Horsetails (Equisetum)

     I have a long history with the Horsetail plant.  It started back in my youth when I was very interested in fossils and found some amazingly big chunks of a a stem-like fossil on the side of a railroad cutout, not far from my Indiana home.   After a bit of research, I discovered what I found, it was a Calamite, a tall tree-like plant (up to 100 ft, 30m tall) that lived in the Paleozoic forests 100 million years ago.  I also learned that the Calamite was a relative of the Horsetail plant that still lives today.  I had never heard of a Horsetail plant, but the name stuck in my mind.

    When we first came to BC, and were driving through a beautiful deep forest, I kept noticing what I thought were hundreds of young conifer trees growing along the side of the road.  I soon learned that what I was seeing was not small evergreen trees, but Horsetails.  When we bought our land in the Robson Valley, Horsetails became a very common site. 

    I always loved Horsetails, and was surprised when Brian Minter, a garden expert who answers gardening questions on a on CBC radio call-in show, mentioned that Horsetails were next to impossible to get rid of, because they have roots that can go down 20 feet, and you can never get them all out.  I have Horsetails in my garden and greenhouse, but I have never found them problematic.

    Horsetails are very interesting plants, with the way their leaves radiate out from uniform sections along the central stem.  Those stems are coated with abrasive silicates, making them useful for scouring metal items such as pans and things made of tin.    Boiled and dried Horsetail stems where used in Japan for the final polishing process in wood to produce a smooth finish.

    Horsetails send out an unusually shaped strange cone-like structure for dispersing their spores.  A few times I have seen this spore stem, poke itself through paving on the edge of a road.  I was amazed that this fragile plant could force its way through the hard surface. (photo below)  I could certainly not poke my finger through it.  

    

Take a look at my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca

A Favorite Robson Valley View

     One of the reasons we chose to live in the Robson Valley, was its beautiful mountain scenery.   I also liked the fact that it was an agricultural area.    Just a short drive east of McBride is one of my favorite views of the Valley.  I like the fact that it stunningly and beautifully combines both the Cariboo Mountains and the agriculture.

    The mountains in the middle of the photo are part of the Premier Range, an undeveloped area that can be seen jutting up in the Raush Valley.   This time of year the mountains are covered with a coat of pristine snow and the fields are still tan with the dead winter grass.  The trees have not yet begun to leaf out.  When they do, the view will add a colorful accent of early light green foliage.

 You can see my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

Kona Still Has An Eagle Eye

     Even though Kona is now all crippled up and can no longer walk, she still possesses a very keen eye.   I am constantly amazed when she suddenly erupts into loud barking, and I look around trying to find out why, then finally I see some animal obscured in the woods across the road, or some dog way in the distance when we are in town,

    A couple of weeks ago, when I had set Kona outside in the front yard, she suddenly began barking.  I looked around to see what she had noticed, and it was a deer on the wooded slope way across the road.  The sight of the deer kicked in Kona’s instincts, and although she can no longer walk, she began scooting like a seal across the yard, all the time barking like a demented fool.

    Kona loves to ride in the car.  Whenever the car is moving, she lies down in the back seat, but when we stop, she sits up and looks around.  

    Yesterday, I drove into town and parked in front of the library.  When I was just getting out of the car, Kona, who was sitting up in the back seat, suddenly went into one of her loud barking fits.  I tried to calm her down, but she wasn’t having any of it.  I looked around, wondering what had caused her sudden agitation.  I couldn’t see anything obvious.

    Then looking closer at the surroundings, saw four deer silhouetted in the shade of the house across Main Street.  They were all standing still, and I would never have spotted them, but Kona sure did.  

    Even though I have lived around here for just about 50 years, I am always surprised when I see deer wandering around in downtown McBride.  

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

Our Old Picket Fence

     It is quite common to hear in old movies that people dream about eventually living in a cute little house with a white picket fence around it.  Well, I guess I can say that I achieved part of that dream, because our house did have a picket fence around it, actually most of our property was surrounded by a picket fence, but it wasn’t white, it was an unpainted cedar picket fence.

    The fence was built by the retired guy that built our house back in the early 1960’s, and it is impressive how much work he must he must have put into splitting all the cedar pickets and constructing the fence.  From the length of the fence I estimate that about 1,800 pickets were used.  The guy probably went out into the bush, found the cedar logs, cut them to about 4 ft. (1.2m) lengths, then using a froe, split the logs into pickets about 3 to 5 inches (7 to 12 cm) in width.  He also had to split all of the cedar fence posts, dig the holes and set them into the ground before he could nail all those pickets onto the rails.  It seems like it must have been a tremendous project, all the while he was building the original house.

