Cabbage Are Beautiful

     This morning I started to watch the old 1953 movie “So Big” that I had recorded the other day from  TCM.  I enjoy watching those old black and white films, and  while knew I had seen this one before, I  didn’t remember its storyline. 

    The movie begins with a young lady (Jane Wyman) attending a posh boarding school in the 1890’s.  When her father suddenly died leaving her with nothing, she was forced to leave school and take a job teaching school in a in a tiny farming community outside Chicago.

    She knew nothing about agriculture and while traveling in an open wagon to the farm home where she would be housed while she taught, she asked the farm hand that was driving the wagon, what she was seeing in the field.  He replied, “Cabbages” to which she replied, “They are beautiful.”

    Saying “Cabbages are beautiful.” was a great joke to the farm hand, and her statement spread through the community as a joke, and was referenced several times in the film.  Her statement also resinated with me when I heard it, because I too, think that cabbages are beautiful.  A cabbage happened to be the subject of the first painting I did, back in 2005.

    I had taken photos throughout my life but it wasn’t until I retired that I realized that every time I took a photo, in the back of my mind I was thinking, “This would make a good painting.”  Upon my retiring, I realized I was getting old and if didn’t start painting, I never would.  I chose a photograph I had taken of a red cabbage in my garden to be the subject of my first painting.

    Fortunately, that painting of a cabbage turned out really well and that encouraged me to keep painting.  Had it not turned out well, I probably would never have painted another picture.  Above is my painting of a “beautiful” cabbage.

    

You can view my other paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

The Payoff Has Arrived

     I confess that I am not the most conscientious gardener.  I usually just do the bare minimum of what needs to be done to get a crop, but nevertheless just doing the bare minimum, still requires a lot of my hours.  All of the planting of seeds, trying to maintain the right growing conditions, and weeding take up a lot of time and still doesn’t guarantee that you will get anything close to the harvest that you dreamed about when you started.

    Well, I am happy to announce some of the rewards I had hoped for, have finally started to arrive.  Of all of the different vegetables I plant and tend, the most important for me are my tomatoes and potatoes.  I have yet to dig any of my potatoes, so I don’t know what is under the ground waiting for me, but happily, the tomatoes have begun to ripen in our greenhouse, and we have been eating the juicy red spheres.  

    I spent many summers in my youth picking tomatoes in my grandparent’s large commercial greenhouse in in their fields.  Nothing tasted better that those large succulent Indiana tomatoes, but I continue to strive to reproduce that taste.  I never really get it, but still the tomatoes I grow far exceed any of the so-called tomatoes I can find in the local grocery store.

    While I am on the subject of tomatoes; just this week scientists have announced that potatoes came from a mutation of an ancient species of tomato which enabled it to produce tubers in its roots.  Both plants were developed, grown, and prized by the Aboriginal people of South and Central America.      

    Scientists have always suspected some kind of link, but they never knew which plant developed from the other.  Both plants are in the nightshade family, which includes some toxic and poisonous plants.  This led to some hesitancy among Europeans when they were introduced to potatoes and tomatoes in 15th and 16th Centuries.   

    I love fresh tasty tomatoes and look forward to slices on my sandwiches, in my salads, and in the fresh salsa that we plan to eat while we have them.

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

Our Share of a Spectacular Sunset

     The Robson Valley runs along in a SE/NW orientation. During those long days of summer the sunsets at the far end of the NW Valley.  Because of the way our house is set, if there is a beautiful summer sunset, we can only see small patches of it through the thick grove of trees that line our property.  That was the situation Sunday night.  From what I could see through the small spaces between all of the branches, it was a spectacular brilliant rose-pink sunset.

    The only part of the colored light from the sunset that could be seen at our house was a small patch of pink color on one of the overhead clouds that covered the sky.  I took a photo and waited, hoping that as the sun lowered, more of the bottoms of the cloud would become illuminated with color, but it didn’t happen.   I was glad however that I took the photo because it is quite unusual to have just a small pink-colored spot in the gray sky.

