wildbillsdreamscape

I posted this on flickr some time ago it has rec’d 9 comments, which is a lot for my work

I am trying an experiment with Word 2007. Using it to prepare my blog posting. The highlight of the morning a visit by several Canada Geese families to the shore in front of my house. The goslings are getting to be nearly the size of footballs. Still gold fuzzes.

I spent five minutes yesterday morning watching the shoreline antics of a mink. The mink was swimming in the shallow water of Georgian Bay in front  of my home. It was checking along about 120 feet of shoreline for its breakfast, dancing in that odd humpty backed lope they have over the shoreline rocks and then slipping back into the water and diving under the surface to emerge onto flat rocks just below or just above the surface of the water. The bay was calm yesterday morning. After a bit, the mink brought something up after a dive and carried it into shore. Looked like a small fish. Glad breakfast got caught. I went in to have mine.

The highlight of my week: sighting a juvenile bald eagle out on a large rock in the water in front of my place. He/she was about 40 yards away. Had a large stick in one foot. It was a little comical because it was wavy and every now and then a larger wave came up and the eagle didn’t seem to appreciate the cold water on its feet. Bald eagles don’t get their adult colouration (dark coat, white head, yellow beak) until they are four or five years of age. So I’m guessing with a stick as a trophy, this eagle is building a home nearby. Later in the day I saw a pair circling overhead. Nice new neighbours. Now the turkey vultures are not the largest birds in our neighbourhood.

We have lots of ducks, geese, trumpeter swans. Gets pretty noisy when they have their cocktail parties on the water.

I have only seen bald eagles here once before. Several winters back, two were a long way out on the ice having lunch. I watched them with binoculars. Quite a sight then. To see one so close this week was a big thrill. Massive head, huge feet and legs, and of course, those unbelievable wings.

Western NY has had it worse, but we have had 120 centimetres. Our normal snow fall in this season is 160 centimetres total. The newspaper reports that part of the abnormally large lake effect snowfall this winter is due to Georgian Bay still remaining largely open water. Where we live on its shore, it is solid clear across. The bad part of the week has been the whiteouts. All this powder snow blowing, white on white. It is easy to lose the track, the view of the line of the lane, the road, the ditch.

On the bird feeding front, a pair of cardinals have been stopping by amid the herd of black squirrels. We got 8 at one time. We had a world’s record 21 mourning doves at one time. Nuthatches, chickadees, some sparrows. And one red squirrel.

The other day in town I was running errands, after every stop longer than five minutes, I had to rebrush my car. At one point the snow was falling so fast, I got one side done and as I worked to get the other side clear, the first side disappeared under the fine white snow.

I love winter, the cold, clean, fresh air. The quiet standing on the beach road, the dog rolling in the snow. No one around outside. Simple and white. At night the moon reflected back up from the snow cover. A lighter shade of night.

Not world record setting but a lot has fallen in the past 24 hours and the forecast calls for more. First thing this morning I went out to brush off my various bird seed feeding spots and surfaces in the back yard. Yesterday we set a record for the most mourning doves feeding at once, 21.

This morning after clearing about 6 inches of snow, an hour passed and the seed was lightly covered. By the afternoon, another 4 or 5 inches had fallen. I saw a black squirrel covered in snow who had been digging in the snow on the old wood bench to find bird seed. So out I went with the dog to brush off and reload the seed. The temperature was about -15 C but with little wind it still didn’t feel all that cold. More like a couple of degrees below freezing not 15. Maybe I am just getting used to the lower temperature.

Our forecast is for snow each day for the rest of the week. I am going to try and get some photographs. Although to keep my digicam safe I may limit myself to shooting from the car. Hope my power windows don’t freeze solid.

One thing about this kind of weather, it makes me appreciate summer. I stand on shore and look out across this narrow end of Georgian Bay and see the snow over the solid ice.

It is hard to believe that not so long ago the water was open and flowing and not so long before that I was swimming out there. That my dog was swimming. That we both will be out there again. He has done that for 8 years. This summer will make it 9. I have swum in Georgian Bay every summer since 1970. We used to rent a cottage near here for several summers in the 1960s.

In 1955, we rented a cottage near here. On the day before we left to go home, we stood on the dock and threw pieces of bread for the sea gulls. I must have enjoyed this a lot. The next day, when my Dad was off visiting someone, and my Mom was packing up things with some help from my sister, age 5, I went back out to the dock. It was wavy that day, the dock wet. I went out on the dock and fell into the water. I was 18 months old. Apparently I had enough sense of self preservation to stand up and hold onto the side of the dock. My head was above the water. I was strong enough to stand up to the waves. My Mom looked out, saw me and ran out to pull me up out of the water. She told me later that when she lifted me up I was completely rigid. Once in her arms, my entire body went limp.

Heard them last night as I was sitting reading on the closed in (insulated and heated) sun porch. The kittens and the dog were keeping me company. I cracked open a window and could hear clearly, many trumpeters “playing” their trumpets. Georgian Bay is of course still wide open, it may start freezing over later this month. Enjoyed listening to them tuning up.

