Christmas at our house

It's finally feeling Christmassy for me these days. We had a terrific snowstorm today, the Christmas shopping and crafting is finally all but done, Mario Lanza is singing his own special brand of fire'n brimstone style Christmas songs, and Byron and I recently put up our Christmas 'tree'.  

As a kid, I'd always gone out with my family to pick a live tree and cut it down and then hang out drinking hot chocolate and not being able to feel our toes.  The tradition continued into adulthood. My sister and her family and I and my dad would go out tree hunting, and after I met Byron he too joined the brotherhood of tree hunters.  It officially stopped being fun when we realized a few years ago that not a single member of my sister's family could take a snowball  well. The highlight of this discovery was my brother in law Ray being a wet blanket about getting one in the back.  Anyway, we opted out of this arbicide last year, and decorated our cd rack instead.  This year we did the same, and it makes me giggle with glee every time I look at it.

I've gotten an  early Christmas present, I must've been good this year :)   Byron installed a light in our bathroom so that we can try to be better houseplant parents.  The plants are definitely responding well, although we seem to have also established a thriving fruitfly community :(

I've been thinking about how people are approaching Christmas this year, and I'm pleased that so many people believe Christmas doesn't need to equal spending lots of cash or giving stuff for the sake of having given stuff.   This Christmas cheer stuff, however is great--random acts of kindness, time spent, company enjoyed,  experiencing the wonders of the season. I'd rather have this all the time and have that be enough than get a bunch of stuff just because it's Christmas.

My plant light is 'stuff', I suppose, but more than that, it's going to allow me to keep gardening thoroughout the winter, and start my garden earlier in the spring, two things that I'm really looking forward to.   Thanks, Santa!

ahh, snow!

Snow is good for the soul.   

I've just come in from shovelling, which I really enjoy. It's a good opportunity to be outside and feel productive and breathe deeply.  I admire the was one teensy weensy little fragile snowflake can, in cooperation of millions of its brethren, can bring a bustling city to a standstill.  The persistence of mother nature reminds us that for all our big heavy brains and clever technology, we're still at her mercy. I also spend this time pondering weighty issues :) The snow quality tonight has deteriorated a bit, it's mostly fluffy and too dry for snowmen, but easy to shovel.

We've gotten a load of Weather today--dry flakes of snow, big clumpy 3D snow, wet snow, powdery snow and wind.  The snow started when I got to work at 8, and I was all atwitter with glee as I watched the blizzardy winds swirl snow from the rooftops.  Finally around 9:30  I couldn't hold back any longer, and took off to do a snow assesment in the back alley, where I made two small snowpeople.  It was snowman snow! Perfectly crunchy, sticky, dense, packable snowman snow!  I left my two snowy sentinels to guard the door to the stairwell and went about my day.  By the time I departed for home, they were up to their little necks in about 5 inches of snow.  (these are snowmen 6 and 7 of 10000)

Looking forward to # 8 and beyond, we're expected to get 50 cm by Sunday night!

adventures in home ownership

it's that time of year again, the time when it always seems like the middle of the night. you get up and go to work in the dark, you come home in the dark, you go to bed and wake up in the dark to use the washroom and go back to bed and wake up later on when it's still dark to go to work again. the 'flu is making the rounds, and so is glumness and tiredness. this is nothing at all what Richard III had in mind when he got all long winded about "the winter of our discontent", but it sounds about right...

don't get me wrong, i love winter. love it. i love coming in from the cold and i appreciate the exertion of shovelling while wet snow turns my hair into a frozen nest. i love the excuse to have hot chocolate or warm honeyed milk, and i love the way a snowfall, consisting of millions and millions of teensy weensy fluffy beautiful flakes can slowly bring a whole bustling city to a muffled standstill. every season has its drawbacks though, and for me, winter is a time of feeling old and tired. i've been suffering a recurrence of the elbow/arm/wrist problems i had earlier in the year, caused by and accompanied by all sorts of barely tolerable work nonsense. what a body needs, in this sort of situation, is something fun and new, a good, satisfying learning experience or two!

