July 4, 2010
comments 6

A Small Surprise

I hadn’t planned on visiting a forest today, since we haven’t had rain in a while and I thought there wouldn’t be many mushrooms around. However, the dogs seemed to have the idea that on weekends I’m supposed to take them for a walk in the woods. They were all excited this morning, so I decided to take them to the woods for an hour walk before the day heated up.

We didn’t go to the usual spots, instead opting for a nice forest about 3/4 of the way up. (Salvelinas, for your benefit, it’s the forest where we find the hedgehogs). It was quite dry in the forest, so imagine my surprise when I quickly found a fistful of chanterelles. We walked around for an hour or so, but that one patch was all that we could come up with. Still, considering I expected nothing more than a little exercise in the company of my dogs, I’m pleasantly surprised.

July 3, 2010
comments 4

Jacques’ new party palace

I thought I was making a shady spot for the dogs to lie around in the garden (an alternative to their favourite shady spot under the deck), but Jacques showed me that I was clearly making a party place for cats. He supervised construction and couldn’t wait to try it out.

You can see a rare mushroom in these shots. How fortunate we are to have the extremely rare Amanita chipbowlamus mushroom growing in our back yard here at Anchovy World Headquarters.

July 3, 2010
comment 0

Go Last Night

I played 5 games of Go with Vox last night. In the game pictured, the first of the night, he won handily with white. I got my licks in too, though, winning two of the 5 games. Last night’s games were scrappy and there were some significant kills involved.

Filed under: Go
July 2, 2010
comments 5

Find the Possum

This morning at about 6:00 we were enjoying coffee when Tuffy P suddenly exclaimed, Look, Look, there’s a possum in our back yard. I grabbed the camera and headed out onto the deck, a sight for sore eyes I’m sure in my pjs and slippers.

Sorry about the lousy picture quality. It was after all very early in the morning and I was hurrying to get a shot before the little critter disappeared into the trees. If you don’t see it right away, the possum is just on the left of the garden on the right. I had heard we had some here in the neighbourhood, but this is the first one I’ve seen.

July 2, 2010
comments 5

Blogs and Blogging

From time to time I like to check out the search terms that cause unsuspecting readers to parachute onto this island in the sun. Here’s a few from yesterday:

  • grass mushroom
  • bird checklist of Toronto
  • McGarrigle Wild Goose
  • Chicago street-walking polka band
  • Sam Smith park Canada Day

As well, every day a dozen or so people land on 27thStreet after searching for something related to Das Boot, based on a single post I made months ago. Back when I had the old blog, Mister Anchovy’s, I used to get searches for Johnny Cash finger. That went on for months.

I periodically check to see how many people are popping in here, and I notice the usual summer drop has begun. June marked the lowest hit count this blog has seen since I started it back in October (of course maybe it’s just that I haven’t posted enough accordion videos to keep everyone happy). Mostly I check just because I’m amazed that people keep coming here at all. When I switched from Blogger to WordPress, my hit count very quickly started to escalate. It went up about a third past the average hits I was getting on Blogger and then more of less leveled off. I have no idea why that is. I have no regrets about the switch in any case. I like the way WordPress is set up and I’m very comfortable with it.

There is way less chatter on this blog than on most of the ones I visit. Some blogs receive loads of comments every day. Over here, some version of the 80/20 rule applies. That small group of friends I like think of as my blog community checks in and makes the odd comment (thanks folks!). I think I do the same. I like to check in and acknowledge blogs I like. I also comment from time to time if I have a strong opinion on a post (at the risk of ticking off the blogger).

I find there is a slowly evolving group of blogs that I visit regularly. Occasionally I’ll add to that list and drop some others off it. All those blogs are on my blogroll but I confess I don’t regularly visit all the blogs on my blogroll. Some of them are there simply because the nice people who write those blogs were kind enough to link to me and I’m happy to do the same in kind. Others I pop in and visit from time to time.  If I find a blog that intrigues me, sometimes I’ll link to it and visit for a while. This sometimes leads to being a regular reader but as often as not, I find out after a short while that it really isn’t all that interesting to me. Sometimes blogs intrigue me for the oddest reasons too. I’ll visit and think, I’m really not sure why I keep coming back here, and yet I’ll find myself there again the next day. Curious, huh?

A couple times, when I’ve seen blog award listings, I’ve made an effort to check out the winning blogs. Almost without exception, I’ve found blog award winning blogs to hold little interest for me. I don’t know why that is. Who are those award givers anyway? I think one of the good things about the blog-swamp is that there is no acadamy. I’m happy for 27th Street to quietly exist, floating around the blog-swamp, powered by a small community of friends who strangely enough keep coming back.

Have you found any interesting blogs lately? Let me know and I’ll pop over for a look.