loyalty
The thing about letting the dog run the mouse out the door is she might keep going to the next barn. The dog I mean, the mouse will always come back.
Category: Dog days
after the rain
A few thinnings.
So far it’s been a wet summer. That’s ok with me if it means no smokey skies.
Spuds.
The garden is coming around like it always does in summer regardless of smoke, sun rain or mist. Even my negligence can’t keep it down.
Lavender.
Black Crimson Tomato.
Willow eats the last radish.
Rain
The look Willow gives trying to convince me to give her a bite of my breakfast.
It works every time.
Thundershowers on and off this past week. It is something we haven’t seen for the last few years. Thunder, yes, showers, no. Lightening without showers is hazardly in a bone dry forest, as the last two years have proven. With luck we won’t have smoke filled skies this year.
The garden is benefitting from the moisture and lightning that releases nitrogen. I have long noticed a growth spurt after thundershowers.
The garden is beginning to produce, we have wonderful salads each night, consisting of a mix of about ten different greens.
A small Song Sparrow weathers the storm.
Lisa, Willow and I were back in the bush today cutting firewood. We got most of it done between storms.
Very fine day.
firewood
We have plenty of firewood. We get it early. We call it next years wood.
It takes sweat and stamina to cut, chop and finally relax in front of a fine fire.
The dogs were a sniff in the bush. Catching scents, running hither and yon. I envied them. I also envy the way they can sleep anywhere. Dreaming of slow rabbits and bird calls,
Lisa did the cutting, not every woman can handle a chainsaw with a 24” bar, while I hauled the blocks. Maynard caught a rabbit and displayed it proudly. Willow enjoyed the bush as usual. Very fine day.
Canada Day
Daisies and Yarrow
A busy Canada Day Weekend for Lisa and I. Our son Hunter and his wonderful girlfriend Bree were out from Calgary to take in the festivities with their friends. We put up a higher fence around the garden in and attempt to dissuade the deer from eating our vegetables.
Lisa stopping on a cutblock to admire the daisies.
Lisa busied herself further making wooden signs for our daughter Maddy’s quickly approaching wedding. Lisa is very handy with power tools and can whip together almost anything. This spring she made me a a potting bench, complete with a sink, from the old leftover cedar siding from our renovation a few years ago.
Driving Willow crazy.
This morning we escaped the ruck of the crowd in the valley bottom and got behind Swansea. We followed the creek a ways then turned mountain side. Crossed a few cutbacks covered in daises, kept up until the road ended in a spot we haven’t visited for awhile.
Always happy, even if sometimes one step behind.
Willow looked and dug for rodents. I took a few photos. Found a spring crisscrossed with moose tracks. Lisa harvested small new prickly pine cones. We picked a couple bouquets of wild flowers for home. Willow hunted until her tongue hung out of her mouth.
Very fine day.
those northerners
fence line
“Yes I am. It’s on my resumé,”
said my neighbour,
after he was told
he wasn’t
an asshole.
***
My fence even half not up
still tomorrow should
prove promise.
***
It’s good not to be a connoisseur of anything. It allows us to drink bad beer and wine, eat all the the extra parts of the animal, enjoy Jughead and Crumb, figure a fine is sometimes worth it, tell bad jokes, unpolitically correct or just in bad taste, share stories about birds, flying, laughing. . . those superior bastards.
Plus what would we do without sub standard music? Shite, we would all be listening to Brahms and Taylor Swift.
***
My boss likes to say, we ain’t building a piano. He doesn’t say it to me. He knows I haven’t seen a piano since keyboards. But for the other guys. . . those old fucks.
***
Storm clouds with nothing in them, neither rain or wind. Most go west to east and jump the mountains. It’s the northerners you have to worry about. They care little for geography, and will flatten a garden in a minute.
***
Exaggeration isn’t just bullshit.
stripped
Willow sporting her new haircut.
We got a new dog. . . well not exactly. It took two sessions but we gave Willow her annual stripping.
Wire Haired Dachshunds grow a thick wiry coat over winter and it has to be ‘stripped’ in spring. This is done by grabbing a few hairs at time and pulling them out.
Willow with her winter coat digging for spring mice.
It is not that bad because the hair has loosened and needs to come out. I’m not sure if the hair is even really attached to her anymore, but held in place by all the other long wire hair.
Once it is out they have a smooth soft coat for summer.
Cooper and Willow wrestling over a stick.
Although it doesn’t hurt her, Willow doesn’t like it. She endures Lisa and I pulling, while she thinks of hunting, letting us know if we grab a couple more hairs than acceptable.
At the end of it we have half a dog as what we had at the beginning.
Willow trying to talk me into a late night fetch.
Spring Time
Cooper and Scarlett hang loose.
Dug the last of the garden tonight. I am way behind this year. With luck I will get most of it in this weekend.
The cool weather stuff (lettuce, peas, carrots) could have been in 2 weeks ago. However, on the bright side, the good thing about planting late is everything can go in at once. Beans, kale, tomatoes. . . it’s all up to them.
Time seems to be of the essence now, like always in spring. There is only so much to plant a garden, or spend behind the mountain listening to the creek or watching stars playing hide and seek with the tree tops.
Somehow those old trees can still play tricks and make the most of time.
Willow and the beetle.
background
Mines and clearcuts.
In town or up the pass, it makes no difference, the creek still bubbles and the stars jump. In this day and age the trick is cutting out the noise and light. Not easy. Still, the stars and Milky Way outweigh fireworks anyday. The sound of a log caught on a sandbar, geese honking, trumps the gunshots and voices spouting nonsense.
It’s about putting your ear to the track, looking high and deep, not being taken in. It’s not that hard.
early may
The absolute colour of spring.
We were able to slip behind the mountains into the bush this evening. Lisa said bring the camera we may see bears.
We did see a truck that looked like they were hunting bears. You probably wonder how I can tell if they were hunting bears. I will tell you sometime, but for now I will keep it to myself. I wish many hunters luck, these I did not.
We got higher than we have since November. Willow enjoyed the snow which was plenty and stopped our ascent just below where we find orchids.
Willow digs in.
I looked to patches without snow for orchids, though I knew it was too early. Willow ran for sticks and snowballs, raised her nose for the smell of rodents and scratched and dug for thawing scent.
Many of the slides have not yet come down. The grass is greening in the valley bottom. It felt good to be out breathing the air, listening for birds, feeling the last spring snow underfoot and looking for trees that died during winter to add to the woodpile.
Palliser Pass 