November 25, 2018
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Colter Wall at the Opera House

We trundled out to the Opera House for the Colter Wall show this evening. For those unfamiliar with his music, Colter Wall is a young guy from Swift Current Saskatchewan (or as he calls it, Speedy Creek) who has been making a name for himself with a bag of excellent songs and a distinctive, deep, resonant voice.

I have to comment about the venue. Any venue in which the audience has to stand up, crammed in like sardines for a few hours, is just wrong. Up on the mezzanine there is very limited bench seating. We headed directly up there and found a spot. There were bars on both levels. Some people who go to shows like this all the time will likely say, stop your whining already, but that’s just because they haven’t enjoyed the luxury of a chair at a concert.

Obviously, more people can be crammed into a joint with no seating than one with chairs and tables, and I understand everyone concerned wanting to make a go of it, but I didn’t like it much. I wasn’t impressed with people being randomly frisked at the door either.

We discovered that Colter Wall has quite a loyal following. A lot of the audience knew all the words to most of his songs and many people sang along to several of them. It was really strange to hear hundreds of people singing along to Wall’s murder ballad, Kate McCannon, though, as if it were a campfire tune.

Wall’s performance was excellent. He started the show solo and he shines with just his guitar. After a few songs, he brought on his band – drummer, bass, pedal steel/dobro and harmonica players. The band was very solid, but I thought on some of the songs they were too loud in the mix.

Overall, a strong show and we had a great time this evening.

November 24, 2018
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The Water’s Fine (really)…

Two Newfs on the Avenue of Trees

The Partners wanted to go somewhere (anywhere) in the car this morning and they started working me early. I took them to one of their fave places, the leash-free area along Etobicoke Creek. Ice was forming on the edges of the creek. I thought, no way any dogs are crazy enough to go swimming today. Wrong. They crashed through the ice, slipping and sliding, and splashed down into the creek.

Crunchy bits
Party on!

November 22, 2018
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The Paris Goldfinches

We just installed this little flock of goldfinches for a client in Paris Ontario. These were made with various materials, including broken crockery, erector set blocks and Smalti glass tiles. You can see many of our mosaic creations at the Long Branch Mosaics pages.




November 21, 2018
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Chilly Nature Walk – Ashbridges Bay

Today’s nature walk with Miles Hearn was at Ashbridges Bay. This is a very popular summer spot, with a really nice beach and many beach vollyball courts. There weren’t so many people around today. Temperature hovered around the freezing point this morning but in exposed areas, the wind was biting. This was a good day to have mitts over gloves. Miles equips himself with hand-warmers, which keep his mitts toasty for hours.

The open lake was a striking deep blue this morning. We also had some great views of downtown Toronto to the west.

The plentiful chickadees didn’t mind the cold.

These delightful little birds were happy to take seeds from our hands.

I’ve been posting photos of spindle trees almost every week lately because this time of year they are in their glory. I simply can’t resist a couple more.

Aren’t they beautiful?

I thought tamarack and larch were the same thing. I learned today that they belong to the same family – Larix – but are different species. Here in the park we saw both the larger larches and the smaller tamaracks.

The photo above is a larch cone and below, tamarack cones.

Once the leaves fall, nature offers us a different look at some shrubs and trees. For instance, Miles pointed out the leaf scars on some Kentucky Coffee Trees.

It’s also time to look at tree buds. Most trees have buds which are a uniform size throughout the tree. I learned today that the cottonwood is an exception to that rule. It has buds of a variety of sizes.

Cottonwood buds

Male cardinal

This yellow lichen was very striking. We might not have noticed it with all the leaves on the trees.

The bird highlight today was a Ruby-crowned kinglet. Many times when you see these birds you differentiate them from the Golden-crowned kinglet due to the absence of a gold marking on its head. The ruby version of this bird often doesn’t show it’s red crown. On this particular bird though, the red marking on its head was quite clear.

It’s only the male who has the crown patch. This bird forages for insect eggs and larvae for a living, extracting lunch from tree bark.

There’s a little beach at Ashbridge’s Bay bordered by a beautiful large Russian olive and a Sea buckthorn.

Russian olive
 Sea buckthorn

Next week will be the last of this series of walks and it will be close to home at Marie Curtis park, which forms the boundary between Long Branch (which is part of Toronto proper) and Mississauga to the west. I’ve also signed up for a series of 6 more walks – and these will be winter nature walks – in January and February.

November 21, 2018
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Bitter Creek

I listen to a lot of music outside of the mainstream star-maker machinery these days, and I’m constantly amazed at the breadth of content people have posted up on YouTube. It’s a remarkable resource. People learning this music when I was growing up without any internet, had to physically seek it out.

Here is Bigfoot at a campsite at Clifftop in 2011, playing Bitter Creek. I’ve been listening to Bigfoot in my car a lot recently. I’ve taken workshops led by the banjo player in this video, John Herrmann. I LOVE his playing. For those not into old time music, Clifftop, or the Appalachian Stringband Festival, located in West Virginia, is the biggest of the summer old time music festivals.

 

November 20, 2018
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The Birds of Winter

Tuffy P came across a book called The Birds of Winter by Kit & George Harrison at a thrift store a few days ago, and brought it home because we really enjoy the winter birds around our backyard feeders throughout the winter.

Although the photography section is somewhat dated (film cameras), and there are only a few pages of colour photos and many mediocre quality B&W photos (+ some fair line-drawings), this book contains plenty of good information.

It breaks down the winter birds we’re likely to see into groups, talks about their feeding habits and migration, with notes about attracting them in the backyard environment. It’s a fast read, and I learned a number of things going through it – perfect at thrift store prices. I think there are plenty of more attractive books out there with equally good information, plus the internet and especially YouTube provides resources for the new bird enthusiast which simply didn’t exist 3 decades ago when this book was written.

November 20, 2018
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Viewing issues?

WordPress had created a new editor and I tried it out. Some viewers may have noticed dropped caps and blocks of colour. I was having some fun trying some different things. However, I received feedback from my brother who tells me where I have used light text on a dark background, he sees dark on dark. Is anyone else having the same poor viewing experience? I’ve asked WordPress to look into it. I’m also having a problem with my categories disappearing when I use the new editor. For now I’ve reverted to the old one so my small but often loyal group of viewers get the same experience they are used to.

If you are experiencing technical difficulties, thanks for your patience.

UPDATE: The problem my brother experienced was caused by a setting on a Firefox extension. He changed the setting and the problem went away.

November 19, 2018
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Community housing

It occurred to me that the mature spruces out back (we have several of them) are excellent potential winter owl habitat. I know owls show up just a few blocks away at Sam Smith Park, and I know that some owls, such as screech owls, don’t mind being around human habitation. For all I know, we’ve had owls out there and I just haven’t noticed them.

A little Googling taught me that some owls will move into an owl box. Normally they use cavities in trees or sometimes used woodpecker nests, but lots of people have had owls roost and nest in boxes. I thought, hey I’ll try that. I can make one from wood I have lying around. And so I did. I read that owls like it if you provide a few inches of leaves or wood chips in the box, and I provided that too.

I mounted the box in one of the spruces at the back of the property, about 15 feet up. Apparently it isn’t necessary to get your box way up in the tree. I read that anything above 10 feet is fine. Who knows if I’ll get any owl visitors, but it will be fun to check the box regularly and see if anyone moves in.