The Squamidian Report – Oct. 11 / 03
Also in this issue:
Sheri In Bosnia
A Note From Brenda
North Nova News
The Ontarion
Hi All,
We’ve had a very wet week. That is good as it had gotten quite hot and dry here again. The forests need a good soaking and the high country needs to start building up its winter snow load. One really neat thing about rainy weather here is how it rains. Because of the mountains, our weather happens above, below and beside us, all around. We are ‘in’ the weather. It can be raining very hard on your head and be sunny just a short distance away. Somehow, this results in spectacular double rainbows. The colours are brilliant as they radiate from the same center point. As the rainwater collects on the mountains it has no choice but to obey gravity and flow down hill. I can scan the surrounding cliffs and canyon walls and see countless temporary water falls cascading down thousands of feet.
I was able to finish phase one of our deck project last weekend. It is the first level off the main deck and incorporates the side yard fence. There is a little gate that lets us walk out onto the granite rock. That gives us access to a part of the property that had been a bit hard to get to. The next phase will be the lower landing, just off the back yard level. The final phase will be the stairways that tie it all together.
I’ve taken some photos of what we have so far; they are posted to my web site under the ‘Pictures’ link.
The whole time I’ve been working on it, my little Stellar Jay buddies have kept me company. The Stellars are the western version of the Blue Jay. They have the blue body colour but their heads, necks and shoulders are black. (I think birds have shoulders). They have little tiny blue eyebrows. They are vocal and pushy and very well organized. I think they post lookouts throughout the neighborhood and as soon as someone puts out some kind of goodie, like peanuts, the lookout stationed at that place signals the rest of the mob and they all come running. If you put peanuts on the deck railing, they line up in a row and take their turn getting them.
The Jay stationed here is quite vocal. We call it Squawky Doodle, and it sure lives up to its name. It will sit about 2 feet from my head and squawk at me, all the while raising and lowering the feather comb on the top of its head. It tips its head from side to side as it studies me, trying to figure out what I’m up to. I think it is the same one that hopped into the sunroom a while back and checked things out.
It has been too wet this week for me to lay out the next phase of the deck so that means I don’t feel under pressure to work on it the whole holiday weekend. Gee! Hope Sue sees it that way.
There is quite a lot of interesting reading in the following articles so I’ll stop here and let the others take over. Enjoy.
One of the Email addresses you see included with this ‘mass’ mailing is to Judy and Brian. They kind of keep to themselves, sort of watching from the sidelines. Judy is a first cousin to my father, Brian is her better half. They have a very interesting story to relate regarding Brian’s son and his son’s wife.
****
As cousins of Doug and Sue, my husband
Bryan and I are lucky to receive the weekly news from around the country each
week. We do enjoy it even though we don't respond or add very much. Doug
thought that you would be interested in hearing news about our
daughter-in-law's stay in Bosnia as a Master Corporal in the Canadian Armed
Forces.
Jordon (Bryans son) and Sheri have been in
the military for approx. 12 years. They met in basic training in Trenton,
married about 2 years later and probably have spent more time away from each
other than together. Jordon was born in Hespler and lived there and
Kitchener before joining the military, Sheri, was born and raised in Cape
Breton Island. The have two children, (their first was full term
stillborn, Joshua) and Ben was born 6 years ago and Cameron 3 years ago.
Jordy has been to Bosnia twice, each time
for 6 months, the last time he returned home was two days before Cameron was
born. He just made it!!! They have been stationed in Trenton, Montreal, Calgary
and now Petawawa. Sheri finally had to take her turn "on Tour" so
last spring she was given the departure date of Sept. 26/03. She started
to prepare the children for her long absence and to get her house in order,
gardens etc. meals to have in the freezer etc.
Come Sept 26th and all the teary
goodbyes with the children as they leave for the sitters she waited for Jordy
to come back and take her to the base for her departure. True to the Military,
they called as she was ready to leave the house to say "the flight is
delayed 24 hours" Wonderful!! She gets to stay home another day, but has
to go through the goodbyes again. However, she did make it and the kids and
hubby survived the emotion of again "saying goodbye". She is a LCIS
Supervisor at Camp Black Bear, has her own office and is commanding her own
unit. Her barracks is similar to the "containers" that items are sent
over from Europe by ship, but she is lucky, she has windows. Others just
have a door. (six months in that, not for this kid) She reports that Bosnia is
a very beautiful country, very hilly and the farmers grow their crops right on
the hill...no glat land there. They even graze their cattle and sheep on
the hills. It looks like at any second they could take a huge tumble.
