of weeks ago it got worse, a really sharp pain that was there all the time. So reluctantly I went to the doctor. She thought it might be a meniscal tear and ordered X-rays, although she said if it was a meniscal tear it would not show up in the X-ray. However the X-ray showed significant arthritic deterioration which probably better explains the pain. So I've been on anti-inflammatories to bring down the inflammation and I am now on a wait list to see a physiotherapist. I don't know how long that will take.

The anti-inflammatories are tricky, either they are too weak to have any effect or they are strong enough to make the pain go away but they give me heartburn. There doesn't seem to be a happy medium. The latest anti-inflammatory I am barely tolerating, I will take it until the end of the week and then stop; hopefully the pain will too. At least it does not interfere with walking too much, climbing the basement stairs is the main problem. I've decided that it is because the stair risers are too steep and the treads too narrow. There's really not enough room to redesign them, more shallow stairs would just bring my head closer to the edge of the ceiling going down.

Really the only way to fix the problem is to put the stairs back where they were originally, but that's a major renovation I don't want to do. The only other alternative is to not put firewood in the basement. Have to think about that.

But the main thing is, the smelt are running, spring is just around the corner.

The Mighty Nordic Pole Walker Conquers Her World

Winter continues in a mild vein, a few cold days, a tiny bit of snow, and NO shovelling. Yay!

My own cold is gradually receding, but still there. The day I wake up with unplugged ears will be a major turning point.

Now Hapi is limping. Can't see anything, her paws look fine and when I palpate her leg she doesn't wince or pull back. In the morning the limp is almost non-existent but by evening she hobbles like an old lady. I'm thinking it's muscular or tendons. I am trying to cut back on her walks but it's hard to do, she loves her walk no matter what. Today I am going to resist her forlorn look and not walk her at all. Poor Hapi.

In January I tried to sign up for Triple-A (Acadia Active Aging), a Department of Kinesiology exercise program for older adults that some of my friends are raving about. However they were not accepting any newcomers because the people already in the program are not dropping out, they love it too much. But the woman running the program urged all of us who applied to participate in her new study on Nordic Pole Walking for Elders. I wasn't really interested but applied to the study anyway. Whew, talk about changing your life!

The initial assessment was pretty rigourous: how many sit-ups, how many push-ups, how long on a treadmill, how high you could jump, and a couple of other things, along with an extensive questionnaire covering health history, mental health and attitudes toward aging. Then a two-hour workshop on how to use the poles, a schedule of daily walks, and a set of free poles for the duration of the walk (unfortunately we don't get to keep them forever).

I have to say that walking with the poles is transforming, they are quite amazing. Basically, they transform you from a person to a dog: you lose your hands but you gain two more feet. I walk twice as fast, I easily traverse icy ground without cleats and steep hills are a snap. My arms are getting a serious workout, I can feel muscles I didn't know I had. They told us in the workshop that the poles take up to 30% of your weight off of your legs, which means less stress on arthritic joints.

Hapi was scared of the poles at first, she seemed to think I was going to whack her with them, but she's used to them now. I can walk as fast as her!

I am keeping an eye out for poles to buy for myself after this study is over. The great thing about pole walking is that you can do it any time of the year. My one and only complaint about the poles is that on really cold days I wear mittens over my gloves and it takes forever to get the hand straps over the mittens. I dare not take the poles off. My way around that I think is going to be not to use the hand straps on those days. Not strictly kosher but better than nothing.

I signed up for a one day workshop in Fair Isle mittens at Gaspereau Valley Fibres, I already know how to do Fair Isle knitting but being self-taught there are always things you can learn from an expert on how to do it properly, and besides, the mittens look wonderful (follow the link and scroll down about 3/4 of the page).

Yesterday I went to the shop to pick up the kit for the workshop and browse the shop. I ended up buying some Fleece Artist yarn on sale and a set of fleece soles to make slippers from. They are real fleece, leather on one side wool fleece on the other, cut into sole shape with holes punched around the edge. They come with a pattern for knitting the uppers to the soles. You can get them in every size from toddler to adult male.

