Spring buds!

Let's begin with the horse chestnut tree!  It's beginning to show leaves. They are so green and drippy with sap. 

Primrose

Doug the slug

This has been National Mental Health Week in Canada (May 3 - 9), and these are difficult times. It is so good to get outdoors. Noise continues to set my anxiety off, however. Who knew we lived near an OPP Recertification Range? Thursdays is their usual day. They put a notice in our mailboxes showing the dates when they are shooting. Thankfully. I asked them for a tour, as it really sets me off and it helps to know they were rapid fire guns.. I know it is important work, but that doesn't help my startle reflex! Poor JB has to warn me when he uses the dust buster.

I was a Victim Response Volunteer, and the noise of the helicopters every Friday, around 4:30 as the citiots drove to their cottages, they contributed to it. Our first morning here, we were awakened to the sound of an ambulance and firefighters. Someone was driving drunk and flipped his car in the ditch.

When we lived in Muskoka, by the lake, the noise and smell from snow machines and noisy watercraft drove me nuts. As my mom died, then we worked with my dad, I associate it all with the noise.

Traffic scares me, especially when I collect garbage in the ditches. It's important to do it, so I suck it up. The traffic here can be awful. It's a spot where locals know they can pass. There is about 500m of straight road. I wince as I hear them rev their engines, hoping there won't be another incident. 

This dude goes by at high speed a lot. motorcycle  

The wood ducks continue to nest. The male, for some reason, kept staring at the female in the nest!

Wood shuffling 2.1

Day 2 – Saturday, Part 2 (Wood shuffling Part 2.0 Friday)

The dude who delivered was funny. He said they were frantically hustling to deliver wood to customers. He said that the radio announced the 'F' word.
I asked, "They used the F bomb?"
I should have just shut up and let him tell his story. Not the F bomb, but the word 'frost,' and people were in a hurry to get wood in. He was quite concerned that we didn't have enough wood to heat the size of our house over winter.( I'd ordered 2 bush cords.) Explaining that we had propane, I just cannot haul the wood some days. I give myself the day off.

Having just checked in on Facebook, where I'd posted my video... Winter, bring it on! 
Caitlin, as is the family tradition, broke out into puns. I'm not great with puns, but the rest of them are!  I post them here for hubby, who doesn't do FB!

I was listening to the radio, hubby was taping the tennis game for me. The radio wasn't doing well, but I heard them announce the tennis. I plugged my ears. It was a cold open, with the remnants of Hurricane Harvey on the way. I knew I'd best get it all done Saturday. We ended up getting 17.8 mm (7/10") and I was happy the wood was in the shed and dry.

Annie was desperate to visit. She watched where Daisy was going. Then hustled on over. Daisy is still wildly jealous of her. 

Today, I had three cats and a hubby helping! Dorah was the most interested. They run across the open yard, we've got coyotes and hawks!

At the end of the day, a few scrapes, sore muscles, and a jogging bra full of debris, we got it done!

rocks, trees, roots, burials

The ancient Chinese said, "树高千丈, 叶落归根", meaning, "A tree may grow to be a thousand zhang (10,000 feet) high, but its leaves fall back to its roots".

I have been thinking of my roots.  Holing fast to good memories, letting go of the bad.


Where is home to you? Ours is changing and it is  hard leaving things behind. I have been working on my parent's gravesite, trying to make it a little more homey. The flowers died with the heat and lack of rain. The family all turned up for the brief ceremony.

The stone has been ordered, but will arrive after we leave Muskoka!

Josephine helped 'bury the treasure', as we explained it to her. This is a place, her Papa told her, where people can go and think of loved ones, and talk to them in their hearts.

Having interred my parents, I am thinking about the cycle of life

While Josephine was visiting we spotted a slug eating from the carcass of a frog skeleton. 

 My blog friend, Yogi, created an interesting post. He is the person who turned me on to geocaching, and I completed my first last month! I, too, have a fascination with cemeteries and grave markers, also life and death.


He said, in part: 

Patty Parsons

I got my new issue of Scientific American earlier this week and it is a special issue on "The End."  They had an article that blew my mind. It was on a laboratory that studied the degradation and decomposition of human bodies after death. I had to check this out.


Basically, this is a place where the pros study body decomposition for research purposes. Morbidly fascinating. All for the greater good.

I haven't had time to read my SciAm yet, but I will, now!