Moody Fall Morning

     I had planned to blog about something else this morning, but after I got done painting my square, I happened to look outside and saw the moody atmospheric effect that fog was giving to my pond, and I had to take some photos.

    Living in the Interior of British Columbia, I pay a lot of attention to the changing of the seasons, and this year the coming of Fall was unusual.  Usually when Fall is on the horizon, we start to get some days of autumn-like weather that starts to acclimatize us to what is coming.  This year it stayed sunny and warm until the official start of Fall, and then...BAM, it was on us.

    Suddenly there was snow on the mountaintops, rain and damp weather, and it became obvious that Fall had fallen.   I have felt cold ever since.  I had not been given a chance to acclimatize.

    When I first saw the photo above blown up on the computer screen, I noticed that I had missed one apple when I picked the tree. Can you see it?  It is just above the red Boston Ivy vine.

You can view my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

1974: A Letter Home From Our One-Room School Adventure

        in 1974 we were young living an adventure in remote British Columbia.  We were able to immigrate to Canada by taking a job no Canadian would do.  An isolated fly-in lumber mill on Takla Lake was wanting to start an elementary school in its camp where a few families lived.  I took the job despite the fact we had to live in a place with no road access (it was a fly-in camp), no radio or TV reception, and no phone, except a radio-phone in the mill office.

    It forced my wife and I to live without most of the things we were used to, including our families and friends, or a grocery (or any other kind of store) and very irregular mail.  Starting and teaching in a one-room school was an all consuming job.  In my university teacher training, one-room schools were never mentioned, so I had to figure it all out by trial and error.

    A couple of weeks ago, when my brothers and sisters recently came to McBride for a visit, my sister  gave me a packet containing some of the letters I had written home during my one-room school days, that my mother had saved.  This one was from September of 1974, the start of our second year in the camp.  It gives a glimpse of what our isolated lives were like.

Dear Everyone,

    I guess by the time you get this letter, Grandma will have already been dead for several weeks, but to us, she just died yesterday when we received your letter.  It is strange.  I knew she would probably not last too much longer, but still it was such a shock to hear of her death.

    I was glad however that she didn’t have to endure longer the incommunicative existence that had become her life.  How terrible it must have been for her to want to say , but not be able to get it out.  How frustrating to be aware of your environment, but not be able to respond to it.  I am glad that that kind of life didn’t last any longer than it did.

    We are sorry we couldn’t be home for her funeral.  I guess she had already been buried for six days before we even found out about her death.  

    I guess I owe grandma a tremendous amount.  She has had a very great affect on my thoughts and feelings.  I remember how much I used to hate all of those lectures she constantly gave us kids, about war, playing with guns, and things like that.  Even with the attitude I had at the time, her lectures planted seeds that grew and developed into major parts of my philosophy.  Also, her interest in wildlife and wilderness have also grown with me as I have matured.  I will never forget Grandma and Grandpa.

    School is going well.  We still don’t have 10 kids (above photo taken at a different time), but we are now up to eight.   

    Right now my wife is baking a round bread and a braided bread.  We haven’t bought one loaf of bread since the electric stove in our teacherage has been hooked up.

    Our dog Vincent ( a Pomeranian) rubs his neck in dead fish every time he finds one, which is often.  He must have found one tonight, because he smells terrible and his neck is all black from rotten fish.

    I had to report the Aboriginal family that lives down by the lake, because their kids are not going to school anywhere.

    I made a sandbox for the school yard using railroad ties.  Then I borrowed a mill pickup and drove down to the Big Lake (Takla) and dug some sand, hauled it back, and filled the sandbox.  .  It was really hard work loading the sand in the truck because it was wet.  The kids really do like the sandbox, which is the only playground equipment they have in the camp.

    I plan to make some more playground equipment for them, but the mill has yet to give me the supplies I need.

    If you ever need to call us, do it during the day.  The mill office is closed after 6:00.

Your Son,

David

    

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

Fall Mice Migration

     Every year in the fall, all those mice living wild outside start looking for a nice warm place to spend the winter.  Unfortunately for us, a lot of those mice migrate to our house.  So far this year I haven’t seen any overt signs of immigrant mice, but it could still happen.  

        I don’t like to kill wild things, but mice can cause many problem in the house, if their population is left unchecked, so I try to deal with mice as soon as I see one.  I have never seen evidence that our cat Lucifer has caught a mouse in the house, so dealing with them has been left to me.

        The other day while reading through my 1995 diary, I came upon this description about having to deal with mice in the house:

    I began to see mouse droppings on the stove and kitchen counter.  I had been putting out the live trap (a trap that doesn’t kill the mouse, just captures it), with tempting bait (cookies, chocolate chips, cereal, etc) but the mice just wouldn’t go into it.  As a last resort with not being able to catch any of them, I started putting out some “snap” traps that would kill them and the traps quickly showed results, killing two of them.  

        Next evening I heard another mouse making noise in the pantry, so I quietly tip-toed through  the kitchen, and saw the mouse run off. Then later I heard and saw it again.  This time I was able to chase the fleeing mouse, trying to hit it with a broom, but again the mouse got away.  

        When I later heard the mouse, it was making noise in an empty Life cereal box.  I quickly closed the lid of the box, taped it shut, and drove the box a mile or so down the road to the river.  There I opened it up and let puzzled mouse scramble out.

    As I was writing about that in my diary, I heard one of the snap traps go off.  Another mouse dead.

            I would have rather have caught it in the live trap, so it could continue to live its life somewhere far away from our house, but it chose a snap trap instead of going into the live trap.

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

A Spool of Blue Thread

      This novel had no exciting action or daring rescues, it was just the story of three generations of the Whitshank family and the Baltimore house that they lived in.  It was about their personalities, their relationships, their foibles, and the interactions with each other.  The family members have to deal with the interpersonal situations that life throws at them within a close knit family.  Tyler’s writing made the Whitshanks feel like a real family and that made the novel engrossing and interesting.  I enjoyed secretly observing the Whitshanks as they dealt with the twists and turns of their lives.

    The book is not written in chronological order, and although it skips back and forth between generations, it touches on the relevant moments each generation experiences which fit nicely into the total storyline.  

           The plot begins during the Depression, when twenty year old Junior Whitshank, is forced to flee his home and family in the rural south, after he was caught with an overdeveloped girl who unbeknownst to him, turned out to be very underaged.   He ends up in Baltimore where he takes up work as a carpenter and strives to rebuild his life to become a talented builder.  

            After becoming a building contractor, Junior builds a beautiful house for a rich patron, he then becomes obsessed with the carefully crafted house that he created.  He manages to become the handyman for the wealthy family who own the house, and eventually achieves his secret goal when the owners move, and he is able to buy the house, making it his own, for his young family. 

    Also intriguing is the story of Junior’s son Red and his wife Abbie, who later inherit and live in the house with their children.  As their troublesome son Denny matures, he becomes very undependable, causing all sorts of grief, heartbreak, and disappointment to Red and Abbie, while Stem, the very young boy who they adopted after one of Red’s employees dies, becomes a dependable, generous, and stable member of the family.

    I enjoyed reading how the small quirks of the family members grated  on other individuals in the family and how each strived  to achieve their desires.  Anne Tyler did a wonderful job of showing family dynamics, while creating a very interesting novel despite mostly dealing with mundane situations; things that most families have seen or experienced.  

            Reading A Spool of Blue Thread, has left me eager to delve into the other novels Anne Tyler has written.

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

Doughnut Day

      In 1995 our little Village of McBride didn’t have any source of doughnuts, so our always hungry Forestry staff initiated “Doughnut Day.”   We  arranged for the courier, who every day delivered parcels from big city Prince George to McBride, to periodically stop by a Tim Hortons before beginning his long drive, and pick up a box of doughnuts for our office.  We never knew exactly when that would happened, but whenever he could, we happily paid him for his efforts.  

    One morning I was in a rush and wasn’t able to fix myself a sandwich for lunch before going to work, but figured I could buy one at the local delicatessen.  When lunchtime rolled around I walked to the deli with my stomach juices were running, primed for a exotic store-bought sandwich, but to my dismay, I discovered a sign taped to the door which said the Deli was closed.  Confused, discouraged, and wondering what I could eat, I walked back to our office.

    When I got back in the office my low spirits suddenly soared.  I discovered that while I was away, the courier from Prince George had arrived and had dropped off a Tim Horton’s box which was sitting on the table in the coffee break room.  It was “Doughnut Day”!

    I opened the box, studied the selection, and picked out a cream-filled chocolate doughnut and settled down to eat my unexpected meal.  That day my lunch consisted of the two doughnuts and a Mountain Dew.  It was not exactly a balanced meal, but my taste buds and gut were satisfied.

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

This Obnoxious Junk Food Inhibitor Works

     Everyone knows how unhealthy and bad, junk food is for you, but it is difficult to resist that wonderfully satisfying crunch, that blast of salt, and the pleasing taste of fat, that it provides.  The millions of dollars those mega-food corporations spend to develop an addicting taste of chips, is almost impossible for our fragile willpower to resist.  I confess, I am weak and a sinner.

    Some time ago a friend gave us a “chip clip” to close those unfinished bags of chips.  It was a novelty clip in the form of a friendly smiling cow.  It was cute and I liked it, until the first time I opened the clip.  Upon doing so, a loud obnoxious mooing sound began emanating from the cow.  It was a loud and horrible sound.

    I sometimes quietly try to sneak a handful of chips out of an open bag of junk food without my wife finding out.  I usually take it to another room so she won’t hear the overly-loud crinkle of the bag when I open it.  Even when I try to open it as quietly as I can, I rarely succeed in getting a handful of chips without her finding out.  

    With this obnoxiously loud cow clip, sneaking a snack has become impossible.  Knowing that, while still tempted, I often restrain myself, because I will certainly be found out.  The other day, I found the above bag with just very few chips left in it, and I thought it would be the decent thing to do, just to get rid of those chips so we could throw away the bag and get it out of the kitchen, but I saw the cow clip, and that forced me to pass up the temptation.

    Obviously, I have mixed feelings about the cow clip, my good angels appreciate its goal, but my bad angels hate it.

Take a look at my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

A Challenging Day of Playing Music

     I usually have to wait around for a Tuesday night to get my fix of playing music.  Tuesday is when our Jam meets.  However, I was able to get an extra musical fix on Sunday, when I was invited to the 90th Birthday party for Art, one of the longtime musicians who plays in the long established old-time music group in the neighboring Village of Valemount.   Their members include a few ninety year olds, and they have been playing together for scores of years.  

    While I had never heard them play, I certainly had heard about them.  Like our Jam, they meet weekly to make music.  The were said to be a really tight band, and that sure seemed to be the case.  At our jam we have made a song book with lyrics and chords of the songs we play.  We go around the group and in turn each member picks a song, which we then play.  In Valemount, they seem to play mostly instrumentals:  Old waltzes, reels, polkas, and that sort of thing.  They have no books, one member just starts doodling out the start of a melody on their instrument, and the others join in.

    Needless to say I spent a good part of Sunday afternoon flailing and lost.  Five members of our Jam were there at the event.   Luckily, Gordon from the Valemount group, usually looked over at me, took pity on my ineptness, and shouted out what key the song was in.  Even then, a lot of the songs had unexpected chords that went beyond the simple three chord progression.  It was a real struggle for me.  I wasn’t used to having to do so much thinking on my feet.  

    There were fifteen musicians present and 10 different instruments.  Since there wasn’t a mandolin, I mostly played that instead of guitar, unless the chords in the song were in a difficult key for my ability on the mandolin.  Since most of their songs were unfamiliar to me, I had to keep my eyes peeled on one of the guitar players to see what chords he was playing.  That wasn’t always obvious, so I was often a beat behind, before I figured things out.  

    The job of identifying the chord became a whole lot more difficult when I was playing the mandolin.  Again, I had to watch a guitar player to see which chord he was fingering, but after I identified it,
“Oh, that is a D chord.”  I had to erase that image of the guitar D chord from my brain and then remember how a D chord was played on a mandolin.  That made my playing mentally exhausting.

    Nevertheless, the gathering was very enjoyable, I met a lot of people I didn’t know and others that I hadn’t seen for a long time.  Michelle, who hosted the event, had organized a potluck dinner, with food that was varied and enjoyable.  I was very glad I had gone.

    I am still looking forward to our Jam tonight.  It will be a lot easier, more satisfying, and confidence-building to be able to look in our song book and see the chords and lyrics to the song we are playing.  That is very reassuring to someone like me who is always forgetting lyrics and which chords to play.

You can take a look at my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca

Nachos With Freshly-Made Salsa

     Welcome to the first day of Autumn.  The local trees have already passed their prime Fall colors, the strong winds of fall have begun, and almost on schedule there is a tiny bit of cooler bite in the air. 

    All summer long I have been watching the tomatoes and chilis slowly mature in the greenhouse, and finally we have been able to savior the reward, fresh salsa on nachos.  That combination is something we look forward to all year, but it is a rather fleeting pleasure, since our tasty fresh tomatoes have a “Best Before” date, and while the jalapenos and other chilis will last a bit longer, we need the two of them together for the best salsa.

      We will enjoy the combination for as long as we can, and then we will just have to dream about it until next year.

You can see my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

Some Local Fungus

     I don’t really have much to blog about today, but I did have a couple of photos of some of the local fungus that I wanted to show you.  Above are Shaggy Mane mushrooms that have come up in the lawn.  Shaggy Manes are edible and tasty.

    The photo below show some conks that have erupted on the trunk of a tree.  When I was a timber cruiser if I saw conks on a tree, it meant that the inside of the tree was rotting.   All of the mushrooms and conks you see are just the fruiting body of the plant.  Most of the plant is growing underground or inside the tree.

    At the end of the month, there is going to be a mushroom weekend in the Robson Valley, with fungus experts leading trips into the forests to help locals identify edible mushrooms.

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

Maybe Weasels Aren't Vampires

     Obviously, the photo above shows a grouse, not a weasel.   A grouse is a common, chicken-like bird that lives in the forests around here.  The other day we let Kona outside to get some sunshine.  These days poor Kona can hardly walk, and it is sad when we see her try to hobble around.  Anyway, after being out for a while,  I saw her limp around the corner of the house carrying something in her mouth.  

    I went out to investigate and discovered that it was a dead grouse.  I knew that Kona hadn’t killed it, but had just smelled it and picked it up.  I had her drop it and I picked the grouse up.  It hadn’t been dead long, its feathers were still smooth, patterned, and beautiful.  I couldn’t figure out why it was dead, and wondered if it had slammed into a window. 

    Then I saw the reason;  it had a small open wound below its head on its neck.   

    “Awh,”  I thought, “A weasel killed it and sucked its blood.”

    Why would I think such a thing?  Well, I’ll tell you”

    A decade or so ago, we had some chickens.  We enjoyed watching them wandering around in the yard and scratching the grass looking for insects.  The chickens provided us with lots of eggs and chicks, when we didn’t see where they hid their eggs.  It was all good.

    Then one morning, I went into the henhouse and was horrified to see five chicken corpses.  I couldn’t figure out what had happened to them.  Their bodies weren’t mangled or eaten.  It was a puzzled.  Then I discovered the small open wounds on all of their necks, I figured some vampire-like animals had killed them and sucked their blood.  Then in talking to others about the incident, I was told it sounded like our chickens were killed by a weasel.

    Ever since then I have believed that weasels were vampires, but this morning, in doing some research, I discovered that that was not the case, and weasels don’t suck blood.   I guess it is not uncommon for weasels to kill a lot of chickens at a time and not eat them.  When weasels get into a chicken house, the chickens all freak out and flutter and fly about.  Their wild activity sends the weasel into a frenzy, causing them to go into a killing spree.  Then they try to hide their victims, thinking they will return later to eat them.

    I guess Kona found a grouse corpse that a weasel had hidden. 

    I threw the corpse into the woods, and now I wish I would have taken a photo of the small wound so I could see it.

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

Three Sisters Planting

     Many of the agricultural tribes of Americas practiced what they called “The Three Sisters” planting.  This was a method of companion planting using their three staples:  corn, beans, and squash.  These three crops where planted together and created a symbiotic relation between the plants.   This is how Wikipedia explains it:

    The three crops benefit by being grown together.[5][4] The cornstalk serves as a trellis for the beans to climb; the beans fix nitrogen in the soil and their twining vines stabilize the maize in high winds; and the wide leaves of the squash plant shade the ground, keeping the soil moist and helping prevent the establishment of weeds.[7][8] The prickly hairs of some squash varieties deter pests, such as deer and raccoons.

    I have always been curious about how the Three Sisters method works and this year I tried out a bit of it my garden.  I didn’t really do it exactly the same way, because I didn’t plant squash, just the corn and beans.   I failed to mound the corn rows and planted them too close together.  Also, the type of corn (Black corn) and the bean varieties I used were new to me, and probably not suitable for growing in our northern climate.

    The resulting plants look a bit chaotic in the photo above.  The vining beans did seem to pull over a lot of the corn stalks, and I haven’t yet checked on how well the final produce faired.  It has not yet fully matured.

    The Three Sisters method seems to make some sense, and I may try it again more religiously next year, if I get any suitable results.  In the photo below you can see the red ear of the corn and some of the bean pods.

    

Take a look at my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca

Pressing Apples

     Remember that garden cart full of apples that I had picked from the tree, to prevent the bears from getting them and tearing up the tree?  Well, once picked, I didn’t know what we were going to do with all those apples.  I was sure we wouldn’t be able to eat them all before they started getting soft.  Fortunately, a solution appeared.

    In 2015 the local sustainability group had purchased the parts needed to make a portable apple press, and got a local man to put it all together.  Every fall they wheel the impressive wood-framed contraption out so that people can convert their apples into juice.  

    We drove out to the Dunster Hall yesterday with our apples and some jars and put the apple press to use.  Pete, the local apple press expert was there to show us what to do.  The apples are first put into a chute that leads to a grinder.  That’s Michelle in the red shirt dropping her apples into the chute.  After being broken into bits by the grinder, the apple bits fall into a net-lined wooden bucket.  

    When that basket is full of apple pieces, the bucket is placed under a press which is turned by hand.  That is Pete at the far end of the press with his hands on a board that turns the large screw that slowly descends, crushing the apples, and releasing the juice.  The apple juice then runs down a long chute at the bottom of the press, into a container which you can’t see in photo.

    It all worked smoothly and efficiently.  I over-estimated the amount of juice our garden cart full of apples would produce.  We took along five gallon jars, but only collected about one and a third gallons of juice.  Michelle took the leftover crushed apple pieces to feed to chickens.

    Our apple juice is sweet, tangy, refreshing, and tasty; we had some for our evening meal.

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

A Memorable Night Spent in the Outhouse

     Yesterday I blogged about our outhouse.  On today’s blog I will tell you about a horrific event of my life that happened in that outhouse in December of 2012.  Here is the grim tale:

        We were going to have a Christmas Eve gathering at our house.  Trevor was going to bring over a slide projector, and everyone was going to show some of their old slides from their youth.  I had sorted through some of my old slides and was looking forward to the evening.  

        Our toilet has been rather sluggish lately, so my wife suggested that since we didn’t want any problems when all of our guests were here, that we should just use the outhouse whenever we had to do any major business.

        When I went to bed on Dec. 23rd, my stomach seemed a bit rumbly.  Several times during the night, I woke up to more unease in my stomach.  At 3:30, I awoke, and realized that I had a problem.  I didn’t really relish the thought of going out to the outhouse in the cold night, but it seemed a necessity.

           I just wear long johns and a long sleeved T-shirt to bed, and since I wasn’t planning to stay outside very long, I didn’t put on pants;  I just walked to the back door and put on my felt pack boots, a hat, and a coat and stepped out into the night.  

        It was a cold (-22C, -8F) outside.  The sky was clear.  The stars were sparkling, and the moon made the snow glow with a blue light, as I crunched through the snow to the outhouse.  When I got closer to that goal, I felt a sudden urgency, so I quickened my pace, threw open the door, and the toilet lid, pulled down my long johns, and quickly settled my naked behind onto the icy crystals that ringed the toilet seat.  

        “I made it”, I thought in relief.

        My bowels thundered and released in several waves, then I became aware of how light-headed I was beginning to feel, I could hardly think, as my consciousness began to close down.  I passed out.

       I slowly became aware again, but couldn’t figure out what position I was in.  My brain wasn’t really fully engaged.  My bottom seemed to be still on the toilet seat, but somehow the rest of me was all scrunched up.  Slowly, I figured out that I was slumped over with my head against the outhouse wall.  I tried to move, but I was so woozy and I had zero energy, I couldn’t right myself.

        I think I was probably in shock, my head was bathed in sweat, which was very cold in the frigid night temperatures.  I thought that maybe this was the “Big One”, and I was going to die, alone, there in the outhouse.

        After some time passed, I gained enough strength to use my arms to sit upright.  Then I suddenly felt like I was about to loose my lunch.  I managed to lower myself off of the toilet platform and onto the floor, where I knelt with my head haloed by the toilet seat, my head over the hole.  I purged several times from deep and low inside my abdomen.

       As my thinking cleared, the thought came to me that when my wife opened the outhouse door, she would find my corpse, bare ass toward the door, and my head inside the toilet hole.  It was not a comforting thought.

        When my purging seemed to stop, I fought my way up to the toilet seat again.  I still didn’t have enough strength to go back to the house, so I sat there, with the sweat still pouring down my face, pondering my pathetic situation.  After a time, I did manage to stand up, pull up my long johns and stagger to the back door of the house.  There I found Joan putting on her coat, about to come out to see what had happened to me.

        I was pale and sweaty, and had blood running down the side of my nose, where I had hit it, falling against the outhouse wall, when I passed out.  She helped me to the couch in the living room.  I threw up a couple of more times in the bathroom, by that time, she had a bed made up for me on the sofa, complete with a bucket, so I wouldn’t have to climb up and down the steps to my bedroom.   I had given up all I had to give, so fortunately, I didn’t need to use the bucket during the night.

        The next day, we cancelled the party, and I spent a meal-less the day on the couch.  Except for a total lack of energy, I had no symptoms.     There has been a stomach flu going around, but in others, it has lasted at least a week.  I feel okay now, so whether it was the flu, food poisoning, or the norovirus, I am not sure, but I have never experienced such an intense sudden attack on so many fronts, before.  

        It was a pretty miserable Christmas Eve, but looking on the bright side, I am happy that my frozen corpse wasn’t discovered in the outhouse.

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

In Praise Of Our Outhouse

     Living the very rural lifestyle that we do, means that sometimes we lose our water.  Unfortunately that can happen during winter when our waterline freezes.  There have been a few times when we had to live without our water for a month or so.  During those times, we could always find supplies of water for drinking and cooking to keep us going, but the whole business of “going to the bathroom” became very stressful and burdensome.  We were sometimes forced just to do our “business” out in the woods.  Luckily, we are surrounded by woods.

    In 2010 we had a lot of family members coming for a reunion, and I feared that the tiny bathroom we have in our house might not be able to service the big influx of family that were coming, so I decided to build (and dig) an outhouse to help share the load.  I picked a spot on the edge of the woods beside the greenhouse and began to build it.

    Digging the pit was the most difficult part of the project.  There were a lot of tree roots that I had to deal with in the digging.  Once I got passed them, I found it difficult to maneuver within the narrow confines of the pit I was digging as the hole got deeper.  I only was able to dig down about three and a half feet (1 m.),  before running into another problem.  The underground water table on our land is very high, and as I dug, water began to slowly seep into the pit, so I had to stop.

    I constructed the outhouse and put it into place and it worked very well when I family was here.  I was very glad I had made it.  Normally we never use it, except during those rare occasions when someone else is using the bathroom and so we go outside and use the outhouse.  When that occurs, we find the outhouse odor-free and really a comfortable alternative.

    It is also very convenient whenever we lose our water.  It certainly takes a lot of the stress away.  Of course, using an outhouse in the dead of winter is not as comfortable as using it during the summer.  It means putting on coats, boots, and gloves, shuffling through the snow to get there, and then slowly lowering your naked bum onto the freezing wood of the toilet seat--not a wonderful experience, but what other choice do we have.

    With the recent visit of my brothers and sisters, again the outhouse came into regular use, and luckily it didn’t really begin to emit any odor until their week of visiting was over.

    While I realize that urban dwellers might think negatively about having to use an outhouse, which if open to the public, often means a smelly and unpleasant experience, but our outhouse has served us well, and has been a very welcome addition to our rural property.

    

Take a look at my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca