A Spring Welcome

     Every year the Strankmans, the old retired couple now dead, who previously owned our property, still welcome us to Spring with a cluster of flowers that come up in our yard.  It is a much appreciated legacy that they have left us.

    I imagine it was Mrs. Strankman who planted the bulbs, and created a small circular flower garden with a fake-looking wooden “wishing well” as the main feature.  We didn’t much care for the wishing well, so we made it disappear forty-five years ago, when we bought the place.  The flower bulbs however remained in the ground and come up every year to welcome us to Spring.  

    Those flowers bloom before the grass takes over.  Once the grass starts to overpower the flowers, I always avoid mowing over the area where the flowers grow, because those flower bulbs need their leaves to photosynthesize enough sunlight, to give energy back to the bulbs so they can bloom again next year.

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

Old Man's Beard Lichen

     We are in that period of the year before the explosion of leaves begin to obscure the trees.  Many of the tree trunks and branches are showing off the growths of lichen that they sport.  We live in a temperate rainforest, and lichens thrive in the moisture that early Spring provides.  Lichen are a plant made up of a combination of both algae and fungus that work together to keep things going.  Here are two photos of some “Old Man’s Beard”  lichens that I spotted today during my first walk around the pond.

You can see my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

Sounds Like High School Proms Have Changed

     I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about my high school prom.  After fifty or so years, I can’t even remember the actual prom, but I do have vague recollections of the event.  I remember the girls getting fancy dresses, and some of the boys renting tuxedos, (I just wore my sports coat and slacks.)  I did get buy an orchid corsage for my girlfriend. The big event of the evening was the prom itself.  All of my friends were dressed up and I got to go to the dance with my girl friend.

    In all of those nostalgic movies based in that era, the parents have their teenage child and their date, pose in their fancy clothes and take their picture.   I don’t recall that happening to me before our prom, and certainly haven’t ever seen a photo proving that it did.  The dance itself, and maybe a party put on by friends afterward, were what the night was all about.

    I was talking to my sister the other day and she was telling me about the prom her granddaughter recently went to.  From her description, it sounded like the dance itself, had become an after-thought.  The main thrust of the evening was taking a lot of photos of the couple all dressed up, that could be posted on the internet.  In this case, their prom evening was hampered by a downpour of rain, but that didn’t prevent the couple from going to various landmarks in the city to stand in front of them in the rain, so they could take a photo of themselves.  I just don’t understand this whole “selfie” thing that has taken over culture. 

    During the 1980’s we used to joke about Japanese tourists who would stand in front of beautiful scenery, famous buildings, or works of art and take a photo of themselves, partially obscuring the object they were happy to prove they had seen.  That whole selfie practice has now taken over the world.  That photo of themselves is more important that the event or the place.  Take a selfie, and put it on the internet.  

    Oh well, times change like they always have.  Like most old people, I don’t particularly think things have changed for the better.  

Take a look at my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca

I Never Noticed That Before

     For  forty-five years I have been looking at the mountains that enclose the Robson Valley, but this year I noticed something that I had never noticed before.  If you look at the side of the mountain in the photo above, you can see horizontal lines of snow crossing the mountain mid-slope.  Those seem to indicate sort of terraces on the side of the mountain.  

    I had never seen that before.  I think the reason it is so visible now is because of the forest fire we had a couple of years ago, and the amount of snow we had this winter.  The snow was just deep enough to melt on the angled slope, but still remaining on the flatter areas.

    I am not sure whether those “terraces” are the result of different layers of bedrock, or something caused by the glacier that once filled our valley.  Those terraces are also evident on the slope of the mountain just to the right of this one.

    We do learn something every day.

You can view my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

    

Nature's Rhythm Continues

     During these chaotic times when powerful leaders strive to disrupt, I find comfort in the fact that at least Nature is trying keep to an even keel.  Two of my regular water fowl species have returned to my pond to breed in the Spring.  Above is a photo I took of the Mallards.  The green-headed male is pretty evident, and if you look in the lower left, you can see the female.  

    The other day I was also pleased the hear the honking of a pair of Canada Geese as they maneuvered  along their flight path so they could splash down on the pond.   I am hoping to soon see the Wood Ducks, Hooded Mergansers, and Barrow’s Goldeneyes, who also frequent the pond in the Spring.

    I had my pond dug in 1993 to create some habitat for wildlife, and in the thirty years since it has given me much satisfaction, to see the wildlife it has attracted.

You can see my paintings by going to:  davidmarchant2.ca

I Haven't Given Up On The Future

     The future of the world is looking pretty hopeless these days and I certainly feel it, but at the same time, as I look back at my actions, I realize that in the midst of all of the gloom, I am still doing things that show I have not given up.  Maybe it is the gardener in me, but Spring always inspires dreams of a new start and a hope for a better future.

    Above is a shot of some of my young tomato plants.  They look mis-colored because they are under the grow light, but they seem healthy and eager to be put out in the warmth and sunlight of the  greenhouse.  Last year, because of a late planting due to repairs I had to make on the greenhouse and tree roots sucking up all of the water in the soil, I had my worse tomato crop ever.  I have fixed both of those problems, so I am back dreaming of a bountiful crop of big juicy homegrown tomatoes this year.

    Of course, I feel the same way every Spring, and dream about the amazing bountiful garden I will have.  Rarely do those dreams come to fruition, but those dreams do keep me going and sane.  Let’s hope they do the same this year, because if we ever needed hope for the future, it is this year. 

Take a look at my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca

My Fossils

     As I look back on my life one thing is clear; I have always been interested in the past.  I have always loved history.  As a child I was interested in the American Indian culture.  I was fascinated with the tribes that lived in North America, as well as the Aztecs, Mayan, and Incas in Meso-America and South America.  I  collected arrowheads and searched for them in the plowed fields around our house.  I wanted to be an archeologist.

    Later, my interest in the past reached back even further; to our stone-age ancestors.  I loved reading about Neanderthals, and those primitive humanoids that came before them.  I was fascinated by evolution and how modern humans came to be.

    Then I became enchanted with fossils, and I began to collect those stone remnants of plants and animals that lived millions of years ago.  I dreamed of becoming a paleontologist.  

    Here are some photos of my fossil collection.

    See the long brown segmented fossil in the photo above?   That is a Calamite, an ancestor of the horsetail plant we see today.  It grew in the swamps 300-350 million years ago.  I discovered the fossil vertical on the walls of the railway underpass on St. Joe Rd. near my home in Evansville, Indiana.

     I had biked there to explore the cut.  I climbed down to the railway and was amazed when I saw the fossil.  I extracted it from the rock, then overjoyed, biked back home.  The railway underpass was a terribly unsafe place to be, but I was glad I checked it out.

    As an adolescent, I was once invited to go to a strip-mine near Terre Haute, IN with some adult fossil hunters.  The strip mine was full of these oval rock “concretions” that you could hold in your hand.  We would hit them on their sides with a hammer which caused them to split open.  Inside you would often find the imprint of a fern or some other plant.  It was an amazing an wondrous revelation, something that I will always remember.  You can see some of those fern fossils below.

    The large ammonite (snail-shaped) fossils and shell fossils, I found near Takla Lake, BC when I was teaching in the isolated one-room school at a lumber mill.

    Sadly, I have never found any “fossil” areas in the Robson Valley, so my fossil collection has remained as it was, for decades now.

    

Take a look at my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca

Friends Who Rock

    My friends, David and Pedro both have a wide spectrum of interests, but I have been surprised at how quickly they suddenly joined together to devote time to rocks.  During their younger years they both had been very interested in rocks, but as time passed, their attention in lapidary faded as they moved on to other things. 

