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Showing posts from May, 2021

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
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Messy, Messy Nature

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Messy, Messy Nature Once again, we are blessed with a beautiful Sunday morning! The birds are singing their hearts out and in the distance, a tractor is rumbling around in the vineyard, a sign that the work week does not stop for our farmers. Just as I finished typing the title of this blog, I adjusted my laptop and accidentally hit the pot in which I was trying to grow my precious heirloom tomato seedlings. I had been pleased with twelve seedlings peeping out of the dirt several weeks ago and, as of last week, was down to four. So as the pot crashed to the deck floor, I hastily tried to save these fragile babies from the rubble of potting soil they found themselves under. I repotted them in record time and cleaned the mess left behind. As I was putting away the dust pan the irony of my title did not escape me.... My husband has been complaining for weeks how messy nature is. In this last week, the poplar forest behind us has been showering us with "snow" making the pool and
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The Watcher in the Woods

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                                     The Watcher in the Woods In one of the first springs that we lived in this house, our neighbour told us about the coywolf pair that lived in the thicket behind our property. He warned us that he suspected that they had a den somewhere close by and that the kids were to be careful when they were playing outside. Since I had grown up with woods and a creek as my backyard, I was not in the least worried about a danger factor, but more fascinated than anything else. Interestingly enough, a local magazine had done a feature article on coywolves that spring with a beautiful male on its cover. So the timing seemed uncanny. Every spring, a low area between our neighbour's property and ours fills with water and remains that way for several months. And every spring, we have a male and female mallard come and claim that patch of water for hours of bathing and diving time, though it isn't too deep.  On a grey, overcast day, I was standing by the house w
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