Newboro Lake froze last night.
November 19, 2014
UPDATE: You’ll find this year’s ongoing ice report near the top of the column on the right of the page. Please contribute your observations as other readers consume them eagerly.
After a very quiet fall my inbox jolted to life this morning with urgent messages regarding the new ice.
Competition is already warming up for the ice-out contest, but the most interesting addition to Maggie Fleming’s email chain this morning has to be from Stephen Wasteneys, who thinks his brother Hardolph might now be trapped at the cottage by the ice.
The Len’s Cove camera is now in a new location, so you may wish to check out this link:
http://lenscove.com/webcam/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_content=1129378
Update 9:20 a.m.
Stephen Wasteneys commented:
(My brother) is on Holder island. I just spoke with him and that part of the lake is still wide open so it is probably just the harbour where it is sheltered that has frozen.
He said the high winds of the last few days have significantly cooled the lake off however and with the right conditions it will go. He still has a few more days work up there, so hopefully it won’t ….
Thanks,
Stephen
The Geezer’s Gaze
September 10, 2014
For three days this past week I have subjected my sun-damaged face to a chemical peel with a new, jaw-droppingly expensive product called Picato. Then yesterday I emerged into the light of day.
All went well until my wife and I entered Costco in Kingston. Most people I had met to that point had basically ignored me or met my eyes and passed on. But several men of about my age stared. Right at me, eye contact and all, trying to figure out what was wrong with my face. The jarring disparity between their behaviour and that of other people I encountered left me wondering: were they staring because they were identifying with my plight or glorying in my apparent illness? Maybe they were also worried about their faces and bodies deteriorating. Or maybe they just don’t give a damn any more, and stare if they want to stare.
This was my first encounter with what feminists used to call the male gaze. It wasn’t pretty. I’d have to agree with their accusations of entitlement and objectivization. My few square inches of reddened skin really didn’t deserve to be viewed as an ugly bit of landscape, but that’s how I felt after these brief encounters.
In sharp contrast to the geezer gaze was that of younger women. They had no reaction beyond polite eye contact. At first I thought they were remarkably controlled and kind, but as I think about it, maybe they didn’t see beyond the gray hair and beard. Maybe I have moved into that age group where I am now invisible to pre-menopausal women.
What if the fellow geezers were actually the kind ones? At least they acknowledged my existence.
Anyway, I have discovered a new narcotic: Grey’s Anatomy, Seasons 1-3. Those episodes were better than codeine at making time pass in a smooth, mildly pleasurable manner. The shows are of consistent quality, just clever enough to hold one’s attention, occupy 42 minutes, and provide the kind of emotional “ups” Huxley raved about in his drug-addled Brave New World.
Grey’s is available for download in almost unlimited quantities as well, so after surviving two trans-continental flights on it, I went on a 3-day Grey’s holiday in bed away from light, without glasses, while the Picata chewed away at the sun spots. Grey’s Anatomy, streamed online without commercials, is Huxley’s Soma.
Have you ever felt like a character in a scifi movie, the unsuspecting schlep who first encounters the mutant plant and then is devoured by it before it goes on to conquer the world?
I felt like that guy this morning when I realized that there was a whole new layer of growth coming up through the huge patch of DSV I had zapped three weeks ago.
Dog strangling vine spreads more rapidly than anything I have seen before. Its rate of growth is hard to believe, and it is relentless. Roundup will kill it, but it’s a lot like creeping charlie, the weed which bedeviled my mother’s gardening days: break it up or cut it off and any bit of root or stem will simply produce another plant.
But DSV also produces pods which rather resemble small green beans. They dry and release milkweed-style seeds on parachutes, and there are millions of these pods on the plants. DSV also climbs with alacrity, wrapping itself around other vines to produce the “dog strangling” effect after which it is named.
On my first attempt to walk through a metre-high mass of this stuff I nearly pulled both hamstrings.
