Post Cards from Durham, Part ii

Today we are looking at McGowan Falls.

“McGowan Falls. First dam and mill established 1847. Royal Can. Legion Br. 308 Durham dedicate lighting of McGowan Falls to the memory of Arthur McGowan 1st president of Durham Br. R.C.L.” In case you don’t have Legions in your country, those are places where veterans and their well-wishers get together to swap old stories and toast special occasions: wedding anniversaries; retirements; new grandchildren; Tuesday.

Pretty dam. Chilly! (I hope you’re not reading this aloud to anyone. ) You can walk right over the dam in good weather; there are gates at either end that shut for the winter.

And here is McGowan Falls itself. The far top right of this picture continues from the far middle left of the previous one. Hmm, ice cold, a nice head of foam on the yellow-tinted liquid. That sight would have me thinking about the Legion, that’s for sure.

Back to Basic

This post is a nod to Julie at Towards Sustainability.

I experimented a bit with baking soda today. Besides being a basic ingredient for baking, baking soda is basically a basic mineral. The reason it reacts in such a jolly free-for-all with vinegar is because its baseness, or alkalinity, is competing with the acidity of vinegar, and they end up cancelling each other out.

I think. Chemistry was never my strong suit.

Anyway, I tried two cleaning experiments today.

The first was on silverware, which you can read about tomorrow. The second was on my hair.

Julie has recently mentioned in her blog that she washes her hair with baking soda. I’ve known for some time now that the ingredients in shampoos are not good for humans, but I haven’t actively searched for alternatives. But baking soda, hey, it’s right here in my kitchen cupboard! I commented to Julie that I was eager to try it out. She replied:

Hi Lavenderbay,
I highly recommend ditching the shampoo and conditioner! Be prepared for your hair to spend some time adjusting to its natural oil level though; commercial shampoos strip the oil out so your scalp compensates by producing much more oil than it needs. It might get greasy for a couple of weeks but should settle down after a while if you persist with it.

How’s that for an interesting piece of information? Shampoo makes your hair dirtier. It’s scary, it really is.

So, speaking of scary, here’s the Before picture of Turtle’s tresses:

Kinda gross and gloppy, the result of  a store-boughten bubble bath two nights previously.

I used a tablespoon of baking soda in a cup of warm water to wash, and then the juice of half a lemon squeezed into another cup of warm water to rinse.

Unsure of how much lemony freshness I wanted in my hair, I added a few drops of White Cedar (Thuja occidentalis) — well, six. One or two would have been plenty; the six that slipped from the bottle made me wonder if E.g. would arrive home and ask whether I had washed the floors.

So I rinsed out the rinse, just to make sure.

Here’s the after picture:

Note the Celtic reddish sheen. (Ignore the grey highlights. ) My hair feels silky clean, and E.g. sez it doesn’t smell like anything in particular, so I guess the dogs won’t mistake me for parquet after all.

Success!

Fat Flakes

We’re having a bit of a snowstorm. It started as minuscule rod-shaped flakes, as though the gods were in a lousy mood and had dissected all the six-pointed beauties.

That began before breakfast. Now, in early afternoon, the snow has changed to teeny-tiny balls. I grabbed the camera to show you the spherical ones lying on the more nondescript snow.

The first photo has been brightened, and the second one darkened. I find that if I tip my laptop’s screen, certain angles bring out the roundness of the fat flakes.

The Inuit would have a better word for it, but I’ve always called this round style “laundry detergent snow” .

You can easily see the big ball-shaped flakes on the top of the finer snow.

A close-up. Not the greatest photo, but you get the idea.

My Mediocrity is Saving the Planet

Seamus does some eco-friendly editing.

Almostgotit has a catchy by-line for her blog: “With every failure my reputation grows.”

It is in that spirit that I have entitled today’s blog entry.

I occasionally snivel about never having made any money from writing. My writing doesn’t reek that badly, I whine; how come other people get published and I don’t?

Umm… because I never send stuff out?

But wait! Here is a much better, far more virtuous reason, brought to you by the World Wildlife Federation. I recently received an e-mail from them, inviting me to pledge to reduce my use of paper. Here is what they ask:

I will:

* Print documents only when absolutely necessary.
* Proof documents on my computer screen rather than printing.
* Print everything double-sided.
* Stop picking up leaflets, fliers and other advertising
* Mail back advertising catalogues
* Recycle all paper I use
* Ask for recycled paper products
* Invite a friend to join this action

Do you see? By blogging, which demands on-screen proofing, requires no hard copy or covering letters or envelopes, and wastes no space in bookstore flyers or literary reviews, I am not exhibiting a fear of rejection but rather am unselfishly doing my bit for the planet.

And that’s what you can tell your friends next time they ask.

PS: If you’re interested in this latest WWF campaign, go here and click on “Stop the madness of wasteful paper consumption”.

The Forks of the Credit

Although it may sound that way, “the forks of the credit” is not an expression akin to “the horns of a monetary dilemma”. It is the name of an Ontario Provincial Park, “Credit” being the name of the river that divides — forks — in this area. Today, E.g. and I took the pupsters for a ninety-minute loop hike. In the summer, the walk could probably be done in half the time, but some of the trail today wasn’t broken, and the snow was up to the Cardis’ shoulders. They didn’t seem to complain, though.

The Bruce Trail and the Trans Canada Trail both run through this park. Here’s a signpost that E.g. photographed, showing what’s allowed on this stretch of the Trans Canada and on the park-constructed Meadow Trail. Just now, I’d take the permission to bicycle with a grain of salt.

We followed a park trail along the south side of the kettle lakes (small, deep bodies of water) to where the Bruce trail meets it at right angles along the edge of a steep bank. I was standing on the Bruce Trail looking across the valley when I took this picture. I like how it shows where moist blowing snow adhered to the sides of these trees.

