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.
Tag: dogs
fine weekend
If you ain’t ready to leap you never will be.
That’s what I’ve heard. Heights with water under have begun to frighten me. Even logs with rushing water, once skipped over, take concentration.
It’s the sky and water telling us to hold on.
I appreciate their concern.
The pure white and jade.
Sooner or later you fall
or jump.
Best to keep
your laces
tied
up.
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.
welsh
There ain’t pictures clear enough to tell the story of the mountains. The rain is intermittent, same as the sun, both make the moment, all forgotten till next time.
We were hell and gone, looking for glacier fed lakes and rushing creeks. A busted rock exposed ore. It was kicked aside. Down the mountain overlooking clearcuts. Hoping no one would notice.
There were magic mushrooms and large toads in the bush, twisted snags, spruce, pine and larch, hundreds of years old, somehow missing snow slides and lightening strikes.
Those rolling rocks on top of scree will take my legs someday, but not today even with rain. Today the sky is my friend, mottled with clouds, bear shit and moose tracks, threatening either storm or sun. Lucky they stayed in-between where it’s good for us on the ground.
Very fine day.
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.
may long
Riding in the back of the truck.
Was up early. Scarlett and I headed to the store. We were planning a big spaghetti dinner. Scarlett picked out ice cream treats. I let her have one for breakfast.
Good neighbour Larry sold plants, over the weekend, to tourists. Tomatoes and peppers mostly. They look good this year. Brandywine, Cherokee, Black Cherry and Thai Dragon.
The long weekend brings out the tourists in force. They race and honk their horns at each other. Sometimes they bump into each other in the parking lots and yell at each other. Still, I don’t blame them for wanting to be out here, away from Calgary and the malls, freeways, casinos, high-rises, pavement, neighbours that you live right beside but don’t know, shopping, shopping, fees and movie theatres.
We headed up the pass to look for orchids. We were only five minutes off the main road and we never saw another person. They were all fighting for coffee at Kicking Horse Café, thank God.
Last week there was still snow.
Turning wild.
Today, Scarlett and Cooper ran, climbed banks and contemplated the tops of trees. They found paths in the bush. They followed moose tracks until they were out of sight and we had to call them back.
Mountain orchid.
The Calypso Orchids were out. Small, among the forest floor, almost invisible, sinking into the moss.
Kelsie, Scarlett and Cooper, climbing towards the ridge.
I pointed out a snowy mountain and suggested we should run up there. Scarlett and Cooper took off in it’s direction. It had fresh snow. You can do much worse than run towards an unclimbed ridge.
The kids sat in the back of the truck for the ride off the mountain.
Palliser Pass 