On her day off she took a 13 km walk to a
castle in the mountains. The scenery was breathtaking or maybe it was the lack
of oxygen. She was approx. 3300 ft above sea level. She saw lots of
locals tending their fields or just sitting in them watching the animals
graze. Life there is very SLOW. She had her picture taken with a
beautiful little girl that couldn't speak much English except to ask for a
BonBon for her and her family.
The nearest city is Zagreb in Croatia.
Hasn't had time to check out the shopping, no restaurants to go to, but the
base has enough movies to last years. The weather so far has been very
hot, around 30, and she even has air conditioning.
The food...well that’s another story.
She said the men seem to like it but it does leave a lot to be desired.
(She is an excellent cook) She knew one of the soldiers that was killed last
week, Sgt. Short. She said he was a fantastic man, taught her Leadership
courses and was well liked, which is always the case. To make it even
worse, his daughter was killed last year in a vehicle accident in
Petawawa. She was in an armored vehicle that rolled over and it pretty
well cut her in half. As Sheri said, the next time we think our lives are
crappy, we should probably look around and be thankful of how blessed we really
are.
Jordy's days at home start with getting him
and the boys up, showed, dressed, and drop the kids at the sitters by
6:30AM. Any men out there want to try that for a week, let alone 6
months???? He reports for duty at 7 and then picks the boys up again by
4, makes supper, gets Ben to hockey and practice twice a week, helps him with
his French homework (Jordy can't read or write French) Cameron to "kiddie
College" twice a week, as well as laundry, cleaning, yard work, (they have
an acre of land) look after the dog, and the list goes on and on. They
are also having a problem with Bears coming on their property. Not enough
food, and approx. 9 bears have been shot on their road. They leave the
mothers with cubs alone but all children and pets have got to stay close to
home and never out alone.
Their life is never dull and they can't
wait until they "retire" and move to Cambridge.
If you like I can keep you up to date with
"Military Life in Bosnia" as she sends it to me. Of course she can't
say in email what her job is incase "someone" is listening, but she
sure can talk about it when she returns to Canada Jan 10 to the 30th and then
she returns to Bosnia for another 2 months, returning for good around April 3
or 4th.
That’s all for now, and thanks for
listening
****
Hi Doug and all,
I know I'm supposed to be writing about our
trip but I'd rather write about a new baby...our first grandchild, Katelyn
Anne, who arrived Sept 4th at noon, 12 hours before her poorly planned
grandparents left on a trip to Ireland. It was touch and go as to whether
we would be able to get into McMaster to see her. Katelyn's mom, our
daughter-in-law, Melissa is diabetic. It was determined that Katelyn
would be born earlier than her due date due to the fact that these babies
really grow a lot in the last few weeks of a pregnancy..as much as a pound a
week.
Katelyn was a bit stubborn and wasn't to be
coerced into delivering on the 3rd and so was born by C-section the next day.
As soon as our son Dan (the new dad) phoned from Hamilton, we were on our
way.... down to McMaster. Melissa had been traveling this route weekly for the
past two months for her check-ups. When we arrived, Dan was in the hall
using his phone card to call the rest of the family and friends. Melissa
was resting comfortably and so off Dan went to see if we would be allowed into
the nursery to see Katelyn. I can't tell you how excited we were and when
we saw her in the little isolette it was all we could do not to pick her up and
hold her close but that was not to be. We had had to wash up to our elbows
first and told we couldn't touch anything. She was hooked up to a couple
of lines and they were monitoring her blood sugar.. she was fine but looked so
small and helpless...the nurse was just so helpful and told John to go ahead
and snap as many photos as he wanted so he took a picture of her little name
card and then a couple of pictures of her. We just stood there gazing at
her and then we had to leave.
We were two mournful souls driving to the
airport in Toronto but we consoled ourselves that at least we had seen her
before we left and in the days that followed we kept in touch by email and the
kids sent us more pictures. So we'd be in a cyber cafe in Dublin, admiring our
granddaughter from afar..one time I even turned to an absolute stranger at the
computer next to me and asked..."Would you like to see our new
granddaughter??" She didn't have much choice!!!LOL
Katelyn and Melissa were discharged the following Wednesday and are both
fine. We arrived back in Kitchener on the 27th and drove straight to
their house from Toronto and held Katelyn for the first time.
In January, our daughter Jill and her husband Dale are expecting. We
aren't traveling anywhere.
****
You could call this the calm after the storm. Everyone has a story to tell and most feel very fortunate they only lost some trees in our area. The city of Halifax (known as the city of trees) lost 1/10th of their trees. Point Pleasant Park and the Public Gardens were devastated. Friends of ours, staying at the Lord Nelson Hotel in Halifax that night, spent a sleepless night because the building was shaking. I thought two days without power was long but many are still in darkness. Nova Scotia Power Corporation has been working flat out and many people are getting very impatient. We rely on power so much and it can actually become exhausting to be without it. One blessing is the weather is warm. Actually I think if we had more practice living without electricity we would get good at it. We were also very fortunate not to miss any days at work since our workweek is from Tuesday to Saturday and we need power for everything. I have cut hair in semi-darkness and tried to blow dry hair in the wind but it’s not my favourite way to work. Some of our customers came in to feel the luxury of electricity and fill their water jugs. One lady said her neighbours ran a hose and extension cord to their house so they would be more comfortable. There were many acts of kindness. It was strange how sporadic the electricity was mostly because of trees resting on lines. They had to be removed before turning on the power for fear of fires. Most schools were closed for the week after the hurricane. That didn’t bother the kids any.
We finally have a new roof on our tower and are weather-tight once again. It looks cute; this 4-sided roof is now a room at the top of our house with no windows. Anyone misbehaving could be sent to the tower just like in the “days of old”. Today we put our aerial inside it and our television works much better. We get 3 clear stations now. We are too far out in the country to get cable and that’s just fine with me. I’d rather go to the movies more often or rent one once in awhile than paying out all that money for cable. Mostly I hear everyone complaining there is nothing on cable anyway. There are better things to do than sitting around watching TV all the time.
My friend Claudia and I are still doing our early morning walks. About two weeks ago, on our usual trek we encountered a new dog that had moved into the community. We have befriended all the regular ones but now we had a new one. As we passed by his property we discovered he had been roaming and tangled his leash around a spruce tree on the other side of a ditch. Claudia has 3 dogs of her own and her heart poured out for this animal in distress. As she headed across the ditch to see what could be done, the dog became miraculously untangled and darted after her. She saw the dog coming, turned quickly in the loose gravel lost her balance and fell. Fearing the dog would lunge for her head she frantically pulled her sweater up above her shoulders. He bit her twice, once in the arm and the leg when she managed to get up. Feeling extremely helpless and screaming “get home”, I picked up a big rock ready to clobber the dog if I could get a clear shot without hitting Claudia. Luckily the dog got tired of the whole scenario and wandered away dragging his rope. Back on the road feeling very exhausted and shocked we checked out her bites. Her arm was punctured and started to bruise and her leg was also bruised along with scrapes from falling in the ditch. We managed to finish our walk to her house where we called the owner of the dog and explained what happened. Turns out they had already decided the day before to put down the dog since he had been chasing their horses while their daughter was riding and felt it was too dangerous to have the dog around anymore. They have been very kind to Claudia ever since, calling to find out what they could do for her. They felt very bad about the whole incident. This was not a good start for them in a new community but they are very sincere people and it could have been much worse.
All summer long I have enjoyed the Squamidian very much and all the comments and stories that result from it. It really is like an extended family. Doug always has a wonderful, descriptive way of writing about his part of the west and Greg keeps us all informed about the area I have fond memories of. I just love the story about the cigar smoking. And the news from Australia too. Also I am so glad Mary is contributing with her stories of her travels. Keep it up Mary, we are very interested. I hope to keep up my weekly report too.
Until next time, Sus
****
THE ONTARION REPORT
October
10, 2003
Hello everyone! Wow have we had a nice week weather wise!
It’s been 18 to 25c and sunny. Amazing Fall weather. Carole and I took the opportunity to clean up the garden pond and get it ready for winter. The fish were a challenge to catch. We decided to place them in an aquarium for the winter. They were only about an inch long each when we bought them about 3 months ago and now they are between 2 and 4 inches. It’ll be interesting to see if they live through to next spring. Carole wanted to see how big we can get them to grow. Our water has been terribly green for about the past 2 months. Nothing we tried would clear it up. We finally got some special treatment from the garden center on Ottawa St that they told us to use next spring when we open the pond. We were going to wait but decided to clean it up while we were removing the fish for the season anyway. Adam found a 10 gallon aquarium in the Pennysaver for $30.00 so we took a trip to Fergus to pick that up a couple of nights ago. We spent about 2 hours trying to catch all the fish with a net but with the water so green, we could only scoop around and hope to catch them. It was futile, as we only caught 4 of them in that amount of time. I figured that the only way to catch them was to pump the pond down until we could see them. I went to the Fire Hall in Waterloo and borrowed a submersible pump and a length of 1 ½” fire hose. Once that was hooked up it was only a matter of minutes till the pond was 4” deep. We scooped a few more fish out but still couldn’t get them all. I was kind of hoping that we wouldn’t see a sudden spurt of gold water eject from the end of the hose! The opening of the intake on the pump was small enough that I figured the fish wouldn’t fit into the impeller. We were in luck! Carole had counted 10 fish during the summer but we had paid for 12. Oh well, it’s hard to count the little beggars when they keep swimming in circles. At this point, we had 8 fish in the aquarium. That left only 2 possibly 3 in the pond. I had to pump the water as low as I could with this type of pump in order to see what we had left. Finally Carole managed to net one more fish. I got into the pond and lifted the big rock that we had placed in the middle and sure enough there was one more fish in a small depression under the rock.
I grabbed that last fish and that made a total of 10. The aquarium is a nice one but as it turned out, there are too many fish for only a 10 gallon tank. They look like they’re a tad crowded. My cousin offered us another aquarium that he was no longer using. I picked it up today but he had no pump or equipment with it. I guess that means another trip to the local pet shop. This rescue mission for the fish is turning out to be more and more costly every day!
When I went to the pet shop a few days ago to purchase new media for the tank filter I mentioned to the guy at the store that I was just going to release them in the Greenbrook Pumping Station pond on Greenbrook Dr. Well, you’d have thought I’d just admitted to planning a murder! He said “Oh my God, don’t you dare”! He proceeded to tell me that gold fish are not an indigenous species and that releasing them could cause all kinds of problems. I said “really, like what”? He told me that that’s the reason we have such a problem with Carp because someone introduced them to Canadian waters. I’m not really sure what the “problem” is with Carp but I had thoughts of our great lakes being over run with Giant Goldfish and our fresh water fishing industry in ruin because of the problem created by my releasing them into the Greenbrook Pond! So, now that I know we’ve saved the world by deciding to keep the goldfish in our tank for the winter, I feel much better!
Once I had all the fish out of the pond I decided to use the pressure washer and clean all the algae off the liner. It took about an hour but I finally had the liner shining like new. I placed the hose in the pond and cranked on the water and went in for supper. By the time we finished supper, the pond was full to the brim. I started the pond pump again and decided to put a teaspoon full of the new pond conditioner in that we were going to save for spring. That was around 8pm last night. Carole had asked me not to pressure wash the water falls rocks as she like the look of the algae on the falls. Well, let me tell you, when we looked out at the falls tonight after supper, Carole asked me if I had cleaned the falls anyway and I said no. The falls rocks were gleaming clean! I guess the teaspoon of water conditioner had done a job on the algae covering the falls and cleaned them just like new.
Finally, something that appears to work on the water to keep it clear! With that in mind, we are looking forward to opening the pond in the spring just to see if it will do the job all summer. Hopefully, it will keep the water clear for next year. I’d hate to think that filling the pond in and using it for a flower bed would be our next move! Hahahahaha! Just kidding, Carole would kill me if I even joked about it!
Well, I guess I will call it a day for this edition of The Ontarion. I look forward to reading whatever contributions may come from others this weekend. I’m sure now that the busy summer season has ended, Karin and Sus will be able to write to us more. Carole and I were so glad to hear that Sus managed to make it through the hurricane with relatively little damage and no injuries. The picture of the sailing ship “Hector” that Doug posted on his website is amazing. I don’t know where you got it Doug but if you have any more pics of that ship in an upright position, we’d love to see them. Maybe Sus can send us some more pics of the lovely area that she lives in now that her season will be slowing down again. Take care all and I’ll talk to you again next week.
“HAPPY THANKSGIVING EVERYONE”
Bye for now!
GREG.
PS: Something to Think About>
Every man is a fool for at least 5 minutes every day. Wisdom consists in not exceeding the limit.
****
I have posted two pictures that Brenda sent of her grandchild on my ‘Pictures’ web page.
Enjoy your Thanksgiving Weekend everyone.
http://members.shaw.ca/doug_b/
Have a good one..
the
doug