The yarn I bought is not bulky enough for the slippers but I already have some suitable yarn for that. I got two skeins in slightly different colour ways, my plan is for a pair of socks in slightly different colours. Some day.

I went to the shop with a friend who wants to learn to knit. She has limited vision but is keen to learn, and she already has a project in mind. When we arrived at the shop we told the woman there the parameters: impaired vision, absolute beginner, specific project, acceptable colour range. She was immediately able to select an appropriate yarn which my friend was very happy with. She also selected the appropriate needles (in this case, a circular needle) and told my friend approximately how many stitches to cast on for the project.

After that we went for lunch at the Port Pub and bought some beer from brewmaster Randy to take home with us. Then we took our dogs for a walk along the Gaspereau Canal. My friend's dog is a male King Charles Cavalier who has a mad crush on Hapi. It is quite funny because Sidney is no bigger than a cat, Hapi hardly knows he exists. Sidney was in seventh heaven following Hapi along the canal trail, his tiny tail wagging just below Hapi's big malamute plume. Earlier, Hapi made Sid's day by chasing him around the dining table, after months of never noticing his existence at all.

Today I am going to the Brownbaggers Lunch at Acadia to hear a talk on Kluscap (often spelled Glooscap) and Wabenaki mythology. Hapi will mope at home.

It's a dog life

Busy busy busy! That's my excuse here. Since the last post I have had family visitors, finished the fence, gone to PEI twice, and now have Sam and his two dogs Hapi and Hiro in residence.

The dogs are huge, hairy, smelly and do not play well with others. While Dobby the boxer and the Toronto branch of the family were here we had three major dog fights where Hapi and Hiro ganged up on Dobby and had him yelping in distress. Dobby is a big dog, 80 lbs big, but Hapi and Hiro dwarf him.

I was really happy to have Dobby here, he was glad to see me and I enjoy his affectionate nature. He is not hairy and not smelly. Seeing him take a beating from Hapi and Hiro did not sit well. I am sure he was very glad to leave here and get back home to his less aggressive dogpark buddies. He had war scars to show off.

Sam thinks that given time the three dogs would have worked things out and grown to be more friendly with each other. I think he may be right but Dobby was being seriously traumatized by the process. He did have a very good vacation in PEI though.

Taking Hapi and Hiro for walks is difficult, I cannot control the two of them alone and they are aggressive toward other dogs. I would like to be able to let them off the leash but there are no places around here that I can be assured that we will not encounter other dogs. I got haltis for them but as fast as I get them on the dogs the first dog has its halti off. I tried walking them separately but Hiro howls continuously when he is alone.

My current strategy is to get them used to short separate walks wearing the halti. Sam says he notices that after a couple of days of that he already notices that Hiro is more controllable on the leash. But I don't really know what to do about their aggression toward other dogs. I wonder if they were permanently separated whether they would be less confident and less aggressive, but Sam doesn't think it will make a difference.

Wilfred delivered two cords of wood to me and we shared a bit of Harbour gossip and chatted about the dogs. He suggested electronic collars for them. That might help, but I wonder if it would make any difference through their thick fur. Also I hate the idea of electric shocks. I suppose though that it might be better than the alternatives.

Sam and I are used to living alone, sharing this house is not easy. Not only are we trying to adjust to shared living accommodations but he is adjusting to a new job that he doesn't particularly like so far. He thought it would be better than it is turning out to be.

I went to Prince Edward Island the first time to visit Isaac and Gretel at the cottage they had the use of while on vacation. Gretel's parents live in PEI and her aunt purchased the cottage a couple of summers ago for the use of all of the family. Her Dad made some extensions on the cottage, three added bedrooms and a screened in deck. He operates a wood mill and was able to use mostly wood that he had milled himself.

The cottage is set in the woods a short walk from a sandy beach, you can't see the ocean but you can hear it. Mornings we would walk with Dobby and the kids along the beach, later in the day we would go swimming there. Gretel's stepmom organized a paddle trip down a local river one sunny afternoon, I brought my kayak along for that.