byron and i embarked on some home maintenance work over the weekend; i think it was pretty routine, as far as work goes, but it felt like a real adventure. i was all atwitter with excitement as we took measurements and drove to home despot, where i happily spent less money than i feared we would have to. we have finally conquered the crawlspace under the house! the crawlspace which, in my mind, was inhabited by rabid hobo squirrels and colonies of malignant centipedes, actually turned out to be a just little space with a dirt floor, inexplicably strewn with clay pots and bricks. i discovered to my delight that i'm just the right size to sit on the entrance step and get in and out easily. we soon replaced insulation in the floor of our kitchen with a lot less effort than i would have expected. dunno how byron feels about it, but i thought it was great fun. we'll see if the eavestrough cleaning holds as much potential for amusement!

$#@%^&@!

our fair city has brought in a new waste management system, which sees homeowners paying variable taxes based on the amount of trash that they put out--i think i may have reported on this a while back. i wholeheartedly support this, and wish the new program every success. it makes lots of sense to me...if you can recycle, compost and otherwise reduce your household waste, then you shouldn't have to pay the same taxes as someone who can't bring themselves to sort their recyclables.

we have been quite smugly putting out a couple of small plastic grocery bags of trash in our tiny garbage bin every couple of weeks...we once went a month without having our garbage bin emptied because we didn't consider it full enough to justify having the garbage truck idling in front of our house during collection.

i suppose instead of being self-satisfied and complacent we should have been chaining our garbage bin to our porch and writing our address on it in big sharpie pen, and realized that we are surrounded by people who create so much garbage that they have to GO AND STEAL SOMEONE ELSE'S GARBAGE BIN in order to have properly presented garbage for the city to collect. jesus. we are now going to have to pay our fair city $50 for a new garbage bin. garbage put out in anything but an approved, registered bin does not get collected.

this is a test of my endorsement of the whole program, and of my beloved mayor miller. i don't actually know much about the man, and i do know many people who say things like 'feh, that miller, he's a bum'. i can't even recall if i voted for him, but i do like him and the things he is trying to do to make our city better. the garbage plan is an excellent one, but suffers from the growing pains associated with any kind of transition. i bet when this idea was being passed around nobody thought of a way to deal with mass bin thefts. i don't even really mind the $50 fee for the bin--apparently tons of these are being stolen all over the city, and well, someone has to pay for the production and delivery of them, right? i do sincerely hope someone at city hall figures out how to not punish people for losing their bins to theft. it was my hope that if they knew we were simply replacing a stolen tiny bin instead of upsizing to a bigger one that they would offer us a free replacement, but not dice. i can't say i blame them, really.

nonetheless, i am still pretty ticked off at this, and wish the person who stole our bin (but so thoughtfully removed the bag of garbage that was in it and left it under our porch, along with a few empty beer boxes) a bad case of bedbugs and a guilty conscience. (i also wish this on my neighbour john, and my boss at the dog food factory, for reasons that i may go into some other time). may all of them sleep badly tonight! grr.

the year of ten thousand snowmen

recently, while listening to christmas music at home one night (yes, this has already started in at the monkey house) i came to the conclusion that frosty the snowman really had the right idea; even though in the animated tv show he comes across as a bit of a witless buffoon, he has a good attitude. he knows his days are numbered (as are ours, every one of us) but he's determined to live out his days as happily as he can, rather than waste time being miserable about his inevitable melting. it seems very self-actualized and enlightened.


i remember in my youth flipping through national geographic and seeing photographs of Qin's terra cotta army and being blown away by the sheer number of them. in my more recent years, as a budding peacenik and treehugger, i've decided that i should embark on the zen-like practice of building my own army, but instead of an army of soldiers to carry out soldierly duties (ie killing, looting, and otherwise oppressing), it should be an army of ten thousand snowmen to bring peace and the sheer therapeutic joy of snowplay to the world.

i admit, ten thousand is a bit ambitious, but hey, if you're going to dream, you should dream big! last year i managed nineteen snowmen ranging from actual snow snowmen to this beautiful sculpted foam ninja snowman who is currently at large somewhere in my office.

