Every time I see a Hooded Merganser on the pond, it makes me smile. They always look like a duck with a punk haircut. Hooded Mergansers like to hang out in wooded lakes and ponds, so I guess that is what attracts them to my pond. They nest in hollow trees or logs and decades ago I put some duck nest boxes up in several trees by the pond for the Wood Ducks, and the mergansers find them suitable as well. I hope this female will use one again this year.
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When I was a kid, I was in 4-H. Each year we would sign up to do projects in various categories. I did projects in Forestry (mounting leaves and identifying wood samples), Wildlife (making plaster-casts of animal footprints), Electricity (making an extension cord), and one year I also did Strawberries. I had to plant some strawberry plants in the garden and keep them weeded, so when an inspector came out, they looked healthy and neat. So I knew what strawberry plants looked like.
After moving to McBride, we were once walking through Koeneman Park and I noticed these very tiny strawberry plants growing in the grass. I hope you can get a sense of their size by comparing it to my thumb in the photo. They were very small compared to a normal size strawberry plant. These were wild strawberries. I found them very interesting, everything looked the same; their leaves, their flowers, and their runners, only everything was miniature.
When the small strawberry plants made strawberries, they too were miniature. They are about the same size as a pea.
I found that picking a wild strawberry difficult, because of its size. Usually my clumsy big fingers would just end up with a strawberry smear, rather than the berry, whenever I tried to pick one. I thought that such a compact little berry would be a real burst of flavor, but there didn’t seem to be enough there to really give much of a taste. Still, I find it amazing how humankind has bred, developed, and enlarged this little plant into a plant that produces the much bigger and more tasty strawberries that we have today.
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We often walk Kona down the runway at the McBride Airfield. It is a windy place, but yesterday caught us by surprise. When we left the car and started down the tarmac, there was a slight breeze in our face, but when we got about a third of the way down the runway, suddenly a really powerful gust of wind slammed into us. It knocked me off balance and I had to reposition my footing and lean strongly into the wind to stay upright.
The rest of our walk down the runway was a struggle and we had to fight the headwind all the way, until Kona indicated to us that she had had enough, and we turned around. The wind made Kona’s head look pretty streamlined as he faced the wind.
The airport has two wind socks; a small one and a larger one. I assume that the smaller one shows the pilots the breezes, and the bigger one doesn’t come into play until the winds get stronger. The big wind sock is rarely pushed out horizontally, but it was yesterday. (Below)
Wind sure seems to be making it into the news recently. In last week’s local paper there was a photo of a neighbor’s house with it’s roof laying in the yard. That roof has been on the house for decades, and now suddenly the wind came up and took it off. In the Toronto region many residents are still without power after a derecho moved through the area knocking down trees and damaging houses. Until two years ago, I had never even heard of a derecho, (a widespread, long-lived straight-line wind storm causing tornado-like or hurricane-like destruction with its powerful winds), but I guess with all the changes to the climate, we can expect to hear about more and more of them.
The powerful gusts we experienced yesterday were nothing like a derecho, but it certainly drew our attention to the power of wind.
The other day when Kona and I were walking around the pond, I noticed a pair of ducks out there that I hadn’t seen on the pond before. The male was a coppery color, while the female (can you see her, she really blends in to the water) was gray and white. I didn’t really know what kind of ducks they were, but figured that because of the males distinct coloration he would be easy to identify. I took some photos of them because my memory is really bad when it comes to remembering how things looked.
When I got back to the house, I downloaded the photos, looked at them, then grabbed some bird books to see what kind of ducks they were.
It seems like the birds and ducks that come around here, never really look like the pictures I find in the reference books. The closest looking duck I could find in the bird book was a Cinnamon Teal, but I am never very confident in my identifications, because of there always seem to be big differences in what I saw and the images in the books.
The duck I saw had a head that was darker in color than the rest of its body. The female was gray rather than brownish, like the female duck in the book, but none of the other ducks in the book look as close as the Cinnamon Teal, so I guess that is what it was.
Below is the image from the book.
It always takes a bit of time in the spring for trees and bushes to leaf out (this year due to all the cool weather it took even longer), however once they get going they explode into a jungle of foliage. I was shocked the other day when I happened to look out the window and was confronted with all of the green that I saw. This is how it looked.
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I’ve mentioned this before, but whenever there is a brilliant sunset that draws your attention, you should also look behind you because often the sunset will create unusual coloration on whatever is there. That was the case last night. There was a large orangish cloud toward the sunset, but behind me the trees were turned some interesting colors from its light.
Up here on the 53° Latitude, we are really starting to see the amount of daylight getting noticeably longer and longer. I took this photo at 9:00 in the evening. The Robson Valley stretches out in a North-westernly direction. During the winter the sun sets behind the Cariboo Mountains, but as we get closer to summer, it slowly moves along the mountains that hold the valley, and and then sets at the far end of the valley bottom.
And of course our sunrise gets earlier and earlier in the spring. We keep all of the curtains in the bedroom closed at night, because dawn comes so early. We can hear the birds start chirping at 3:45 AM. Even though it is dark in the bedroom, Kona isn’t fooled and like clockwork wakes us up, insisting we get out of bed every morning at 6:00.
We still have about a month of lengthening days to go, but then the our sunsets will slowly move eastward and begin setting behind the mountains again.
you can view my paintings at: davidmarchant2.ca
See the patches of baby-blue in the photo, they are Forget-me-nots. Back in the late 1970’s when we bought our place, our neighbor was Mrs. Nail, a retired astronomer. She was a member of the Alpine Club of Canada and I think through them, she got some Forget-me-not seeds that she planted in her yard. Although her house is not real close to ours, over the years the flowers spread into our yard. Mrs. Nail died decades ago, but every spring when the Forget-me-nots come up, I am reminded of her.
Forget-me-nots have tiny blue or pink flowers. I think it is the acidity of the soil that determines the color. I sometimes come across white blooms.
I have a bit of a wild-looking lawn, because I like to have flowers growing in it for the bees and hummingbirds. Although they seem quite vigorous and may not need my help, I always mow around the patches of Forget-me-nots to make sure they will mature enough to produce seeds and grow and spread again next year.
Below is a close-up of their beautiful little flowers.
When the alignment of the evening sun is just right, the power lines along Hinkelman Road reflect the brilliance of the the setting sun and seem to dance down the country road. Of course I had to stop and take a photo.
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One of the jobs we have to do this time of year is put the gravel screen over our water intake culvert. We take the screen off during the winter, since no gravel comes down the falls when everything is frozen and covered with snow and we are afraid that freezing water might cause a blockage of flow into our culvert. However, when things really warm up in the spring, the alpine snow starts to melt and the creeks run very heavy, carrying gravel and boulders with them. The gravel screen prevents our culvert from filling up with gravel and boulders which would stop our water flow.
Three of us went up to the intake this morning to roll and lift the heavy metal gravel screen into place, so hopefully we will have uninterrupted water throughout the spring. However, nothing is perfect and sometimes the strong water flow will pile up boulders and wood on top of the screen, which does cause
us to lose our water. We will keep our fingers crossed that doesn’t happen this year.
There is concern in BC about the unusually cold spring we have had thus far. That has prevented the snow on the mountaintops from melting slowly, so as a result, there is more snow than usual up there. If a really hot spell comes along, creeks will turn into torrents, and there will be flooding in the rivers.
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We had a couple of appointments in Prince George yesterday, so Kona spent the day at the Robson Valley Pet Hostel, getting a haircut for summer. She was getting pretty shaggy and uncomfortable, so we had Ann mostly take off Kona’s hair on the body, leaving it longer on the head and tail so we would still recognize her. Kona always looks different after a haircut.
It was a 12 hour day for us yesterday, driving up to Prince George, scrambling around to get all of the things we needed to do, done. On our trip up, we saw three black bears grazing on grass along the side of the highways.
Our car was so full of supplies when we finally got back home, there was absolutely no room for Kona, so we parked the car at our house and I drove to the kennel in my truck to bring Kona home. We are always exhausted after one of our whirlwind trips to Prince George and always relieved when we return safely to our house.
You can view my paintings at: davidmarchant2.ca
I know I have shown photos of Lupine leaves before, but after yesterday’s showers, as I was walking Kona around the pond, I spotted two more examples of them that I thought looked interesting. Lupine leaves are all very similar, but at the same time they are all slightly different.
Yesterday when I was going through some photos for the blog, I came across these two shots that I took in Macau. Macau is the huge gambling center for China. It’s glittering and extravagant casinos rival anything found in Los Vegas, but as you might expect, all is not gold.
I was fascinated by the chaotic and creative wiring on the side of this building. I assume a lot of apartments were made inside which the existing infrastructure couldn’t handle, so they just ran all the wires and pipes outside on the side of the building.
