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Issue #1002
Including:

From Russ

From Carol

The Ontarion

Hi All,

I am so tired of this endless heat that I could scream, but that would take too much energy. I’m tired of crunchy brown grass, crunchy shrubs and dried up gardens. I’m tired of idiots starting camp fires in the middle of a total fire ban. I’m tired of people trying to escape the crowded city, only to find themselves sitting on an over crowded highway going nowhere, on their way to an over crowded camps site or whatever, only to have sit in stop and go traffic as they all try to get back to the city. I’m tired. I’m tired of being tired. I wish I could get some quality sleep but its too hot. The house can’t cool off when it doesn’t cool off outside at night. At least we’ve missed the worst of the forest fire smoke, at least so far. Mind you, we were on the verge of being chocked out on Wednesday. A fire had been started just up the Upper Squamish Valley by some brain dead moron on Tuesday and by Wednesday morning the wall of smoke was starting to spread into the lower valley where we are. Luckily for us, the wind changed direction and sent the smoke further inland.

But getting back to trying to sleep, used to be, years ago, when I was still working, I’d look at the clock at about 4am and think “oh crap, I have to get up in an hour”. Now I look at the clock at 4am and think “oh crap, I’ve got to try to somehow get back to sleep for another hour or so”. Funny how things like that work.

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Ok kids, I’m scrapping the bottom of the barrel these days, musically speaking. But its an interesting barrel with silly little surprises in it. Its also a very old barrel that pre-dates most of us, at least the bottom layers certainly do. Way way back in time a lot of advertising was done on billboards. You still see them around along some highways but they are not near as prevalent as they once were. Posting big advertisements on billboards was how stuff was advertised. Anyway, back then, a musical comedy duo (yes, some us will remember musical comedy acts from way back) called Homer and Jethro did a spoof song about the ads on some billboards getting all mixed up by a big storm that moved everything around. The song called ‘The Billboard Song’ is about all the mixed up messages. Have fun.

Video Format
Billboard Song

doug

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From Russ

Just what we need - another poisonous weed!

Just what we need - another poisonous weed!! As though poison ivy and Giant Hog-weed weren't bad enough, now we have another poisonous weed growing freely all over the place! It's called Wild Parsnip. I see it growing in the roadside ditches as I ride about here in Point Clark. I wish I could pick a handful of the weed, and show it to you - but, I don't have that capability as yet - besides, I wouldn't touch it without wearing special gloves - I don't want to get hurt by this Hellish pant!

Identifying Wild Parsnip: In summer it has yellow (or maybe white) flowers growing from a single flower stalk with flat-topped umbel of clustered yellow blooms. It looks a bit like Queen Anne Lace, but grows much taller (6 to 10 feet high). The stems have vertical grooves running full length (stems resemble green celery stalks), and the flowers appear on the ends of these stems which resemble dill-weed. Leaves are 'compound', pineal, 5 to 15 saw-toothed, variably lobed, and yellowish-green.

How it works it's Evil: Close examination will reveal hairs growing on the stems and leaves, these hairs are are covered with 'oil' from the plant - the oil sticks to clothing, bare skin, and fur. When exposed to the sun (Long-Wave UV Radiation), chemical burns and blisters form. These blisters are ugly! Painful! and long-lasting. Five days to five months!! When finally healed, ugly scars remain!

Please be aware and share this post:

Danger - Wild Parsnip
This invasive plant Burns, Scars, Spreads, invades!!

Educate your family!
Wild Parsnip grows freely all over Bruce County. Please be aware and share this post.

Burns pets also!

By Uncle Russ.

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From Carol

I learned, or should I say re-learned as I knew this before, some interesting medical facts recently. You know that allergies happen when your immune system sees such usually benign things you are in contact with, like strawberries, nuts & pollen, and attacks as if there is a virus invading your body. Some times the immune system becomes deadlier and turns on ones own tissues, attacking and damaging, leading to autoimmune diseases. Some such diseases are: Rheumatoid arthritis where the joints are attacked, IBD where the intestines are damaged, lupus with lungs ad blood cells are involved, MS with the nerve cells damaged.

And then there is Type 1 or juvenile diabetes. In this case a person’s immune system attacks the insulin producing beta cells in the pancreas. While both Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes involve insulin they are really totally different diseases. With Type 1 no matter how much a person changes their diet or life style they will always be insulin dependent for life. Insulin shots and glucose finger prick testing will be the child’s reality forever. At this point in time there is no cure for type 1 diabetes, just management of the disease.

There will be a steep learning curve for the child, parents, grandparents and others regarding how to figure out how much insulin to inject (and how to give that injection), to recognize the signs when the blood sugar levels drop to low or climb to high, and many more things I can’t even begin to think about now. The reason I am telling you all this is because my granddaughter, Vivienne aged 12, has just come home after spending several days in hospital where she was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. She was very ill when she went in and we are all very proud of how she handled everything in the hospital.

Carol

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THE ONTARION REPORT

Hello everyone!

This week has indeed been a productive one! We spent all of the sunny days out back taking care of all the weeding and overgrowth we’ve been meaning to remove from the gardens. It’s amazing how much overgrowth extends from the original plantings. We have a flagstone path that surrounds the pond and leads from both sides of the house into the back yard and ends at either side of the concrete patio. The one side of the pathway closest to the neighbour’s house side has gardens on both sides of it and these gardens have grown to extend onto the flagstones so much that the pathway was only about one third of it’s original width. We really didn’t realize it until Carole decided to cut this growth back a little to make room for a couple if new plants she wanted to put into the gardens to give them more colour! Once we started to clear some of this overgrowth back we realized how much the gardens had encroached on the width of these pathways. The limestone’s that we had originally placed along the edge of the gardens to form a barrier between the garden and pathways was actually about a foot beneath the overgrowth after several years of growing! We worked at removing most of the garden overgrown plantings and actually removed more than we intended. However, with that said, the gardens looked completely new and receptive to planting all new and more colourful plants and flowers that Carole had chosen to replace all of the low growth greenery. With the original all green growth removed to the bare earth, the new planting of more colourful plants etc really makes the whole back yard appear to be brand new indeed!

What a difference with the new colourful and taller plants! I guess it’s worth taking a close look at one’s gardens after several years and considering renewing them with fresh plants of a different nature. The whole back yard appears to be refreshed after a week’s work by the three of us! Carole, Adam and I all worked hard at this project and the end result is certainly worth the effort! It’s beautiful and should last several years once again! The plantings were not the only project we accomplished this week! We also took my electric chain saw and set about removing most of the heavy growth that stood behind the pond. It had grown so large over the years that it was overshadowing the pond. The fence that’s between our yard and the neighbours is starting to lean into our yard with the pressure from the trees planted on the neighbour’s side. Their lilac trees etc are now several inches thick on most of their branches and have grown to push on the fence. While the neighbours have been renewing their back yard with a new deck, new walkway and a pond after living there for the past twenty years and not paying much attention to the yard in all those years, I took the opportunity to speak to them and ask that they trim the garden trees that are putting pressure on my fence and pushing it out of shape. They agreed that they would make an effort to trim those heavy branches away from the fence so that I might be able to straighten the fence and rebuild part of it to make it more attractive and stronger. However, so far they haven’t done their part to remove those branches but I’m sure they will eventually do so! The lady of the house noticed that we were trimming the branches on our side of the fence and commented on it so hopefully that will encourage her to do their part to remove their heavy branches next! Then I can finally rebuild the fence since it’s been standing the same for the past 23 years! It’s time to renew the fence to go along with the new looking gardens lining it on our side! Hopefully I’ll be able to get it completed before the fall!

It seems that yard work never ends when you’re a home owner! Oh well, that’s life in the big city I guess!

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Something else that’s been taking up the news lately other than Covid-19 and the forest fires across Canada is the number of gunshots that have been plaguing Waterloo Region so far this year! There have been 9 shootings so far this year and the Waterloo Regional Police have stated that the source of these shootings seems to be people coming to KW from the Toronto area. They seem to like to come to our quiet city and commit the shootings so they can quickly jump onto the 401 and leave this area to make their get away! We’ve not only had a plague of shootings but also a plethora of car thefts in Kitchener lately. In fact just last night, there were 5 vehicles stolen within a block of each other in the south end of Kitchener. They tend to like to steal High end Toyotas and Lexus vehicles. They have some nerve stealing car after car in the same neighbourhood on the same evening! They like to steal the electronic/push button start style vehicles. I guess the computer age has made this type of theft easy to accomplish. There doesn’t seem to be much in the way of “Hot Wiring” vehicles anymore to steal them when a hand held computer makes it so easy to overcome the anti theft devices built into today’s modern vehicles!

I guess KW is becoming a big city and there’s no stopping these things from progressing once cities expand to a certain size! We can’t build a wall around a Region this size to keep the criminals out! All we can hope for is top notch policing for our region to eliminate as much of the crime as possible!

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That’s it for this week folks! Thanks for tuning in and I’ll look forward to talking to you all again next week in The Ontarion Report!

Bye for now … Greg

PS: Something To Think About>
Let’s continue to encourage everyone to have their Covid shots so that we might finally beat this terrible virus!

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Take Care And Be Safe
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The articles in these issues are the sole property of the persons writing them and should be respected as such.