Wood frogs and spring peepers

There are moments. A robin:

 

A Flicker, with a red-winged blackbird. We have a half-dozen blackbirds, and another half-dozen Grackles. 

I swapped out the green ribbons for March, to yellow for April. 

Our snow is gone. Joe Brian did a bit of a rake.

There are enough outdoor chores with out making more to do inside. Something happened with the coffee machine. The coffee overflowed, and dripped out, down, and under. We had to scrub it all. Great fun. 

Outside it is a mess, wet, muddy, with more rain on the way. We'll be begging for rain in August, I bet. Meantime... there are flood warnings and watches around Simcoe, Sudbury, Muskoka, and Lake of Bays in Ontario. YIKES.

 

The wood frogs are signing. OK, mistyped that, but they are signaling for mates! 

   

 A couple of days later the Spring Peepers chimed in.  

 Down in the pond, the mosquito Larvae are squiggling around.

   

 The yellow-bellied woodpecker is doing its thing. They have learned that banging on the metal towers amplifies their sounds. He is looking for a mate.

 

Caffeine withdrawal

It was horrible. I turned on the coffee drip and nothing happened. Nada.
No sound, no drips.
Now, my friends know our love of coffee.

Our mornings, well, I ease into it. Fetching the newspaper, down a 100m driveway, killing it and bringing it back.
We sit and read. Now, I know this is retro. Our kids sit on their iPhones and read the news, but there is something satisfying about turning the large pages one by one, discussing the news, talking about one thing and another.

 JB is an aficionado, and he judges coffee in the various Daycaytions we take.

These suckers run $30,000!

He eagerly sips his coffee!



Not to panic...
he said, I'll drive into town (6 km!) and get some coffee!

No, says I, I've been through this before.

I hauled out my late mother's percolator.

I have held onto this for good reason. Aug. 4, 2006, our power went out in Muskoka for 3 days after a hurricane. We made coffee with this machine on the BBQ sideburner.
I have fond memories of mom's big open houses at Christmas, and other parties, when this was brought out. She saved everything.

Back to the good old days

My spring bulbs grow, coffee at hand

I loved sitting in the morning and reading the newspaper. At least, that was the theory. Usually I was at school at 7 a.m., and home by 3, perhaps out having a workout to relieve stress. Maybe, in my clouded, out of focus rear mirror, it was in the evening I read it!

When we moved from Ottawa (Nepean) to Bala, Muskoka, we were out of luck. I mean no newspaper delivery. Not the Globe & Mail, not the National Post, not the Toronto Star, Toronto being a mere 2 hour drive south. None of them.

The local Metroland paper came in the mail, with many inserts, but not the closest major paper, The Toronto Star. We would buy it on Saturdays. But with an entire section devoted to the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), it really didn't apply or interest us.

In Perth, just to the north of us, one of my clients gets the Globe delivered. I was excited. No luck. I decided to go for broke and have the Ottawa Citizen delivered. I cannot abide reading a newspaper online. Is it just me?

Snowy morning, traffic speeds to work

I like sitting there, discussing issues with my beloved, cutting out interesting pieces, researching it later. For example, the day before we had ordered the paper, an article was printed about the wild turkeys introduced to build up the extirpated species. I was shocked. I might not have spotted it, being labelled a 'science' issue, and buried in the subpages of the online edition. Now, I don't know about you, but I failed science. My daughter has her M.Sc., and so I don't feel too badly. She is my resources for things scientific. She mentioned this article as she knew we had had 28 turkeys on Christmas day.

Surprise - who was under the spruce tree

This morning, since hubby goes out to feed the deer, who are usually standing staring in at us, heads hung, with an empty feeder, I figured he might as well go down to the end of our drive and fetch the paper. Mind you, this was my gift to him. And it was a good gift. We can go back to the good old days when we discussed issues in the paper, debated politics, and drank that first cup of coffee in the day.

Oliver was not amused. He sat, slowly turning from black fur, to white snow waiting for that dastardly red squirrel, then went after the birds. All he caught was snow.

Coffee.....aaaaahhh

I am married to a coffee aficionado. The dear, sweet man has had coffee all around the world, and he knows his stuff. Here he is at the counter...seeking his solace.

Perhaps a better moniker is connoisseur! (Fr. connaisseur, from Middle-French connoistre, then connaître meaning "to be acquainted with" or "to know somebody/something".)

Part of Brian's job involved travel and he has tried coffee everywhere, as only the sleep deprived or jet lagged can understand.We 'went for a drive', but I didn't realize we were going for a drive for the best cappuccino in North America!

Now, Brian, AKA Joseph (another long story!), is in charge of going to the LCBO and buying my wine (he doesn't drink - but he is great at doing errands) and Bill is always trying to convince him to try a new type of wine. I keep giving him an order: my favourite: Masi, in honour of one of my favourite students, an ESL student who fled the war in Afghanistan. (Is that crazy?) Bill is a connoisseur of wine, Brian is not. Poor Brian.

We were looking to buy a cappuccino machine, but realized that they are a bit too expensive, especially if you want one that works, dependably. The one, left, is worth 5-digits!

Now, Oliver's, in Muskoka, has about 5 stores in the towns nearby, and they have 4 cappuccino machines at any one time. Usually one is broken! In looking for a cappuccino at one store in Port Carling, we didn't find one. The machine was loaned from Bala's Oliver's for the previous time we visited and it had gone back to Bala. Sheesh.

In our research we have found that you get what you pay for. The best machines are Italian, and they are closely guarded by those who own them. We found one in Rosseau. Who knew?

At the lovely little building, right, we found heaven for Brian. Beaners Internet Café.
Our favourite Rosseau restaurant has been Crossroads, but if we are looking for a Sunday afternoon coffee, Beaners is the place.

Now, I didn't know how to even spell cappuccino, but figured it out. I like my coffee hot, and brought to me either in the bathroom, if I have an early morning appointment, or at my computer after cats are fed, goldfish fed, and I have a fire going in the wood stove. I am NOT an aficionado, let alone connoisseur.

Beaners opened in September, and on a quiet March Sunday afternoon it was quite busy. We had some wonderful wraps. Aaaahh, worth the drive!

Delightfully appointed, with a comfortable 2nd floor lounge (below), and they have had regular movie nights. What a concept!

Cappuccino - Wikipedia

Cappuccino is an Italian coffee drink prepared with espresso, hot milk, and steamed-milk foam. The name Cappuccino comes from the Capuchin friars, possibly referring to the colour of their habits or to the aspect of their tonsured (white) heads, surrounded by a ring of brown hair.




Morris, Jonathan (2007), The Cappuccino Conquests. The Transnational History of Italian Coffee, website, summary(PDF)

1. ^ "Connaisseur" in its original French
2. ^ 'Connaisseur' in the Centre National de Ressources Textuelles et Lexicales, 3rd meaning

Fair Trade Coffee

We love our coffee. It is one of my happy addictions. It used to be my treat for getting into work in the morning. Now, it is my treat for waking up!

We go to great lengths to purchase Fair Trade. I always seem to have a brain fade and say 'free trade' coffee.

Having read an article in Time: Special Report, Oct. 5, 2009.
I am beginning to think it is free coffee.

The facts

• Fair trade represents about 2.5% of the industry
• Fair trade is a 25-year global campaign
  
• pays the farmer 13% more than current non-organic market price
• if farmer gets $1.55 /lb., retail customer pays $10/lb.
• one farmer makes about $1000 per year, for example
  
• coffee is the 2nd most traded commodity (after oil)
• Nestle & Kraft dominate the industry
  
• there are 25 million coffee growers world wide
• Fair trade = $1.75 billion
• globally: coffee industry = $70 billion
  
• Starbucks is the globe's largest purchaser

Starbucks has pledged to double the amount of coffee it buys (20 to 40 million lb, to amount to 40% of the coffee imported into the US.

The farmer must drag 100 lb. of fertilizer up a mountain. It is labour intensive and still does not feed a family. About half of the farming families go hungry a couple months a year, in a recent study.

I cannot imagine the equity of this situation. Like Cheap-Mart, Kraft & Nestle get away with world domination, and the ruination of the small farming/business owner.