i invite any and all snowman makers to help me in my quest. if anyone is interested in sharing pictures of their snowmen , I will be more than happy to set up a picassa web album of our growing population.

so far, this year's tally is four snowmen (not bad, considering we've only had one real snowfall). here's a couple of them, snowmeo and juliet, the famous starcrossed lovers. (juliet is leaning down from her balcony and gazing at the imploring figure of her man--the thing that looks like a ghost with a happy face in the background is the work of mother nature and had nothing to do with me.)

best wishes of the season, and happy snowplaying!

ah, procrastination!

in a rather lame and transparent attempt to put off cleaning the bathroom, i've decided to try to get some more pictures posted here. these are from my summer/fall adventures.


this is a bee stinger, with the guts attached. we've all heard that when a bee stings someone it disembowels itself, yes? this is true. they sometimes trail their innards around as they continue to fly around after they've stung. i got stung twice, once in the ear (it was un-fun). poor little bees.


we planted some wilted, sprouting ginger in our garden, then forgot about it. look at what eventually got dug up! it was tasty. this also works if you throw your sprouting ginger ends in a flower pot.





fall was painting season. we painted and painted and painted. we got sick enough of that vile puce non-colour that was on the walls, and put lots of color in our home. it actually feels like people live here now! the pumpkin orange bathroom and the green pepper living room do so much more to soothe the soul than dusty rose and beige-ish.

ok, i've successfully evaded the bathroom cleaning for 8 hours now...time to go!

miscellanea

it's a day off today, remembrance day is a federal holiday. i observed a moment of silence at 11:00, but only because it was a continuation of the 5 hours of silence that i'm still observing now. i've spent some time happily (and quietly!) futzing around the house--moving stuff from the porch, feeding the birds, reading honey recipes--it's a nice day off, as days off are so often wont to be.

i've gotten out of the blogging thing, same goes for facebok. dunno why. i've been keeping busy, probably alot busier than in previous years. baking, composting, jam and jelly making, honey bottling, painting and fiddling in the garden have kept me pretty occupied (although i admit to spending many many hours playing video games ;) )

anyway, time to run...more to come (eventually...)

lament for two wasps (or enlightenment through profound intoxication)

5:00 a.m: two hours after returning from the wedding reception, and i'm wide awake, heart pounding, mind racing, still smelling of campfire and trembling from the cold while the lump in the futon gently erodes my spine with every toss and turn.

my poor addled brain, floundering in its own murky depths in search of sleep, instead inexplicably presents me with a weeks-old memory of wasps, and the tears begin to trickle.

*****

it's a hot sunny mid-august day in the beeyard, perfect for doing our customary maintenance and hive inspections. our bee hives are relatively healthy and robust, but we're always on the watch for signs of intruders who try to rob the hives. at the third hive we see them. wasps. again.
in a strong hive, the workers can defend their home quite capably against the odd wasp or wax moth, or even mice, by stinging or by cooking the intruder with the combined body temperature of many bees clustered around it, but take a bit of work and our bees have already encountered so many challenges this year...

"fuck off," i whisper to the wasps, quite conversationally. "crunch!" they say, and "craaackle" as they meet the business end of my hive tool. i frown at the blobby brown mess of legs and exoskeleton, and wander off to sit in the long grass, with a vague feeling of dissatisfaction that mounts slowly for weeks before being resolved.

*****

it was a lovely wedding, if you ask me. sort of a cirque de soleil of weddings, with something for everyone. vows exchanged under the shade tree in the backyard, a bouncy castle for the kiddies, hold'em poker for the grandparents and assorted elderlies, a popcorn vending cart, many cows worth of bbq'd steaks, a fire pit, lots of good company and some good old Regina style hospitality.

while poker players were whooping it up in the garage and the old friends gathered 'round the fire to reminisce, i found myself talking to a number of fascinating and brilliant people. the man who i'd found shouting at byron about different types of peppers calmly shared with me his philosophy for living a good life, the photographer let me look at his photos and ask questions about what he sees and learns about people when he photographs them, Don with the "I got dumped on Jerry Springer" shirt waxed sentimental about family and friends, and Jeff lent an air of sanity to my latest bout of save-the-world-before-the-apocalypse musings.

all the excitement and new people and mind-expansion and fresh prairie air must've jogged some gears into motion; by the time i finally fell asleep in an embarassing position with the bedroom door wide open to the high-traffic hallway, i'd realized why the killing of the wasps had upset me so much.

