Tuesday
May 8, 2007

Of Foxes and Fools

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Here are a few of my favorite online haunts:

REALTOR.ca
[This is the site I visit to fantasize about living in Toronto again, which is almost every single day during the winter]

Jonathan Cainer's Zodiac Forecasts
[This is where I visit in the morning, when I need a positive spin on things past, present and future.]

Living Local
[This is where I go to see what Canadians are up to, sometimes I even buy things from the businesses listed there.]

Environment Canada Weather
[This is the site I visit every morning, and before every road trip during the winter]

Yesterday the weather report called for rain today. Since the sun was shining early this morning, I headed out for my walk right after Attila left for work, to beat the rain.

The black flies are beginning to increase in number and to congregate in swarms. There were still only a dozen or so swirling around my head and bare hands, and none of those managed a nourishing bite this morning. The time for wearing nets is soon approaching.

The buds have progressed quite a bit over the last twenty-four hours, making distances in the forest appear hazy and green. The breeze is up today, and the smell of pollen and growth permeates every breath of air.

Kits (Red Fox), three of them, rustled in the leaves as they played near the roadside. They did not hear me coming. I didn’t hear them at first, for the crunching of my own footsteps on the stones. It was my eye that caught a movement under the maple and pine. One of the three was wrestling with something on the ground, something inanimate it seemed. Then I noticed the other two kits, just a few feet away playing around an old and rotted tree stump. I stood and watched for some little time, as they had no awareness of my presence. Their parents must have been away searching for food, as there was no evidence of them. As I took my first step to move on, the kits all stopped dead in their tracks and cast their gaze upon me. They watched me longer than I watched them.

What is it about babies that fascinates and delights? I ask, but it is a rhetorical question, because any answer would have to use words, and there aren’t any that can capture the feeling. You know what I mean.

Further up the trail I came across two trilliums in full bloom, both a dark purple. How beautiful. When we were children we picked wildflowers in the spring, for our mother. Hepaticas and May Flowers abounded in the forest where we lived in isolation. However, we were strictly instructed to NEVER PICK trilliums, as they must be left undisturbed. To this day I have never picked a trillium, and never will. I think that fairies dance under them when no one is looking.

Attila has closed in the hole in the house, where the door once was to the deck, that was sheared off the north side of the house, by the snow, when it came off the roof in March.

As I cleaned my kitchen cupboards over the last week, small quantities of ingredients came to my attention. One small bag contained about three tablespoons of poppy seeds. I threw all three in with the flour when I was making our last loaf of bread. To my surprise the yeast went into overdrive, almost foaming in sections of the dough. Baked, the loaf has an unusual quality in that it is slightly crunchy and soft at the same time. Attila loves it, a happy discovery. I will be on the lookout for an economical source of poppy seeds.

After coming in from my walk, I opened the windows to the sounds of chain saws and a chipper. The neighbour is having trees removed from his property. I have no idea why, there were not that many left to begin with. People seem bent on destroying all traces of the natural environment, as they prepare their property for eventual sale to rich tourists. No doubt they are correct in their assessment, that natural is bad, that faux natural is good for sales.

To make matters even worse the workmen trampled onto our property, breaking the branches on small trees, to secure their line while felling one of the neighbour’s trees. By the time I noticed them trampling over our property the damage had been done. I decided that conflict with the neighbours would only diminish the quality of life here, and it could not undo the damage to our young trees. Nothing will be said, and hopefully the trees will recover.

Enough about that! I can smell something delicious in the kitchen, probably the granola made with fresh maple syrup. Off I go to investigate!



Top of Page
RECIPES :: Cast

Worldly Distractions

leaves
The Old and the New



By the Easy Chair
I need to get to the library!



Airwaves
Rustling leaves, chain saws and a chipper.



On the Screen
Partly Cloudy
Temp22°C
Press 101.8 kPa
Visibility 15 km
Humidity 34 %
Dewpoint 5°C
Wind WSW 11 km/h



Blog Version
 

Page by Page: A Woman's Journal
Photography
Poetry
by Maggie Turner

Canadian Maggie Turner writes and publishes poetry, photography, and a personal journal online. Her work reflects the current way of life in Canada, embracing Canada's past, present, and future in a unique portrayal of everyday life. Maggie's voice is one of the many that actively depict the rich diversity of Canadian culture.

Photography: "a term which comes from the Greek words photos (light) and graphos (drawing). A photograph is made with a camera by exposing film to light in order to create a negative. The negative is then used in the darkroom to print a photograph (positive) onto light-sensitive paper.
Source: University of Arizona Glossary

Poetry: "a form of speech or writing that harmonizes the music of its language with its subject. To read a great poem is to bring out the perfect marriage of its sound and thought in a silent or voiced performance. At least from the time of Aristotle's Poetics, drama was conceived of as a species of poetry."
Source: Creative Studios

Journal: " "Though a journal may be many things - a treasury, a storehouse, a jewelry box, a laboratory, a drafting board, a collector's cabinet, a snapshot album, a history, a travelogue..., a letter to oneself - it has some definable characteristics. It is a record, an entry-book, kept regularly, though not necessarily daily.... Some (entries) will be nearly illegible, written in the dark in the middle of the night.... Not only is it a record for oneself, but of oneself. Every memorable journal, any successful journal, is honest. Nothing sham, phony, false...." (Dorothy Lambert from Ken Macrorie's book, Writing to be Read )
A journal is a way to keep track of your thoughts about what you read... as well as what you did on any given day."
Source: Journal Writing

A Blog is an online journal created by server side software, often hosted by a commercial interest.

"The term "weblog" was coined by Jorn Barger[4] on 17 December 1997. The short form, "blog," was coined by Peter Merholz, who jokingly broke the word weblog into the phrase we blog in the sidebar of his blog Peterme.com in April or May 1999.[5][6][7] Shortly thereafter, Evan Williams at Pyra Labs used "blog" as both a noun and verb ("to blog," meaning "to edit one's weblog or to post to one's weblog") and devised the term "blogger" in connection with Pyra Labs' Blogger product, leading to the popularization of the terms."
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_blogging


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