We all returned to Nova Scotia after a couple of days, meeting Sam and his dogs in Truro as he drove from his home in BC. Thanks to the wonders of cell phone texting, we were able to connect at a gas station and drive the rest of the way to my house together. It was a hectic short family visit with four adults, three giant dogs and two kids.

Unbeknownst to me Sam was expecting me to dogsit for three days while he went to a wedding in Cape Breton. I had previously agreed with Isaac and Gretel to take their oldest son Tristan back to PEI to spend a couple of weeks on his grandparents farm there, so the dogsitting job was not a welcome kink in my plans. We settled on my dogsitting for one day and putting the dogs in a kennel for the remainder of the time at Sam's expense.

The dogsitting day turned out to be a rainday in which we all stayed indoors. Isaac gave me access to his Netflix account so Tristan and I watched movies all day while the dogs moped.

My second trip to PEI was fun, this time I took my bike with the intention of doing some cycling on the Confederation Trail (aka Tip-to-Tip Trail). When the trains were retired on the island the provincial government turned the train tracks into a hiking and biking trail from one end of the island to the other, hundreds of kilometers of flat, gravelled trails through farms, woodlands, marshes, bogs, barrens and small towns. Lots of little B&Bs and cafes have sprung up along the trail, along with bike and canoe rental places, information rest stops, craft and gift shops and so forth. Really quite delightful.

The towns are close enough by that you can easily bike from one to the next in an hour or so, depending on speed. I planned only to bike the part of the trail in the vicinity of the cottage and the farm, but I saw lots of bikes loaded up with gear for longer trips. People from all over, I chatted with a man from Minnesota and a couple from the UK.

My first day of biking I planned to do a bit of grocery shopping and stop at the river we had previously paddled for a swim. The second day was cooler and windier, I biked another section of the trail that bordered the Gulf shore (Gulf of St. Laurence).

On the one rainy day of my PEI stay, Gretel's stepmom came over with Tristan and three neighbour boys to play a board game with me. On my last day there Fiona the boxer (Dobby's sister, living at the farm) had nine puppies to the great delight of the four boys. One of them described how one of the pups was born in a 'plastic bag' which Fiona licked off. They wondered about the logistics of eight nipples and nine pups.

Just before leaving the island I dropped by to see Fiona and her litter, she looked kind of shocked. Perhaps I am just projecting, but that's how I would feel in her place.

Now I am playing catch-up, taking care of all the stuff that was neglected while visiting PEI and with family. Two days spent weeding, harvesting and replanting my garden, some time working with the dogs, and catching up with neglected friends.

I stopped by the hardware store to pick up a new composter I had ordered, the fellow at the customer service desk asked me what I was up to now: every time I came in I was working on some project or another. I told him I had a list, I was making my way through it. He carried the composter out to the truck and I had to let the two dogs out of the back in order to get the composter in. I managed to shove the dogs back in after the composter. Hapi likes getting into vehicles, Hiro does not so he takes some coaxing and shoving.

I am thinking that I will probably keep one of the dogs, Hapi, and send the other one home with Sam. However Sam is now talking about going to college here, meaning that he might end up staying for several years. As things stand at the moment, I do not think having him live in my basement is realistic for either of us but I do not know where he can rent an affordable place for him and Hiro. Until we work that one out I am focussing on halti-training Hiro and somehow getting the two of them to either adjust to separation or be less aggressive with other dogs, or both.

My home is full of dog hair and dog smell. As luck would have it my own sense of smell has deteriorated with age so the smell is not so irksome as it might be, but I know that visitors react to it. The dogs have recently been groomed but you'd never know it, their fur is so thick!

The dogs poop in the back yard which attracts flies, I try to clean up the messes as quickly as possible but the dogs prefer to spend the night sleeping outdoors which means that in the morning the yard is full of flies. Sam says if I got into a regular dogwalking routine they wouldn't poop in the yard, but with all the problems of walking two giant aggressive dogs, that's not going to happen anytime soon.