Below is a photo of a gold necklace which I saw displayed in the window of a store. I guess some high-roller gambler could buy his little woman this “decorative” gold trinket to celebrate his winnings.
In December, 2005 my brother got married in Macau. Amazingly, he and his wife treated my whole family to a trip to Hong Kong and then on to Macau for their wedding.
I was aware of China’s authoritarian ways and I entered Hong Kong with a bit of wariness, but that soon disappeared when we actually got there and experienced the efficiency of the very modern subway, the extravagance of the shopping areas, and the safety I felt being out on the streets with the thousands of Chinese. After days of exploring Hong Kong, it was time to take the ferry over to Macau.
I don’t really remember getting to the ferry terminal, but I do remember the tightly packed crowd of people, all shoulder to shoulder, slowly shuffling toward the doorways that led to the ferries. Since Macau was more tightly controlled by China than Hong Kong at the time, I assume once we got to one of the doorways, we had to show our passport before we were allowed through into a huge room, which was again packed tightly with people. My family had been rather dispersed as they went through the various doorways, but we managed to find each other in the very crowded room and regrouped.
We were all standing there together in a group excitedly talking, when some official-looking men made their way through the crowd, making a beeline toward us, more precisely, making a beeline toward me. They looked me in the face and began talking to me, but I didn’t understand what they were saying.
It soon became clear that they wanted me to come with them. While I think I kept my exterior calm, inside I was confused and getting panicky. China’s authoritarian practices surfaced in my brain and I didn’t know what was going on or why they seemed so intent that I should come with them. I knew I hadn’t done anything, so I left my family and went with the men as they worked their way back through the mass of people and back through one of the doors we had entered through.
My mind was racing through all sorts of scenarios of hardcore questioning and being locked up in a Chinese prison without knowing what was going on.
The authorities took me over to a man standing in the crowd and said something to him, then he looked at me, shook his head. I obviously was not the man they were seeking and with great relief the officials motioned to me to go back into the large room where my family awaited worriedly.
It was such a relief to get back to my family and the security of things I knew. All these years later I remember the fear I began to experience on that day, but I still don’t know why I was picked out or what the whole thing was all about.
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Winter has such an overriding presence for me that as soon as one winter is over, I immediately start working on gathering firewood for the winter to come. You can see how much firewood I have cut and split already. Luckily, despite my worries during last winter’s cold snaps, I did have some firewood left over, so that I didn’t have to start from scratch on my firewood supply for next year. It would be nice to get more, but now other things, like the garden, are demanding my attention.
As I age, all of the work requirements of keeping up the maintenance of our place becomes more and more difficult, but hopefully these old bones I can keep muddling through.
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Our dog Kona is extremely obsessive when it comes to squirrels. She is so impatient and demanding about everything else, but when a squirrels is involved, she will spend hours patiently not moving, just sitting and watching, sitting and watching. We welcome this squirrel behavior, because normally we have to watch Kona like a hawk because she gets into so much trouble when left on her own, but with squirrels, we don’t have to watch her, because we know where she is, just sitting there watching.
Yesterday a squirrel must have run up and taken shelter in my truck engine, because Kona spent the entire afternoon sitting there under the truck with her head up in the wheel well and engine compartment. She would periodically scamper to the other side of the truck to get a better vantage point, but her gaze was cemented on the squirrels hiding place. We were amazed at her determination. She would just patiently sit there, wagging her tail, whenever she sensed the squirrel move.
I realize that situating herself under a vehicle can be a dangerous place for her to be, but we never go anyplace without Kona inside the vehicle or inside the house, and it is sure a nice change to have the squirrel look after Kona for a while.
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I grew up hating grass. From the time I was 8 years old I have been pushing lawnmowers around in circles on lawns, cutting the grass. Fortunately at present, grass cutting is not a priority, but only because it has been a cold spring and the grass is only now started to turn green. Luckily where we live in the Interior of British Columbia, during the summer, grass grows rather slowly, but it does grow and so periodically I am forced to crank up the lawn mower and mow the lawn.
My hatred for mowing began during the summer after third grade, when I got (or was given) the job of mowing the small neighborhood cemetery that was just a house away from where we lived. I had to push the family lawnmower along the road, over to the cemetery while carrying the gas can. Once I had arrived I said a silent prayer, hoping that the lawnmower would start. When it did, I began mowing; back and forth, around the gravestones, then back and forth again for an hour or so, until I was finished. Then with the front of my T-shirt alI dirty from wiping the sweat off of my face, I pushed the lawnmower back home, awkwardly toting the gas can in one hand that was also pushing the lawn mower.