This week I have seen outcroppings of the weed along the Ferry Road near Chaffey’s Locks, the Chaffey’s Locks Road, and Lockwood Lane. On my friend’s building lot it has made it 150 feet in under the forest canopy in one area. On the other side of the road it seems to be progressing unhindered.
If we don’t take immediate measures to control this invader, we can forget about plant diversity and seedling growth in our woodlots. DSV will crowd everything out. We can also forget about walking through forest trails in summer and fall.
By comparison the wild parsnip which lines our roads is a mild irritant. The DSV is a crisis and we need to take immediate steps to fight it back.
Municipal governments must get on the ball. This stuff is vectoring down roadways, quite possibly spread by mowing. Spraying to control the infestation is the logical first step. But it must be done immediately.
In Ogdensburg at the TSC, Roundup and other concentrated herbicides are on the shelf for anyone to buy, but to obtain the same materials in Ontario you must write the pesticides examination every five years. Many tree-huggers, myself included, now hold expired licenses, and our life supplies of Roundup (purchased before our licenses expired) won’t last through a blight on the landscape like this.
The second step would be to facilitate the acquisition of pesticides licenses and renewals: a single exam in Perth in mid-March will do no good for land owners who wish to protect their property this summer. And they’ll need the restricted stuff if they want to do any good. So far in three sessions I have sprayed 6 litres of concentrate (diluted 100 to 1) on one infected building lot, and it will take more to do the job. The diluted stuff in hardware stores available without a license just won’t cut it.
We need to get serious. If a brush fire were blazing at the front of your property, you’d try to put it out, right? DSV will easily have as devastating an effect as a forest fire on your property if it is allowed to spread unchecked.
Once those seed pods dry out and split, the time for action will have passed, and we can forget about walking through the woods.
UPDATE: August 14, 2014
My neighbour dropped a clipping from Tuesday’s Citizen by the house. It’s an interview with Dr. Naomi Cappuccino of the biology department at Carleton University. Her specialty is biological controls of invasive speces. She claims to have located a moth which eats only DSV.
PressDisplay.com – Ottawa Citizen – 12 Aug 2014 – The tale of the moth and nasty plant
Does nobody answer the phone anymore?
July 23, 2014
Rant mode ON
At 8:30 on a Wednesday morning in late July I have just run through a series of five phone calls without a human response. I’m looking for 100 bd feet of oak to redo the deck of my equipment trailer. George, my usual supplier, seems to have taken off on another holiday with his wife. Harvey, a new potential supplier in Sydenham, didn’t pick up. Two others where I’m a regular customer also didn’t answer.
My wife suggested that everybody’s out, at work. I find this a bit hard to believe that that many kitchens would be vacant at 8:30 a.m.
I don’t think this is a problem of call display, as I believe I’m on good terms with all of these local mill owners. Even my pal Les didn’t answer my call-back after an urgent email request for some wood.
I guess the days of the tyranny of the ringing phone have gone.
Rant mode OFF
The irony of it is that Harvey (see above) sent me an exasperated email claiming that he had tried to call me at 3:00 today but I didn’t pick up. At least I sent him an apology: I couldn’t hear my cell over the tractor’s engine.
Bear!
May 12, 2014
Gee, the Canadiens – Bruins game is about to come on. I hope this isn’t an omen.
This evening I looked up while walking to the garage and there it was, placidly grazing on grass in a wet spot in the field, happy as a clam. It was upwind of me and didn’t seem to have a care in the world, though it moved very quickly when startled by a noise on the road on one occasion.
After a long while it made its way over the fence and into the neighbour’s quarry at the top of the drumlin.
This was a first. Bear spray is now on the shopping list and night-time perambulations will require caution for a while.
Regarding the omen: my wife pointed out that this bruin went away, so maybe things are now looking better for the Canadiens. We’ll see.
7:43. Les Habs just scored. Bet called from the kitchen, “What did I tell you?”
UPDATE: 13 May, 8:13 a.m.
I examined the area of the field which had held such an attraction for the bruin last night. The grass didn’t amount to anything there, and it didn’t touch the ripe cranberries on the bushes nearby. But there were thousands of dandelion buds. Picking them one-by-one would produce the grazing action I watched from some distance away. The one I tried didn’t taste bad.
So our fierce, scary bruin was picking dandelions in the field.
But a dogwood growing along the fence likely wouldn’t share my Winny-the-Pooh treatment of this fellow. Apparently it’s mating season, so the torn bark on the bush might be a valentine to any sows in the vicinity.
Shipwrecked in Rideau Ferry
April 27, 2014
We stopped in Rideau Ferry Sunday at lunch time and ventured into the dining room The Shipwreck built on the site of the old Rideau Ferry Inn. Given the early season and our arrival on the stroke of noon as it opened, it came as no surprise that we were so far the only diners.
The timber-frame hall shows evidence of a good deal of thought and care in construction. Wide pine plank floors survive because of an expanse of harder flooring separating the dining room from the entrance. Queen Anne chairs provide comfort and contrast nicely with the post-and-beam ceiling and exposed stone hearth and box stove. Many windows offer a panoramic view of the Bridge and the waterway.
An elaborate patio enclosure and complex landscaping under the outstretched limbs of a massive shade tree complete the summer decor.
Our pleasant, articulate server directed us to the special, a single-dish rigatoni concoction with a bolongnese sauce, served in a large pasta bowl at $14.00. My wife explained to me that a bolongnese sauce starts with a blend of veal, pork and beef, to which is added a tomato-and-onion sauce, spiced quite mildly, then smoothed with a bit of milk.
I had never tasted a dish like this. As it cooled and I grew accustomed to the flavours, I liked it quite a lot.
If we had received this dish at our favourite Kingston restaurant, Casa, I’d think the chef was having a particularly good day.
With the closing of The Opinicon we’ve been without a good dining room within easy driving distance of Forfar. It looks as though The Shipwreck may well come to fill that void.
Worth noting as well was our stroll on the new municipal docks directly under the Bridge. They should hold eight to ten cruisers in addition to the docking space on the Shipwreck property.
Things my hairdresser tells me
April 25, 2014
Danielle comes to the house and snips my few locks amid a torrent of interesting conversation.
Last time she described driving a Can Am Commander UTV on tracks around a snow-covered go kart track at a cottage she and her husband visit regularly by snowmobile. She said it was fast and lively in deep snow, though hard to turn on dry pavement.
Today she told me that her grandfather-in-law taught her not to eat bananas during black fly season because they make you irresistible to the little devils.
It was -10C this morning with an icy north wind. The snow crunched like midwinter’s when I stepped on it. O.K., I was bored. I had fired up Tony’s 4WD Polaris Ranger to take out the garbage and it made sense to warm it up a bit before putting it back in the shed. And there was that huge expanse of untraveled snow…
The Ranger booted over the snowbank at the edge of the driveway and dove down behind the house. No problem. If it can do this, I can haul the sugar-making equipment up to the shack. How do I get back up? Last year I ran on down the hill, crossed to the barnyard and climbed back up the hill there.
Off I went at full speed. The snow felt like concrete under the freshly-tuned Ranger’s wheels. I carved a wide turn in the 20-acre field below the house and headed west. This was too much fun. Why not carry on to the other end, another quarter-mile away, and come back the next field over?
At cruising speed I ducked through the gap between fields. A straight shot to the 50 acres beyond beckoned, so I headed north.
All of the sudden the left front wheel of the Ranger dove into deep snow, quickly followed by the rest of the 1500 pounds of vehicle, cargo and driver.
Why is it always the left side which falls through the crust? Tony has a real stability problem with that machine.
Mind you, my slightly lighter Ranger TM did the same thing in January. In fact the only way three of us could keep the 1100 pound vehicle on the crust after lifting it up and rolling it ahead was to drive it from outside, manipulating the gas pedal with an old canoe paddle found in the box. Maybe it’s the driver’s weight that’s the problem. Oh, well.
So there Tony’s Ranger sits, front corner down in two feet of snow, next to a quiet farm lane. It’s comfortable. There’s no point abusing it in a frantic attempt to back out. A crew will either lift it back up onto the snow or spring will free it, whichever comes first.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/112002166@N06/13428228334/
UPDATE: 6:50 p.m.
Did I mention I buried the winch tractor on the way back to rescue the Ranger? I explained to Bet that I had needed some space in the buildings for sugar-making equipment. This barely earned the derisive grunt it received.
After supper I walked back to the Ranger with a round-point shovel. Anything I dug just buried it deeper.
On the other hand the Massey Ferguson 35, though apparently stuck in the snow, wasn’t quite done yet. After rocking a bit of a gap, I discovered that while high speeds were useless against the crumbling snow, if I eased the old tractor forward very slowly it would in fact climb back up onto the crust and creep the final 150 yards to where I could turn it downhill and run the cable 150′ to the Ranger. That was 5800 pounds + driver riding on the crust at least a foot above the field.
The buried Ranger offered no resistance whatever to the 8800 lb winch. In no time it was back up on the crust and after a couple of spins around the fields to celebrate and allow the battery to charge up, I put it away. The MF35’s as comfortable there as anywhere.
UPDATE: 27 March, 2014, 5:30 p.m.
It only gets worse. I need spring to get here.
UPDATE: 30 March, 7:30 p.m.
After a day of thaw I was able to drive the winch tractor from where I had abandoned it to a road a half-mile away. With the winch I then rescued the Bolens by dragging it through three feet or more of snow to a path I had blown out with another tractor.
We still can’t get to the sugar bush with wheeled implements, snowshoeing has become an agonizing way to travel now with the uncertain footing, but the thaw is gaining momentum.
UPDATE, 3 April, 2014:
Rod vs Snow
So far it’s Snow 6, Rod 0.
The path back to the woods remains stubbornly impassable for wheeled vehicles. There’s just too much snow and with mud underneath. The task overwhelms even my larger tractors. The situation improves each day, but only by a little.
Four days ago on snowshoes I sank to the bottom so drastically that I could barely travel. In one area in the middle of the walnut field I dropped into snow above my knees. Sore muscles leave me disinclined to try that again soon.
But waiting for spring is a difficult concept even for a not-so-young fellow hardly brimming with energy, not to mention a son whose travel agenda allows only a short time in which to expose all of his friends to the joys of sugar making.
Of course the trees in the lane (now 33 buckets) have stopped running. Yesterday I tried to use the new Kubota with its large turf tires to smooth the ruts in the driveway. Nearly got the thing stuck. With a trailer attached it’s useless in mud.
Today is another day. It’s frozen quite hard outside this morning, so the sap may run. The tractor may even make it from the big walnut tree (a quarter-mile back the lane) across the 450′ of walnut seedlings to the woodlot, where more deep snow awaits. Then at least the Ranger will be able to haul people and materials back and forth to the house.
Saturday, 5 April, 2010
We’re still far from our goal of free passage to the woodlot, though it rained heavily overnight. At 6:00 a.m. on Charlie’s last weekend before he returns to Vancouver, who knows how today will unfold?
Suggested Revision to the Rules
March 25, 2014
Re: 2014 Ice-Out Contest
Ladies and Gentlemen:
Please note a suggestion from 2012 winner George Kitching:
Rod, perhaps you might consider a cut off date to ensure fairness – what do you think of 1st April?
Do I have a second for this motion?
Rod
Please offer comments on this post but continue to post your contest entries on the original page to your right.
the Walnut Diary 