UNCLE ANGUS

       Well, it's the end of June. I didn't need to tell you that. The year is half over. You don't need to know that. 

     Since I was a teacher the end of June was a very important time of the year. The kids had been " finished" for about two weeks. They were just waiting for the year to be over. However, where I taught we had to teach in the last school day of June. 

    Now to add to the mix the caretaking staff were getting ready for their summer work. Some painting would be done. Repairs could be made to plumbing, electrical systems , wood work and floors. Much material was being delivered to the school. The caretakers were ready for the kids to leave so that they could get on with their work.

    I always think of one care taker in particular for the end of year. Angus was a character. He was a great story teller. He liked to have an audience so the school was his audience. There was always somebody around to talk to. 

    Angus was not always a school caretaker. He was a farm hand in his younger days and the stories just flowed from that part of his life. 

    Angus finally settled down and had an acreage and small house. Angus liked farm auction sales and knew a bargain when he saw one. So Angus had acquired a large number of odds and ends that he would freely loan to any teacher who wanted something. All his possessions where in good order. He knew what he had and where to find it. 

    So a number of the young teachers who were getting established did lots of work on their houses and yard. Where did you go for special tools? Angus. He loved to let you have his equipment for you to use. 

   So some of us started calling him Uncle Angus because he took an interest in helping us. 

    So at the end of June I think about the smell of wax  and Uncle Angus. 

     

THE WAY BACK MACHINE

      This is my parents wedding photo. they were married in Feb. 1938. They were still in the depression but they decided to make a life together. It was a wild ride of ups and downs. 

A GOOD SITE FOR ART

   We have an excellent park system. The park runs along both sides of the Red Deer River. Sometimes the strip of land along the river is very narrow and sometimes it opens to parcels of several hundred acres. There's Heritage ranch at one end and Gaetz Lake Sanctuary at the opposite end. 

      I have volunteered with this system in a couple of capacities. Several years ago heavy gauge steel silhouette art was placed in three different places. Now I judge myself to be somewhat open minded when it comes to art but these I don't like for several reasons.

    I don't think that they are in the right place. One set of figures shows a man and wife who are pioneers. The sanctuary is for flora and fauna. Species get some protection and people can be taught about some of the species. Another set of figures depicts the North West Rebellion. The opposite end of the park has some relationship to the rebellion but not the sanctuary. Then there's a weird little "Jeep" thing which makes no sense at all but may refer to a WW II army base that was nearby. 

      Only one piece makes sense and that's a large moose adjacent to a small entry road to the sanctuary. There are many moose in the area. It is also a great reminders to drivers to watch for moose. The figure is very eye catching as you enter the sanctuary. 

    So what's your opinion of these pieces? 

     Okay, I've got the first photo. It looks like the Gaetz's who originally owned the land for the Gaetz Lake Sanctuary. 

MY 83rd SUMMER SOLSTICE

     I like special days like summer solstice. I have always thought about the longest day of the year even as a child. Well, I probably missed the first half dozen. 

     I only attended a summer solstice celebration once. I was living in Inuvik NWT. Some of us would climb up a hill just south of town. We had a good supply of hotdogs and beer. We would wait until midnight. Now at that latitude we had 24 hour daylight . We'd had 24 hour daylight for about 3 weeks. So the getting together was not for celebrating the longest day but solstice itself. So gradually we would wander off home (no cars) and appear a little bleary eyed a work the next morning. 

   So here ae todays numbers: 

             sunrise 5:13 AM

             sunset 10:00 PM

             Daylight hours 16:47

      The photos are not from today but a few years ago. I was out for a bike ride when I took these photos. 

     The sun shining on the north side of  house about 9:20 PM

    Just before sundown.

     10:00 PM in my back yard. 

YELLOW LADY SLIPPERS

 June 18, 2023

      There are some things I just have to see when they come in season. One of the things I must see and take photos of is the yellow lady slippers.  They are an attractive  flower. 

     At one time I had the mistaken idea that yellow lady slippers were rare ,but not so. Yellow lady slippers will grow under many conditions. They will grow in disturbed soils. You can find them growing in a ditch be side the road. 

     Last Sunday I went out to my favorite patch of Yellow Lady slippers. There were more flowers blooming than last year. 

     So along with the lady slippers I caught a few other blooms. This site is about 2 acres. In the last photo I tried to show the number of lady slippers in a patch but it doesn't show what I saw. 

      

I've never seen a butterfly like this. 

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MY CAMERA

       This last while I have been dissatisfied with my photos. They seem to be a bit fuzzy and out of focus. I've been in a hurry and I haven't stopped to check things out.     

      I was beginning to think that I might need a new camera. My camera is about 5 or 6 years old and is a Nikon L830 which is  lower end camera. But then, I'm a lower end photographer. So finally , I found some time and went out in the back yard to do some testing. I suspicioned that there might be some shake from me so I propped myself up a bit. I found that I could still get a reasonable photo from the camera. I also found that I had to take more time and be more precise with focusing. 

      And on to another issue. You've been looking at this photo for a long time. How long? Since Oct. of 2014. So nine years ago. Do we update our photos or leave them at a younger age? If I look at this photo long enough will it be imprinted on my brain and I will think that I'm this age? 

      Well, okay how about an update?

     Well, I've decided that there must be something wrong with my camera after all!

FOOD RATIONS

      I did a post about 10 days ago about learning to grocery shop. I remarked about northern rations and a few people asked questions and that got me thinking about government food rations. 

     My time in the Arctic started in 1963. At that time it was a different world. Settlements were hundreds of miles apart. The only business in the small settlements was the trader. The trader took skins and the aboriginals got guns, bullets, knives and traps. The trading post was not heated. The only food they carried was flour, baking powder, tea and sugar. 

     So if the government was going to send in a teacher or other employee, to such a settlement they had to supply food. So this is why I was given a big pile of food. We laughed and joked about our rations and how pathetic they were. Someone who had never been in the north probably made them up. The rations were also constricted by storage facilities. We had a little three burner electric stove and a tiny little refrigerator. The suites were complete with dishes , pots , pans and cutlery. 

     So what did we get in the 1000 lb of food? There were many things we had not seen before. There was no fresh food. There was 2 hundred pounds of flour as they expected us to make our own bread. Ha, ha if your a 23 year old male who'd never cooked before . Most of the women at that time had not made bread either. There were many stories about the messes of bread making. 

    We had  tinned potatoes and powdered potatoes both equally gross. We had powdered milk that we couldn't mix so lots of lumps in your cornflakes. There was lots of canned milk. There was lots of macaroni, spaghetti and rice. There was lots of canned vegetables and fruit. Meat you ask? The meat was all canned. Try canned bacon or sausages. They were terrible. So there was klik and spam and canned ham. 

    There were lots of cookies, jello, and puddings. I forgot cake mixes!

     Then there were such things as jam, butter(tinned of course) tea, coffee, sugar, salt and a few spices.

    So for this 23 year old kid, the cases  of soup that were to last for a year were gone by November. Next the beans ran out!

    I didn't learn how to make bread but I did learn how to make pancakes.

    We had most things in the rations but they were a bit different so we had to learn a few things to make proper use of the food. 

     We did have a small grocery store but the prices were outrageous. Families didn't buy  things at the store. I bought bread and I don't remember what it cost. Bananas were a dollar. 

    When I look back it this it was a balanced diet but many of the things were difficult to work with and didn't fit in with standard recipes. 

    I lived in a 32 suit single staff. We traded much food and quite often ate together. Girls cooked and received what ever they wanted out of our rations. 

     They wee great days and I often think back to the good old northern food rations. 

      

SHOULD I LAUGH OR CRY

      This week I was trying to see if I could find some photos of Wakeham Bay where I taught for two years. Wakeham Bay was not above the Arctic circle but very isolated as far as transportation and communication was concerned. There were no phones in the settlement. 

    Okay, I found a site with many interesting photos and then in this group of photos , I said hey, that photo is mine. Yes , it was my photo with photo credits to Hiawatha House. This was a big surprise to me as I naively thought, or didn't think, that my photos would show up on another site. Yes, some of my readers might snag the odd photo but I didn't see my photos going any other place. 

     This was the photo that showed up under transportation. We where being ferried out to the icebreaker D'Iberville to have dinner with the captain. The big orange thing on the bottom left is the pilot's knee. 

       So then I started wondering. Is it good that my photos go wandering off to some group of photos. How would my photo be picked up? On the blog I have some family photos which if I think about it shouldn't just go off to some place I don't have control over. 

     So I need some opinions from some jailhouse lawyers. Do I prevent my photos from travelling ? How do I prevent my photos from travelling? What do you do with your blog photos. 

FIRSTS IN LIFE

      Electica   wrote about the first time she bought a car. 

       This reminded me of a first for me when I was quite old.

        I was 80 years old the first time  bought groceries. Yes, I went with the Micro manager for years as the cart pusher, but I never actually shopped and bought the groceries.

       No mother of a farm boy was going to send her son to town to get groceries . So I didn't buy groceries while I lived at home.  At the time I was growing up we did not buy very many groceries as we prepared our own food. We had all our own meat from the farm. Our vegetables were limited by the time we could store them. 

      When I left home to go to school, I boarded so I did not have to buy groceries. One land lady I had would phone her order into the store and I would pick it up for her. 

     Then when I went to the Arctic we were given rations. In other words we were given enough food to last us a year. These rations were prepared for someone who didn't have a store that they could buy groceries from. I remember my rations came in two huge boxes that would fill the back of a pick up truck. 

     So recently it was taking the Micro Manger a long time and much effort to buy groceries. One day I finally said , "You're not buying anymore groceries. " 

    And that's it. I bought all the groceries from then on. The Micro Manager makes a list and I shop. 

   How do I like buying groceries? It's great. It was a learning experience that was good for me. 

THE GOOD OLD ULTRA SOUND

       This week I had the pleasure of having an ultra sound. I know that you can tell by my sarcasm that I don't like ultra sounds. However, I do have a bit of common sense and realize the value of ultra sounds. 

     I have two ultra sounds a year to check on a little bulge on my aorta that leads to my lower body. Now I keep razzing my Doctor and tell him to look on the outside of me. It's all bulges , blemishes and wrinkles. Why is he worried about a little bulge on my insides. Doesn't he know my insides will be the same as my outside? 

    So I was ordered to be at the clinic at 7:45 Am. There were some new procedures this time. 1: There was a six hour fasting. 2: No urination after 6:00 AM. 3: drink 2 glasses of water at 7:00 AM. 

    And as some of you may have had this procedure more than I have, you know the drill. Some round headed devise is pressed into my abdomen and they run it around searching for things. Sometimes they press very hard looking for some hidden part. When they find it "click"  and a picture is taken. Then "take a deep breath and hold it". I'm like leaky balloon and can't hold my breath for very long. It seems like a long time before they say let go. A new one this time is to extend your stomach. 

    So in about 15 or 20 minutes she said it's done and she would check with the radiologist to see if the results were acceptable. She threw me a towel and told me to wipe that horrible icky stuff they use to lubricate your skin so that the "whatever" they use to press very hard" on your abdomen will slide easily .

   So it's over for another 6 months. If there's something wrong my doctor will call. If nothing has changed I don't get a phone call. 

NATIVE PLANTS

        I confess that my weakness is for native plants. I don't recognize many plants but I do go out on field trips to find plants.

      Here we have bush and all kinds of plants that grow in the under bush. With deciduous trees we have a very lush undergrowth. I like prairie flowers best , but since I don't live on the prairie I don't see the prairie flowers. 

     Yesterday I was birding in the morning. Birds and plants were at their peak. We identified 39 species of birds. I tried getting some flower photos but since I'm not that steady anymore the camera is continually refocusing .

     We started at a foot bridge across the Red Deer River. There were hundreds of cliff swallows nesting under the bridge. 

            Then we walked along the escarpment of the river so it's a challenging walk . It's set up for cross country skiing but it goes through heavy bush.

     So here are some of the flowers I found. 

SPRING

       We had a very short spring this year. April was cold and frosty. When May  got hot and we had a couple of very hot spells. It was dry last summer and also the winter. So with very dry conditions you know what happened. We had some major forest fires. You know because many people suffered with the smoke from our fires. We still have about 60 wildfires and 10000 people away from their homes and farms. 

      Today's sunrise was 5:19 AM and sunset at 9:48 PM That means we had 16 hours and 29 minutes of daylight. With the long days our plants advance and mature quickly. My blue bells matured and now are going into dormancy. The bleeding heart is almost finished blooming. Some peonies are blooming. Irises are just ready to pop open. My tiger lilies are ready to burst into bloom. 

     So spring weather may have been  rather short but I'll take May's fine weather. So far June has been nice but not too hot. I've got my tomatoes planted so I'm ready for summer.