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The
Squamidian Report – Mar. 2 / 24
Online Versions Of This And Past Issues (Choose the year and then the date for the online issue you want) Issue
#1136 Jamie Russ Wayne Nova Scotia Sus Doug
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From Jamie (Canuck)
Some of you may be interested to know that we’re in full scale production mode for this year’s sap run. I’ve collected about 45 gallons so far, from 10 spigots on 7 trees.
Last year we boiled indoors on our gas stove, this year for a bunch of reasons… mostly that I hate to spend money on natural gas when I have access to more wood than I can ever use, for free. And, not gonna lie, it’s nice sitting out tending the fire. Before I go a funny story, one of the neighborhood dog walkers dropped by this morning for her dog to have a tussle with Maisie… when I told her about collecting sap, she laughed and said walking by She wondered why we would have put out so many salt licks for the deer. Some people’s kids…. For the record she’s probably in her early 60’s lol. Sigh.
Anyway, I’ll keep you posted as the season progresses.
Best Regards, Jamie Wilson
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From Russ
Ides of March
You probably heard of the IDES of MARCH, because it is the day Roman statesman, Julius Caesar was assassinated. To wit: Ides of March, 74th day in the Roman calendar. The immortal words "Beware the Ides of March" are uttered in William Shakespear's Julius Caesar to the leader by a fortune-teller. Other bad things have happened on March 15, of course, but there's probably no reason to be ware of March's Ides more than the Ides of any other month. Britannica
I always thought the expression had something to do with the 'wild weather' we experience in March ....."In like a lion - out like a lamb". As I look out my window today (February 28th), it looks and feels like March! It was 10C at 7:00AM, and 5C an hour later. The temperature has kept dropping rapidly all day (now, -6C at 4:00PM), while the wind is gusting to nearly 50K/hr, and the "snow machine" has started-up, giving poor visibility at times. Hence, your typical day in March!
How do you feel about changing to "Daylight Saving Time" again. This time, on March 10th. Personally, I would prefer to stay on Standard Time, because when you think about it they can't save daylight!! That's an arrangement between the Sun and Earth.
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"Something to think about" are the 'signing-off' words oft used by our long-time writer/contributor Greg Payne, whom we miss and continue to have (him), Carole, and Adam in our thoughts and prayers.
With only 26 letters in our English language, it has been estimated that the vocabulary includes roughly one million words. (Linguists take that with a chunk of salt, and some have said they wouldn't be surprised if it is off the mark by a quarter million) The average number of different words used by an adult English-speaking person is somewhere between 20,000 to 30,000. I know a retired teacher who can spew-out that many in an hour without coming up for air!!
Have you ever wondered just how many words there are available for us to use? The Second Edition Oxford English Dictionary contains full entries for 171,476 words in current use, 47,156 obsolete words - to this may be added 9,500 derivatives included as sub-entries, bringing the total to 228,132.
Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged, together with its 1993 Addenda Section, includes some 470,000 entries. But then, you knew all that.
Have you ever wondered what the most fearful words are - when coming from someone in authority over you?
>from your teacher: "Stay after class - I need to have a word with you"
>From your boss: "Come to my office at once - - there's been a change we must discuss"
>From your spouse/partner: "We need to talk" (Ouch!)
So much for the saying; Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words may break my spirit.
Uncle Russ. ****
From Wayne
Well, it is finally our turn to report on weather problems. We had 3.5" of rain fall on frozen ground yesterday and the temperature was +12D Centigrade so we lost all of our snow. With the rain we had 90 kph wind gusts all day and night. At dawn the temperature dropped quickly but the wind is still howling as I write this on Thursday morning, Feb 29th. Of course we lost more shingles and our heavy bear-proof garbage bin was picked up and smashed.
Just yesterday I ordered a new metal roof so that is scheduled for late April. I hope that we don't have any leaks from the accumulation of three violent wind storms this winter! The river ice broke at 10:30 this morning . It was quite a sight with large tooth-like flotsam racing toward the area that was not yet broken up. It broke up and is spilling onto the low shoreline by the trailer park!
Sylvia was to have a dentist appointment but the clinic called to cancel because "the dentist can't get to work because all the bridges are flooded and most roads in Sussex are closed". Well, let's see if it is on the news! It is! Here is a view of part of the downtown area. It is already -9 Degrees, going down to -14 Degrees tonight with the wind gusts reducing to mid-50s. People downtown have no hydro and can't flush their toilets because the sewers are flooded. Russ, your granddaughter posted this on Facebook. She said that she was not disappointed that she would miss work today at Tim Hortons. That's a Tim Hortons in the middle of the flooded area. I don't know if that is the one at which she works. For those in distant lands who don't know where Sussex is, it is in southern New Brunswick.
Wayne
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From Nova Scotia Sus
This past week has brought us more snow and then torrential rains with high winds. The snow banks have melted some and the driveway is down to gravel. We had milder temps for a change. We drove into town today and saw parts of roadways washed out and all the streams are running rampant. We are so lucky living on high ground with good drainage.
Now that I'm working only 2 days a week I have to remind myself what day it is. We had problems with our truck so we asked Zane to take a look. He is our go to when anything happens. We couldn't live here without him. And of course he found the trouble and fixed it.
Sus ****
From Me
How’s it going…..eh?
We’ve all experienced it, that very unpleasant feeling you get when you realize you’ve lost a set of keys. Where could they be? Where did I leave them? Did they fall out of a pocket or get stolen? Panic!
Well, I lost a set of key a few days ago. All those thoughts flashed through my brain as I thought carefully about where I’d been and what I’d been doing. Luckily it was just 2 keys on a keyring and not something worse. After some consideration I realized that the only place they could be was at the gondola. I had used the door key to lock and unlock our house door when we did our morning walk and had then kept the set in my pocket as the other key was our postal box key and I’d intended to check for mail at some point that day. I keep our gondola passes in my wallet and therefore have to pull it out of my pocket to retrieve the passes in order to go up the gondola. The only place those keys could have escaped was there, I hoped. They had probably been pulled out as I pulled out the wallet and therefore would have been lying on the concrete by the lift where someone would see them and hand them in.
So, next morning when we got there I headed over to customer service to inquire. I know most of the people who worked there, and when I asked if anyone had turned in a small set of keys, the guy I was talking to smiled and said yup, these must be yours. I was relived, it would have been no big deal to replace them but lost keys are frustrating and can in fact be a security issue. The keys were probably relieved and happy too, they would have been quite worried about being out in the world on their own, cold and lost. Bottom line is, keys are found, no harm done, all is well, and it gave me something to write about. * I must agree with Russ and Wayne and Sus when they mentions the volatility of March type weather. We had a late winter / early spring storm this past week. Nothing new about that but it did give us all forms of snow, rain, wind, sleet, and fog known to man. It would have been quite nice, even perhaps fun if it had adhered to what the forecasters had forecast but no, it did it’s own thing. Our area was supposed to get a foot or more of nice clean white snow over a night and part of the following day. Instead, we got half a foot of snow and then it turned to poring rain. That meant by morning the half foot of snow was a half foot of drenched slush. The snowplow that went up our street pushed the stuff into giant balls that rolled off the plow blade and blocked each driveway.
Half a foot of slush is too heavy for old farts like us to try to shovel so I pulled out the old snow blower and went at it. That worked fine except for down at the road (our driveway slopes steeply away from the house to the road). The snow at the bottom section of the drive and on the road was so wet that it was a bluish color. I made the mistake of trying to move that heavy stuff with the blower and for the first time in all the years I’ve used her, she plugged up. The slush was simply too heavy and sticky to be blown. So, after clearing the chute I tried again but this time held the front of the blower an inch or so up, therefore leaving the wettest part of the slop. That worked and we got most of the drive cleared. The silly thing was, by the end of the day most of the snow had been force melted by the all-day heavy rain. However, I know from experience that if we’d not cleared the drive, the temperature would have gone down instead of up, and the wet slop would have frozen into concrete.
Doug ****
Have
a
Good One ****
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