*****

i try to be a friend to nature. weeding is done by hand, rainwater is collected and used in the garden. vegetable waste is composted with great enthusiasm and helps our soil grow healthy plants. we have mice in the house? we live trap 'em and drive them to the park for relocation. spiders, centipedes, moths, pillbugs and other crawlies get removed to the back yard, and even slugs find a new home in the generation ship known as the neighbour's backyard. as i like to point out, we're all just trying to live, right? the slugs and i have different ideas about what the garden needs--they think it needs slugs to lick great gaping holes in the foliage, i disagree. on a small scale like this it's nothing to kill anybody over.

the thing that's bothered me about the wasps is that i killed them out of malice. if they were a big problem in our hives we'd be taking serious steps to handle them, but the fact is they're only a nuisance at this point. i've let my sympathy for the bees sway me from my "everybody's just trying to live" belief, leading me to feel justified in tampering with an environment that's already got a built-in control mechanism, and it doesn't feel good or right. may i never again need the visceral squelch as a critter's life is extinguished to remind me of how bad malice feels.

the gals get ready to kick some wasp ass

It's been a busy summer...

and i haven't felt much like blogging. sorry. i've spent many many hours in the garden and with the bees and other critters, have a look: http://picasaweb.google.com/MyLittlePatchOfThePlanet/BugsRBeautiful

gigo

i've just returned from an evening at foodshare, where i'm a volunteer. i normally put in some quiet,pensive and labour-intensive time in the compost yard, but tonight the garden crew were harvesting and cleaning up the vegetable garden and holding a potluck, so i brought some rhubarb sqauares and lent a hand. i got to eat some pretty good food and meet some pretty interesting people.

afterwards, i had to hurry on over to my pickup point for my good food box, which i get from foodshare for my volunteer efforts. i love this in theory. it's a symbiotic relationship between the organization, the volunteer and the local produce growers. in practice, though, this usually ends up being more beneficial to my compost bin (and, ultimately, my garden) than it is for me, as i end up not eating much of my bounty. why? i don't have any particular answer.

there's a lot of good stuff in the box, and i should be eating it instead of buying lunch at work. my self-imposed challenge, then, is to feed myself at every meal from my good food box. we've got cantaloupe, carrots, tomatoes, bananas, cukes, zukes, cherries, onions, apples, lettuce, broccoli and celery. let's see what i end up having to compost out of all of this (my money's on the celery).

a good argument is hard to find

no, seriously, it is. i've had some experience in recent weeks in disagreeing with various people, sometimes over misunderstandings or misinterpretations or just plain differences of opinion, and i've come to a new understanding of what makes a good argument.

we've all had experience with people for whom an argument isn't really an argument, it's just a plain all-out fight. it seems, in retrospect, that fights are often not about the comment or action or idea that kicks off the whole thing, they're more about venting or finally saying mean things that we dare not say in our saner moments.

a couple of weeks ago i had a disagreement with a coworker over some nebulous office policy, and it was just that, a disagreement. a difference of opinion. we each have our own idea and understanding of the issue, and we've come to our own conclusions about what is 'right'. we aired our views, and others came to offer their opinions, and we all did a bit of talking and listening and understanding the other point(s) of view.

also a couple of weeks ago, i had a disagreement with a coworker that left me in tears after a barrage of unexpected angry words were directed my way. i realized at that point that a good argument isn't one that features zingers that will make the recipient wince, displays of anger that will wipe that smirk off someone's face or harsh words that will forever haunt; i guess those are 'fights' (or, sometimes, just vaguely sickening, tummultuous glimpses into the deepest, blackest, most tormented recesses of a soul)

i'm pretty dazzled by this new concept of a good argument, but it seems to methat a good argument doesn't even need to result in someone giving in or a compromise being reached. a good, successful argument could very well just be one which leaves the parties involved feeling that they've reached some sort of better understanding and offers the knowledge that future opportunities exist for calm, rational discussion, should other issues arise.

i'm still fairly certain that the person i shared this enlightening conversation with is not my cup of tea in many ways, but i have a newfound respect for his style of communicating, and this leaves me feeling quite hopeful, and makes his coworker-ship that much more enjoyable.

activity update

this is further to my post about the get-in-shape challenge i'm participating in, and is more for my own reference than anything else. feel free to skip this.

we went on a 10 mile bike ride this weekend, which felt great! the toronto outdoor art show was on so down we headed to have a look, stopping for lunch and checking out the 'hood on the way.
it turned into a full afternoon of fresh air and seeing some pretty amazing art. laura vegys' vibrant, beautiful, delightfully twisted water colours were especially memorable. we went on another shorter ride, which offered a nice ride through a part of the city we don't normally see, and we've been biking a lot to our suprisingly beautiful neighborhood library, which is another fun little spin-round through the 'hood.

many thanks to byron for his continued support of my efforts to get out and be active, and for being my inspiration when i'm not making any efforts at all! whether it's spending an evening at the compost yard or an afternoon with the bees, a night out with a girlfriend, getting out on the lake, suggesting a bike ride or tolerating my constant futzing around in the garden, byron encourages me to take whatever time it takes to do the healthy things that i love, and i count my lucky stars for this influence in my life!

pudgy is as pudgy does

i've recently issued a challenge to my good friend scott during his latest round with our common foe, the getting-in-shape bogeyman. We've known each other for fifteen years or so, and during that time we've both found it difficult to achieve healthy lifestyles.

scott is a smart guy who knows lots of words, and he has devoted many (I mean, really, a LOT) of them to describing and dissecting his pudge on his blog. i've had a history of trying a number of different and potentially fun and exciting activities which usually don't continue very long, due to poor time management, accessibility issues or outright lack of interest. (ie. aquafit, bellydancing, biking, kayaking, pilates, yoga, boxfit and the bars and plates class, which i'm a little afraid of.)

i'll be seeing scott and amanda soon, in just over five weeks. i've told him that i want each of us to have something to brag about when we see each other. he's offered 5 lbs and 10 commutes to work by then, and i've said that intend to be 'active' 3 times or more per week until then ('active' being biking to work, kayaking, a couple hours composting etc., or even...a dreaded trip to the gym)

so anyhow, here's what i've been up to over the past little while:

• went kayaking with ingrid to the toronto islands on fridayfor 3 1/2 hours. good for upper body and core muscles, and we also saw baby night herons, baby ducks, a beaver, orioles and some cardinals.
• went to aquafit on monday. had a lady in the class who kept rolling her eyes and saying things like 'boooring!'. had a good workout anyway, good physiotherapy for my elbow.
• composted on sunday for 3 1/2 hours and today for 1 1/2 hours. good for arms and back, plus it makes me super happy and i get to look at bugs.

this isn't as obvious a workout as, say, going to the gym and lifting weights 3 times a week, but it gets me out and feels good.

we'll see what the coming weeks bring!

planning for the apocalyse

we got out to a baseball game recently with our friend alex. i enjoy baseball games for the experience rather than the game itself.

sitting in the sun with the dome open,cito gaston back in charge and birds squawking above us, we got to talking about what interesting times we live in, and what we should do if the world gets suddenly, drastically, alarmingly terrible (due to, say, exreme weather, crop shortages, fuel shortages, soil erosion, world war, genetically engineered superviruses, or 'the vortex of extinction' that laurence the bee expert believes honeybees are teetering on the edge of) ad we find our world in some way going *boom*.


