Q: What's the difference between a bare patch and a hole?

A: You don't get wet on a bare patch of ice.

This is the droll advice of the 82-year old teaching Rick Mercer how to ice sail!  That's our Canadian Rick Mercer!


Up here we know that the ice is melting slowly.

The shoreline is a different story. The ice is becoming waterlogged and just slowly sinks!

You can see the darker ice shards. The horizontal lines show the melted layers of snow, while the shards form vertically.

As I sit by the lake I can hear the tinkle of shards as they break up with the wind. The lake ice is in motion all the time, too. As water ebbs and flows, the water moves and water seeps up and down between the shards.
Normally, this rock isn't exposed in the spring.  The ice keeps sinking, the water levels are low, and rocks protrude.

I read an article about how we ought to change the way we teach science. More free exploration, rather than didactic teaching. I think that works for someone, like me, who makes up a hypothesis, based on observations, but the pendulum of pedagogy keeps swinging back and forth: laissez faire, to back-to-the-basics...but I digress!

Spring is springing, with green shoots of the day lily in bare patches.

I don't know if anyone remembers the book, 'The Grass is Always Greener Over The Septic Tank', but it is true. This is a photo of the lilies that are on top of our septic storage tank and it stays much warmer than the rest of our gardens all winter.

I've planted several bushes around it, Rose of Sharon, for example, that requires no colder than -10 C., but the warmth of the tank keeps the bush safe in winter when we go below -20! (This is an August 20, 2007, photo!!!!)

The snowmobiles are wearing their summer coats. Trails are closed, and repairs to the roads will now start! 

Next, we'll look forward to bugs!

See also: Rick heads to Jasper National Park to trigger avalanches with explosives. This interested me, too. My brother is a dynamite expert, as well as being on the rescue team, underground in Musselwhite, a N. Ontario mine. The things people do for a living!
Speaking of working at play...and doing things you love:
Paralympics open with rocking ceremony
More than 5,000 performers of varying ages and abilities were part of Friday night's Paralympic opening ceremonies in Vancouver, dazzling a capacity crowd at BC Place stadium during the two hour show.


To get back to Rick Mercer, he visited with Team Canada's Sledge Hockey players.  He spoke with Graeme Murray, in the video. 
Graeme, who resides in Gravenhurst, Ontario, began playing sledge hockey with ... Graeme helped Team Canada win gold medals at the 2009 Hockey Canada Cup.

Ice, curling, and hockey: how Canadian and these are the things that make winter in Muskoka!






But, below, is a great video of the sledge hockey! It is a very difficult sport, especially for someone out of shape, like Mercer. He'll tackle anything.