    What is now left of the fence is now about 60 years old.  With its aging, it has taken on a very rustic patina.  It is now covered with lichen and moss as you can see in the photos.  I do love the natural look of those old lichen-covered pickets, posts, and rails.

    I have had to tear down huge sections of the fence as it deteriorated, because the fence was no longer needed since we no longer have any goats (I used to have a herd of Angora goats).  Another reason I have taken parts of the fence down was because of the danger it presented with in increased number of forest fires these days.   If a fire did start on a section of cedar pickets and rails, it could easily spread, burning its way down the fence to our out buildings and house. 

You can view my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

Oh No; Is That A Forest Fire?

     Like most people who live in forested areas, these last few years have made us very paranoid about forest fires.  A few years ago, we were forced to evacuate our home after a forest fire, started by someone doing spring burning, escaped and began ripping across the mountain slope above our house.  

    It was a very blustery day yesterday when we drove into McBride.  When we got to the top of Mennonite Hill, and overlooked the Valley, I was suddenly filled with fear, when I saw a white plumb rising, and spreading across the tree tops. 

    “Oh no,” I thought, “Don’t tell me someone is trying to do burning when it is so windy.”  I feared a fire  had already escaped and was burning through the trees.

    When we got at the bottom of the hill and alongside of the Fraser River, I was much relieved to discover that what I had seen was not smoke, but dust, blowing off of the large sandy beach beside the Fraser.  It was pretty amazing just how much fine dust was being picked up and blown by the gusts of wind.  It created a very thick cloud of the stuff.

You can view my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

Earth Day

     I participated in that first Earth Day back in 1970.  Our small conservative university had a short  ceremony out in the lawn with some speakers from the Biology Department.  It was not well attended. Like I said, it was a conservative university, and concerns over our planetary home were not high on most of the student body’s agenda.   Of course, like in most groups, there was a small fringe of people who cared passionately about the Earth, and sought to stop the existential degradation that was threatening it.

    Those were days of hope and had restrictions only been put in place back then, our planet’s climate would not be in such a dire and threatening state today.

    For me, hope for the Earth is pretty much gone.  Big oil money controls the White House, and now all those corporations that used to give lip service to the environment, no longer have to “Green Wash” themselves, in fact, with Trump and the sycophant Republicans in power, it is dangerous for them do so.

    All I can do is urge everyone to do what you can to protect the natural environment we still have, and try to limit your use of fossil fuels as much as you can.

    

You can view my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

Timex, One Crappy Clock Radio

     In December, I blogged about getting a new clock radio, something I really depend on, but was having trouble finding in a store.  I was overjoyed when at last I found a Timex clock radio in a store in Prince George, after striking out multiple times.  It didn’t take me long to discover that my happiness at getting the new clock radio was ill deserved, the Timex turned out to be a piece of junk.

    See all of the titles by the buttons on the top?  Well, it turned out most of them were just suggestions, not something that would actually happen, if you pressed them.

    There are two buttons for setting the alarm, so you can set two different times to wake up.   Supposedly, you can press the buttons and set the time you want to wake up.  After trying to set the first alarm time, I finally just gave up.  While trying to set the alarm time, at one point, just stopped moving the clock.  It stopped at 2:30 in the afternoon, something I didn’t want, but I couldn’t change.  I couldn’t even turn the alarm time off, so every day at 2:30 in the afternoon, the radio came on. 

    I then tried to set 7:00 AM, the time I wanted to wake up, on the other alarm.  I was able to successfully set it correctly, but I was unable to get the clock to unset the alarm for those days I didn’t want to wake up at 7:00, so the alarm went off whether I wanted it or not.  

    I always liked to  use the “Sleep” function on clock radios.  Often, if I wake up in the middle of the night and can’t go back to sleep, I turn on Sleep mode, then set how many minutes I want it to play, before it turns itself off.  Unfortunately, sometimes when I hit the Sleep button, instead of showing the time to stay on, it changes the radio station, giving me static.  That is not something I want to have to deal with in the darkness of the middle of the night.

    Sometimes when I wake up in the middle of the night and turn on the Sleep button, I hear a program I don’t really want to listen to, so I slide my finger over to the radio ON-Off button to turn it off, and for some reason, instead of turning off the radio, it increases the volume, something else I don’t want to hear in the middle of the night.  The electronic wiring for the function buttons seem to be all random, intertwined, and messed up.  The forty dollars I spent on the Timex clock radio, was money wasted.

    Yesterday, we did another shopping day in Prince George.  I remembered that the store where I got the Timex clock radio, also had Sony clock radios, and so I forked out $50, for one of them.  I sure hope I have better luck with that one, than I had with the Timex.

You can see my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca