Colours of Late August: Yellow

Well the colours this time of year seem to be mainly yellow.  Overnight the late blooming Queen Anne's Lace disappeared, as did the chicory, and a bit of something purple that I didn't take the time to stop and identify it.   I don't know the official name of this flower.  It grows about 2 m (6 ft) tall.  I got a little clump from a  friend, who got her's from a friend.  Years ago, at one of my kids soccer games, the coaches wife was giving away clumps of this flower that she'd gotten from her grandmother's garden.   So it's an old variety of some kind of rapidly spreading, tall, bright yellow flowers.  Lots of people say it's been found at old homesteads, their grandparent's homes etc.   It's reliable as it blooms in abundance at the end of every summer.  It get's pummelled down by heavy rain, and still blooms, just sideways on the grass.  I've no idea how to control it because digging doesn't always get all the roots and one year in desperation, someone used round up on it and it died back a bit and then the next year, just popped back up, stronger than ever.   It's a good thing it's pretty.

Rudbeckia.  This is a cultivated variety that I planted.  It reminds me so much of being a kid and the fallow fields and roadsides were plentiful with a wild variety of this flower.  Of course we called them Blackeyed Susan's then.  I used to braid daisies in the earlier summer and these later in the summer, into my horse's forelock and mane!

It's still one of my favourite garden flowers, especially for the colour it adds late in the year.

The feed store has a tiny plot of dirt beside the smallish greenhouse.   They used to toss pumpkin seeds there and have a lovely little pumpkin patch in the fall.  Then the whole fashionable thing of getting photos taken in Sunflower patches came up, so they planted sunflower seeds.  They grow tall and look lovely, and then at the end of the season, they toss the remains into their compost, beside the old silo.  There are a quite few volunteer sunflower plants growing this summer, which look quite fun with the volunteer pumpkin plants.  Most of the flowers were still looking a bit down, as it was mainly cloudy that day, but this one was most optimistic, and reaching for the sun that wasn't quite there yet.

Another volunteer, although it's definitely not yellow!  Almost 20 years ago I planted some morning glories in a planter near the front door, where they grow slowly and only had a few blooms.  The next year one plant returned and still was late blooming, with only one or two flowers.   The issue of course was the really bad soil, probably garden soil, hard and compacted and needed to be replaced badly.  I was busy and it wasn't all that important so I just left it and moved on.   Every few years though, I find a morning glory growing someplace around the front entry.  I take that as a win.  These are just the bog-standard variety, nothing special at all, but I do enjoy the little pops of purple.

Stupid weather, and meh stuff in life.

We had great seats for a mediocre concert!

 We went to a concert the other night.   I was looking forward to seeing the 2 artists because they don't travel very often anymore.  While they aren't pumping out the hits any longer, George Canyon and Aaron Prichett have a long history in Canadian Country Music.  It was a charity benefit concert, which is the first thing which should have tipped me off that maybe it wasn't like a regular concert.  Then too it was to be a mix of holiday and their hit songs.   Meh, is the best review I can give.   There were few actual songs of any kind in comparison to the anecdotes, stories, humour, call outs , so many call outs to family, friends, the stage hands, the charity guy, the guy who just joined them.   All this took time from actual music which is really what I wanted to see.    The show consisted of two 45 minute sets.  The second set sadly had fewer songs than the first set, by a noticeable amount. The charity sales pitch rambled and was all over the place and too long.   I think if they'd had someone help edit and fine tune the stories and the charity sales pitch, it wouldn't have dragged nearly so much and they could have gotten both a more effective use of them, and more music in. I will say that the few songs that George Canyon sang, showed that his voice is a smooth and strong as ever. I'd have loved to hear more of him singing.

The weather had been stupid on Friday.  It actually started snowing on Thursday and just never stopped.  We were lucky with our timing for leaving for the concert, which was a bit over an hour drive away.  We caught a break in the weather and had taken the major  highway, so it was well plowed and salted.  There was only one snow squall which affected us, and not for long.  That made it a much nicer trip despite the squall warnings and lake effect snow.  We decided not to drive home in snow squalls in the dark.  The hotel we chose turned out to be a suite with a full kitchen and separate bedroom.  The only odd thing was that it was a converted 1881 building, and our inside room had no windows, although 2 skylights.  It was reasonably priced too, 

Another meh project is the newest scarves on the loom.  I put two on because I had just enough yarn, if I dressed the loom correctly.  It's a DK yarn weight and I put it on the rigid heddle loom, so it's in between heddle sizes.   I'm a bit worried that the sett is a little too loose, but we'll see once it's off the loom.  The main issue I have is that it's pastel and the pale blue and ecru on the white just seem to look grungy to me.  I much prefer weaving and working with brighter colours.   Hopefully it will look better once it's finished.   The yellow reed hook was a gift from my friend E.   She cut them out of plastic and shared them.  It's a nice size, comfortable to hold and works beautifully on my loom.

The weather has been stupid the past few days, with snowfall warnings, lots of snow and horrid roads.   A few days before though, I looked out the window and saw this pretty sunset.  The sky had a lot more purple in it, over the orange and pink, but this is close.   I snapped a photo from the window because I worried that the sunset would be gone by the time I got outside.  I was right on that and happy I'd taken a quick snapshot before I tried to race outside.   It had faded quickly.

I'm working on making a sweater on a knitting machine.  I've made a bunch of hats which are great projects to learn the basics.  A sweater has a lot more steps and techniques, so we'll see how it turns out.  I picked up some less expensive yarn to learn with so I wouldn't waste or wear out the handspun yarn I've been spinning since the summer.     I've over 1800 yards spun so far, more or less, so that should hopefully be enough for a sweater.  Spinning yarn for a project can take a while, so I'd rather learn on commercial yarn.  Hopefully I'll have a wearable project out of this experiment, even if it is just some sort of man-made fibre.   I also finished a pair of cabled wool mittens which I'm pretty happy with, just no photo yet.  I just sewed in the last ends of the second mitten a few minutes ago, so a good end to the day.

Daily Life

The new hens seemed to be settling in with the old chooks.     After two weeks in the barn, so they'd know where home was, I let the girls out to free range on a nice day.  I had to think about that though because white hens are much easier to see, so a bit of an easy target for predators.   We'd had snow and it melted, so I was hopeful all would be well.   Unfortunately when I went to tuck them in to the barn in the evening, one of the leghorns was missing!  I looked all over the yard and I couldn't find her.  With sadness, I locked up the barn and decided to keep them inside for the foreseeable future, to keep the other leghorn safe.    Luckily, the next afternoon, the missing hen was fussing close to the barn.  Even more so on the lucky front, she was really hungry and I was able to lure her into the barn with a scoop of food and moving it a short distance at a time to get her into safety.   She's in the barn now, and doing fine after whatever adventure she had.  We've only had a missing hen return after being gone for an evening once before, so it was a happy occasion.  

We had snow squalls in the forecast, with lake effect snow expected to be close to 50 cm.  I figured it was time to put the rest of the garden to bed for the winter.   In the spring I'd purchased 2 bales of straw and left them out all summer to hopefully start rotting.  One way or the other I'd be able to use them for mulch in the fall, but rotting straw already starts the composting process.   I had cleaned out all of one bed and most of the other.   I also planted 46 cloves of hard necked garlic.  It will be interesting to see how many garlic plants actually germinate.  It starts to grow early which always makes me happy.

 I opened the one straw bale and the inside was nicely starting to compost, so I used the straw to put a 6 inch layer of star over both garden beds to let the straw work over the winter.   Also, because every spring, I find a nest in the straw from some unknown animal, I wanted to set up the space in case they needed it this winter too.   Both raised beds are set nicely for the winter.  I left the two kale plants in because they are still growing, will last over the winter and give us fresh greens early in the spring, until they go to seed.

Thankfully, we didn't get 50 cm of snow.  Also, the weather warmed up a bit, and what snow we did have, melted quickly.   I peered out the window one afternoon and the sunset was amazing.   I didn't catch the colours properly because I knew in the time it would take to run outside, I'd miss it, so I took the photo from my window.   The sky was blue, purple, orange and that bottom bit was a glorious pink.    Between the numerous cloudy skies and dusk coming at 4:30ish,  I often miss the rare pretty sunsets just due to timing. 

 I'm totally not impressed with it being dark by 5:35pm!  With the fewer daylight hours, and keeping the chooks inside, the older girls aren't laying eggs right now.  They need about 16 hours of daylight to encourage them to lay.   I could put a light in the barn, but I just deal with fewer eggs rather than do that.   The new leghorns, being young are giving us eggs which is nice.   They are tiny pullet eggs though which makes for some interesting guessing at how many pullet eggs equal a normal sized egg.  Today's eggs were marginally bigger, maybe almost a commercial small size!  Yay for that!

Keeping busy

 I've been doodling around with this year's Xmas cards.  I actually tried to start them in October, so I'd have the choice of putting them into the mail early. We are having rotating Postal Strikes right now, which could end up being another full fledged strike by December.    It's  really odd because it's hardly noticeable because we get so little letter mail anyway these days.  There are ads and flyers but those go into the recycling bin generally before we even look at them.   It also feels odd because I used to be a prolific letter writer with several penpals.  I enjoyed that a lot.

I've decided that I should probably invest in some better water colour paper.   My current paper was all I could find locally and it was fine for several years.  This year however, I'm finding out its limitations and issues.   One technique I was trying really didn't work well and it was a paper issue more than a me issue!   I remembered I had a few sheets of handmade paper that I'd gotten at a paper making class at an SCA event a couple of years ago.   I hadn't used it because I wasn't sure my skills were up to using handmade paper.   The year after I'd made the paper, the instructor did a demo on how to size it with gelatine, so paints and ink wouldn't soak in.  So this evening, I mixed up a batch of gelatine and painted it on the paper.   I seem to remember the person demonstrating this using fairly longish strokes.  I had to use gentle, short strokes on the paper.   I did up 3 sheets and have it sitting between felt sheets.   If I had something heavy to sit on it, I'd weight it, but there is nothing handy right now, so my fingers are crossed and hoping for the best.  Some instructions suggested it could be 2 or 3 days before the sized paper is ready to use!  

I broke down and bought new shoes the other day.   Shopping for clothes is not one of my favourite things, but sometimes needs must.  Anyway, I do like them, but managed to leave them on the floor, nicely out of the way.  I woke up to the little obnoxious cat of my husband's biting at them.   I rescued them and wiped off the cat spit.  I woke up quickly enough that there wasn't much of kitty tooth marks on them, so that is good.   Still not my favourite way to wake up when Kevin the cat is getting into trouble making activities. 

I've almost got the small raised bed cleaned out.   I went at it today because they are calling for snow in a few days. I got enough done that it will be easier to deal with in the spring.  Now just to grab 5 cloves of garlic and finish off the row that I had decided I didn't need to finish.   Hindsight being what it is, I can't believe I made that decision.  That half row won't be used for anything else, so if I don't pop the garlic in, it will be wasted space.  That would give me just under 50 heads of garlic for next year if the crop is successful.

The last bit of autumnal colour.  Taken before we had a storm with much more wind than rain.   The leaves were flying around  making for an interesting visual.   I'm so really not ready for winter to come waltzing in early as they've forecast, or not. Either way, I'd be happy with a late winter.   The long range winter forecast says an early and harsh start to the winter in this area, and then possibly a slightly milder end to the winter, with high risk of freezing rain possibilities.  Somehow that doesn't seem much better to me.  Being on the edge of the snowball means we sometimes get hammered with snow. :(

A cold and frosty morning and new chooks!

It wasn't quite 8 am when I had to head out the other day.  This was the view from my driveway.   The sun was just rising and there was frost on the grass and all the fields.    It was very pretty but just a tad cold out side.   I still had my coat in the car from the springtime, as I sometimes just toss on a sweater or hoodie when I'm running about to the shops.  I keep spare mittens, a toque and a jacket in the car just in case there is car trouble during the in between seasons.  This summer though, I just tossed the jacket in the back instead of bringing it inside, so it was where I left it instead of where I needed it that morning, rather than inside so I could wear it!

My hubby has been bragging about how nice his seat and steering wheel warmers on on his new car.  I sent him this photo of my steering wheel warmer.  Interestingly enough, the mitten photo was taken just seconds after this one, having backed out, parked in the driveway and pulled out my phone.  The sunrise had already faded due to the rising sun.   

 Yes, that is frost on the edge of the windshield.  I had to scrape the windows, which wasn't fun.   I may have had mittens and a toque in the car, but I had moved my ice scraper into the garage in the spring and had to run into the garage to try to find it.   I couldn't find it quickly though, so I had to run inside and grab the tiny hand ice scraper that I used to process flax and sometimes nettle (although a dull butter knife works best for nettle).  We went out today and bought me a brand new snow bush/ice scraper tool since the old one has gone walk about!  It will certainly get a lot of use one way or the other this winter.

We didn't want any new chooks this year.   Honestly, we have 5 older girls and they still lay enough eggs to keep us well stocked and allow a few for co-workers.  Not as many as we used to have, but more than enough for us.   However,  I was chatting at the feed store and we were discussing how they had a chook delivery just a couple of days earlier and a few people hadn't replied to their phone messages, for their chooks, but still wanted them.  They were able to arrange a delivery of ready to lay hens the next day and not only the red sex link layers, but they had a few leg horns available.  I ordered 2 leg horns.  They lay white eggs.   When I do Pysanky (Ukranian Easter Eggs), I have to spend a lot of time and aggravation looking for large white eggs, without date stamps on them.  One year I ended up finding duck eggs.   They were mixed colours, blue, green and white, but they were telling me that their spring duck eggs come from young ducks and that's why they were still small.   Hopefully these girls will thrive and I'll have my own decent white eggs for this spring.   They're already laying little tiny pullet eggs which look so small against the giant brown eggs.

More inkle, a garden treat and some seasonal colour

 

I started a new pick up pattern.   Actually, I started one before this, but cut it off the loom.  I'd used 2/8 cotton for the background and 4/8 for the pattern threads.  It was pink and burgundy and looked very pretty in the 11 thread pattern. However, with the fineness of the threads and the dull daylight hours we've been having, it became way too fussy for me.  There were too many mistakes, and way too much unweaving.   Eventually I cut it off and re-threaded in something that is easier to see.

This is a 7 thread pattern, so easier to begin with.  However the blue and white pattern area gives a lot of contrast and when I'm weaving at night, it's much easier.   The pattern turned out to be a 6 step repeat either forwards or backwards, making it even more fun once I realised that.  It was pretty easy to memorize.

The big issue is that I didn't double my pattern threads.  It's fine and looks okay.  There isn't quite the full coverage nor the slightly raised texture.  This is a flat band.   My recommendation is to not try to warp your inkle loom while watching the Blue Jays come back to even the playoff  series.  I did a bit of unweaving last night too from not paying quite enough attention to my weaving.

The poor chooks have been inside for the past few days due to my being busy.  It's just safer to leave them protected, despite them being not quite so happy. about it.  Soon enough we'll have snow and they'll not want to go out anyway, so as long as the weather is nice enough, I let them free range.    This morning, I let them out and as I was walking by the tomato plant which I'd not yet pulled from its planter,  I saw a flash of yellow.  There were 4 ripe yellow tomatoes, of which 2 were just slightly soft, so I gave them to the chooks for a treat.   The other 2 I brought in, plus 2 of several remaining green tomatoes, which will hopefully ripen inside.  There were another 4 or 5 green ones, but they were just so very tiny.  This was a nice surprise.

I made blueberry jam at Westfield yesterday.  I wish I'd taken a photo though, but I didn't.  I brought my own, very dry wood to start up the stove, which worked a treat.  It hardly smoked at all.  Often, because this year's wood has been green and unseasoned, we've had huge smoke issues when starting up the stove.   It was very windy, but weirdly warm and then we had a lot of rain.  While the stove was burning hot enough to boil, the jam wasn't boiling as the breeze was cooling down the jam from the top of the pot.   In the end though, it turns out that even if the jam just barely boiled, if you cook it long enough it still reduces down, the pectin sets and you get jam despite everything.   I'd popped in a batch of scones into the oven before I started the jam, so we had something to test the jam with.

The drive yesterday was so pretty.   This past week the leaves, really started to change colours.   Lot of oranges around here with some patches of red.  Along my route yesterday, the area has tons of red maple and red oaks, which were all in their full blazing glory.  The colours were spectacular.  On the way home though, because there was still a bit of drizzle and because of the rains, the colours were enhanced.  It was truly a glorious sight.    This little leaf met when I got out of my car at home.

The photo below is what I saw hanging over my usual Westfield parking spot.   It wasn't noticeable when the tree was fully leafed out!   Luckily I'd never noticed the wasps at all this summer, nor in the fall.  Yesterday they were still quiet, so all was good.  I didn't move my car either.  Just left it there because I figured if they hadn't bothered me all summer, they weren't likely to do so yesterday either.

A Sunday hike

 

trail beside the river

We went for a walk yesterday.  It was relatively mild, although breezy and grey out.   The temperature topped out at 9C or 10 C, but the breeze made it feel a bit cooler.  We bundled up and went for a lovely walk in an area where there is a lake, a river, and it feels like you're walking from one type of terrain to another.   The trail meandered along a river, through some fir forest, up through an aspen and poplar grove, up through an open field and then through a large stand of cedars before we ended up near the start of the trail.  We traversed a small piece of preserved railroad track, by the 2nd lookout point for the lake, not the one I usually take pictures from, and saw a lot of browns, with occasional splashes of colour.  

This is the side view from the lake.  Usually I take photos from the right, where the shore line curves around and the lake ends, or begins I guess.   There used to be a lovely picnic table here and we used to pack a lunch and eat looking over this view.  It was lovely.  Then they moved the table.   It's now in the middle of the V where the trail breaks off into 2 different routes.   Nobody eats there lunch there because there is no privacy from all the people and all the dogs.   They did replace it with a very large, long metal girder or beam.   If you don't mind sitting on the metal, hot in the summer and cold the rest of the time, then you can still sit and view the lake.   It's not quite as easy to share a lunch there now though.

There was this single vine of bittersweet, with red, almost fuchsia husks, with the little orange berries.  It was almost the only bright colour outside of some very limey greens from very young pine trees.    

All of this scenery would have still been stunning if we had blue sky, but we really get a lot of pale, grey and almost white skies during the late autumn and the winter.  A few years back, one horribly grey January, it was recorded that we got a whole 14 hours of sunshine in the month.  

Gah, we have another wasp in the house.   There is some type of wasp that is wintering over in our stacked winter wood.   It's larger than a yellow jacket and at least it's fairly calm.  We're getting several a week, maybe every other day or so.  It's both frustrating and irritating.  As a bonus, this weird, unseasonably mild spell, has brought houseflies back inside.   There should definitely be no flies and wasps in November!

Fall colours, the loss of the same, and run up to Xmas

 Ahhhh Blogger, you've updated several times recently and things are now harder to use and my original settings have been changed, hidden or apparently are no longer applicable. Something to keep me on my toes I guess.

We went for a walk on a local trail.   It's one with a nice boardwalk beside the river.   I suggested we take this one because soon our weather will change.  The cold, wet and snow will make the boardwalk slippery and difficult to traverse.   We no longer take this trail in the winter because it's just not fun.  Winter walks on the trails can be a little bit harder, but not so much fun when you're also dealing with ice patches or long lengths of snow covered rutted ice, which is what that boardwalk becomes.

However, in the nice weather, this trail is interesting.  All the Ash trees have been cut and left lying around, so that it looks in places like something out of a bad Sci-Fi movie.   The trail runs right beside a train track and an industrial area, so there is sometimes a non-nature like soundtrack to accompany the walk.   Today though, it was the light creating interesting reflections on the river which caught my attention.   They were very clear, as the water was oddly still.

The trail was pretty despite the many downed logs.  I noticed that there were some new ones which weren't Ash trees, and there were some still standing which should be cut down as they were obviously going to be a falling risk soon.   Mostly the woods have young trees.   There isn't a lot of undergrowth in places, so the visuals of looking through the forest is interesting.  The undergrowth usually obscures this.  

It was lovely tromping through the fallen leaves.   This was just before the windstorm which meant the landscape went from lovely fall colours, to stark, empty trees in one afternoon.  Waking up the next morning to virtually no leaves left on the trees was interesting.  It was like we had an autumn colour season which went from green, to full colour, to bare trees in just over a week.   I didn't even get a lot of photos of the fall foliage just because the timing was so quick.

There is always an exception though.   This maple always colours last, and always holds its leaves.  It's just starting to drop its leaves and the colour is still turning.   It's really lovely this year as it's changed from the usually all yellow leaves, to yellow, orange and red.    I have a loom looking out the window at it, and it's always lovely to weave in the autumn with that view in sight.

I've been working on this year's Xmas cards. I've found if I don't start by the beginning of November, they become a bit rushed and stressed.  I'd trialed several ideas.  I watched a bunch of online tutorials for new techniques and ended up just painting something simple.  I like them well enough, although my brain tells me that they still need something.   I'm not sure it does though.   Only had 2 mishaps, one where the tape stuck and ripped a bit of the painting and the other when I was mucking around with the sky ideas and I ended up with one which was too dark for my liking. 

  I tried the remove background feature and it did, relatively well, although it did dump some black spots on the one card, which aren't there in real life.  Also, I haven't figured out how to not have the original save as the edit.  On my old computer, I could just save the edited photo as a different name, but this one applies everything to the original.  This works really well for when I'm writing things up as but I'll still need to figure out the photograph part of things.   

I did figure it out but I like the photo with the messy background better.  I painted 15 landscapes for Xmas cards, all similar but not quite the same, just to keep things interesting for me.

October Colour

 

I had to leave the house at 7:50 am.  The sun was just rising.  I had to stop in the driveway to take this photo as the light and colours were spectacular.   While the mornings are late in coming, I'm really not looking forward to the time change.  I'm on the side of keeping one time zone and not switching back and forth.   Switching seems to cause more issues than not.

This was the view across the road two nights ago.  The light was perfect.  The leaf colour change this year have been odd to say the least.  We've been stuck in a no colour zone for ages.  There have been a few trees changing colour but mainly lots of dull green leaves.  Then a couple of days ago when I was locking up the chooks, the trees were still mainly green in our yard.  The next morning though, it was like every one of them had coloured overnight.  So amazing and beautiful, but definitely odd.

The one zucchini plant left was hit by powdery mildew a while ago.  It survived, albeit damaged with greying leaves.  However I went to pull it out the other day and not only is the plant still flowering, but there were 5 zucchini still growing.  One was starting to get too big, but these 4 are still perfect.   I'd though there were only a few leeks left, but this was a lovely surprise.

I saw this stump full of shelf fungi by a woodpile.   While the trees are finally coloured and the leaves are falling astoundingly quickly, there is still a lot of green in the grass and weeds.     This made a nice contrast.

Soon the world around will be white.  The skies will be grey, or watery, pale blue.  We'll get limited sunlight hours, so I'm enjoying the sun and colours while we still get them.

2 Busy Weeks

Colours have been slow to start in our area, and apparently due to the weather.  The slow and mild decent into autumn, is the reason our colours aren't nearly as bright as usual.    My trips to Westfield have been interesting as the leaves coloured there earlier and have been falling.   I've gotten to tromp through the leaves on the way to my building, which is always fun.   

This is one of our favourite local trails, which overlooks a small lake.    The sky really was that blue that day.   Our winter skies, and sometimes our late autumn skies tend to be pale and watery grey blue.   

One of the invasive weeds in our area is Virginia Creeper.   It takes over fence lines and grows into any nearby trees.    I pulled a couple of vines from a large pine tree near our fence line and the rest pulled off the back part of our deck.   I took a couple of bittersweet vines as well because they were growing up in a space between decking boards.   They were all still fairly green, so I wove them into wreaths.  They need to dry flat before I bring them in to decorate them.  I checked them this morning as was surprised how damp the underside felt, so I flipped them over.   I put them in the gazebo to keep any rain or dew off them.

I wove a scarf on the rigid heddle loom using some lovely yarn I'd picked up.   I did the calculations for the sett before I dressed the loom and using 10 dents per inch worked out perfectly .  However, the yarn was fuzzy, not quite as bad as a mohair yarn, but noticeably fuzzy.    Hindsight, after only weaving a few rows, says I should have gone down to a 7.5 dent to make the fuzzy yarn easier to weave.   I had to open every shed with a pick up stick before weaving.    I have more yarn, so I'll try that next time.

Regardless, the scarf, while taking a bit longer to weave, was quite nice until a quick check of the underside showed that I had some small floats from skipped threads: about 5 of them.  Instead of bothering to fix them, I ironed some lightweight interfacing on the back and cut up some  shapes to make stuffed woven strawberries.   I stitched them by machine, cut little leafy top green bits free hand from felt and sewed them on by hand, adding some hemp twine for hangers.   I'm going to see if the guild wants them for their $5 ornament fundraiser.  If they don't, I have lots more materials and there will be strawberry ornaments for everyone this year!

I had my sock machine, a Legare 400 in at Westfield to demo.  It was a slow day, but the people who did come in were really interested in both the building and the machine.   I had some really great conversations with people which made a somewhat slow day actually good fun and interesting.  Plus the day went by fairly quickly.    I'm going to need to make a nice little acceptable travel table though as finding an antique  table which can support the machine really securely and not wobble, or fit properly has been difficult.   Still it was a great day and I got a pair of socks made in-between conversations.

 

Interesting Hiking

We've been hiking a trail which is about a 25 minute drive from home.  It's not horribly long, but it has lots of things which make it interesting.   It's a circle trail, it has educational spots to explain the local wildlife, pollinator plants, the local lime industry etc.   It has a dog park, several look out points, picnic spots and sie trails so you can wander around on a new trail every time you go.  It runs alongside the river part way, which has been most interesting.   

Lately, we've been seeing a lot of chewed and knocked down trees.  These aren't saplings but trees which are at least 30 cm in diameter and bigger.

As there are no wildlife signs for beavers posted, I wondered if muskrats could do this sort of damage.   There is was a lovely little grove poplar or aspen trees just when you enter the trail.   All the big trees were either chewed down, or in the process of being chewed.

We were there on the weekend and we saw this!  It seems to be a beaver dam under construction.   Since it's in the Thames river, I can't imagine the beaver having the ability to dam the whole river up, but he could have a nice sheltered home for the winter.

I wonder if the people who take care of the trail, will let the beaver stay?  It's made for a lot of curiosity, and interesting conversation over the past few weeks.

We've been having picnics at this spot, overlooking a man-made lake for  water/run off control.  It's spectacularly beautiful and makes you feel you are in some sort of wilderness area.   I spent a fair time watching, what I thought was a muskrat, playing in the water.   I wonder if it was the above beaver instead?   I didn't have a camera with a strong enough lens, to capture it from where I was and my phone would only show little ripples.    I didn't think I needed a 300mm lens or bigger, but I've found a number of situations where it would have been nice to have.

Here is the lake and lookout from a different vantage point, the last time we visited it.  The snow has all melted now, fallen a second time and melted once again.  Except on our deck, which gets no sunshine during the winter months.  

Friday morning hike

Today's weather has been amazing.  With a high of 19C and sunshine, it felt almost summery, instead of November!  This morning we took the time to take a short walk on a trail we hadn't done in a couple of years.   All the paths have been groomed and made accessible.  It made for an easy ramble. 

  However, the number of trees which have been removed made it feel like a whole new area.   I'm guessing they had to remove all the dead and dying Ash trees.  It's quite open now and much less like walking through the bush.  It's still a pretty walk though since much of the trail follows a winding river. 

 Being a weekday morning, there were few people on the trail.  We did follow the markings of what turned out to be a little 2 year old toting a huge stick, all around the trails, with his mom and a gigantic Newfoundland puppy, which weighed more than the two of them put together.

 

There was a lovely grassy area; a green oasis in a forest of browns.

A little pond with lots of algae and growth, looked so pretty.

           

   It was nice and relaxing to watch the river flow by.
       

There were ducks on the river.  They were in small groups here and there, rather than one large flock.  However, I didn't have my big girl camera with a good lens, only my phone, so I was too far away to get reasonable photos of the ducks.  Still, I have to say I'm happy to have an alternate camera for when I'm in unexpected situations, so I can at least still take snap shots.