The list of stuff to be done before winter is full. The firewood has been delivered and needs to be stacked. Places for stacking need to be cleared of other things which in turn need to be stored somewhere yet to be determined. The dogs need rain shelter other than my tiny living room. The kitchen faucet needs to be replaced. The decks need painting or something. The usual lawn mowing and gardening tasks. Several trees need pruning. I need to build four new garden frames for next year. The basement is a mess...

I got to two plays, Beowulf and Driving Miss Daisy, and hope to get to The Vigil and Shakespeare in the Park (Halifax). I managed to get to the Kempt Shore Music Festival and I have a ticket for the Deep Roots Festival, but I missed Stanfest and will (have already?) miss the Lunenburg Folk. Next year. One weekend planned this month at a friend's cottage with a bunch of women friends, the Labour Day weekend planned with a visit from an old Ottawa friend, a weaving workshop in September and hopefully a kayak camping trip in October and somehow a weekend at Milford Lakes Lodge (I have a Groupon I need to use there).

My life has just become a busy round of projects, culture and socializing, I kind of miss the old days of reading and knitting and long walks alone. The fact that my posting here has become so sporadic and that I am not getting near as many photos in is kind of indicative. No doubt this shall pass, but I do wonder when.

In lieu of regular posting

I am having a hard time keeping up this blog these days. Called my brother on his birthday yesterday and he commented on how not up to date the blog was. I explained that I frequently thought about posting to it, mentally wrote the blog post in my head, but failed to actually post it because the photos for it were still on the camera. I didn't really want to post without some pictures, but I needed to download them and edit them for posting which would take hours, and that was the end of that. The photos are still on the camera, the mentally written blog posts gone wherever it is that such things go. Not anywhere retrievable.

So here's a synopsis of stuff I have not posted about. Some of the links are to photos or blog posts with photos in lieu of actually posting them here.

I did a three-day tutorial in weaving with Pia. She bought the yarn for me in Halifax (blue, green, purple and yellow cotton) and over three days we warped my loom with 6 yards of it. I started a sampler and will eventually weave placemats and a runner. The original plan was for tea towels, but the colours just seemed better suited to placemats. We had a good time and it was very satisfying to get the loom set up. Coincidentally it was during the rare conjunction of three sunny days in a row.

Yes there are photos on the camera.

I've been working on both the Acadia Community Farm (and my own little plot there) and my own garden in the back yard. On the Farm we've been digging and composting beds and planting and mulching seedlings. Because the spring here was so soggy we did not get to start until very late in May and the soil is a very heavy wet clay. While my own plot is only 10' x 10' and very quickly dug and planted, the community field is very large---I'm sure it is well over an acre---and there is no rototiller so it is all being done by hand. Very slow, backwrenching work. Most of the Farmers are young students who are up to the task, but for some of us older types this is not pleasant work at all. I put in onions, garlic, squash and beans. I was going to plant potatoes, but decided against it.



In the backyard garden I put in four garden frames and a long narrow bed against the playset. I am thinking of turning the swingset portion of the playset into a greenhouse, and thought I would plant pole beans against the south-facing A-frame of the swingset. The pole beans are not doing well. I got two garden frames set up with horse manure, topsoil and ash from the woodstove and planted a bunch of things (peas, beans, tomatoes, carrots, onions, broccoli, herbs, a variety of fresh greens). I filled two more garden frames with manure intending to leave them to rot until next year, but changed my mind and decided to plant them this year. Which meant taking out some of the manure and replacing it with topsoil and wood ash. I'm about halfway through planting those frames now.



In the meantime the people who own the field behind my house mowed the field and left the mowings in windrows. I thought they were going to turn it into hay. But after a couple of days they pushed all the dried windrows into the bushes surrounding the field. So I went out with my wheelbarrow and collected a bunch of it from the bushes nearest my backyard. I've piled all that in the swingset area. Not sure yet what I will do with that, you can't really use hay for mulch because of all the grass seed in it, but at the very least it will mean I don't have to mow the grass under the swingset anymore.