    Decades before moving to McBride from New York City, David had packed his collection of rocks into boxes, and all of his treasured rocks were moved to McBride, then sat idle in the basement until a couple of months ago.  That is when Pedro came over to help him unpack those long-ignored boxes.

    Rediscovering those old treasured chunks of stone, sparked and renewed David’s interest in lapidary and Pedro was happy to be able to join in the resurgence.  David immediately set out and bought equipment for cutting and polishing rocks and Pedro was happy to help with the rock work.

    Hearing David talk about the enjoyment he and Pedro have been having with the rocks, reminded me about my long-ignored container of rocks (fossils) I have collected over my lifetime.  On Tuesday I went over to David’s to see what he and Pedro have been up to, and to show them my fossils.  (I’ll show you some of my fossils tomorrow.)  

    It was really interesting afternoon, seeing David’s “raw” rocks and watching how the rocks were  cut and polished.  Over the years, David had collected a wide variety of stones to be worked on, and the ones they had polished were beautiful.  They had so many brilliant colors an designs in them.

    During my childhood I had always loved to see and feel the polished rocks for sale in souvenir shops, when our family went out West on vacation.  Below, is a photo of some of David’s polished rocks.

 

You can view my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

     I am sure I have mentioned before how important the seasons are here in Interior British Columbia.  Because they are so important, I am constantly on the lookout for those first signs that indicate the coming of the next season.  Today I was happy to see one of those important signs that indicate Spring:  The ice that has covered my pond for several months has now just about all melted, and I can see open water.

    It is such a joy to see the reflection of the sky in the pond, instead of the boring snow-covered ice.  Yesterday morning when Kona and I did our walk around the pond, a pair of mallards flew off.  I am sure they are the same mallards that nest on the pond every spring.  They too are happy to see open water again.

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

Remembering Some Old April Fool Fun

  In 1984 I submitted a few photos and captions to the local paper for the edition that comes out on the first week of April.  It featured such April Fools photos and captions showing us growing bananas in our garden, our car damaged by terrorist (actually rust), our damaged root cellar caused by a meteor strike, etc.

    The paper’s editor, did tell us that several people where initially taken in until they realized they were April Fool spoofs.  

You can view my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

Pop Quiz

 

    If the quiz has you stumped, here are some definitions:

        Kakistocracy-  A government that is run by the worst, least qualified, or most unscrupulous citizens.

        Kleptocracy-  A government by corrupt leaders who use political power to steal the wealth of 

                              people.

        Oligarchy-  A government in which power rests with a small number of (usually wealthy) people.

        Plutocracy-  A society that is ruled or controlled by people of great wealth or income.

       

View my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca 

A Memorable Encounter With A Fox

         One of the joys of living in the bush, are the occasional encounters I have had with wildlife.  In going through my 1993 diary, I came upon one of those memorable encounters which happened one night when I went out into the woodpile to get some firewood.

        I picked out some pieces of wood, cradling them in my arms, then turned back toward the house to carry it in.  Suddenly a fox came out of the darkness and trotted across the driveway toward me.  It shuffled through the snow to the far end of the woodpile, sniffing around.  I was very surprised, knowing how wary wild animals are to humans.  The fox then walked around walked around the end of the woodpile and started headed directly toward me.  

        This seemed very bizarre.   Surely, I thought, it was aware of me standing there, but maybe it was paying all of its attention to sniffing around.  Just to make sure that it knew I was there, I spoke out to it.  

        “Hey fox, I am here. “  

        However, the fox seemed totally unconcerned about my presence.  This was pretty amazing, so I yelled to my wife who was in the house, so she could come out and see the fox, but unfortunately, she was busy playing the piano, so didn’t hear me. 

         The fox then turned its back to me and walked calmly away, disappearing back into the darkness from where it came.

        Of course, this was not some dramatic wildlife encounter, but it was an incident that has always stuck with me, because of the fox’s trust that I didn’t present a danger to it.

View my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca

Behind Those Autographs

     Last week I blogged about how my prized autographs had been largely obliterated by time.   I wasn’t planning to get any autographs when I went to those long ago concerts of The Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, and John Denver; I had just gone to listen to the music.  However when the opportunity arrived to meet those guys, I scrambled through my wallet to find something that they could sign their autographs on.  What I found were some cards for various things that were blank on the back, so that is what I had them sign.

    Last week when I studied those cards where the autographs occurred, I happened to turn them over and I found it interesting, because they told of some of the things that I kept in my wallet back then.  

    Perhaps the most interesting to me was the back of the card that featured David Crosby’s autograph.  It was my old Bob Schaad Record Club card, something that I had totally forgotten about.  I remembered the name Bob Schaad, but little else.  Bob Schaad had a record store in downtown Evansville, my home town.  I don’t remember much about the store, but evidently I was a member of their Record Club.

    It looks like if I bought ten record albums, I got a whopping $.98 off of my next album.  Back in the 1960’s albums were very expensive, especially for a teen like me, who didn’t have a lot of money, so it would have been a big bonus to get 98 cents off, after buying ten.  

    This Record Club card tells another story.   See the two “X’’s over the stamps.  After I got David Crosby’s autograph on the other side of the card, I certainly didn’t want to turn it in when I became eligible for the free album, so I must have taken the card into Bob Schaad’s and explained the problem, and they marked the two “X”s over the stamps to indicated they were no longer valid, then they gave me a new card, with the same amount of stamps, so I could still get my $.98 discount, and at the same time keep my David Crosby autograph.

    The other cards that I had gotten autographs on the back of, were:

        A 1963 Driver’s Education Certificate so I could be taught how to drive at my high school when I was 15 years old.

        A high school “Letterman’s Pass”  (I was on the track team).   The pass allowed me to get into all of my high school’s “home”  games.

        My college student ID and also my college library card.

    At my age, I have been enjoying looking back at the life I lived, and certainly, seeing these sixty year old artifacts that I used to carry around in my wallet, stimulated some long buried memories.

Take a look at my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca 

    

Theme Parties: The Blues Brother Party

     One of the more memorable parties that we attended at our neighbor’s house had the theme:  The Blues Brothers.  The Blues Brother movie that had recently come out on video tape was full of great music and a lot of laughs.  Above and below you can see the invitation to the party, and fortunately, one of the partygoers took some photos which you can see at the very bottom of the blog.

        I have been constantly surprised at how rich our social activities were in the Robson Valley during the 1980’s and 90’s.  We were surrounded by a wonderful group of like-minded friends with whom we visited, watched VCR movies, dined, played volleyball, and partied.  Luckily, we lived right next door to Kjell and Celine, whose house became the party-central for many of those get-togethers.

         They hosted many theme parties that required costumes, food, and music related to the theme.  The “Blues Brothers” party happened in 1989.  Dark suit coats, hats, and glasses, were donned by the males, emulating Elwood and Jake, the main characters in the Blues Brother movie.  The women also wore dark glasses to accent their swanky dresses.

        The on-going eating and dancing to the blues music, was interrupted by the Blues Brothers Air Band performance.  I was impressed at how much Bruce, the high school principal, (shown holding the girl) got in to the part.  When he wasn’t mouthing the words during the song, he gyrated and dangerously swung the microphone around by its cord. 

        The women performed as a dance troupe named  “Ruby and the Red Lips” and grooved to heavy beat of a driving blues song.  It was a wonderful party of abandonment with our alter egos, and I am sure it is remembered fondly by all of the participants.

        Ah, to be young again.

You can view my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

Theme Parties: Come As You Were

    Another one of the many “theme” parties that was had during the heyday of our social life during the 1980’s and 90’s in the Robson Valley, was the “Come As You Were” Party at Monroes.  The idea was to dress as some historical figure you might have been in a past life.  I really don’t remember who I went as, I think I went as Mark Twain, but I see on this invitation it has me down as Sigmund Freud.  I don’t really think that is how I came as, because making a beard would have been a problem.  Being Mark Twain (one of my heroes from the past) would have been more logical, since I often used the long white mohair from my Angora goats, to make a mustaches and hair for costume parties.

    I do remember making a dance tape for the party, because one of the songs on it was Dire Straits, “Money For Nothing” which had just been released, and was was a big hit during the party.

    Our large group of friends sure had some stellar times back then.

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

Theme Parties: The Jamaica Party

     In the late 1970’s we moved into the small and isolated community of McBride, in BC’s Robson Valley.  For 4 years, my wife and I had been living in even smaller places without any friends our own age, so we hoped that in the Robson Valley, we would develop friendships with people who had common values, and fortunately, that is exactly what we found.  For us, the 1980’s and 90’s became the Golden Age of our social life.

    One big reason for all of that exciting social life was our neighbors Kjell and Celine.  They were very social-oriented and who were constantly organizing “theme” parties, where party-goers were expected to dress up to fit the chosen theme of the party.  The food, music, and entertainment were also expected to fit the party’s theme, and were always wonderful.  We were amazed at how the participants could always come up with, and create; unique costumes for the theme, from items they found in our tiny one-horse Village of McBride.

    This morning while going through one of my old file folders, I found the invitation I created for the “Night in Jamaica” party that our neighbors put on.  I was always given the task of creating the invitations to the parties and you can see what I came up with for the Jamaica party.  This was before you could do much on a computer, so I had to use pen, photos, and a black and white photocopier.

     I think I dressed up as a plantation owner to the party.

    

Take a look at my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca

View From the Tete Jaune Bridge

     Yesterday we took Kona to Valemount to get a haircut.  The Village of Valemount is about an hour’s drive from McBride.  Quite often when we go, instead of taking Highway 16 to cross the Fraser River, instead we cross at the Old Tete Jaune Bridge because it offers such a spectacular view of ragged peaks of the Cariboo Mountains.  I rarely cross the bridge without stopping to take a photo.

    This is how it looked yesterday.  The sun was blasting on the mountains, whose tops were completely blanketed with snow.  I thought it made for a stunning shot.

My paintings can be seen at:  davidmarchant2.ca

Snow-Capped

      I always have my eyes on the mountains, watching the changing light.  Here is a shot I took the other evening from Hinkelman Road of the snow-covered peaks of the Park Range of the Canadian Rockies.

    We are off to spend the day in the neighboring Village of Valemount, where we are taking Kona to the groomers for her haircut.

Take a look at my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca

Fortunately, I Was Wrong

     We live during a time when we are flooded with misinformation.  I hate that.  I love honesty and truth.  Well, in last Wednesday’s blog about finding $1,600 of old Canadian paper money in our safe, I went online to see if it was still valid, since the Canada now just has plastic bills.  I found the website shown in the photo above and misunderstood what it said.  I thought it meant that all old Canadian paper money no longer was legal tender after January 1st, 2021, and that is what I blogged.

    On Friday, I was paying for the insurance on my truck and mentioned my “worthless” $1,600 to Rosemary in the insurance office.  She told me that she thought that I was wrong, and my paper cash was still valid.  She advised me to ask at the Credit Union, so I drove over there.  There, the clerk assured me that those old paper bills were still legal tender.  That left me really confused, so when I got back home, I checked again on the internet, and re-read what I had found there.

    It was then that I discovered that the Canadian paper money that was no longer legal tender were just those  dominations, that had been discontinued:  One Thousand dollar bills, five hundred dollar bills, and two dollar bills, not the old paper money that I had.  So happily, the cash I found is still good.

    Like I said, I hate the flood of disinformation that is online, and I certainly don’t want to be the author of any, so I thought I should put it out there that I had been wrong, and old Canadian paper money in denominations of $1, $5, $10, $20, $50, and $100 are still valid

Take a look at my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca