27th Street

October 26, 2018

Rogers Rant

Rogers keeps calling me. I try to be polite. I ask them not to call anymore. Please take me off your list. I don’t want to hear about the deal of the day. Honest, I don’t. Usually at that point they hang up. I’ve asked them maybe 15 times to stop calling my home but they keep doing it. Sometimes they even knock on my door and I tell them the same thing. I’m running out of patience. What part of this horrible behaviour do they think is a smart business move? The chances I would ever do business with a company that keeps harassing me at home is way less that zero. I will never ever do business with Rogers. Ever. No chance. The end.

October 26, 2018

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Morning walk at Humber Bay

I enjoyed morning walk at Humber Bay today. It’s a beautiful spot on the west side of the city. There was hardly anyone around when I was there, except for a couple naturalist/birder types, who can be easily ID’d by the binoculars or cameras hanging from their neck.

The highlight of this morning’s walk was a beautiful juvenile black-crowned night heron, which I was able to see from about 20 feet away.

There are spots at Humber Bay which seem quite wild and isolated….

and also places where you get a great view of downtown Toronto….

There were quite a few ducks around, including several hooded mergansers.

Here are a few other highlights from the walk.

I met a nature enthusiast there who volunteers with Toronto Field Naturalists. I was only vaguely aware this organization existed. This fellow provided me with a bookmark with the website. When I got home, I went online and got us a family membership. Their mission is to connect people with nature in the Toronto area. It’s a volunteer-driven non-profit organization. They do over 100 guided nature walks each year + host many other talks and events. They also have some properties in the Uxbridge area which they operate as nature reserves.

I’ve long been connected to nature. I credit my father for instilling in me a love for the outdoors from an early age. For many years I fly fished extensively, then with the help of my brother, I got involved with foraging for mushrooms for the table. This year I’ve been going on weekly organized nature walks as well as walks on my own in which I can test my knowledge of the plants and birds I’ve learned about. Bit by bit I’m improving my ability to identify plants and birds.

One of the things I’ve learned this year is to enjoy the natural treasures right here in the city. We live in a great spot for this with Sam Smith Park to the east and Marie Curtis Park to the west, both destinations on the weekly organized walks. There are so many other Toronto treasures, including the Don Valley, Leslie St. Spit, Rouge Urban National Park, Wilket Creek/Sunnybrook Park, Lambton Woods, Humber Arboretum, Clairville, and many more.

Before the spring bird migration, I hope to upgrade my camera. I’d like to concentrate on improving my photography skills next year.

October 25, 2018

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Walking in Sam Smith Park

We’re so fortunate to live just down the street from Colonel Sam Smith Park. It is a Toronto treasure. Often when I’m there I have the dogs with me, which makes it a bit difficult to look at birds, but this morning I went for a good walk in the park on my own.

Along the east side of the yacht club basin I saw what I believe is a Greater yellowlegs. I was able to get close enough to grab some shots with my handy-dandy little point and shoot camera.

As usual, there were lots of gulls around. I’m not very good at gull identification. Is this one a herring gull?

I saw these ducks near the beach on the east side of the peninsula. Are they gadwalls? One of my goals for next season is to learn to identify all the various ducks that show up in the Toronto area.

I mentioned in an earlier post that I have trouble photographing yellow flowers. I tried again today wnen I saw some sow thistle. It was overcast and I was able to get a better than usual shot.

October 24, 2018

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Nature Walk – Cedarvale Park

Bird vetch

Cedarvale Park is a lovely urban park located in the St. Clair and Bathurst area, here in Toronto. I’ve been going on Miles Hearn’s nature walks since early spring and this is the first time we’ve visited this park. Much of the park is pretty tame. There is a leash-free dog area, an arena, plenty of grass, but there is also some woods and an interesting wetland.

There are still some asters in bloom in the park.

Heart leaved aster

Heath aster

Purple stemmed or swamp aster

The most difficult flowers for me to photograph are the yellow ones. With my little point and shoot camera my results on yellow flowers are just so-so. Today there were 3 yellow flowers of note in the park.

sow thistle

Cinque foil

Butter and eggs

There are quite a few Amur maples in Cedarvale Park. It’s a shrubby maple with really nice fall colours.

Amur maple leaf

Amur maple keys

The only mushrooms we saw were growing on trees rather than on soil. The most interesting of them was a variety we saw last week as well, the Hypsizygus.

Hypsizygus

unidentified shelf mushroom

A new plant for me was Indian hemp. We saw several examples of this plant today.

indian hemp.jpg

Another plant I was not familiar with, found in multiple areas of Cedarvale Park, is comfrey.

Comfrey flowers

Comfrey

It was quite cool in the park today. As it gets colder, I suspect I’ll be using my notebook sparingly on these outings.

Here are a several more pictures I snapped on the walk today. Each is labelled.

Milkweed pods

Alder – male seeds

Mulberry

Hawthorn berries or Haws

Iris seeds

Crabapples

Basswood

Pearlly everlasting

Burrs

Cattails

Alder – female seeds

Comfrey

Comfrey flowers

October 23, 2018

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Banjo Tales

Most of my friends know that somewhere along the way I fell hard for the banjo. People around the neighbourhood seem to enjoy hearing it but I’m sure there are those who think, what happened to that guy? Why does he play that old time stuff? Why can’t he just play some classic rock or blues or something like that? Fortunately in our crazy post-industrial world, there’s room for everything.