I did get paid for mowing the cemetery, a whopping $3 for each time it was mowed. Of course $3 was worth a lot more than it is today, and it was always gratifying to have the money, but it never did really lessen the hatred I had of mowing the grass.
I always remember in the sixth grade when my teacher asked the class what they did all summer, and I answered, “I mowed a cemetery”, he cleverly quipped, “Oh, you worked with a lot of people under you.”
Mowing got a lot worse when my family moved into the new house they had built, a bit further down the road, in what previously had been a field. Our new house was wonderful, with a lot more room and more modern, but the down side for me was that it came with a yard (which still seemed like a field) that was way too large.
Mowing that lawn during those hot humid Indiana summer days was hell. Sweat rolled down my face as I pushed the mower back and forth, back and forth across the lawn. What made the task fifty times worse was the fact that we lived just a house away from a country club, and every time I would look in that direction, I could see the country club kids, splashing and frolicking around in the country club swimming pool. Boy, did that make me hate lawn mowing.
I continued mowing lawns into my university days, when I used the job to earn money. It paid for clothes, record albums, and even some guitars, but I hated doing it. As I mowed, I dreamed of lawns with grass like golf course greens, that stayed low, and never seemed to grow, and dreams of houses with “lawns” made of concrete which was painted green, that never had to be mowed. However once I was finished the job, my hatred dissipated, and I would wipe the sweat off of my face and I happily slid the cash into my wallet.
Below is a photo of Oak Ridge Cemetery, my first paying mowing job.
Here is an incident from 2012 that features Macintosh, our laidback Old English Sheepdog.
Bark.....Bark, Bark.....Bark.....Bark.....Bark...Bark....
“What’s wrong with that dog?” Mac generally doesn’t bark. Well, maybe sometimes, when a squirrel gets on his nerve. I went back to my book.
Bark.... Bark, Bark.
I was reading, and had just two more pages to finish in the novel, but I didn’t want Mac to get into the habit of habitual barking, so I put the book down, got up, and walked down the stairs, opened the front door, to yell at him to stop.
When I opened the door, I was gobsmacked. My eyes saw, but my brain just temporarily shut down. It seemed like I was in fantasyland, because standing right there by the porch were two pigs looking at me, while Mac stopped barking, happy that I was there to help him.
When my brain began firing again, I tried to chase them away. They were friendly enough, but seemed happy to be in our front yard.
Where did they come from, I wondered. The only person in the neighborhood that I had heard had some pigs, lived a mile away. I called my wife to come out with a broom to keep the pigs from destroying things, while I went back inside to make some phone calls.
I called the guy I thought had pigs, and found that his phone was disconnected. Then I called my next door neighbor, but he didn’t answer, so I left a message about having two pigs in my front yard and asked if he knew who might own them.
I then called the neighbor on the other side of my house and explained to their teenaged daughter why I was calling. She laughed and said they didn’t own any pigs.
Having learned nothing from my phone calls, I went back outside and took over from my wife. I decided the best course of action would be to try to herd the pigs into my barnyard, which had a fence all around it.
When I tried to herd the pigs, Mac’s herding instinct kicked in and he happily joined me, barking and darting around. Unfortunately, Mac always seemed to go the wrong way, blocking the pigs from going into the paddock. Eventually, in frustration, I put Mac into the house and returned to deal with the pigs alone.
I managed to herd one of the porkers into the paddock, but the other took off in the other direction. The captured one headed down the fence line and the which inspired the free one to follow him, but on the other side of the fence.
I grabbed a rope and made a noose, thinking I would try to lasso the free pig, but it was starting to get nervous and beginning to think that I was untrustworthy, so he didn’t let me get too close. I scrambled behind him through brush and around the woodpile, but I couldn’t catch him.
About that time, Bruce, the next door neighbor I had called, came through an opening on our property line with his two dogs, and I was happy learn that the pigs were, in fact, his. With his help, we managed to get and secure the freed pig into the barnyard with his buddy, at which point Bruce went back home to get some “slop” to tempt the pigs back home. Meanwhile, the pigs were busying themselves, rooting around the plants in the paddock.
Bruce soon returned with a bucket of slop and two hot dog buns, and like the Pied Piper being followed by the rats, soon Bruce, along with his dogs, followed by the two pigs, were all parading back toward their home.
Another exciting episode of “Life in McBride” had come to an end.
