July 29, 2015
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What are Canadians really like?

We recently met a couple who have lived in various places in the United States, from Texas to Arizona to New Orleans to Virginia. In recent years they have been traveling, and this summer they are exploring Canada.

Well, Jan has a blog, Jalyss at Large, and she recently made a post called The Peculiarities of Canadians. Go have a look at her list of 14 Canadian pecularities….what do you think? Maybe people from other places understand us better than we do ourselves.

Our new friends left Toronto on Tuesday heading towards Sault Ste Marie and Thunder Bay. I hope they have a great trip and discover lots more about Canada and Canadians.

July 28, 2015
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Memphis had surgery today

IMG_2599A few months ago, our Memphis had surgery on her back right knee due to a ligament tear. Her right leg is doing well. Unfortunately, her left leg had the same problem. Today she had surgery on the left side. The surgery went well. She’s recovering overnight at the vet’s and I’ll bring her home tomorrow. She’ll be on lots of rest for a while and then will slowly begin to take walks again.

July 27, 2015
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Photo update

We were able to recover our photos using a program called iPhoto Library Manager. I now have them stuffed safely into a folder. I have no idea why they disappeared. These were all the photos Tuffy P shot in Buffalo at the Garden Walk. DSC00606Watch for highlights soon!

July 26, 2015
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Ohhhhh Noooooooo….iPhoto ate our pictures

Tuffy P came back from Buffalo with over 300 photos on the camera. I dropped them into iPhoto on our computer, and looked through them there. Then I shut down iPhoto. Meanwhile, I took a couple photos in the garden on my phone, and when I put those into iPhoto, I noticed that all the Buffalo photos had disappeared, nowhere to be found.

I tried googling for help, and followed the advice of rebuilding the database. This took half an hour but in the end I still didn’t have any of the 300+ photos. I’m hoping these photos are hiding somewhere in iPhoto or on my computer, and I will find them and shout, Eureka! Is that too much to hope for? Does anyone out there have any ideas as to how I might recover these photos?

This is not the first time iPhoto has, for no reason at all, disappeared some of our photos, and I’m getting grumpy about it, grumpy enough to find an alternative. If any of you Mac users out there use an alternative, what is it and how well does it work for you? I don’t want to risk losing any more photos. I never had technical problems with iPhoto until recently and I don’t know what has changed. It was never a very friendly program, but I got over that. I can’t get over losing photos.

Open for suggestions….

July 26, 2015
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Tuffy P is back in town….

Tuffy P just got back from the big garden walk in Buffalo. I said, hey check out the oxen yoke – I planted it in the garden. So out she went. Two minutes later, she came back in and said, oh I added a little something. IMG_4062It’s perfect!

July 26, 2015
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New addition in the back garden

IMG_4053 IMG_4055This is an old oxen yoke (I think), which we found at Nice Old Stuff, in Jarvis Ontario. I planted it today with the aid of some quick-set post cement. The plan is to build something on top…perhaps it will be a gravity-defying imagination station, or maybe a tall apartment house for birds. I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.

July 26, 2015
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Banjo tricks and gun culture in old time music

I was surfing around the YouTube and came across this great footage of Uncle Dave Macon performing Take me Back to my Old Carolina Home…

This jaunty tune, which comes complete with banjo tricks, has a violent heart – banga banga banga went my Gatlin Gun. This is by no means unique. Gun violence has a long history in American song, perpetuated even now with gangsta rappers. It seems our collective obsession with violence, (and I include gentle apologetic Canadians along with our American friends here), spills out all over our culture. I suppose we sing about our darker selves.

There are songs about men murdering other men (Stagger Lee; John Hardy), men murdering women (Little Sadie, Pretty Polly) and occasionally, women murdering men (Frankie & Johnny).

Here are Kurt Sutphin and Riley Baugus performing John Hardy. John Hardy was a desperate little man; he carried two guns every day...

Sometimes the killer is caught – and killed. Here is the story of Charles Guiteau, who killed American President Garfield in 1881… Lew Dite

Then there is the introspective look at the beast inside us. Here is Nick Lowe…and Johnny Cash

Have a safe and peaceful day. Hug somebody today.

July 25, 2015
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A backyard curiosity

IMG_4041There is an old apple stump out in our back yard. Today I noticed an unusual growth on it. This brown feathery growth is on the top and sides of the stump, which suggests the organism producing it has spread throughout the stump.

I was on the phone with my brother at the time, so I sent some photos over to him, and he looked for it his Audubon mushroom guide while we talked. It appears to be – and I say appears because photos are not completely adequate for identifying fungi – chocolate tube slime mold, also known as hairy stemonitis, or by its latin name, Stemonitis splendens. Aha, so slime molds do not all look slimy.

At first glance it appears to be all composed of this feathery brown stuff, but on closer examination, each of the “feathers” are supported by dark, slender stalks. Waving my finger through it releases a brown dust, which I presume are spores.

This is the second unsual fungi I have found in the garden this year, the first being some so-called dead man’s fingers, which I also posted about here.