Tag: environment

dear deer

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Heard Willow putting up a helluva fuss. Popped my head out of the studio and there she was head to head with a Mule Deer.

Deer kill dogs regularly within town limits by stomping them. Our neighbours Cocker Spaniel was killed a couple years ago. At this time of year the deer are starting the rut.

We are careful when we put Willow in the yard, making sure there isn’t any deer around. They will be circling my garden regularly now food is getting scarce. The sunflowers are blooming, the ground is still full of carrots and beets, along with the cabbage calling their name. It must look like a smorgasbord.

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Willow and I have an agreement to try to look after each other. I get annoyed at her because she follows her nose, rolls in shit, eats live mice and birds then throws them up later. She also has issues with me. I fall asleep in cold places, forget some days to head into the bush, push her back while going through the drive through and insist Scarlett and Cooper are her masters.

When I saw Willow nose to nose with a deer, I picked up what was closest, a plastic pale and ran for the deer. It didn’t move for a second, then realized I meant business and turned and ran. I threw the bucket for good measure.

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It was a terrible throw. Landing wide. Willow looked embarrassed for me. I tweaked my shoulder in the doing, damn I’m getting old.

postcard

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We always saved something for cold harvest. We chipped carrots out of frozen ground. Chewed on seeds come winter. He thought the dill ones could hide whiskey breath from his mother. This on account the birds wouldn’t eat them. He tried to explain it one day, I didn’t get it. He was wrong; about dill masking the smell of whiskey though. We saw his mother chase him out of the house after he’d eaten a bushel of them. He was mostly wrong most of the time. But sometimes he could be dead on. Thats why we liked him, I guess.

pitter patter

RCE_1105Fireweed.

Rain the last few nights. It feels good. Tonight the stars can be seen while rain hits my face. There is a smell of woodsmoke in the air, not from forest fires but a wood stove.

Most of the garden is in. If I was smart, ambitious and had extra dough, three things that have always been in short supply, I’d build a new fence around the garden. It’s a battle with the deer. They have been leaving their calling cards on the outside of my decrepit fence. By the time they break in they will have my blessing.

There is  a lot of beets and chard we have yet to address. Both are sweet. We grate them and cut them raw for every meal. If we only ate them and nothing else, now until November, there would still be too many.

Lisa and I are missing the pitter patter of little feet on the floor.

finally fall

_LME8510Cooper burying the potatoes I just dug.

Frost behind the mountain, along the creek, as soon as sight is lost of the valley bottom. The leaves are changing. The potatoes are in. Most of the tomatoes ripened on the vine. The onions are pulled and dried.

Lisa and I were deep in the bush Monday morning with our grandkids. It was chilly when we walked the cut block and the road in and out. They took turns calling Willow.

_LME8457Dog tries to steal babies tomato. Scarlett, says, ‘fuck you Willow’. . . not really.

Cooper threw rocks over the bank, liking the way it sounds hitting the snags and boulders on the way down. Scarlett walked the whole way in her moccasins.

_LME8505Hiding out in the carrot patch.

Lisa and I get to show them something they don’t see everyday. Their hands get cold and sometimes hurt grabbing the wrong prickled branch pulling themselves up. They get to see trees living and some old stumps. They already know roots make the best walking sticks, berries with crowns are good and everything light green smells fresh when you crush it between your finger tips.

I just want them to love being here.

Early September

RCE_1099Fall Fireweed gone to seed.

Whew! Thank goodness the summer is over. There is always a sigh of relief after Labour Day. All my white clothes have been cleaned and pressed and put away. This morning there was no standing in line at the coffee shop while a herd of tourists looked at the chalk board menu like they had never seen the word ‘coffee’ before. I was in and out like a wedding dink. It’s fall, back to Carharts, plaid long sleeved shirts and not driving ten miles out of the way to avoid downtown.

RCE_1114Solomon’s Seal berries.

It was close to frost this morning. My wise sister Deb has covered her plants tonight. I’m going to risk it. I could be sorry come morning. We have had a great year of tomatoes with most of them ripening on the vine. There won’t be many green ones to ripen inside this year. They are delicious! It will be at least February before I’ll be able to buy one in the store.

RCE_1097.jpgWild Asters.

I got a text from my good neighbour. He is on a road trip going across BC visiting his kids and grandkids. It’s been awhile since he’s been able to do that. I thought he may want to know how his garden is doing, I’ve been looking after it in his absence. Instead, he said his laptop was stolen from his vehicle in Vancouver. He was pissed. In the spring he stopped in Canmore and had a giant block of cheese he bought at Costco stolen from the cooler in his vehicle.

He really has to start locking his doors, but I wasn’t going to say that. I texted back, ‘on the bright side think of the fun you will have filling up a fresh laptop with brand new porn’. An hour later, I was getting worried I’d stepped over the line, then a bing on my phone, ‘you know it.’

RCE_1108Rose Hips. As plumb and full as I’ve seen in the wild. It is said they have 20x more vitamin C then oranges.

It’s good to have the land cooling after another bad summer. Winters are traditionally bad in the valley. Work drying up. Only minimum wage. Cold and overcast in the valley bottom. No doubt this winter will bring challenges.

Fall is underway. The firewood is in. I worry like usual, maybe someday all the demons will come home to roost. ’til then the colours keep changing and the birds keep flying above the creeks.

Joy and Ray

_LME8410smRay Crook and Joy Bond

It’s not everyday you get invited to a 100th birthday celebration. It is especially rare to be celebrating two 100th birthdays at one party!

