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Home and family
There’s a chickadee that has visited my feeder for three winters now. All chickadees look the same except for this one: it’s leucistic – part of its black head is white. So it stands out. When I don’t see it, I miss it. When I see it again, I smile. This chickadee is part of […]
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Day 21 – Home
I’m in the middle of a course on plant identification. We’re looking at everything from grasses through to trees and figuring out how to tell one species from another. Biologists don’t know how many species of living organisms there are. The best estimate they have is 8.7 million, but estimates go from 3 million to […]
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Day 20 – Husbandry
The place we live bears scars. A trail was hacked through the forest, a building was demolished, our house was built over 18 noisy months. Although it was a place of nature, that nature was damaged. So it became our job to nurture it back to health, to be stewards of the land. We planted […]
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Day 19 – Sand
A few years ago I was on a beach in Florida. All was right with the world: the sun was shining, the waves were waving and the seagulls were staying away. I took a handful of sand and examined it. For the first time, I noticed what sand actually was. Instead of a monochrome grit, […]
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Getting away and bringing it all
The Highlands sure is getting bigger. As we’ve reported, our County has the fastest-growing population in Ontario and fourth fastest in Canada. Whether it’s people retiring to the family cottage, buying a second home or purchasing a property to rent out to others for August weekends, this place is booming. There’s certainly an allure in […]
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Day 18 – Glasses
A couple of years ago, I started to need reading glasses. First it was medicine bottles, then books, then my computer. If you’re of a certain age, you know how it goes. So off I went and bought a drugstore pair. They were wonderful. How clear the world was when I had them on! The […]