I thought today was garbage day (along with the rest of the neighbourhood)….but no, it’s tomorrow. Here’s Pokey LaFarge performing Garbage man Blues.
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Snowy
A snowy owl has been making regular appearances at Sam Smith Park lately. It’s been seen in a number of spots around the park, but the most common place is out on the yacht club docks. Often it will sit right on a dock, and quite a way out there it is easy to miss. Other times it finds a slightly higher roost. Today it was sitting on a high voltage hydro box way out on the docks.
It was not a great day for photography – cold and grey, with a light fine snow coming down – but I got this shot.
Some reflections on 2018
We started the year with a vacation, to Vietnam. Neither of us had been to Asia before so this was quite an adventure. I was very apprehensive about the long flight, but as it turned out it was not as brutal an experience as I had expected it to be.
I loved Vietnam in so many ways, and I hope we get an opportunity to return.
In early spring, our young Newf Ruby tore both hind cruciate ligaments. Fortunately we have both our dogs insured. Pet insurance is not inexpensive, but 90% of the cost of two very costly surgeries were covered. When she went in for surgery, she was unable to walk without assistance. Here she is in October of 2018, goofing about in Etobicoke Creek. She still has a slightly odd gait, but she is running and playing with other dogs, swimming, and getting around very well. Big thanks go out to the West Toronto Veterinary Surgery for doing a fantastic job getting Rubiska’s knees fixed up.
Also in early spring, I signed up for some nature walks facilitated by the Toronto District School Board. These walks were led by a remarkable naturalist named Miles Hearn.
These walks opened my eyes to so much of the world around me. I already knew some about aquatic insects like mayflies, caddisflies and stone flies from my fly fishing experience. As well, I’m familiar with a quite a few species of mushrooms found in our local woods. Miles taught me about local wildflowers, shrubs and trees, as well as bird identification. I started taking pictures of the plants, trees and birds we looked at to help me learn to identify them, and as the season progressed (I kept up with the walks right up to late fall and I’ve signed up for winter walks as well), I became more interested in taking photos of the nature around me. Here are a few of my photos.
Sheila and I have been making mosaics together for quite a few years now and 2018 was a banner year for our mosaic projects. Here are a few examples. To see more, visit our Long Branch Mosaics pages.
After months of planning, the Long Branch Garden Tour took place in June of 2018. This grass-roots event became Toronto’s biggest free garden tour with 37 gardens. We’re hoping to make the 2019 garden tour even bigger and better. If you live in Long Branch and you love to garden, we’d love to include your garden in 2019.
Nephew Luke married Stephanie during summer of 2018!
This fall, my group of short-short stories about accordion man Lazy Allen and his buddy Staashu became a book. It’s available on amazon. Please consider purchasing a copy. Reviews on Amazon or Goodreads are greatly appreciated!
In September I visited Storm King Art Centre in the Hudon Valley for the first time. What a fantastic place!
While in the area, I also visited DIA: Beacon, in Beacon NY, a huge and fantastic art museum in an old Nabisco factory.
When I left the Hudson Valley, I continued the roadtrip south to Buena Vista Virginia and the Rockbridge Mountain Music and Dance Festival. I camped 4 nights in the town park where I met lots of great people and had a chance to jam with some really fine old time players.
I worked on shedding quite a bit of weight in 2018, with the help of lots of fresh veggies and herbs from the garden. Hopefully I can continue the healthy trend into 2019.
After I returned from Rockbridge, Sheila traveled to England for the wedding of Emily and Emily while I looked after The Partners here in Toronto. She had a great time at the wedding and quite the adventure on her side-trip to France after the wedding – as she was pickpocketed on the Paris Metro. Here are a couple of the collages Sheila did while traveling.
Bring on the new year!
Last book of 2018
Sometimes I enjoy reading books I might not ordinarily read, or books which I stumble on. Tuffy P brought home a few well used novels recently. She knows I enjoy an occasional spy novel so she included some books by well-known spy novelist John Le Carré. One of these was a short novel called A Murder of Quality. At 156 pages, it must be one of his shortest books. With a couple days before the end of the year, I thought I’d squeeze this one in (I checked on Goodreads – this was my 13th book of 2018, if it matters – about my usual rate of literary consumption). We have a long-standing tradition around here of hanging out at home on New Years Eve, and reading is a perfect activity for the occasion.
A Murder of Quality is the second of the George Smiley books, but strangely enough, it’s not a spy novel, but instead a quirky little whodunit. Smiley got involved with investigating a murder as a favour to a friend he knew from “the war”. The book was written in 1962 – I was 2 years old – and it feels like a book written in that time period. It’s decently well written and nicely paced, and overall I thought it was a pretty good whodunit.
This novel is timely for me to read in a way, even though the book is almost 6 decades old. It’s set in a religious private boys school. Here in Toronto, there has been a huge scandal at a private boys school, which has been in the news for some time. In Toronto, the issue was sexual assault among students, so-called hazing rituals taken to the point of violence and rape. The school in the novel also has an underlying cultural rot, and also deals issues around fitting in with the particular ugly school culture.
I’d call this novel decent entertainment. It’s nowhere near this author’s best work, but I gobbled it up and enjoyed it as a year-end read.
Let’s Go To Mars
with Barrence Whitfield & The Savages
Winter Morning
I was out playing Go last evening, and when I rolled in around 1:00 AM, snow hadn’t started, but by 7:00 this morning, our world was covered with a couple centimetres of fresh snow. I took the camera out to capture the snow-covered garden.
This fall I decided to leave the sunflowers in the ground over winter. They look strangely beautiful covered in snow.
The Black-eyed Susans are also striking with a snow hat.
I caught a glimpse of Cowboy Tom out there, riding the winter range. Everybody said he’d be the first to head south to his wintering grounds, but Old Tom, as weathered as an old piece of wood, still loves riding through the fresh snow.
Tom will make winter camp out beyond the old Imagination Station in among the spruces.
Goofing around with the gang
The Partners piled into the car (they love car rides) and we trundled off to one of their fave places, the Etobicoke Valley leash free park. This is located west of The West Mall and South of Dundas at the end of a street called Southcreek.
This park offers a creek to splash around and swim in, some forest trails and a very long open field. We always meet up with a great crew of dogs in there.
Today has been pleasant for the end of December and Ruby could not resist getting into the water for a quick dip. Georgie didn’t go in.
Boxing Day in the park
I suppose some people are out trying to find some Boxing Day bargains today. For me a walk was in order after two days enjoying lots of rich food, so I wandered out to Sam Smith Park. Grey morning, light breeze, temperature above freezing.
I’m making a point to pick up some garbage each time I visit the park. I don’t mean I’m going to obsess about trying to get all the litter, just that I’m going to make an effort to remove at least 10 pieces of litter each time I visit. It is not like it is a difficult task. Around the parking lot, for instance, there is a remarkable amount of litter each day – but there are coffee cups and water bottles and beer cans in other areas of the park as well. Today I removed 18 pieces of litter. My challenge to park users – and not just this park, but your local park too – is to do the same. Take a couple minutes to do your part to keep the it clean. I find it staggering that people can visit a gorgeous park like Sam Smith and throw their crap around.
The most interesting bird I saw today was a kestrel. I saw this small bird of prey in 3 or 4 different spots, usually perched on the tip of a fairly low tree, checking out the lunch buffet.
As usual there were plenty of mute swans around…
There was still some witch hazel in bloom in a couple areas of the park.
I saw one morning dove in the park. I usually see them in pairs and I suspect its mate was not far.
Birds out back
Christmas at 27th Street
27th Street 