Remembering 2013

    The last day of the year is usually the day to reflect on all of those things, both positive and negative, that happened.  For me the negative memories outweighed the good ones in 2012, but 2013 was a good one for me.  There were a few negatives; we went weeks without a toilet, and it seemed that we would never find a new one that would fit or work.  We had to give up on having chickens when it became clear that if we continued, a weasel would end up killing them all, but those episodes, though frustrating, were minor in comparison with the real tragedies experienced by others.

    Being a real weather oriented person, I had to be impressed at how good the weather was for us in 2013.  We had lots of warmth and sun, and got rain at all the right times for us to have a really bountiful garden.  There were very few mosquitoes, and a beautiful and mild fall.

    2013 was the year I discovered that there were pine martens living close to us, and woke up one morning to find one in my bedroom.  It was the year a Subway restaurant truck wrecked close to McBride and we ended up with rolls of frozen dough for making buns (we still have a big bag in our freezer, since I keep forgetting to make buns).

    Our cat Lucifer discovered the delights of watching TV and following the cursor on my computer screen.  She also learned to curl up to snooze in the cardboard box beside the computer instead of standing in front of the monitor.  

    I started playing music again in 2013.  I initiated a weekly jam session at the library, and as a result gained a lot of new musical friends and learned a lot of new songs.  The mandolin became my main instrument forcing me to learn a lot of new chords and I got a new amplifier for my electric guitar for when I want to play rock and roll.  Joan and I had to re-awaken a lot of old brain cells by starting to square dance again.

    I stopped two life-long habits.  Water became my drink of choice, thus stopping the habit of drinking Coca Cola or other soft drinks.  I also mysteriously stopped chewing on my fingernails, something I had done all of my life.  I whacked off the pony tail I had for 20 years.  

    I think the the most positive thing that happened in 2013 was getting a dog again.  We spent 8 hours of nerve-wracking driving on icy highways to get Skye from an animal shelter down in Chilliwack.  It feels like our little family is complete again.

    If you have been following my blog, you already know most of these things, but I felt obligated to follow the lead of all the TV and radio news programs and review the year.  I hope 2013 had been a good one for you too, and that 2014 will a be a really good year for everyone.

See my paintings at:  www.davidmarchant.ca

Back to Snow

    A couple of days ago I was complaining about the rain turning my driveway to ice.  Today I would like to take this opportunity to complain about snow.  This is the second day in a row I have had to shovel my driveway.  Yesterday I shoveled 5 inches (12.7 cm) of fresh snow snow from the driveway  and today it was about 4 inches (10 cm).    

    I hope you don’t get the wrong impression, complaining about the weather is one of my favorite pastimes, but deep down inside, I realize we have it pretty good.  While I am sure some of you might shudder at the thought of winter in Canada, the weather here in the Robson Valley is quite tolerable.

    When you look at the other weather stories on the news, some snow doesn’t seem like too much of a hardship.  After an ice storm in Eastern Canada just before Christmas, some people still are living without electricity after all this time, and they have had to deal with cold temperatures at the same time.  Several people have died of carbon monoxide while trying to keep warm in their house using barbecues inside to generate heat.

    Then there were floods in England, and a heat wave in Argentina, where 70 people were hurt while trying to cool off in a river and were attacked by a school of piranha.  My sister in Indiana told me the got 6 inches (15 cm) of rain the other day.  Yep, I am happy to be just having to face fresh snow. 

Take a look at my paintings:  www.davidmarchant.ca

And To All A 'Goodnight'

    Ever wonder what the well dressed McBridian was wearing to bed?  Joan thought the world deserved to know, so she took this photo of me in the night gown and hat I got for Christmas.  Whenever I put it on, I always feel like I should be walking around holding a candle in a candle holder.

    P.S. I don’t wear the “house boots” to bed.  

I am still painting in the morning.  See my paintings at:  www.davidmarchant.ca

I've Been Working on the Driveway

  My driveway is about 60 meters long.  During the summer my outdoor work activities are spread all around, I work in the garden, mow the lawn, and do odd jobs on the out buildings, but in the winter, just about 95% of my outside work is done on the driveway.  It is, after all, our link to the outside world, so it has to be kept clear.  

    Most of my winter work consists of shoveling snow off of the drive.  If we get a light snow, say 3 inches (7.6 cm), I could easily drive over it, but I like to clear the driveway anyway; you never know how much snow might be coming overnight, and it is a lot easier and quicker to shovel a light blanket of snow than a really thick one.  Also, if you continually drive over each new snowfall, it builds up into high ridges that become difficult to drive on, and it takes forever to melt when spring comes.

    I have had a lot of opportunities to shovel the driveway this year.  Even though I keep it clear, some snow always stays on the drive and when it is driven over it turns into “hard pack”, (compacted  snow) and roughly the same thing as ice.  A lot of roads and driveways in this country are a lot smoother to drive on in the winter with the hard pack than they are on the summer, with mud, ruts, and holes.

    After the past couple of days of above freezing temperatures +4C (39F) and rain, the hard pack on my drive turned to glare ice.  Because my driveway slopes up to the road, it would have been near impossible to get up the driveway, so some action was called for.

    This condition happens at some point every winter, and what I generally do is take ashes from our wood stove and spread that across the ice.  It “pocks” the slick surface of the ice and gives tires (and boots) some traction.  That is how I began this morning.

    I took the ash bucket and as I carefully walked up the incredibly slippery drive, I threw handfuls of ashes in front of me, giving me some footing.  Unfortunately the one bucket of ashes I had didn’t get me very far up the drive, so when the bucket was empty I had to come up with some other solution, and luckily I had one.

    Last summer I got a load of sandy gravel to fill some of the low spots on the driveway.  I hadn’t used it all and had a pile of it left by the barn.  The problem was that it had been sitting all winter, so it was covered with about 10 inches (25cm) of snow, and when I had cleared a small section of snow  away, I was not surprised to find that the surface of the pile was frozen as hard as concrete.

       After banging around at it with the shovel, I was able to break through the icy crust of the sandpile and found loose sand underneath.  Then it was just a matter of tunneling or mining the loose gravel from inside the middle of the pile.

    I was able to get 5 bucketfuls of sandy gravel out of the pile, which gave me enough to spread the entire length of the driveway.  Although I haven’t tried driving it yet, I am fairly confident we now again have access to the outside world.

See my paintings:  www.davidmarchant.ca

Robson Valley Wind Monitoring System

    During the Fall and Winter the Robson Valley often has to endure strong winds, as powerful weather systems from the Pacific move across the mountains of BC.  In order to monitor and gauge the strength of these winds, I have set up a wind monitoring system in my carport.  

    If you look carefully at the above photo you might recognize a rounded wooden frame to which a row of clothes hooks are attached.  You can see an orange hard hat and some purple rain pants hanging from some of the hooks.  I also use the hooks to hang tools, like rakes and brooms on the wall.  That is were the blue snow shovels were hanging Christmas Eve when the winds began.

    Yesterday, when I walked out to the carport, I noticed the floor was covered with snow and that the brooms and snow shovels were lying down instead of hanging on the wall.  This is exactly how my wind monitoring system works-- when I find the items that were hanging on the wall, lying down on the carport floor, I knew that overnight the wind had been blowing hard.

I paint every day.  Check out my realistic paintings at:  www.davidmarchant.ca

Debris Trail

    That’s Lucifer there on the right, looking over the debris trail left after the package opening frenzy this morning.  It appears that I was either a good boy, or Santa got bad information, because I got a lot of very nice presents--a lot of them centering around the theme of keeping warm in the winter time.

    I got some felt house boots, and a sleeping gown, complete with hat.  Our friend, Di , who always gives us more gifts than we deserve, must have been taking notes while reading my blog, gifts from her included books on how to grow chili’s, how to make hot sauce from chili’s, and a book about strategies for outwitting squirrels. 

    We talked to Di this morning and she told us that her sister in Scotland apparently got confused when sending gifts out and had mistakenly sent Di the gift meant for someone in Dubai, and I guess Di’s gift went there.

    I guess it won’t surprise anyone that we had ourselves a white Christmas up here in McBride, BC, with a good foot (30cm) of snow on the ground and lots of blowing snow in the air.

Even though it was Christmas, I painted, see my paintings:  www.davidmarchant.ca 

Lucky Joan Wins Big!

    Yesterday morning, we got a phone call from the local BC Liquor store.  It seems that Joan won the grand Prize in their Christmas Draw--a big stuffed bear.  Joan is the proven winner in our family, shortly after we moved to McBride, about 30 years ago, she won a shopping spree at the grocery store and got to run around with a shopping cart picking up free items off of the shelf, then about 15 years ago she won a fancy new mountain bike at the other grocery store.  

    Unfortunately, even though she often buys lottery tickets, somehow those big cash prizes have not materialized for her.  We are not sure what we are going to do with the big bear.

See my paintings:  www.davidmarchant.ca