Good to be up a little later. Tomorrow will be the first day in a very long time I won’t have to get up for work at 4:30am.
No bugs to speak of. The garden is hanging in there without a sign of frost. Tomorrow I will have to pick a few flats of tomatoes.
Plenty has been neglected. Wood needs piling. Photos need editing. The yard and garden needs sorting.
Bought a small axe, wooden handle, short at 28″. It kept slipping out of my hand as I am used to a three and a half foot handle. An axe with a wooden handle that long is hard to find and expensive, but worth it. If I ever win the lottery I am going to have bunch of axes, fancy ones, made in Sweden and Germany, and split wood just for fun.
A couple pictures of colourful cannabis flowers. It is coming good and needs to be harvested before frost.
The tomatoes are in the same boat. Same as the spuds.
Tomorrow is a day off. With luck I’ll get some work done.
The weed has had a good season. Again, I have more than I know what to do with. Now that it’s legal you can’t even give it away. It’s a good looking plant with a relaxing smell and very receptive to the changing light.
The good stuff people are after is grown inside, under lights, sold by the government, with plenty of fertilizers. That’s fine, especially if you want to get high as fuck (and who doesn’t).
These plants aren’t like that. But they sure will ease the pain and guarantee a good nights sleep.
Up past 8:30 perusing seed catalogues. It’s the mild weather, I guess, making me think of spring. Another cold spell is coming down the pike, they say. Still the thought of dirt being turned over and busted up has me dreaming.
I bought a 500 page seed catalogue at the bookstore. It’s from the States. Crazy vegetables, a complete chapter on eggplant, big too small, round, oblong, deep purple and green. Carrots 4 feet long, though they wouldn’t be that long in my soil unless they could grow through glacially deposited rock. Plenty types of Bok Choy, Fennel, Kale. It’s alphabetical and I’ve only made it to okra.
Flower barrel.
My garden will be the same I suppose. The turnips were a big hit last year. The tomatoes were slow. I have a theory on that. I bought them instead of starting them and I think they were mislabeled at Canadian Tire. Instead of 55 day Early Girl I got some 120 day pineapple tomatoes. I won’t make that mistake again.
Willow between onions, raspberry and zucchini.
Regardless I ripened them inside and they were still good. Not bitter.
It looks like a snowstorm has blown in. No concern, the back of winter is broken, even if it’s bad the end is near.
Gemma walking the rows. Gemma left us late last year. She hung in there as long as she could. Couldn’t have been a better dog.
Grey and rain, frost the last couple mornings. It’s feeling like fall. September can’t be beat.
Most of the tomatoes are in. Sitting in flats waiting to ripen in the dark in the basement.
Split wood for the fire. Saw a herd of Pine Siskins. I told Lisa it was too early, but she was damned and determined to warm the old place up. Since we have a lot of wood and grandkids sleeping over I agreed before being overruled.
Back in the ‘old days’ we went as long as we could without heat. My sisters and brother can attest. Oil, coal and electricity has always been expensive. Frost on the walls and old coats used for covers. You could watch your breath until dipping your head under the covers to warm up.
Wind and big defined clouds should be celebrated. When the clouds burst open we should all run outside and feel the water on our faces, soaking us to the skin. My grandkids agree.
A long weekend and the valley bottom is alive with ruck, revellers stirring it up.
Luckily I was wrestling with a nasty sewer pipe and stubborn toilet flange, protecting me from the glut of overindulgence the town has become. The trip to the hardware to pick up closet bolts was a doozy.
Still, I stuck my head out long enough to see the young Cedar Waxwings picking the berries off an Ornamental Cherry. The blue sky crowding the Sunflowers. And the weed doing its best in the lowered sun.
I’ve left out the picture of the sewer pipe and the crowds, I’ve had enough of them for a day.
The election is over thank Christ. The NDP got their majority. Our own Doug Clovchok, Liberal, got re elected. The Greens sucking hind tit were shook from the Premiers neck.
If you want to watch shit float, watch an election.
TV and Radio, even the internet claimed a 7000 percent increase in mail in ballots. A bunch more, took advantage of advance voting, as we did.
Cripes making it this easy must translate to a big turnout.
Not so. The turnout was less than 50%
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If it were a roadway, folks would be up in arms, it would be redesigned sure as the mountains are high.
I smoke marijuana every chance I get. – Allen Ginsberg
Part of being Canadian is listening to American politics. It dominates most of TV channels and internet news. It also headlines much of Canadian news sources. CBC News, for instance, often opens with what Donald Trump has been up to. It has been said, Canadians know more about American politics than our own Canadian government and it’s goings on.
Our Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, has done his fair share of stupid things in recent years including being caught red handed in scandal; sexual, legal and political. He even dressed in blackface with a banana down his pants. However, he has skated through it all unscathed. Of course, it helps when the leader of the free world, Donald Trump, is stealing all the headlines with his own shenanigans. It’s like having a bad brother. Just when you think you are in trouble with Mom he has done something worse and let you off the hook.
If you follow American news you know Trump’s nemesis Nancy Pelosi was caught on security footage getting her hair done in a closed salon and. . . wait for it. . . the 80 year old Speaker of the House of Representatives, didn’t have a mask. Furthermore the owner of the Salon, not the person doing her hair, was outraged that she is closed while a politician, seemingly skipped protocol to have her hair styled.
Okay, I know what you are thinking, how can this be news!
***
But it gets better.
Pelosi released a statement saying, she was set up. Caught red-handed getting her hair done, using her influence to have her hair washed, cut and styled without a mask. I know, I know these are serious allegations.
A set up that must have had America’s greatest evil Republican Party minds working overtime, night and day to pull off.
Now here is the punch line ( if you didn’t think it could get any funnier).
Donald Trump, as he is known to do, tweeted:
“Nancy Pelosi says she got ‘set up’ by a beauty Parlour owner. Maybe the Beauty Parlour owner should be running the House of Representatives instead of Crazy Nancy?”
Okay, all I can say is Holy Fuckin’ Shit! The whole thing is beyond funny. All the writers from Saturday Night Live, Late Night With David Letterman and Conan O’Brien couldn’t come up with anything funnier!
And it’s all coming from old people, Trump, Pelosi, Biden, Schiff, Sanders. Cripes, it’s like the Golden Girls meet the Muppets. And not the good muppets like Kermit and Grover, but those old grumpy men in the balcony.
People should consider Trump isn’t serious about his position, he enjoys driving people crazy. When he ran he probably didn’t even want to get in. Now President he is making a joke of it, getting back at all the people that laughed at him over the years. After all he has been a joke his entire life.
If he was a Canadian politician, Trump would have ran as a Rhinoceros Party candidate, promising to tear down the Rocky Mountains so Albertans could enjoy the West Coast sunsets.
I can’t imagine Trump getting back in for a second term, even going up against ‘Sleepy Slow Biden’, (Trump’s nickname for Mr. Biden not mine).
Once Trump is out I hope he writes a book saying he was never serious, it was all a joke and America had to be reminded to laugh at themselves.
This may seem flippant, but I don’t mean it that way. America under Trump has killed fewer poor people overseas in the name of justice, oil or weapons of mass destruction (opps sorry about that. . . bad intel.) than his predecessors.
In a perfect world, perhaps, history will look back on Trump as a comic satirist in the same vein as Sacha Baron Cohen or Mark Twain.
All I know is I can’t take it all too seriously, and when it shows up on CBC it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s news.
Like Allen Ginsberg asked a long time ago:
America this is quite serious. America this is the impression I get from looking in the television set. America is this correct?
Willow smells for meat to go with the spuds and cabbage.