This White Pine interested me. I always think of a White Pine’s wheeling branches as starting from higher up the trunk; maybe as it grows older, its lower branches drop off?

This baby’s hardly a sapling, though — I could get only two-thirds of it into the photo!

Switching from the rather big to the pretty little, here’s today’s final picture: a cute nest about waist-high from the ground, right beside one of the lakes. E.g. took this picture. The glove is just for scale; it’s resting on a branch, handless.

Serious Turtle

Today I got an e-mail from the World Wildlife Federation (I always feel the need to spell it out in order to distinguish it from the World Wrestling Federation) . They periodically ask their members to send a letter to a world leader or sign a petition on behalf of dolphins (who have a really hard time with ballpoints) or something similar. So I send, or sign. It’s easy enough to do, and I feel good supporting this organization.

Today’s e-mail is just a little different. They are asking for photos “featuring your eyes” to symbolize the idea that “the whole world is watching.”

Well, last year in my Drawing II class, we had to make watercolour self-portraits. Just the head. We were to sit with a mirror as close to our face as possible without going cross-eyed, and put in every little line, shadow, and plane that we saw.

Just as well my vanity is not invested in my looks.

Anyway, I thought I would use a crop of that watercolour. Here now, for your glee, is How Turtle Sees Herself:

Scary, n’est-ce pas? Though somewhat mitigated by the purple background.

But wait! I cropped in further. Then I played with the colours.

What do you think? Serious enough? Do you like the earth tones? Would you want this hanging on the wall behind you while you’re working at your computer?

Winter at Grenadier Pond

We took the dogs to High Park yesterday morning. We went to check out Grenadier Pond to see who might be on it. No one was on the ice at its southern end, but the open, reedy northern end had a few friendly faces.

The pond, looking west. Wait — who’s that on the water?

Check it out, it’s an American Coot!

Here’s that tight-knit group of Mallards and mega-Mallard mixes who live here all year round. The one in front of them, though…

No upward curl on the tailfeathers, no white on the speculum (shoulder patch), quite a bit darker than the female Mallard… I think we’ve got an American Black Duck here.

This grouping is properly called a raft, but I’d like to call them a duck jam. And you are…?

Ah! Northern Shovelers! You can see the water lapping over Mrs Shoveler’s bill as she wiggles it back and forth to strain tiny food particles.

Farther from shore is another, smaller, raft. Pretty sure they’re…

Yep! Those cute little diving ducks, the Buffleheads! Here’s a male. They’re black and white, but some of the black reflects nice irridescent colours.

Uh-oh. That swan is peeved about being saved till last. Hey, Shovelers, duck!

Why Canadians Have a Reputation for Discussing the Weather

Okay, everybody, fling your ball cap, bucket hat, Tilley, or tuque –  whatever you’re wearing this week — up into the air, with a shout of hurrah for Gina: she got it right.

Below are two photos I took this week. First is a crop of the photo from my November 17th entry. Gina, first to comment, said: “Looks very wintery!” Second is as close an approximation as I could crop of the same tree trunks and branches, photographed this morning. Two snapshots, three days apart. There’s always something to say about the weather.

 

Water, Rock, and Trees

Well, here we are in “foggy Saint John”, except that it’s a beautiful clear, crisp Fall day. This morning, E.g. and I went down to the seaside in Saint John West at low tide — E.g. had a notion for an ocean. We parked at the Martello Tower, a national historical site. It was built for the War of 1812. The tower overlooks the harbour of Saint John, the Digby Ferry dock, and Partridge Island, so the first four pictures in this entry were taken from pretty much the same spot.

The martello tower. The less glamorous upper addition was built for World War II.

The Church of the Assumption looks over the wharf for the Digby Ferry (ferry bound for Digby, Nova Scotia) and the long strip of the breakwater.

The causeway to Partridge Island is nearly under water at high tide. The island held quarantine facilities for immigrants (mainly the Irish) between 1785 and 1942. It was the first quarantine station in North America.

Leaving the car in the Martello Tower parking lot, we walked down Sea Street to the beach, and poked about for a bit there.

Bladder wrack is pretty homely when it’s high and dry…

…but in its proper element, it has its own charm.

With sharp eyes, one can turn up a few pretty bits of shell and stone. I could see a lot of granite of various colours, and some pieces of quartz as well.

After mucking about on the beach, we strolled through the neighbourhood a bit, and then had lunch at Deluxe Fish and Chips on Main St W. They use a big cutter machine to make the french fries — no frozen spuds here.

We returned to E.g.’s home at 2 pm, whereupon the four of us piled into her dad’s car and we headed for Rockwood Park. You can’t miss this one on a map of Saint John. It includes an area for camping, a zoo, a golf course, and several small lakes. The Trans-Canada Trail (so far still an ambition — there are bits of it in each province) is one of Rockwood Park’s many walking trails. We walked around Lily Lake, which is currently between stints of hosting either paddleboats and canoes, or skaters. We also passed the beach on one of the Fisher Lakes, a lovely children’s playground sponsored by the Kiwanis Club, and a horse stable.

E.g.’s parents admire the view onto Lily Lake.

The beach. The Fisher Lakes are artificial, but don’t really look it anymore. The “graffiti” on the rock on the far side reads, “No diving”.

The far end of the same lake. The puddleducks like this spot just fine.

We returned to the house an hour or so before supper. E.g. showed me how to use her Lightroom program to fiddle with my photos, we had supper, I snuck away to get today’s blog entry done, and now everyone is queuing up for the computer. Until tomorrow!

(Wordless Wednesday) Seasonal Greetings