My good friend Johanna came to visit for 12 days from out west. She had not been this far east since she was a teenager (she hitchhiked from Montreal to PEI at age 16 because someone told her she could get work on a farm there, that turned out to be a bit of a stretch). We spent the time visiting some of my favourite places and friends. Photos on the camera.



The weather was little better than when Sam was here in May, mostly wet and cold. Johanna packed for the trip better than Sam did so she did not have to borrow clothing as Sam did, however a lot of shorts and tanktops never got used.



The weatherman here has become totally unreliable. They change the forecast drastically on almost an hourly basis. In the morning it says it will clear and be sunny by noon, that never happens until maybe suppertime. If you're lucky. They say rainy and cold today but sunny the rest of the week, and then the next day the forecast is the same: rainy and cold today but sunny the rest of the week, WE PROMISE! We've had more actual rain and more forecasted sunniness than I can tell you.



A local friend was diagnosed with metastasized breast cancer, a bunch of people got together to provide meals for her and her family over the past few weeks. I managed one meal and one visit but then I had company and couldn't seem to spare the time. Her cancer progressed rapidly and she died last week at home surrounded by family. I felt badly that I did not get in to see her in the last couple of weeks, especially after I promised that I would. There will be a Celebration of Life for her later this week, she planned it before her death and requested that everyone wear bright colours and be in a celebratory mood.



The last few weeks at the film co-op they were asking for someone to volunteer to put movie trailers of upcoming films into Powerpoint to show before the feature film. I thought someone else would volunteer but no one did so finally I did, thinking how hard can it be? Well, not so easy as it turns out, but interesting. I get to spend time in the projection room fiddling with the equipment. Who knows, maybe one day I can even help select the films that are shown. In the meantime I have to get up to speed on Powerpoint; I was never that proficient with it and now, several software versions later, I am quite out of touch. But hey, how hard can it be? Don't answer that.



Skype-called Kim and got to see Eva trucking around like nobody's business. Ten months old and already standing on her own, albeit for only a few seconds at a time. She pushes a wheeled toy affair around the living room and "furniture-walks" everywhere. She and Brewster the Shih-tsu have become good buddies. Brewster has to be reminded occasionally that just because Eva is mobile does not mean he can now jump up on her, but it won't be long.



Sam liked Nova Scotia a lot (so did Johanna). So much so that he got himself a temporary job in Halifax and is coming back at the end of July. He plans to bring his two giant malamutes with him. Isaac and Gretel are also planning to visit at the end of July, and they are bringing Dobby, the giant boxer. Three giant dogs, two of whom do not play well with others. So I am scrambling to fence my yard.

Around here, fenced yards are uncommon, one could in theory walk the entire street through backyards on either side of the road. I am trying to strike some kind of balance between sturdy, not too unattractive, and cheap. Ha ha.

It is Sam's plan to leave one of his dogs with me when he returns west, as he has moved into town (Windsong) and two giant dogs are just too much to handle in his new digs. We discussed various options and solutions with their various pros and cons and this is what we have settled on. Not perfect but maybe the lesser of a bunch of evils. For some.

Isaac was telling me that he and Gretel were thinking that their life has become so stressed that they needed a break from Dobby and were hoping I would take him for a few months, however Sam got to me first and I just can't see my way to taking on two giant dogs, one of whom does not play well with others. You never know though, if Hapi and Dobby hit it off in July, I might consider it. But hard to imagine that. With Hiro around Hapi will have eyes only for him and she doesn't know they are about to be permanently separated. It's a dog's life.

Sam will be moving into my basement for three months while he works in Halifax. He will commute, hopefully by some sort of van pool. The job is minimum wage, but working on something he cares about. All told I think he will lose money on the project but there will be intangible benefits. He has thought this all through and it is after all his life.

I do fear for my garden though. Three giant dogs...