Joy Bond and Ray Crook are both lifelong residents of Invermere and the Columbia Valley. Their birthdays are within a week of each other. Today, among friends, family and provincial and federal dignitaries they celebrated their birthdays at the old Invermere CPR building.

_LME8393.smRay and Joy with Brianna Rota, representing Kootenay-Columbia federal MLA Wayne Stetski, and Columbia River-Revelstoke provincial MLA Doug Clovechok.

Lisa and I were born in the valley so we know Joy and Ray and all they have contributed to making this area so special.

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Joy is an active member of the Windermere Valley Historical Society. She still cares for a large garden and delivers vegetables to people without a garden.

I spent a lot of time on Lake Windermere in the winter. Mrs. Bond was a wonderful skater and we would meet often and share a few words. I believe she skated and skied into her 80’s.

Ray lives down the street from us and we talk often. I am always amazed at his ability to recall the early days. His father sold my grandfather his first house in Windermere when he arrived back in the valley after WWI.

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He told me about cutting trail in Kootenay National Park with my father. How they were chased by a moose and later had to cut a large fallen spruce blocking the trail into Flo Lake.

To have two original citizens of a town the size of Invermere turn 100 in the same week has to be some kind of a record.

There is nothing that can be said or written to sum up such wonderful and full lives.

Lisa and I wish Joy and Ray many more years of health, happiness and peace.

clearing

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Lisa and Scarlett. Two peas in a pod, believe me, those smiles mean trouble.

A wonderful few days with our grandkids, Cooper and Scarlett, while their parents slipped away for a mini holiday to the Okanagan.

Lisa and I decided the best plan of action, since they haven’t been away from Mom and Dad overnight, was to keep them busy. Each morning found us up the creek behind the mountain. Cooper and Scarlett did plenty of walking. Cooper worked hard on his rock and hill climbing. Scarlett learned to call Willow to keep her close. We walked through trees and bush, noting the colour in the leaves, the rabbits ducking into the undergrowth and the wild chickens (grouse) that seem plentiful this year.

By lunch and supper Cooper and Scarlett were hungry. By bedtime they were tired and didn’t put up a fuss for Mom and Dad or wanting to stay up late. They slept through the night. In the morning we were off to it again.

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Cooper with supper and his pretend smile.

Cooper did seem to get a little tired of my boiled carrots and spuds at every meal – hey you eat what is ready in the garden. On their last night here I made a big spaghetti dinner. Mom and Dad were back and everyone enjoyed it. Of course the sauce had plenty of carrots.

Lisa and I are lucky. . . and I’m not talking about being able to grow carrots.

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Light rain tonight. It feels good, cool and fresh. Today the clouds were as high as they’ve been for awhile. The mountains showed up and lo and behold had a coat of snow.

Very fine extended weekend.

mid august

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Dean

The turn is underway from summer to fall.  The moon grows, still red, sitting close to mars. It’s been a bloodbath up there this season.

It’s hard to figure what effects us more, the news or stars above. I’ve been taught not to believe what I hear. Would those red stars inspire me in a different day? Does the good news quiet our basest instincts, make us insignificant to each other and the environment?

The mornings are cool finally. That I know and can report with confidence.

smoke show

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We had a touch of rain on Monday morning. The smoke has cleared enough to be able to see the mountains.

BC Premier, John Horgan toured some of the places hit by wildfire, shrugged his shoulders in front of the cameras, and said this could be our new normal.

You hear it a lot – this is our new normal.

It’s been two bad fire years in a row.

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The garden seems to be wilting early. The tops of the spuds are dying off same as the onions. There is a couple of big holes in the garden where the peas and garlic were. The red cabbage has formed good heads and will do plenty of growing once it cools. The carrots are getting large the same as the Detroit Dark Red Beets. Every meal contains both prepared in some form or fashion, from grated raw to boiled to roasted or barbecued.

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Perhaps it’s the heat or the orange haze that blankets everything. The mountains obscured, the traffic, the gentrification of downtown, yoga, soaps and massage, just another place of haves and have nots, the lake, misted, picturesque if not for the hundreds of motorboats running hither and yon across it’s surface, seemingly oblivious to sky, mountain, shore or water. It’s still summertime after all, but I can’t help feeling sad.

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The mosquitoes are out in force. If you’ve read this far, you know I find them the least of summer irritants. The nights are getting longer. The moon is waxing gibbous, half full, not blood red. The constellations can be easily seen. The temperature will drop to 5° just before dawn. It feels good.

Everything’s fine I tell myself until it will be again.

mid august

RCE_0992-Pano.an.smGreen skyglow above the smoke.

It’s green that gives me the most problems. It all looks the same to me. It’s shapes that I look for. Shapes that don’t fit the landscape. That’s the way I was taught to hunt. Looking for curve of antler or back bone sideways instead of up and down. Green gets in the way.

It’s said we see green better than other colours, because from an evolutionary standpoint humans eat plants having to recognize the difference between the edible and the ones that were poison. Our enemies stand out in green. The snake and saber tooth tiger are clocked in a second across the green landscape.

I’m looking forward to fall. When the green turns. It’s already underway. To winter. Long underwear, white and grey, wood on the fire and cooking inside.

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The smoke is bad. I think of my father, during these times, not being able to breath because of emphysema. The mountains obscured. The sun orange all day, disappearing before it goes below the horizon. The moon, waxing gibbous, never appeared. The good neighbours lights fogged over.

Even the great power denial can’t clear the skies.