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Showing posts from March, 2022

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

Curious Coyotes

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 Curious Coyotes As I drove down Highway 55 mid-morning yesterday, I had the privilege of witnessing a gorgeous male coyote make a mad dash across the road. The car ahead of me was barely driving 70, a fact which irritated me tremendously at that time until this magnificent creature made its way across the road and I was grateful that we were indeed driving much slower than was the norm. What really struck me was the way this coyote was running. He looked like a deer that was leaping in broad, graceful, yet slightly erratic, bounds. For a coyote that had just survived months of our harsh winter, he didn't look mangy or thin. In the seconds I watched him cross from one vineyard and disappear between the rows of the next, I noticed that he was a healthy weight and his coat was gorgeous.  But the odd prancing stayed with me the rest of the day. When I stopped at my parent's house later for a short visit, I told my father about my sighting and about how odd it was that the coyote h