I went out this morning to tend my garden and I got the feeling that my plants are finished. there will be no more progress. They will hang around for a few weeks but there will be no more new development.
Some leaves on tees and shrubs are starting to turn and drop off. Part of this is because of the stress from heat and dryness
In particular, I was looking at tomatoes. I've got a good crop and we've been eating them for two weeks. We had two hailstorms so some of the garden plants have had a challenge. the onions have done nothing since their tops were knocked off.
We have had a very hot dry summer. It's tough on plants. I do some watering but only for plants that cannot tolerate being dry. It got to 26C (82 F) today. It was 12 C(54 F) this morning. For the record, the record low for today is -0.6C (30 F) and the record high is 32.3 C (92 F).
I get back from my after supper bike ride about half an hour before sunset. The sun sets tonight at 8:30. It rose this morning at 6:40.
So gradually summer is winding down and slowly leaving us.
Photos are from 2015 and better times.
I'm not easily alarmed. I'm cool and low key about things. Today something happened that shook me up.
I was leaving our small subdivision this morning. We leave from a T intersection that's controlled by signal lights. I was in the left lane to make a left turn. Another vehicle was in the right lane and also making a left turn. It was early and traffic was light. No vehicle was behind us.
I made my left turn and had gone a 100 meters when I heard tires screeching. I looked in the rear view mirror to see a small car that had made the same left turn I made and it was fishtailing across the two lanes.
Before I could decide what defensive action to take the vehicle bounced up on the 4 meter boulevard. Dust and auto parts were flying through the air. I thought, "That's it for him. He'll never move from there." Well , he did move and continued in the opposite direction.
I was shocked. If he'd come to the intersection a few seconds earlier he probably would have rammed into me. If he hadn't lost control and caught up to me he surely would have sideswiped me.
I was shook up over this one.
The vehicle beside me made a u-turn and followed the creep. I don't think the creep would go too far as the vehicle was heavily damaged.
This was too close for comfort.
I'm 77 years old so I've been through a few solar eclipses. I did some research to find out how many eclipses I'd experienced. I couldn't find a list of eclipses in the places I had lived.
I tried to think back to any eclipses I could remember. I could only remember one when I was teaching and we had set up the kids to watch it. I believe that one was a total eclipse. I cannot remember any other solar eclipses. So either my memory is extremely poor or I'm not that interested in eclipses.
I would think that I won't remember this eclipse either as I was not highly excited about it. We had 80 % here and unless you were looking at the sun there was very little change. It did get noticeably cooler. The clouds were much darker. If you didn't know that there was an eclipse you wouldn't have noticed any change in light.
So I wasn't overwhelmed by the eclipse. I know , understand and appreciate the significance if the event.
I took photos at approximately ten minute intervals. The last three show some loss of light.
Anybody tired of seeing this guy yet?
The end
As I was waiting the other day after taking photos of the museum I noticed a condo across the parking lot. This condo looked attractive from a distance. when I got closer to the condo I could see why it was attractive. Almost all suits had attractive flowers on the balcony.
Too often condos have an industrial look as they are plane flat cement walls. No effort was made for decoration.
This small condo is owned by seniors so I suppose they got together to make their building look attractive.
My next challenge was to find a decent angle to get the photo.
When I took the museum photos the other day , I had arranged to meet my wife in the museum parking lot. I had extra time so I looked for other things that might make a good photo. I had gone over to the side walk in the area and then I saw my wife at the end of the street.
I took a number of photos as she was walking toward me. I thought nothing of it. My wife does not like her photo being taken. she didn't know I was taking photos and still doesn't.
The walker turned out to be an interesting photo and I wish I had taken more in the sequence.
So have fun looking at the walker and wondering what's going on. The walker insists that she carries the big bag. You can't separate her from the bag. she also has one of the biggest heaviest handbags you could find. so these two bags overwhelm her and make her look larger than she is.
In my last post I showed you the south side of the museum with the murals made from photos of Canadian people.
Today I'll show the back of the museum and the north side.
Most back entrances are neglected and rather unattractive. Not so with this museum. Large squares make the back walls eye catching.
On the north side they have chosen to cover with local street scenes from the past.
This flag has been seen all over Canada this summer to mark our 150th anniversary.
Our small city built a very attractive museum in the early 1970s. A collection had been slowly accumulating so a good place to exhibit things was needed.
This area has grown quickly from 25000 to 100000 less than 50 years. So a new museum was needed a long time ago.
A proposal was drawn up to construct a new museum for about $30000000.00. This would allow for much more exhibit space and the collection would be under one roof.
Well, a section of the community was strongly against a new museum. They had every excuse in the book for not building a museum and criticized all the points for a museum.
So the project was abandoned.
So plan B. Well, renovate the building we have. Renovations are very expensive and you always find some very expensive surprises. One surprise was to find that the entire north wall was not insulated. You could not regulate the temperature and humidity for proper storage and display of the collection.
So to make the story shorter, almost $300000000.00 spent over ten years and we have the same footprint.
So a few weeks ago finishing touches were done to the exterior. So here's part of the exterior..
These 5 designs are on the south wall. They were made by putting photos of people together to make the design.
I think it's very attractive.
At my place, humming birds are like Santa. They come once a year.
So yesterday I saw a hummingbird at my scarlet runner beans. It checked the red blooms for about 30 seconds and was gone.
Now , surprise , surprise. I saw a hummingbird this morning at the same scarlet runner beans for a full 2 seconds!
Now I'm sure more than one hummingbird visits my yard. I'm sure that I see only a small percentage of all birds that visit my yard. I know that other birders near me see lots of hummingbirds and have very active feeders.
I get envious when I see bloggers showing many hummingbirds at feeders. They show several hummingbirds at one time.
Now I like hummingbirds and would like to have more visit me.
There are four species of hummingbird that spend the breeding season in Alberta. Three of them spend their time in the Rockie Mountains. One , the Ruby-throated spends its summer in central Alberta.
The ruby-throated seems to be a tough little bird as it's sometimes seen at the end of September and beginning of October.
So if I want to see more hummingbirds I'm going to have to move somewhere else or be a very good boy.
Photo by Phil French
Many people are avid antique collectors. It's a very enjoyable and satisfying hobby. Some people are very selective and only collect one precise thing such as type of thing such as cars and they only look for one specific kind of car because it's rare. The same procedure goes with all the other antiques that can be collected. some people just collect everything.
Me? Well, I'm definitely not an antiquer. I may be old and an antique in that way. So far nobody is collecting me. I know I'm worth ten bucks because that's what it cost my dad when I was born.
However, someone in my house has inherited a couple of things and now she would like to part with them.
How do you part with an antique? First of all there is an emotional attachment. But these things have to go and that's serious. So how do you get rid of them and get some value out of them. So hit the Internet and big old eBay hogs the space. Well you find some examples and prices. Now I know that it's not the sale price but what you actually get for it.
Try the local shops. None of them are interested.
So how do I find someone who wants these articles and is willing to pay something for their worth.
I have a feeling that I've got much more to learn on this file.
Wish me luck!