Off for a couple days after a shitty week. Took off for the creek last night to clear my mind. Plenty of snow up top still to come down. It’s got the second home owners scared on the edge of the lake. I don’t like this global warming trend. It would only take a couple of years of winters with lots of snow paired with some chilly summers and those glaciers would grow. Then when it warmed up it would wash those second homes, along with the rest of the pollution down the Columbia.
A new bear.
Was worried about one of the young crows. It was stubborn to take up flying, it found itself along a fence line with mother in a tree offering encouragement, swooping at anything she thought a threat.
She must of done her job because the young one was out of the corner, hopping around with the other two. It must have paid off looking at them everyday because they let me get close.
You know you’re getting old when all you want to do is spend time in the garden and woodpile on your day off.
The good neighbour and I were given a few plants this year. I’d requested them and thanks to a couple sisters three plants were given to me in early spring. Much earlier than I usually start plants.I passed on two to my neighbour as he is much better with young plants than me. The last one I was able to keep alive until it was ready to be transplanted outdoors in May.
They were seeds from Aaron Bradshaw’s plants that he gave his sister, Linda the year before.
Linda started them on her windowsill. Aaron had left the parent plants for his sister when he died of cancer.
The plants were young at the time he passed, but grew in his sister’s backyard. It’s possible Aaron used cannabis for pain or comfort during his battle with his sickness. More than likely, it was something everyone here grows up with and knows helps with many everyday events, happy, sad, life affirming or life threatening.
Aaron was a year or two older than me. We ran into each other plenty. His father and my Grandfather were good friends. The first time I met him, I remember clearly, we were both just tots. My father took me to visit his father. Aaron was running around their house wild. Of course he was showing off for me and probably wanted me to play. But his speed intimidated me and I stuck by my father’s leg.
After that, even later, he knew he had my number, I knew it too. Growing up in this area you had to be tough. Aaron always knew I looked at him meekly. Once, long ago, he stopped me on my bike and asked me to borrow it. This is how a bike was stolen in those days. It happened a lot to me before I hit ten. He said, he just had to do something then he would give it right back.
I gave my bike to Aaron, figuring where he might dump it twisted and broken. Instead he brought it back just like he said he would.
Later in years, when ever we ran into each other, usually in the bar, we would talk, share some stories, about fishing and hunting. We always mentioned his Father and my Grandfather’s friendship. Like there was a bond. And there was a bond. We both grew up in this place. A place that seems to be cruel to some of the people who have been here the longest and love it the most.
Our families have had their share of feeling it.
The plant in my garden put out some big early buds that have been enjoyed by many. I am unsure what strain it is, but it’s a deep powerful one.
My good neighbour’s plants turned out to be a male and female. After I told him about Aaron and the origin of the plants. He decided to breed the two plantsand we now have seeds for many years to come.
The good neighbour calls the strain Bradshaw Shank Redemption. I think Aaron would have got a helluva kick out of that.
Plenty of moisture for September. Still good to have the seasons change, with longer nights and cool mornings. The mountains have a touch of white. Plenty of mushrooms for soup in the bush. Lisa never eats the soup the first day, she lets me eat it, if I’m still alive the next day she’ll have some.
A small sparrow braves the rain to have a chance at the garden’s sunflowers. Lots of overcast, the full Harvest Moon has passed and still no frost.
The smoke blossoms have ripened and need to be cut and dried. They have done well considering the lack of sunshine. It really is a beautiful fragrant plant. As usual there is much more than we can use. The rest will be given away or traded to friends, who like I, refuse to get from the government.
Willow smells for meat to go with the spuds and cabbage.
A new bear.
Bad Cabbage.
Plenty of moisture for September. Still good to have the seasons change, with longer nights and cool mornings. The mountains have a touch of white. Plenty of mushrooms for soup in the bush. Lisa never eats the soup the first day, she lets me eat it, if I’m still alive the next day she’ll have some.
Fall is still on.
Palliser Pass 