Hanging On The Edge

     The Fraser River keeps flowing and as it does, it eats away the soil on its bank.  This is the view of a well house now sitting in a precarious position on the Fraser’s eroding bank.  It can be seen from the Highway 16 Fraser River Bridge just east of McBride.  

    There used to be a grove of birch trees neighboring the well house, but after being undercut by the Fraser, the last of them fell into the river a month ago, leaving the doomed well house alone to ponder its dubious fate.

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

Our Two Big Dead Cedars

     We have two big dead cedars in our yard.  The biggest of the two was already dead in 1977 when we bought the property.  We could see its dead naked top from the road and it helped us locate our driveway at the very beginning, before we became more familiar with our neighborhood.  I was so happy that the smaller of the two cedars was still alive and I built a fence around it to prevent it from being damaged when I had goats.

    We live in a temperate rain forest which is characterized by huge cedar trees.  I love those dark cedar forests with the ancient cedars, and I was proud to have the big living cedar growing in our yard.  Unfortunately about four years ago it died, and I was heart broken.  I have left the two giants standing.

    A few days ago I walked out from the carport and looked over toward the dead cedars and noticed that from that angle, you can’t really tell that they are dead.  When you walk through an ancient cedar forest all that you can see of the trees are their big gray trunks, and that is all you can see from our house, so from that angle, the two dead trees still give the impression that they are alive.  Of course I would love it if they were alive, but at least their dead trunks still give me a bit of that cedar forest feeling.

    Below is a photo.  The foliage that you see is from a nearby willow tree.

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

The Last Days Of Night by Graham Moore

      I have always been intrigued by that time period when electricity was being developed for us and those inventors like Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla, so I thought this historical fiction would be interesting, but it was way above my expectations, and I didn’t expect it to be such a page turner.

    The novel’s characters were real people and the author did a lot of research to get their personalities right.  The events that happen in the novel are also accurate, however the author did have to use his imagination to fill out some of them to fit the plot.  He did do some playing with the timeline to help the storyline.

    The novel follows the life of Paul Cravath, a newly graduated lawyer , who was hired by the Westinghouse Company, who was being sued by Thomas Edison over their lightbulbs, who Edison claimed was an infringement of his patent.  This was a huge lawsuit, whose outcome would determine the future of electrification in the US.  Edison was extremely wealthy, powerful, and domineering, and no one believed that Westinghouse had a chance of winning.  Edison is shown as he really was, not the kindly inventor most people imagine, but a conniving and devious narcissist, who would stop at nothing to win.  

    One of the most interesting characters in the story was Nikola Tesla, the bizarre, yet genius, electrical prodigy. Tesla had a strange, abrasive, and obstinate personality, and bizarre habits (he seemed to live on saltine crackers.)  He developed alternating electrical current, which jeopardized the future monopoly of Edison’s company, who used direct electrical current.  Westinghouse saw the advantages of alternating current which, unlike direct current, could travel great distances down the wires. Westinghouse’s young lawyer, Paul Cravath, had to fight to stay above water in all of the chaos Edison created to stay the dominant company.

    Besides the struggle with the electrical giants, Paul also struggles with his love interest, a famous singer of the time, and also a real person, who Paul later married.

While I generally enjoy most of the historical fiction I read, The Last Days of Night was a standout, both in describing what was going on in the 1890’s, but also in putting it all together into  a really interesting read.

You can look at my  paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca

"Volunteers" In The Garden

     Our garden always looks rather chaotic.  I generally plant things in rows, but plants and seeds left over from the previous year always come up, not in the rows, making things look pretty haphazard.  In the photo above, there is a row of potatoes on the right side and a row of lettuce on the left side.  In between the rows are a couple of “volunteer” potato plants that came up unexpectedly.  Obviously, last fall when I dug my potatoes, I missed some and they remained in the ground all winter and then when the weather warmed, up they came.  

    When I see volunteers, I usually just leave them to grow, thus the chaos.  Actually that row of lettuce was all volunteers that came up in another section of the garden.   I spotted them when they were still small and transplanted them into a row.

    The poppies in the garden always spread a lot of seeds, so poppy plants come up all over the garden.  I usually don’t weed them out, because I like the color their blooms add to the garden.  The photo just below shows a couple of very healthy poppy plants that came up in the middle of my potato row. 

    The photo at the very bottom is my prized volunteer.  It is a foxglove.  A decade ago we had lots of foxgloves in our garden, and then we had a very wet summer that wiped them out and we hadn’t had any foxgloves since.  Last fall when I was putting the garden to sleep, I noticed that a couple of small foxglove volunteers had come up, so I transplanted them where they wouldn’t be wiped by tilling.  This year, one of them is flowering.  The pale yellow flower is not as spectacularly beautiful as some of the ones we used to have, but I was happy just to see any foxglove flowers at all.  

    While volunteer plants do cause some chaos in the garden, to me they always seem like free gifts, so I generally let them grow.

You can see my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

Amphibians in the Pond

     In 1994 on that first year of my pond, I was anxious to see wildlife establish itself in that new environment.  It was exciting for me to discover the new creatures that were suddenly making an appearance on and around the pond.  I was constantly walking around it trying to spot new critters.

    One day and then the days following it, I began to see what looked like small minnow-sized fish in the water.  They would quickly dart away when they noticed me.  This left me very confused, because I hadn’t put any fish in the pond, and there was no way they could get there naturally.  

    One hot day after biking home from work and ready for a swim in the cold water, I decided to take my mask and snorkel with me to see what I could see underwater, and I happened to come upon one of those “fish” that had left me so confused.  I quickly saw that it wasn’t fish I was seeing, but salamanders.  I saw two salamanders who were fully developed.  They had long lizard-like bodies with small legs and light patterns on their backs.  I had seen salamanders around our property before, and I was happy they had discovered the pond.

    I also had toads on our property, but I was still amazed in the spring to see so many of them gather in the pond, make their chirping sounds to call a mate.  I had never had any frogs on my property, but was able to catch a few in other lake in the Valley, and establish them in my pond.

    I was happy yesterday to see my first frog of the year.  There never seem to be very many of them, but I occasionally while walking around the pond, I hear a splash as a frog escapes into the water.  Below is a photo I was able to take with my iPhone of the frog I saw.  I was surprised it let me get so close to take the picture.

You can view my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

Waiting For Something To Happen

     Here is a bored Kona with her head resting on the seat of the couch, waiting for us to do something.  Kona is an extremely high-maintenance dog, and is totally dependent upon us for her entertainment.  If we put her outside, she is only out there for about three minutes, then she comes back in.  If we are outside with her she will pick up one of her sticks and chew it and be satisfied, but that only lasts as long as we are outside with her.  We get tired of constantly being her social directors.

    Kona is sure an unusual dog.  Most dogs like to be outside and can entertain themselves for hours, or just take a snooze in the sun, but not Kona.  She requires one of us to be out there with her, if she is to stay.

    I’m not sure why Kona always likes the position you see her in; sitting up with her head resting on something, but she does it a lot.  I would have thought that just lying down would be more comfortable.

    Kona, Kona, Kona, why can’t you be more normal?

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

Unplanned Hoarding

     We had dental appointments yesterday up in Prince George.  Because we live in a small isolated village, every time we go up to the “Big City” we always make a point of stocking up on the things we need.  Unfortunately, we often don’t remember what it is we need, and what it is we don’t need.  

    After we got home from our trip last night and started to unload all of those supplies out of the car, I discovered we were really mistaken about what things we needed, and as a result we now have to deal with the problem of where to store it all.

    As you can see in the photo above, it will now be a while before we run out of toilet paper.  I was surprised while at Costco, when my wife said we needed toilet paper, because I thought we still had a lot, but toilet paper is something we don’t want to run out of, so I bought a big package.

    We also doubled the number of jars of peanut butter we had on hand.  That was my fault, but I thought we were down to the last jar.  We bought a whole chicken, when we already had several frozen ones in the freezer.   The same can be said for a pack of chicken breasts.  

    Like my wife says, “We’ll eventually use it all.” but given our track record, I imagine by that time we will have already purchased more of that item, which we will have to store.

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca