MYSTERY PLANT.

     Garden to me is a vegetable garden. I love growing vegetables. I like to see the plants grow and develop. Best of all I like eating fresh produce.

     Gardens here get planted about mid May. 

     By the end of June most plants are well on the way . However, this year around the end of June I began noticing a plant that I thought I hadn't seeded. I knew it wasn't a weed. It looked like a cucumber plant but I didn't seed cucumbers. I didn't think it was a zucchini. 

     Fruit formed. It looked like cantaloupe but I didn't seed cantaloupe. As the fruit developed it became obvious that it was a cantaloupe. I was disappointed that the melons split and would not mature. I was surprised that they did as well as they did.

     So how did cantaloupe seeds get in my garden.  When we do a cantaloupe we throw the seeds in the compost. On one cantaloupe the seeds must have been mature enough the germinate. This has never happened before and we eat about one cantaloupe per month.

BIRD WATCHING SEASON STARTS AGAIN

      I lead a local bird watching group. What it means is that I make up a schedule, publicize it and show up to take people around. I usually have a good idea what birds we might see in an area and then the challenge is to find the little critters. 

      I have about 25 people who attend some of the sessions. I get from 10 - 15 each time. I also have some very avid birders and some who are highly skilled. 

     Most of the sites we visit are in the city. They tend to be parks with some good native habitat. We spend about 2 hours at each site. 

    Last spring we were getting very good and would find 20 - 30 species in the two hours.

    Yesterday was the start of our fall bird watching schedule. We went to an area we had never visited. This summer someone told me of a new bike trail. The trail is made up of an old road allowance and part of it has been destroyed. Some artificial wetlands have been created. Houses are built up to the old road and the other side of the road is country. I thought this would be a good place for one of our birding outings. When I was riding birds kept flying up out of the grass.  Most nights I would see a merlin. There were geese and riding through goose poop wasn't a lot of fun.

    So did we have a good time yesterday morning ? You bet we did. The area is junky as it's being developed . Along with the trees and grass there's a good supply of weeds.

     We were happy to find 15 species of birds. It was dull and hard to see. Many of the species were sparrows and they are hard to see in the best of light.

     I've been complaining all summer about my glasses being filmy. I say it's better without my glasses. The Micro manager says I have to wash my glasses. Yesterday it was hard to get a good look at the birds. I wasn't seeing much color. Things were dull. Somebody said get new binoculars with better light.

    I've thought things over. It sounds like my cataracts have changed this summer. I will have to get in and get things checked.

     My apologies for no photos. I don't like carrying both the camera and binoculars.

SMOKE!

       I live in the province of Alberta , Canada. The province to my west is British Columbia (B.C). BC is mostly a mountainous forested area. This summer they have had many wild fires...about 600. These fires are very difficult to control for a number of reasons. First , it's been very dry so the bush and under growth are dry. Second, the bush here is classified as having a high amount of fuel. That is material that burns easily and hard. Many more people are actually living in the forest so there are more people to start fires.

       The fires are difficult to fight because there is so much smoke. Airplanes and helicopters can not get in to fire areas. The terrain is mountainous.  In the summer they tend to get thunderstorms which start many of the fires. Steady rains occur in the winter. Even in the winter some areas remain dry. 

     So you can see the reason for my topic. In July we could call it haze. As the fires continued and got larger we go smoke and at times dense smoke. We've had air quality from 7 to 10. People who may have issues are advised to stay in.

      We've just finished a fifteen day period of smoke. We did not see blue sky or clouds. The sun was very orange and sometimes difficult to see. 

       To complicate matters, there have been wildfires in Alaska, Washington , Oregon and California.

      Now we did cheer for three days as the wind changed and the smoke ended up in western BC, Bellingham, Seattle and area. 

     I've been able to keep active. My biggest problem is with the heat. 

NOW TELL ME SOMETHING...

       Most bloggers have something in their sidebar that tells them who their followers are.

      Now it used to be that you could click your clicker on the follower's face and you would get information on the follower and you would be taken to their blog. 

     Now all I get is a few blogs they follow. Sometimes the name of their blog. Are some of the followers not bloggers?

     So did I click on something to turn these functions off?  Am I supposed to click my clicker on something else. Am I to right click in some mysterious place. 

      I have tried a number of things and nothing works. 

       Can someone tell me what I have to do to get the extra information that I want?  Does anyone else have the same problem?

      I would like to be able to check on my followers and then decide if I want to follow them. Usually if someone follows me I follow them unless their topic is far from my interests.

      Now that I've got this off my chest I can go outside and enjoy the smoke from the forest fires in British Columbia.

😧

ANTIQUES

    My Dad was born in 1912. So in 1932 he was 20 years old and we all know what was going on in 1932. The great depression had been going for more than 2 years by that time. My dad did a lot of couch surfing and did many day jobs to earn his keep as he used to say.

     My Dad started farming in 1935 with no money. So Dad's favorite place to shop was at farm auction sales. He bought furniture, dishes, tools , machinery , cows  horses and much more. The stuff he bought had seen better days.

      So Dad was used to second hand. When the 50's came he had enough money for new things but his head was still in the value of used things.

       Dad had his own auction sale in 1974. The prices were great and he was happy until he found out the bids were high because his stuff had antique value. He was a little insulted. We kind of laughed at Dad behind his back. He was the kind of man who would have given things away.

      Now when garage sales came along Dad was in his element. He could always find something to buy on a garage sale.  He spent 20 winters in Phoenix so had lots of garage sales .

       So here I am trying to get rid of my treasures. We've found that antique stores will by some things...actually a lot of things!  I wish Dad would be here to get a chuckle because some of my possessions are going as antiques.

       Some of the things are old as the Micro Manager has received them from her family. She has dishes from a great grandma. Some things have antique value for what they are. We had hand made moccasins, kamiks and mukluks. Some of these things are used for decorations.

       The antique store bought my reel to reel tape recorder for 50 bucks and managed to sell it for $200.00

      So son like father I guess

THE MICRO MANAGER GETS HANDED A ZINGER

      Okay a zinger is a very witty sharp reply. We hear them all the time. Most of them are funny.

      Well, the other night when I was in emergency with a medical reaction a number of tests were done.  Most of it is classified as blood work. One test I was given I had never heard of before. The test is to X ray the intestine and see how much waste material is contained there. I always though X rays took pictures of bones only.

      Well getting on to 3:30 AM the Micro manager was eager for this visit to be over. She had been pacing the floor for a couple of hours. The young emergency doc finally came in to give me the results of tests.

      He said the retention of waste material in the system was a concern.

      The Micro Manager could hardly contain herself but she did. What came into her head was this. I could have told you he was full of sh__!

COOL OR CRAZY !

      Yesterday afternoon I went ice skating! Now you can make your own decision if this was crazy or cool.

      My regular readers know that I skate once a week from the beginning of Sept. to the end of April.

     The skate yesterday was a lucky freebie. They are putting the ice in the arena and wanted people to  skate on the first layer of ice  before they put on the next layer.

    I had a light fleece over my tee shirt and I was sweating. The ice level temperature was probably about 40 F. Coming out of the arena to the hot dry sun was most unpleasant.

    So I was cool while in the arena for an hour and a half. Since the ice was very rough I might have been a little crazy to skate on it.

    So I hope this cools you off a bit.

    I didn't get photos yesterday so these photos are from other years. So here are some of our stars.
                          Ken

                                    
                         Roy

  
                             Ann                              

                             Anna May                               

THIS WILL COOL YOU OFF !

     In many places this has been a very hot summer. I for one don't like hot weather. I know many other people don't like hot weather either.

    People have many ways of keeping cool. Air conditioning! Fans! Shade! Cool drinks! Swimming! Ice cream! I think this list could get very long.

    I quite often think back to my summers in the Arctic. Yes, we had some pleasant weather. I even water skied above the Arctic circle! Believe me that water was cold . You didn't want to fall. The lake water was very, very cold.

   What I think about most often is when I lived on the coast for two years. I lived on a beautiful bay that was 24 miles long and the widest point was about 7 miles.  There were very high tides...45 feet. That was a lot of water going in and out of the bay twice a day.  At the mouth of the bay there were fast currents. When bay water met strait water there were some interesting waves.

    Now the bay didn't freeze until November because of the tides. Once it froze the ice got very thick. There were huge house sized rocks on the beach. When the tide went out in the winter the ice lodged up on the rocks. At times we would find a hole in the ice, stick a ladder down and walk under the ice picking mussels. Google this one and you should find some articles and photos.

    However, (are you ready for this?) one summer the ice went out on July 22. Now does that cool you off? I'll bet it did.

    The bay was completely covered in ice. We knew that the ice would be taken out with the tides but didn't know what day. All of a sudden you look out and you could tell the the ice was moving. In a few hours the ice would be gone. Everything stopped and we met on the beach to watch such an exciting spectacle.


    One year a hunter was on the ice and of course the ice leaves the shore. There was quite the excitement to get him off. At a place where the ice was near the shore another hunter took his kayak and got the guy off the ice.

    So if this doesn't cool you off, I don't know what will!