This morning a family swam by in front, two white adults, three greyish juveniles…a beautiful sight.

A major item on the to do list got done last week. The cottage was built in 1969/70 here on Georgian Bay. A few years later a one car garage kit was put up as a boathouse/storage building. Since the late 1980s, the water level receded and the 14 foot aluminum boat has sat in the boat house along with its cradle and boat track rails waiting for the Bay to come back. It hasn’t. During the 1990s, my father and mother passed away after some illnesses and the boathouse continued to accumulate materials of various kinds.

Also around the property, bits and pieces of decks and stairs and even some original yellow plywood window flaps had been tucked away in various corners. Dock sections and shore line defense (wire baskets known as gabeons). The guiding principle was “keep it for it might be useful down the road”.

Well, practically none of it has turned out to be useful. So after much discussion and some procrastination, a bin was ordered. What size do you order? Hard to say. But a 20 yarder was dropped off bright and early one Wednesday morning. It was scheduled for a week’s stay.

Now, I have a history of blowing out my back. It goes back to my 18th year when a boulder needed shifting on the property here and no bulldozer was available, so I volunteered and damaged my lower transverse ligaments. Since then periodically, my back goes “out”. Having developed a good sized gut over the years has not helped. So I decided to take it slow and easy.

The first day I worked for about 45 minutes loading stuff carefully along one side of the bin. I wanted to leave room for some sizable wooden dock sections. To move these I had asked for some help. Two fellows were going to come by on the Friday. I did another 45 minute session of loading and called it a day.

That night it snowed and kept on snowing to the tune of 6 inches. I spent time on Thursday pulling pieces of this and that out of the corners of the boathouse. Friday I just stared at the snow trying to will it to melt. The fellows did not come on Friday. On Saturday more work pulling things out and getting them stacked up to load. Sunday the snow finally melted away. Monday morning I did a little more work loading and then sat down to wait and see if the two fellows were going to come as planned at 9:30 am. If they showed up, then the dock would go in. If they did not, the space I had preserved in the bin for the dock would go to other items and the dock would have to go next year.

They showed, well, one guy showed, not good news. It meant that I would have to help move five dock sections planked tops over a 2 inch x12inch frame structure 5 feet x8 feet long. Heavy, heavy, heavy, heavy, and slightly less heavy (one section was a little smaller than the rest).

My back began to ache as we sized them up. However, after a little fussing and thinking, we ended up tipping them up on their ends and flipping them over and over on their ends to the bin, a distance of about 80 feet. My back survived. Three old sets of wooden deck steps got sledge hammered into pieces and the morning’s work was done. Thanks to Jamie the dock sections made it into the bin. I did about 25% of the hefting on those, he did the rest.

Tuesday some more odds and ends: old glass windows, two old lead pane windows from the old 1939 built North Toronto house (why they got brought up I will never know), old lawn mower, old curtain tracks, bits of metal, my mother’s old wheelchair (should have donated that back in 1996 the year of her death), old fibre board, pieces of 1970 panelling quarter inch plywood, old shingles (been sitting for 20 years outside), and old this and old that and I was done. Totally beat.

Called Wednesday morning and they picked it up around noon.

1.65 metric tonnes = 3638.25 pounds
that is a lot of stuff – 30 years worth

across to Port McNichol

Originally uploaded by “canuckshutterer” wj gibson.

the old grain elevators at Port as seen from the Albert St. dock in Victoria Harbour, Ontario taken around noon on November 8, 2006. (Nikon 5700 camera zoomed out to 280mm equivalent – so you can see it is a fair way across to Port).
clarify function in PSP 9 used to manipulate brightness and contrast

there is talk of a major real estate development over at Port

there used to be major gardens and major dock there for Great Lakes passenger ships, the grain ships came down from Thunder Bay (Port Arthur and Fort William in those days) up at the top of Lake Superior.

Rented a dumpster box to take all the stuff stuffed in the old boathouse and tucked away in a few other corners of my “compound/estate”.  Procrastination to take it on the chin. Mother Nature pulled a fast one after two days of leisurely loading. I have back troubles and took it easy intentionally. Snow, lots and lots of wet snow yesterday and today.  It will melt by Sunday morning. I was slightly ahead of schedule and since the box is here for another few days I will cross the finish line, but it is unreal to see this much wet snow last this long this early in November.

The only one thrilled about the weather, Mr. Dog. He even likes thunder.

So some of the odd pieces of building material pieces that are going go back a long time, a medium time, and a short time. A collapsed picnic table that started life back around 1980. Why we hung onto that Iwill never know. Two pairs of old deck stairs that came out of action when the deck was redesigned, I think the idea was to use those for access over the retaining wall to the beach zone or as a tier for potted plants.  So many things planned but never quite translated into action.  The danger phrase is “I should keep that, I might be able to use that later.”

But procrastination is as someone said, all those things I will take care of……….eventually