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

How my Pond Has Changed Over Thirty Years

    You might have noticed that I have lately done a lot of blogs about things that had happened in 1994.  The reason for that is because I have been slowly going through my 1994 Diary.  1994 was the first year of my pond.  It was exciting to see all of the wildlife that were attracted to it.  It was also wonderful to have a place where we could go for a swim.  

    Well, as you can see in the two photos above, the pond, like all things, has changed over the years.  Trees have established themselves on the dam, and cattails now surround most of the shore line.  It was never very easy to get into the pond to take a swim, and now it is even more difficult.  I haven’t been in it for probably ten years, and those last times when I went in, it was not for a swim, but to pull out many of the aquatic plants that were beginning to cover over the surface of the pond.

    I had the pond dug to create wildlife habitat and I guess that has happened, although some of the wildlife that were attracted were not very desireable.  After a while, there started to be leaches in the pond, much to my chagrin (and horror, when I got out after a swim and found them all over me) and there was also a time I got “swimmers itch” from a parasite that came from snails.

    I am still happy to see the ducks that come during the spring and fall, but all those wood ducks disappeared from the Robson Valley after about 10 years, and it wasn’t until three years ago that I had a pair or two return for a swim.

    Even with all of the changes my pond has gone through, I still love it, and it still brings me joy to be able to walk around it daily and watch the evolution of the seasons and years.

    Last week at the library’s Writing Group, I finished my going through my 1994 Diary, and I suspect you will soon be hearing about 1995 on the blog.

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

 

Larry Stamm, Local Luthier

     The Dunster Museum has been putting on a series of visitations to the studios and workshops of creative people living in the Robson Valley.  Yesterday was the third of such visits; this time it was to the workshop of Larry Stamm, a luthier (a maker of stringed instruments).  I have found each visit extremely interesting and like the others, I was left astounded at the talent that lives in our remote and sparsely populated valley.

    Larry has been handcrafting beautiful instruments for decades, and I was amazed at all of the different types of instruments he has created:  Guitars, mandolins, violins, ukuleles, and hybrid instruments that I have never heard of (banjo/mandolins, viola/mandolins, and instruments of other combinations).   Larry custom-makes instruments for people and also repairs broken instruments.  

    He uses beautiful local and exotic woods to create his instruments and has a stockpile of woods for further creations.  It was incredible to see and feel the very thin pieces of wood that he had made to be used in constructing the tops and bottoms of instruments, and of course some will be bent for the sides and arched tops. 

    While Larry has some power tools, most of his time in creating instruments is done with hand tools.  He showed off some of his hand planes, one of which he had made himself that was only about 3 inches long which he uses for careful fine work.  

    I was impressed with the beauty, the sound, and neck-action of the mandolin that was passed around during Larry’s presentation.  Larry is certainly an accomplished luthier and it was enlightening to see how he goes about making his fine instruments.

    In the photo below Larry explains his current project.  He is making a unique instrument for a customer.  It will have the neck of a five-string banjo, with the body of an enlarged mandolin.  You might be able to make out the shape of it drawn out on the paper. 

You can view my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

A Bit of Sunlight

      The coffee breaks we had at the Forest Service are among the most cherished memories of my many years of working there.  I loved hearing the hilarious stories told by the more senior forestry employees about their early adventures on the job, but one of the most memorable coffee breaks I had nothing to do with those stories, it was something that happened to me on a coffee break in 1994.

        My co-workers were always bringing in snacks for the staff to indulge in during the coffee breaks.  On this particular day, Dale Cinnamon, brought in a small bucket of ice cream along some butterscotch syrup to make it more of a treat.  I, of course, had scooped up a bowl of ice cream and dribbled some of the butterscotch syrup over the top.  

    When the coffee break and my bowl of ice cream was done, I went to the sink to wash my bowl.  As I waited in line for those in front of me to wash their bowls, I squirted some Sunlight dishwashing detergent into my bowl.  As the lineup slowly shrunk, I looked down at the bowl I was holding, and noticed there was still some golden butterscotch syrup in the bottom.  Not wanting to waste even a bit of that delicious butterscotch, I took my spoon and scoured out of the bowl.

    I put that spoonful of golden, transparent liquid into my mouth, waiting for the delicious butterscotch sweetness to hit my flavor buds.  Too late I discovered that it was not butterscotch syrup I had scooped from my bowl, but the forgotten Sunlight detergent that I had squirted into it.

    It was horrible.  I almost threw-up, and that awful lingering chemical taste stayed in my mouth for the next hour.

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

Another Story About Problematic Squirrels

         In 2013, I put some covers over the gutters on my house to prevent the leaves from filling them up.  The covers ran along the front of my house but didn’t quite make it all the way to the end of the gutter.  It left a 2 inch (5 cm) gap uncovered.  I figured that that wasn’t too much of a problem, because how many leaves were going to be blown into that little opening.  At the time, the furthest thought in my mind was baby squirrels.

        In June, I found a baby squirrel climbing up the side of our house and looking inside the bathroom window.  It was a mystery to me as to where it had come from.  Days later I discovered that there was a squirrel nursery under our roof.

        Despite the fact that I had once sealed all the holes to our roof with wire mesh, a mother squirrel had found an opening, and had decided to have her family there in the warm insulation.  I decided I would just wait until the little ones were ready to leave their nest, then I would seal up their entrance to the roof.

        A few days later, I was walking around the house and I heard a scratching noise coming from a downspout in the corner of the house.  The downspout came down from the gutter and was attached to a buried pipe that drained the water away.  In between the buried pipe and the down spout there was a crack through which I could see some tiny paws and some eyes peeking through--one of the baby squirrels had first squeezed itself through the opening of the gutter guard, and then had great fun running back and forth in the covered gutter until it decided to explore the downspout.

        I got a screwdriver and took the downspout apart so the baby squirrel could climb out and free itself.   The small squirrel was still about a foot below the top of the buried drain section.  The sides of the pipe must have been too slippery because after an hour the squirrel still hadn’t managed to climb out.  

      Since we were just about to go to the Dunster Ice Cream Social,  I thought I’d better try to get it out before we left.  I went out to my shop and cut a thin strip of plywood, then slid it into the side of the pipe.  Because it was wood and had a rough surface, I figured the baby squirrel would be able to use it to climb out.  It did, and as soon as it was out, it scampered across the lawn and away from the house.

        I had noticed that while the one squirrel was trapped in the drainpipe, its sibling continued having fun, running back and forth through the gutter.  Since both baby squirrels were out of their nest in the roof, I thought I should take advantage of the situation and seal up the hole they had been using to access their home.  I screwed a board across their entrance.

        Several hours later when we returned from the ice cream social, the mother squirrel was on a nearby spruce tree chattering loudly, and the two baby squirrels were running around across the surface of the roof, trying to figure out how to get back into their home.  This activity continued until it got dark.

        The next morning to my dismay, I discovered the mother squirrel hanging on the side of the roof, chatting to a third baby squirrel who was still in the roof, and had been trapped behind my wire mesh squirrel proof barrier.  I got a ladder and ripped the mesh away so the mother and child could reunite.  The trapped baby squirrel was soon out, but one of the original baby squirrels slipped back under the roof to take its place. 

        In frustration, I just walked away and decided to let the squirrels alone for a couple of days.  Two days later, I could see no sign of squirrel activities, so I assumed that maybe the whole family got fed up with all the trouble cause by that interfering human and took off to find a new home in the woods.  I hoped so, but I refrained from sealing up that remaining entrance to my roof until I was confident that the the squirrels were gone.

You can view my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca