I just snapped this series of images of a juvenile Baltimore Oriole splashing about in my bird bath. It is so funny to watch the birds splash around!
I can not believe that in this day and age that there are still people who kick up a fuss when someone decides to buck the trend of uniformly manicured (read boring), high-maintenance lawns. Whether the decision is to plant veggies in the front yard (because, hey, maybe that’s where the conditions happen to be the best for growing) or to cultivate native species and flowers where others might choose to lay sod there always seems to be a brigade of nosy Nellys (or Neddys) who oppose the “unsightly” mess of nonconformity.
The latest story on this front is the tale of Hank and Vera Jones who decided to cultivate plants that attract butterflies. Sounds lovely to me, but apparently the neighbours and the City of Ottawa disagree.
When will the madness end? Why is it so difficult to a)mind one’s own business and b)let go of this stupid notion that we have to all have miniature golf greens surrounding our homes. (oh, and don’t even get me started on the reader comments that follow this news story — long grass = “hillbillies”?! wild grass = “unsafe for children”? Really? Give me a freakin’ break!)
And on that grumpy note, I’m going back to my editing. *hrumph*
I continue to plod on with the manuscript edits. Plod, plod, plod.
I have spent the entire day on a paragraph. An innocent-sounding query by one of the lovely people who reviewed one of my manuscripts ended up sending me on quite a fact chasing mission. The idea was that I needed to add in a sentence or two to an existing paragraph, you know, to clarify things and add in a little factoid. Searching for this particular factoid seemed like it would be a straightforward research question, but it ended up being anything but.
Imagine, for instance, that there existed a law banning, say, eating ice cream cones in public. But this imaginary ice cream cone law had different clauses for, say, sugar cones vs. regular cones — maybe one was banned earlier. And would frozen yogurt count? And what if different branches of the legislating institution had different laws on the books about eating ice cream cones in public? All of the sudden it becomes quite difficult to offer up a straightforward factoid-laden sentence explaining the imaginary ice cream ban. Yeah…that is about the size of the research/writing I did today, substituting, of course, the imaginary ice cream ban with the actual subject of my research. The digging I did today revealed some really important stuff and this will certainly strengthen this section of the manuscript, but I would really like to have more than a single paragraph to show for about 9 hours of work.
Slow and steady wins the race and all that jazz. I feel like I’m running through jello right now.
Two more exciting developments have happened in this region over the past week: the McMaster Niagara Family Health Centre is now officially open, and Brock is now leasing the Hair Cloth Building in downtown St. Catharines.
Hooray!
The theme of this week’s Photo Friday challenge was “Debris.”
This was taken at Gyro beach near UVic, the remnants of someone’s campfire. I’d love to know the story of Iris.
Look what we discovered in the garden today!
As Guy Clark asked, “What would life be without homegrown tomatoes?”
When my beloved orange tabby cat, Taz, died a couple of years ago Nikki gave me a beautiful orange lily plant to commemorate his life and the happiness he brought so many of us. Each year when the first orange bloom opens I always stop and take a moment to remember one of the best cats that ever lived.
I signed up for a Twitter account ages ago, but still haven’t been able to figure out what the hype is all about. I enjoy blogging and facebooking and other online applications, but Twitter just seems a little dull to me. I want to like it — if only because the cute little bird on the logo is, well, just so. darn. cute.
Given how popular Twitter is I figure I must be missing something. I understand the basics of it, I think, but I just don’t find it all that interesting. Maybe there are ways to use it that I haven’t thought of yet — anyone care to share?
Today’s editing/writing session did not go as well as I’d hoped. The problem was not with my manuscript, my ideas or any of the changes I am making to the document. I did not have computer failure nor did I have meetings, appointments, etc. to take me away from the task I really wanted needed to be working on. What I had was a major case of sleep deprivation, and I felt like I was in a fog all day.
I have my neighbour to thank for this. It seems he has decided to set a trap for the raccoons who come sniffing around his garbage can, and last night he caught one. Oh yay. So from about 2am on I could hear this poor little raccoon trying to escape from the cage. Around 4am it seems that s/he gave up on the whole prospect of getting out and instead started to make whimpering noises. It was awful. I had no idea what to do. The thought of skulking about over the fence in the dead of night to free a very angry and upset wild animal didn’t seem like the best of plans. I contemplated ringing my neighbour’s doorbell and getting him to deal with the situation he created, but chickened out. I looked up the local humane society’s phone number, but wasn’t sure if this constituted one of the “emergencies” that they are on call for 24 hours a day. I’m ashamed to admit that I did nothing to help this poor animal in distress and it has bothered me all day. Today I left a message with the humane society to see what they suggest should this happen again.
Is my neighbour even allowed to do this? Seems pretty sketchy to me!
This incident has reminded me of how difficult cross-fence politics can be. On the one hand, I am appalled by the thought of an animal in distress. It makes me furious and upset. On the other hand, I cherish the sanctity and peacefulness of my home, yard and garden. I work from home and I need it to be a non-stressful place. The thought of waging war with my neighbour (and, yes, this incident would up the ante, I’m afraid) makes me a little sick to my stomach.
I’m also reminded of another set of incidents, incidents that took place in another city many years ago. In that instance, my neighbour was a hunting fanatic and occasionally had the bodies/partial bodies of the animals he killed on the lawn. It was revolting. It made me weep. Yet, what could I do? He was in his yard, doing his thing. I remember staying inside a lot during hunting season that year.
My research and writing has me thinking a lot about relationships between human and nonhuman animals these days, but I’m at a loss when it comes to negotiating some of the scenarios that play out (quite literally) in my own backyard.
Some more exciting news regarding making the city of St. Catharines more bike and bus friendly — bike racks to be installed on a number of bus routes, and a shuttle bus to link up the train station with Brock University and the downtown core.
Both of these developments seem to be “experimental” at this stage, let’s hope they are the sign of things to come.
