Today's count

photo by Ron Oriti 2007

Hot, but not too hot.  Blue, with clouds accenting the sky.  A cool wind which is most pleasing.  And I walked among the blue and orange dragonflies in the crabapple grove.  The blue dragons have a wing span of about five inches and are a joy to watch hovering and turning, and once flipping over backwards as they eat the dreaded mosquito.  The orange dragons are smaller and spend more time close to the grass.  The apples on the trees are just starting to turn.  But sadly the ones on the yummy tree have some kind of blight, so there will be no crabapple pie again this year. Sigh.

Yesterday's Count

Blue, blue, blue.  The roses, pink and bumblebee, fill the air with sweet.  Brightly coloured children scream and laugh through the sprinklers.  I jump through to wet my bare legs and remember.  A little breeze ruffles things, like single blades of grass, and carries the scent of the roses.  My favourite crabapple three is thick with bulbous young apples.  Horse feather clouds paint one piece of blue, wispy tendrils curled.

today's count

Back to the crabapple grove.  It is snow free now and the robins are back.  I counted 12 in total.  Five were flying madly through the branches.  Three were squabbling over fallen crabapples, and the rest where spread about the grass with activities of their own.  Three crows, two lounging on the verge as though they owned it.  Who knows, perhaps they do.  A magpie.  A gum wrapper, and a construction peg.  The sky is grey, but at least nothing is falling out of it, knock on wood.  And I was walking around barefoot in my birkenstocks.

15 sleeps

I stand in the crabapple grove, with five magpies arrayed on the branches with the brown apples, all of us enjoying the sunshine of a short afternoon.  I think, two weeks, fifteen sleeps. And when I wake up on the fifteenth day it will the First Longer Day.  The best day of the year for me, perhaps, when viewed that way, the most sacred day of the year.  It is the day that fall, our long fall into darkness, is over, the sun stops and turns, and returns.  Winter begins.  The Light grows, as though in a mother's belly, until in early February, even the sleepiest of us awakens to awareness that the days are getting longer.

Today's count

Spring, just passing through, but continuing the decades long banishment of cabin fever.  The last winter I actually had cabin fever was 1984-85.  Snow came on October 16th, 2 feet of it, and did not leave until nearly May.  In February, going mad, we cranked the heat in the residence, played the beach boys and ran around in shorts, drinking from umbrella-ed drinks and having water fights.  It was a great relief.  But there has never been a winter since that has been as bad.  And today, spring stopped by for a visit. On my walk to the crabapple grove there were five children, building a snow person.  From my angle she looked like a wide prairie farm wife with a pioneer bonnet. Two piles of ice chunks released from the road way while it was possible to dislodge them.  An eight car train calling its way across the train bridge.  The wind, moving the branches of the pines as though they were ships in the sea.

Today's count

November flowers!  And spring flowers at that. Two lady bugs, three people, two of them in red against the brown rust colour that most things are now.  And the few crabapples hanging on.

me vs the ipad: round three

My epiphany.  To interact properly with an ipad one must think like a toddler.  Plunked into a world without language or point of reference just poke and prod ( I actually advise against putting the ipad in your mouth as a method of exploration, or biting it, though I have yet to discount the pleasure of smacking it, it really isn't its fault it is so frustrating to work with) until it does something that pleases you.  Then make it do that again.  If you can, or more to the point, until you can. Repeat. While this learning method is frustrating for an adult (and as the parents of toddlers will attest, the toddler too), it is an excellent exercise for the brain, the determination, and the patience.  Henry is as yet unsmacked, and he came with me today on a refreshing walk through the crabapple grove.  Fall is here in earnest.  The air is sharp, the yellows are bright.  The apples are turning to wine.

Today's count

An October wind, strong and warm, so strong it has raised the leaves from talk to song.  A chipmunk along a high branch of the crabapple trees considering the well ripened fruit.  A class of grade school kids gathered tidily on the bluff above the river, their abandoned bikes laying on the yellowing grass, their attention possibly on their teacher taking about erosion, possibly on the wind, the warmth, the river, the geese gathering in battalions below waiting for final take off.

Friday afternoon in the crapapple grove

Stand at the far end of the crabapple grove, after walking its length in the hot fall afternoon air, over the browning green grass.  Hear the leaves of the poplar, now yellow and lime, rattle against each other in the breeze.  Tip back your head and look up. Above you is a cloud spread across the sky like an enormous feathery wing.  Between you and it the gulls fly, dive, and hang in the air, riding the wind.

Signs of fall

My big blue tarp draped over my potted tomato plants. Street lights at 7:30 pm.  Small patches of condensation on the outer windows in the morning. Socks. The sunlight patch lying wide in the middle of my living room floor instead narrow of over by the window.  A killing frost which has halved the number of wasps banging against the outside of the building begging for a snug winter home.  Not in this wall thanks.  They really are hungry this time of year.  The other day out in the crabapple grove I found two of them licking out the inside of an empty beer bottle.  Yuck. I banged them out and removed the beer bottle.  Who wants one of those in the crabapple grove.  Also, I tend to gather up empty bottles and cans because a  friend of mine uses the money from bottles to buy cows for those in need of such items.  When I check her site I see that she has not updated in in a good long while...or has mooooved it?  But as I know her I don't bother to look at it.  She is, however at cow 50.  So I keep giving her the bottles I find. 

Yes, that really is my great great grandfather's cow.  And yes, he named his cows after his daughters. And yes, Emma there won a prize in 1876 at local Centennial celebrations (that's USA Centennial, Canada is still only counting from 1867, though John Ralston Saul has been known to dispute that). 

And yes, some of the donation cows got named for these ancient and well remembered cows.

Today's count: one crabapple

If you stand by the window and gaze upon the beauty of the day you might be tempted to don your shorts and t-shirt.  But stick your nose out into the day and you will find it suddenly remembers what frost bite is.  The wind is coming down from the north as off a glacier.  So bundle.  Socks, jeans, jacket, in the early morning remember your gloves for biking.  In the afternoon you may leave your gloves in your jacket pocket.  In the shelter of the crabapple grove you may even take off your jacket.  The sun is strong. The crabapples are still more yellow than red, which is odd.  Though the fuchsia coloured ones are in full swing.  Brilliant.  I am sad to report there will be no pie this year, someone else has beat me to the pie apples and plucked the tree bare.  Sigh.  I shall have to make due with regular apples.  There was one wind fall, just fresh from the tree. Yummm.

today's count

More precisely yesterday and the day before and today.  Heat.  Lots of heat.  And not the heat granted us by this imaginary climate change of the planet which has caused increasing humidity in Saskatchewan over the last fifteen years, the heat the clings to you like a sick child.  No, this is the heat of memory, childhood memory, that brushes dry across your skin, lets you know it is all around you, a hot breath, but never more than touches you.  This heat I love, for its memories, for its separateness.  This heat comes under a cloudless sky.  This heat releases you the moment you step into the shade of a tree.  It can not follow you there.  This heat dries the sprinkler water from you before you get back to the office from your coffee break. This heat is the summer I grew up in, when blue was all above for weeks on end.  Put your feet in the river, sit under a tree and listen for the humm of the bees in the blossoms of the crabapple trees.

Today's count

Nine small people taking advantage of the sprinklers on the museum lawn.  Five adults not quite taking advantage of, and not quite avoiding, the sprinklers in the crabapple grove.  Several smiles, a grin, and laughing.  Humidity 34%.  I was bone dry before I got back to my desk.

Watched crabapples never rippen: today's count

Millions of half rippened crabapples.  Just a wee bit tart.  That is just a wee bit tarter than normally tart crabapples.  But I have hope.  Two white butterflies cavorting, two red gold dragon flies taking a break and sunning themselves on a stick.  They are very sensitive to movement.  I was sorry to disturb their break, they have been working so hard, there are almost now mosquitos left.  Blue sky, huge fluffy clouds, warm air.  Quiet.

Today's count

This morning, at home, a strawberry.  My first.  I wrapped it in an old teabag so the birds wouldn't get it.  This afternoon in the crabapple grove I saw a cavorting gopher, more mosquitoes than I care for, a jogger who seemed to feel his role in life was to hold up a pine tree, and a small horde of art students lolling amid the grass blades drawing their little hearts out.

One several and several ones

Todays' count:  one gopher, sitting up and doing that adorable four legged hop they do*; one small brown and orange butterfly; one magpie seen, one magpie heard, one yellow orb in a vast blue space, warm to the touch, one large red ride on lawn mower, one man riding the large red ride on lawn mower and wearing a white hat, several thousands green wrinkly little crabapples.  I am dreaming of pie already.

*for my opinion of Richardson's Ground Squirrels check out an earlier count.

today's count

Not a single blossom left in the crabapple grove.  I look forward to seeing the little green apples appear.  A single magpie at the tip of a pine tree.  And the grass scented mist of the sprinklers. 

Have a lovely weekend.

Today's count

A billion white crabapple blossoms, one tiny blue butterfly, and a magpie, wings and tail spread in a startling view of black and white feathers against the back drop of the white blossoms.

slapping season has begun

Where you to ask me my favourite seasons they would be: in spring:  spring, fall, winter, summer; in fall:  fall, spring, winter, summer.  In the crabapple grove today I can say that summer has arrived.  The mini vampires are loose with a vengeance and I slapped my way all the way to the river and back. I can also report, though, that the leaves are spreading out in their full pale green spring colour and sounding against each other as the wind blows.  The wind has also scattered the cloud cover of the last few days and blue is back and wide.

sprinklers!

Walking back from the crabapple grove I see that the university has deemed the moment nigh for the use of sprinklers.  I managed to skip through the on slot in front of the entrance to my building with only a slight misting.  The bike rack, where my girl awaits our ride home, is completely soaked. Good thing I keep a bag on her seat or I'd be embarrassed. :-)

In the crabapple grove a shortage of robins, only three.  But there were two magpies, which might account for the dearth of robins, as well as two brown white wing tipped butterflies and a ladybug.  And the grass, ohh, so nice on the bare tootsies.  There is this most beautiful blue green tussock grass. It is especially soft on the feet.