Coolish times

I have been watching on Youtube, for free, many interviews of Seamus Heaney. Wonderful stuff.

I am waiting to hear about a change in governmennt health coverage, necessary for the very expensive anti-rejection drugs I must take daily for the rest of my life if I get a kidney transplant. It seems this application should go through. No other news on the transplant front.

We have had some cool weather to brace us. The fishflies as my Mother used to call them. June flies or shadflies or Mayflies, the names others use for them. They are here in the pasr few days. It seems we have more this year to make the birds happy. But still I remember years past when the crop of them was huge. I can remember the front wall and window of the Victoria Harbour Post Office completely covered by thousands of them. That might be twenty or more years ago.

surprise April snowstorm photos

April 15th 2014 100 miles north of Toronto on the southern shore of Georgian Bay, camera Fujifilm S8200, the temperature dropped 20 degrees Celsius from the previous day.

Snow Wallop April 15

Woke to find elevator crash drop in temperature from 17 celsius to minus 5 celsius and several inches of snow. All those early Spring returning birds will have a hard day.  Temperature high tomorrow will be zero celsius.  Wednesday to climb to 5 above.  Photos from my kitchen door.  100 miles north of Toronto.

It has been an unusually fierce winter and it has dragged on into Spring.  There has been extra snow from the seasonal usual and a large number of very cold days.  Spring in Central Ontario is not much of a season, cold, rainy, grey days.  Lots of mud.  Summer bursts out like a sudden surprise. It is not a gradual improvement, instead it pops out and the hot weather descends.  All the green plants turn on their colours like some giant turning a light switch.

 

Dialysis on a warm Friday

Smooth run today.  We had a visitor drop by, John, a former dialysis patient who received a transplant five years ago.  He brought chocolate mint cookies which was kind.  The hospital gives us a snack, coffee or tea or juice and two digestive cookies.  I usually opt for cranberry juice on ice.  

Warm, warm warm today, above ten Celsius.  Grace and I sat out on our back deck basking for half an hour.  I dragged out an old wooden kitchen chair.  

I began dialysis a little over five years ago.  I have been told to expect a kidney transplant this year by December.

Snow Recession

The sun is reaching for the remaining snow around here.  It is still deep in the woods by the roads especially on the north facing sections.  But the shoulders of the roads hidden all winter have appeared.  Georgian Bay in front of my home remains solid.  Yesterday I heard my first starling of the season, such a nasty bird call.  Made me wonder what is star-like about them to gain their name.   I look forward to double digits in the high temperature for tomorrow, 10 degrees Celsius.  I have wondered if the migrating birds are smart enough to read the weather along the way and to slow their arrival north.  They need the ground uncovered and the plants growing, insects to feast upon, to make a go of it.  I am extra weary of winter this year. I enjoy winter but each year as I get older it seems a bit too long and Spring in Ontario always starts as a cold, rainy, slow slide towards summer.

first swim of 2006

first swim of 2006, a photo by gnawledge wurker on Flickr.

from my flickr posting in 2006: “I dont know why but this year Shakey was less interested in starting the swimming season. In the past he and his sister would have gone in even with the remnants of ice on shore. At any rate, yesterday he went for his first swim of the season. He also managed to find the skeleton of a large fish, a muskellunge.

I am always amused when he finds a dead fish washed up on shore and goes and rolls on it. I understand that this is to mask his scent. The only trouble is I have this mental image that forms of a couple of bunnies in the woods, a half mile from shore, sniffing the air. One says to the other, “Gee, I wonder what a dead fish is doing walking into our woods.”

It was 22 C. yesterday, warm enough for shorts for me. On the other hand, a few days ago the temperature dropped for two days and we had highs of just 2 above freezing. We have a curious Spring in these parts.”

Shakespeare passed away at age ten years and three months.  He was a wonderful dog and we miss him.  The dog in our lives now is Miss Grace, who is four years old and still very much a pup.