Smoky Sun at Highway Delay

    Last night our trip home from visiting friends was interrupted for fifteen minutes because of “paving” on Highway 16.  We have been saddened to find out that they are “Seal Coating” the highway.  Instead of resurfacing the highway with asphalt, they are being cheap by putting down a layer of gravel, then coating it with a layer of thick oil.  It is a messy operation from start to finish.  First we suffer from blankets of dust from the gavel that is put down, then the oil, and finally when it hardens, we are left with a rougher surface on the road than what we would have gotten had they done it properly, using asphalt.  It’s the price we pay for living in an isolated area, and it is a degradation of Highway 16.

    The highway stop did give us a chance to watch the Sun sinking at the far end of the Valley.  The Sun was very orange due to all of the smoke from forest fires burning north of us, that has been blanketing our air for days.  

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

 

Veggie Dog at Work

    Kona loves her vegetables, especially fresh vegetables, especially vegetables straight from the garden.  Yesterday, I was out picking peas when suddenly Kona was working her way down the row beside me, snatching a few pea pods off the vine and crunching away at them.  In a previous blog I told how she pulled up and was chewing on a few of my cabbage plants.  

    Luckily, she left some for us to eat.

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

 

Composting Mulch

    Above is a photo of the moist grasses and weeds I piled.  I don’t always see mushrooms growing in it as it composts, mostly I just see the whitish mold inside the pile.  Once it “cooks” for a while, I spread the mulch onto my garden.

    Below is a shot of my newly mulched potato plants.  When you grow potatoes, you have to keep “hilling” the potato plants (putting dirt over the plants to create more soil for the potatoes to grow in.)   Eventually I run out of dirt to put over the growing potato plants, so then I add the mulch on the hills, it is pretty much like soil anyway, and it also helps keep the weeds down.

You can see my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

 

Making Mulch in the Rain Showers

    Every year I have to cut the grasses and weeds growing in the pasture, because I no longer have grazing animals.  Rather than letting the cut grasses and weeds just lie there on the ground and rot, I turn it into mulch for the garden.   I use it to mulch around the vegetables that I grow.  The mulch keeps the weeds down in the rows between the vegetables and at the same time it keeps the soil moisture in, and slowly fertilizes the garden as it decomposes further.

    When I make mulch, the old saying, “Make hay while the sunshines.” is reversed.  I cut the weeds and pile them during or immediately after, a rain shower.  I gather and pile the “hay” I cut, while it is wet, this moisture allows mold and fungi to grow inside the piles, which destroys the grass and weed seeds and starts the degradation of the plants. 

    I let the moist piles sit for a week, so the mold and fungi grows and spreads inside the pile.  I then load the moldy pile into the wheelbarrow and haul it to big pile of mulch, that I have close to the garden.  This allows the molds and fungi to spread further into new areas of the mulch, .  Below is a photo showing the moldy mulch in the wheelbarrow as I move it to my big mulch pile by the garden.   The white areas are the mold.

View my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca

     

 

I Guess I Can Put Them Away Now

    We were going to have some guests over yesterday, so I spent some time sprucing up the outside, around our house.   I grabbed the broom and was going to sweep the front porch, when I noticed that my snowshoes were still lying there under the bench.  Even though the world’s weather is terribly unpredictable and crazy, I decided to gamble and put the snowshoes into storage in my shop, hoping that I wouldn’t be needing them until next winter.

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

 

A "David's" Party

    I went to an unusual event the other day:  A "David’s" Party.   David, the brother of McBride’s retired doctor was coming for his first visit to McBride and so to give him a taste of the community, the doctor organized a party of some of the Davids that lived here.  I, of course, was one of them.

    Having never before been invited to a party attended by just people named David, I wasn’t sure what to expect, but it was really enjoyable.  The get-together was held at the local Chinese restaurant, and so as all of the David’s gathered around the table filled with tasty prawns, spicy chicken balls, wings, and other Chinese appetizers, we participated in a lively conversation about being a David, which then expanded into other stories from our lives.

    All of the David’s had unique experiences, the visiting David had been a nurse in a hospital for men with severe psychological symptoms, another was an electrician, one was McBride’s Fire Chief, and the other was a neighbor, who was one of my colleagues when I worked for the BC Forest Service. 

    I told the story about working at Forestry during the time when there were 5 Davids working in our office of 30 or so employees.  I had been the ‘David’ who had worked there the longest.  One day someone came to the front desk of the office and asked our receptionist if he could “speak to David.”

    “Which one?” the receptionist queried.

    “The ‘real’ one.” was the answer she got.

    I was then summoned to the front desk, and it always made me feel good that I was considered “the ‘real’ one.”

    Back in the 1940’s when I was born, ‘David’ was the 7th most popular name a boy.  Time has been hard on the name since then.  Today in 2023, ‘David’ is ranked number 337; just below the name, ‘Fox’.

    I always liked having ‘David’ for a name.  It seemed dignified to me.  I especially liked it asa child, during the 1950‘s, when the Davy Crockett Mania swept through North American boys because of the Walt Disney productions.  I loved wearing the ‘coonskin’ cap my mother had made me from a fur collar taken from one of her old coats, and I felt a close relationship to Davy Crockett because my name too, was David.

    If you haven’t yet had enough of hearing about Davids, here is a song on the subject by the Canadian comedy troupe, “Kids in the Hall”:      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEGCdVADLWY

    View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

 

Happy Canada Day

    Today is Canada Day, a day when we celebrate Canada.  I have never been a big fan of Patriotism or  Nationalism, fearing the terrible results of blindly following state-sponsored propaganda, but I do have an immense appreciation for Canada, the country that accepted me when I was seeking a home more aligned with my beliefs.  

    We have lived in Canada fifty years now, most of my life.  We struggled at times and sacrificed at times, but I am very happy that we made the choice to immigrate and live in Canada.  We have made wonderful friends and enjoyed economic stability, while living in and building our lives in a beautiful area, still largely pristine.

    Thank you Canada, for giving us that opportunity.

 View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca