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Showing posts from April, 2020

Snowy Speculations

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If I could paint, I would have tried to replicate the landscape very early this morning. Illuminated by the faintest hints of light and hours before sunrise, the cold, stark landscape lay completely still in its snowy blanket. Naked trees stood proudly and quietly against this backdrop, this palate of pure white an unforgiving place for any creature, big or small, to attempt to cross without drawing attention to its existence at this time. Even our ancient tire swing looked sleepy and droopy, suspended precariously close to the ground, as if the effort of hanging from a tree limb was too much for it. To the east, the only rays of light visible were the ones coming from the across the river, and even those seem hushed and muffled, like a child tired and murmuring not to wake them up just yet.  The young families down the road have gone all out with Christmas lights this year. Bright colours adorn the night skies and my neighbours even have a Christmas Cat and a Christmas Dinosaur that i

A Donkey Lives Next Door...

A Donkey Lives Next Door... One summer evening several years ago, my husband and I sat outside in our Muskoka chairs enjoying a nice glass of local wine. This is one of the perks of living down the road from several fantastic Niagara wineries.  Suddenly the most horrific sound split the air! It was like a goose being strangled, gasping for its last breath in high-pitched, squeaky echoes over and over again. Sheer torture and then...complete silence. Now our property borders on a little thicket and is surrounded by vineyards and several hobby farms with chickens, goats and sheep. Coyotes are a common sighting and their nighttime howls have become a welcome and soothing sound. So we just chalked this interruption up to the sounds of nature that surround us. But these strangled eruptions were not to be a one-time occurrence. A pattern seemed to be forming.  Ear-splitting cries for about two minutes each morning, making a repeat performance for about the same amount of time every