I didn’t grow up with old time music, although I’ve been aware of it on some level since my early adulthood. I can recall even during my university days back in the early 80s, listening to Doc Watson. I can’t explain my love of music not part of my upbringing or my background in any way. I had already been playing music from “somewhere else” for quite some time on button accordion. After my brother the trout, Salvelinas Fontinalis, started playing some clawhammer, I began messing around with that music on an oil can banjo I cobbled together myself, and ended up diving into that rabbit hole in a big way. The banjo is, as Jerron Paxton said, the most human instrument.

These days I know lots of people (and some fantastic players) in the old time community, but still to many people I know outside that world, old time music is alien, and banjo music = Earl Scruggs and the theme from the Beverley Hillbillies. I don’t know how many times I’ve told people sorry I really don’t know a whole lot about Bluegrass and no, I don’t play Dueling Banjos.

I came across a most enjoyable film available to watch free online, which offers a wonderful window into old time banjo music. It’s called Banjo Tales with Mike Seeger and it’s by Yasha Aginsky. In 2009, he accompanied Mike Seeger on what would be Mr. Seeger’s final field recording trip in the American South. The result is this wonderful film. For those of you interested in getting a glimpse into what old time banjo music is all about, I encourage you to watch it.

October 21, 2018

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Lambton Woods with The Partners

This morning, The Partners started early, jonesing for an adventure in the car. They know car trips often lead to forests and other good places. I said, OK gang, let’s go, and off we went.

The Partners

October 21, 2018

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Yellow (a retail rant)

Regular visitors to this part of the blog swamp know that Tuffy P and I make custom mosaics. We’re working on a set of goldfinches made from broken crockery, tiles and what-have-you so today I dropped into our local Value Village in search of yellows. I was prepared to buy bright yellows, pale yellows, dirty yellows, flowery yellows, patterned yellows, the more variety the better.

I scoured the ceramics shelves and loaded up with everything yellow they had, except for a couple over-prices vases. This included an un-priced group of saucers, 11 of them. When I got to the cash, the unpriced saucers stopped my cashier in her tracks. There’s no price on these, she said. True, I responded. Make one up, ok? I can’t do that. I’ll have to get my manager to assign a price.

A moment later she returned with her manager, who was decked out in full Hallowe’en regalia. He must have spent an hour getting dressed up for work today. These are part of a set he said. These are all the ones like this on your shelves, I countered. No more. He considered this. No, I can’t sell you these saucers because they’re part of a set. If you like, I can have someone go through the shelves to find the rest of the set for you.

Now, I had just been through all their shelves, looking for anything yellow. If they were there, I would have found them. I explained this to him. If it’s yellow, I’ve got it, said I. Unbelievably, he said, so the answer is no then? Excuse me? You’re saying you don’t want to wait while we reunite these pieces with the rest of the set? I took a deep breath. There are no other parts of this set over on your shelves. He pulled out his ace in the hole. We have people, he told me, whose entire job is to go through shelves putting sets back together for sale. They can find the other pieces and you can buy the set.

I wanted to say, buddy you’re an idiot, but I didn’t. Instead I said, hey, you can sell me these saucers or not sell me these saucers, but I’m not spending another second discussing this. As I told you, he started in again….. OK, I get it. You’re really not going to sell me these saucers. We’re done. He scurried away, happy to have frustrated another customer. I’m confident next time I go into this place, the same saucers will still be there, mired in Value Village limbo – and I still won’t be able to buy them.

October 20, 2018

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Green Tomatoes

We’re closing in on winter. Down at the bottom end of Sam Smith Park, the yacht club people have the big cranes out and they’re yanking all the boats out of the harbour for the season. That is, except for the one or two wacky folks who keep their boats in there, covered in plastic, all winter.

The trees are turning colour and some have already turned. The last tree to change on our street will likely be our Shishigashira Japanese Maple, which holds out to the bitter end, then changes to a beautiful scarlet red before dropping its leaves.

The veggie garden is coming to an end, and as usual there are still many green tomatoes on the plants. I could try to ripen as many of these as possible, but I prefer to deal with this last batch of green tomatoes by roasting them.

I slice them up on a baking sheet. After I took the photo above, I added a sliced up an onion and added a few hot chilies to the mix, then drizzled everything with some olive oil. I seasoned this mix simply with salt and pepper, and roasted it all down in the oven. I filled two of these baking sheets. Green tomatoes are best when you roast them to the point at which everything is caramelizing nicely.

Roasted green tomatoes freeze well in plastic containers or even in bags, for use later in the winter. Here’s a suggestion for using them. Brown some chicken thighs in a pan, then add lots of roasted green tomatoes + some water. Season however you like. Cook the chicken in this mix on the stove-top. As the chicken becomes fully cooked, the cooking liquid will thicken up. Try this served on some red cargo rice. It’s delicious.

Meanwhile, I’m dehydrating some apple rings in a new/old dehydrator. My neighbour across the street offered me a dehydrator she had kicking around but doesn’t use. It’s a better one than the one I’ve had for years. On this one you can adjust the temperature. My old one only has an on-off switch. I wanted to see how well this unit works so I’m trying it out with a batch of apples. My main use for a dehydrator is mushrooms. Foraging is often a feast or famine proposition, and when it’s good, I often come home with way more mushrooms than I can eat. I like to dry some for soups and stews in the winter.