The
Squamidian Report – June 8 / 13
Issue #576
Including:
The Ontarion
Hi All,
Now this was cool, or at least the part I’m going to tell you about. I was headed in to Horseshoe Bay on the bike last Sunday morning to hook up with my riding club, but, as I headed out of town I realized that I needed to pull over somewhere fairly soon and readjust certain parts of my anatomy. When sitting on a motorcycle seat, ‘things’ kinda need to be in the right place or you end up sitting on yourself and that can get rather uncomfortable if not down right painful. But that isn’t the part I’m telling you about, its just the reason I pulled over. The most convenient pull-over would be the small overflow parking lot on the west side of the highway right opposite the main parking lot for the Chief, that big world famous monolith just south of and over looking Squamish. So, I pulled off the highway and into the parking lot and dismounted, which immediately felt better. A little bit of wiggling and jiggling and everything was back where is should be and ready to go.
That’s when I happen to look up at the scenery because face it, that’s what one does when one is there. My timing was almost perfect. I watched as a base jumper’s chute opened. Base jumping from the top of the Chief is quite common but not actually permitted for several reasons. Many attempts end up rather badly with the jumper being blown back against the shear rock face or ending up in the trees somewhere below. There aren’t very many safe landing zones in the area if they do manage to get properly airborne and clear of the cliff. Local search and rescue spends a lot of time and effort retrieving unsuccessful jumpers, or what is left of them, when things go very wrong. I assume everyone knows that base jumping is basically parachuting but instead of jumping from an airplane, the jumper jumps from a fixed object like a bridge or high building or mountain cliff. When jumpers do jump from the Chief, they tend to do it first thing in the morning when the winds are calm and no one is around to report them. Anyway, as I watched, he glided out toward the Sound as far as the highway, then turned back toward the main parking lot. That surprised me. The main parking lot is the biggest flat bare area around but a high tension power line crosses right over the middle of it, parallel with the highway, and the usually quite busy highway runs right beside it. I looked over at the parking lot and sure enough, there were some people there with cameras all set up filming the stunt. This guy was good. He came in, with very little room for error between the power lines and the highway, and landed right in front of his filming buddies. His landing was so smooth that he only need three steps to come to a complete stop, upright and unhurt. They didn’t waist any time getting packed up and out of there, and I headed on down the highway, sitting much more comfortably than when I had pulled in.
*
Willow has a hobby. She is excited and happy and having a great time. She is also frustrated. Luckily, it’s a hobby she can do even though her rear hip has not healed yet. You see, apparently a bush rat, or ground squirrel or some such rodent has taken up residence under our concrete sidewalk by the back corner of the deck. She can smell the thing, or things, under there. Probably a nest of rodents. The poor dog has been trying for endless hours to vacuum them out with the shear suction power of her nose as she inhales while smelling for them. She has also managed to dig a big enough hole beside and under the sidewalk to get her whole head into and shoved right in up to her shoulders. In digging the hole she had to removed several rocks the size of her head. All this while barely able to hobble around. She spends endless hours vigilantly on guard, waiting for whatever it is to come blissfully running out to hopefully jump willingly right into her toothy mouth. Unfortunately the good times must come to an end. I will be filling her hole back in before someone trips into it and gets hurt. Hopefully the critters under there will be long gone by then because I intend to block it off and seal it up.
doug
****
****
THE ONTARION REPORT
Hello everyone!
Back once again for
another Saturday yack session!
Hope you all had a
good week! We had an interesting and exhausting one here in Kitchener. Carole
decided she’d like to have what she calls a “Dry river bed” garden on the front
lawn rather than the boring little one that is usually filled with weeds at the
top of our lawn where the walkway leads from the driveway up to the front
porch. I said that’s an easy one to do Honey, I’ll have it done in a day no
sweat!
Well, things never
are as easy as they seem on paper but this one turned out ok. I started by
removing one more shrub from the existing garden and then the project was in
full swing. I had placed curbing along the edge of the driveway next to the
front lawn a few years ago and it had tilted a little in a couple of spots so I
managed to remove, re-level and then replace the tilted ones so as to have a
nice esthetic look to that edge of the new garden. Then Carole and Adam laid
out the meandering shape of the other edge of the new garden by laying a yellow
rope in the position she wanted me to cut the lawn. I should state at this
point that a “Dry river bed garden” is a meandering pile of baseball-sized
rocks that resemble a dry riverbed! With Adam’s help once again, we cut the sod
in a V shaped grove to form the edge of the new garden opposite the curbside
along the drive. There is no need to remove the sod before continuing the new
garden bed. The new garden can be laid right over the grass which will
eventually die under the river bed. We then rolled out the fabric weed
preventing cloth on the area to be covered with rock. This we pinned down with
the metal pins supplied with the weed cloth. We did this so the cloth wouldn’t
shift when we started placing the bed rocks on the garden. We then rented a U
Haul trailer once again and went to the local “Stone” company and had them dump
2200 lbs of what they call “Potato Rock” in the trailer. They call them potato
rock because they look like potatoes! They are varying shades of white and
beige baseball sized stones that are commonly found in riverbeds, hence the
name “River Rocks”! How clever eh? Well, once we hauled them back home we
proceeded to hand bomb them from the trailer into the garden. We figured after
about 10 minutes of that that there had to be a better way to do this. So, I
got a long handled flat shovel and began shoveling the rocks about 8 at a time
with the shovel. This worked about as good as anything we had thought of so
that remained the method of transfer! While I tossed the rocks into the garden,
Adam used a 4-pronged rake to scatter them into place. We had to put several
layers of the rocks on the bed to cover the black weed cloth that was the
underlay. What started out to need one trailer load turned into two full loads
and about another one quarter trailer full to do the job. With each load
consisting of one large front end loader scoop or one “yard” of stones weighing
in at approximately 2200 lbs, the garden now comes in at around 5,000 lbs so I
doubt the weed cloth will ever blow away! The garden turned out to be a thing
of beauty and Carole’s design is something to be proud of. It sure enhances the
look of the front yard. She’s deciding what to plant if anything in the new dry
feature and is thinking of a few spots of tall grain looking grass. She’s also
considering placing one large boulder in the bed to give it some character! I
like the idea of the grass and the rock surrounded by the bed of stones. Not
only is it maintenance free, it’ll be weed free as well! I like anything that
lessens the amount of maintenance needed to keep it looking good and there’s
not much else that requires less maintenance than a dry riverbed! After one
busy backbreaking day, we had completed the project and Carole is very happy
with the result! When she’s happy, I’m happy! The end!
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>
Projects never are
as quick and easy as they seem, especially when they are projects in and around
the home!
PPS: I’ve attached
two pictures of the new “Dry Riverbed”
Garden so you can
have a look at the finished product!
They can be viewed at this link: Yard Pictures
****
Have a good one..
the doug
The Fine Print!
The articles in these issues are the sole property of the persons writing them and should be respected as such.