You can see my paintings: davidmarchant2.ca
Whenever I am at the grocery looking for apples, I always seek out Ambrosias. Not only does it have an amazingly mild honey, fruity taste, but it’s origin story is very memorable to me.
Many years ago I was listening to CBC radio as they were talking about BC apples. It seems there was one orchard whose owner noticed that every year during the picker’s lunch breaks, the pickers would always gather under one particular apple tree in the orchard. They would always grab apples off of the tree to augment their lunch.
Curious, the owner walked down to that particular tree, and tried one of its apples for himself. He discovered just how unique and delicious they tasted. He isolated and bred the tree and its apples became the “Ambrosia” apple.
I sat there in front of the radio wishing I could taste one of those Ambrosia apples, but I could never find any in our local grocery store, and slowly over time, the story took a back place in my memory. Then a couple of years later wanting a snack, I grabbed one of the apples that my wife had put in the fridge. I walked back to the living room, settled back down in front of the TV and bit into it.
WOW!, what a delicious taste. I got out of my chair and back went to the fridge, opened the door, and read the label on the apples in the bag—AMBROSIA. Finally that long ago desire to taste an Ambrosia apple was realized, and I was not disappointed. It has been my “go-to” apple choice ever since.
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Playing music on Tuesday night is always the thing I look forward to the most, each week. Now, I guess I will have cancel our music jam for the second week in a row because of Covid. Although I feel like I am “back to normal” and over my Covid, I am still coughing up a bit of phlegm, and so just to be on the safe side and not wanting to infect anyone, I will have to endure another week without playing music. I am aware that three of us from the jam ended up with the virus, there may have been more, but three is all that I have heard about.
Our jam has sure been going through a difficult few years. We lost a lot of players who moved away from the Robson Valley and the remaining hardcore members played outside during the summers suffering rain showers and mosquitoes for our music. We had to shut down over the winter months because of Covid restrictions and this spring I started renting a local hall where we could play, when it appeared that Covid was on the wane, but then unexpectedly, it seems to have really tore through McBride.
The Jam is supposed to play in public during McBride’s “Pioneer Days” the first weekend in June. That would give us three more sessions to get back up to speed with our music, if we can get back to playing next week, but up to speed or not, I just want to start playing music again.
Take a look at my paintings: davidmarchant2.ca
I have always loved moss-covered areas and right beside the plank we walk, to get across the pond outflow, is this beautiful moss-covered log laying in the water, surrounded by some water-loving plants. The bright green of the moss contrasts nicely with the dark water that slowly flows around it. It’s a beautiful small natural garden.
It’s been extremely difficult to be optimistic about anything these days, as things in the world deteriorate, and then just get worse, but yesterday something happened that actually brightened my day--there were two pair of Wood Ducks on my pond. I had given up hope that this would ever happen again.
One spring thirty something years ago, the first year after I had my pond dug and it started filling with water, some unusual-looking ducks arrived. I didn’t know what they were but discovered they were Wood Ducks. I had spread old hay bedding from the barn on the bare banks of the dam to encourage grass to grow and the Wood Ducks had discovered there were oats, that my goats had wasted, in the bedding, and that encouraged them to hang around.
They disappeared over the summer, then returned in the fall, lots of them. One evening I counted 42 of them on the pond. After that, Wood Ducks returned year after year. They nest in hollow trees, so I was able to get some Wood Duck nesting boxes and hung them up in some trees around the pond. Some of the Wood Ducks used them to hatch their young.
One Sunday I watched as the baby ducks, looking like balls of fluffy feathers, leaped out of the nesting box to the ground, 15 feet (4.5m) below, urged on by their mother.
I had a reputation locally about having the rather rare Wood Ducks at my pond, something that was unique in the Robson Valley, but then rather suddenly, the Wood Ducks seem to have disappeared and no longer came in the spring. No one in the Valley spotted any in other places either. I don’t know what happened to them, but for about 15 years, there were no Wood Ducks.
About 3 years ago a local birder told me she had spotted some Wood Ducks at the large McBride sewage lagoon. Last year when I was walking around the pond, a couple of water fowl flew off and their call struck a chord in my memory, it sounded like Wood Ducks, but I didn’t really see them to tell for sure. Then yesterday I saw some splashing activity down on the pond, got out my binoculars, and there they were: 2 males and 2 female Wood Ducks.
The males have very distinct coloration and markings. The females are brown, but have a white spot around their eyes. I don’t really care if they nest here or not, I am just happy to see them in the Valley again. I had given up on ever seeing them again.