alex likes the idea of a safe place to escape to, where we could grow our own food and sustain ourelves until the pillaging and riots and general tummult subside. i like this idea. Of course, if the disaster is something like sulfur gas exploding out of the earth and poisoning everything that breathes, then there's not really any safe place.

alex also figures we should have dirt bikes to get to the farm--cars are too cumbersome and would likely get tied up in the panic-saturated gridlock so often featured in end-of-the-world movies. i pointed out that the vespa company would pay our carbon offsets for three years if we bought vespas. it wouldn't matter , but it's a nice though.

livestock would be good, provided there's not rampant foot and mouth epidemics. i think goats are ideal for post apocalyptic farming. very versatile, goats. they eat all kinds of things, they give milk, theyre not large enough to turn on someone and kill them, and they would probably manage stairs a lot better than cows (some living-beyond-the-big-boom scenarios feature a subterrean shelter).

i suppose this might all seem a little creepy and morbid, but it's a game we play based on what 3 of us know is going on in the world. predictions for ice cap melting and declining fish populations and areas of land lost to soil erosion are all coming true, but way faster than we believed they would.

what will you do?

(if you have skills that would be useful in a survival situation (or goats) to offer, please talk to one of us)

why couldn't we have a sloth invasion instead?

which of the following is true? Squirrels are:

a) very cute

b) clever in their own way, in spite of
having a brain the size of a large peanut

c) a highly evolved and wily species,
secretly in league with forces of evil to
bring about the downfall of mankind

d) less adorable and more bothersome than
sloths.

right, it's a trick question, they're all true! this spring we've been plagued with squirrels. they are very cute from far away, like when you're walking in the woods and you watch their tree-top frolicking from the forest floor and feel a deep sense of inner peace and gentle amusement.

it is somewhat ominous, though, when you look out the bathroom window each morning and see squirrels congregating in the beds of new plants and seedlings, and it's downright aggravating to find that each almost-blossom of a new plant has been carefully removed from the stem and torn into teeny tiny shreds by teeny tiny paws and then scattered about the garden.

now, i like to think that i'm sympathetic to most creatures. squirrels, sloths, gigantic ants, telemarketers, komodo dragons, hey, we're all just trying to live, right? but, just like the less wily-clever-and-cute telemarketer, squirrels have to be taught what our boundaries are, so that we can all live together in peace and so that the pellet-gun discussion never has to be resumed.

so, i've decided to chronicle our efforts in getting the squirrels to see our side of things and just behave reasonably. here's what's happened so far:

• wire mesh, also known as hardware cloth: this has been wrapped around a couple of potted plants and kept them safe, but the wire is more functional than pretty.


• cayenne pepper: apparently squirrels don't like it. fun to apply (a tiny bit on a spoon and a huff of breath to distribute it) but i think you have to keep applying it, and you'll probably end up sneezing a lot during the application process.


• blood meal: tiny granules that apparently stink of death. this is the last thing we've tried. i haven't seen many squirrels today, and those i have seen were just passing through. i can't tell if the stuff is working or if we just don't have that many yummy-smelling tender shoots left.

bee action!

did i mention i've gone and become a beekeeper? i joined the bee co-op and have enthusiastically been learning by doing. i spent a great saturday at the brickworks manning a booth and talking to people and pestering the more senior co-op members with questions. this is the observation hive that was on display.

larvae-beasts

the glistening white beasties in the holes are bee larvae; the other bees are hustling and bustling, feeding the larvae and building a little bridge out of themselves, so that comb-repair work could be done in those hard-to-reach places.

ant fight! ant fight!

welcome to my world! no, sadly, i'm not a gigantic cannibalistic ant; rather, i'm a diminutive omnivorous human, with a lingering fascination for nature.

i like bugs--i always think they seem very organized.

these are two of a small population of highlander-style superants that i've discovered in my back garden. i'm not sure if they were fighting or if one died and is getting disposed of or just what exactly. i see them around, but i haven't yet figured out what they're doing or where they're going. they're ants of mystery. i hope they're not up to anything more sinister than pollinating the trilliums.