Harnessed up and ready to go

I’d been waiting all winter to take a sleigh ride. With little snow, the time never
seemed quite right. Finally, in late February, a friend suggested ‘now or
never’, so we went for it. The farm that offers the sleigh rides is only 10
minutes drive from home, in a community called Notch Hill. The property lies
between the rural road and rolling hills to the west.

Chip and Dale, a pair of grey percherons

On arrival
we met Chip and Dale, 11 year old the grey percherons — our team for the ride.
This is their first winter at the farm and they are ‘in training’ for this job.
The owners bought the pair from a ranch in Indian Head, SK where they’d worked hauling winter feed for bison. This seems like a soft job for them, and a perfect way to keep them together in their new home. The farm has 10 older horses, and a yearling percheron. He’s still black, but may turn white as he matures.

Off we go!

Our group boarded the sleigh and we were off to the jingling of sleigh bells just as it started to snow. Hurrah! It was easy to imagine it was still Christmas time.
The route wound through meadows and small stands of fir and cedar, up and down a few short hills and back across a summer pasture to the barn, for about 45 minutes. Chip and Dale were given a few rest stops after pulling their load uphill. Like I said, cushy job, with great treatment for the crew.

Back to the cosy cabin for a warmup

We were entertained with farm family stories from our driver and his father, who hopped on board the sleigh at the last minute. After the ride, we dined on homemade cinnamon buns and hot chocolate in the little cabin that is rented out to tourists in the summer. A fun way to end the trip…….only wish it could have been longer.

A sanctuary for little creatures....

We had a white Christmas in the Shuswap….barely. Okay, this is a picture from a previous winter, but it’s what I’d hoped our cedar tree would look like on Christmas Day. It is the tallest tree close to the house, just off the back deck. It has doubled in size since we discovered it, hidden among the branches of a clump of three slim cedar trees that reached 80-90 feet. Those trees have been gone for several years, taken down when the neighbor clearcut his lot next door. Our three would have been left unsheltered from any winds that spilled down the hill. But we were overjoyed to see this little fellow ready to take their place. It’s too tall to decorate with lights, but it makes a fine launching point for birds that visit the deck feeder.

In winter, the tree reminds me of ‘a secret place’ that appeared each winter in the woodlot next door to our PEI country home. “A circle of towering fir trees, already heavy with a soft, white blanket, had stopped much more loose snow from blowing away. Inside the circle was a sheltered spot, well below the level of the snow banks that surrounded it. It was like a perfect, miniature walled kingdom. When you approached it, you found yourself looking down from halfway up the trees, the snow was that high!”

We used to snowshoe there, with Toby, our golden retriever. When I slid down into the snow-room, he’d peer at me over the edge of the snowbank. With a child’s imagination, the space became a room ‘downstairs’ in the woods, opening into other small rooms in the snow shadows beneath the skirts of the fir trees. “It was obvious we were not the first visitors….tracks of snowshoe hares led in and out of each room. They had chosen this secret place to gambol in the moonlight…unseen by fox or owl. ”

What made it so intriguing, though, was its fleeting nature. “It may never have been here before, in exactly this way, and may never be again. If it were not such a short-lived miracle of nature, would it seem so special? “ At the time I wrote about this place, I mused…”occasionally when we stop to see, not merely to look, we are lucky enough to witness a brief, precious moment of existence.”

As I watch chickadees darting in and out among the snow-laden branches of this cedar, it’s like an echo of that other ‘secret place’ we knew 30 years ago. We’d come upon that other spot by accident, the first time. And this little cedar had appeared, almost the same way, as the big trees fell. It’s great for the birds in all seasons, while it stirs particularly pleasant winter memories.

Echinacea, aka purple coneflower

Outside, things are a bit dull just now, as the year is winding down; we’re almost to winter solstice again. This morning there was a lunar eclipse (which I missed….sleeping!). Otherwise, no excitement outdoors. Little snow, no stormy days, mild enough for a long walk in the afternoon if you take advantage of the few sunny hours.  Few visitors to my bird feeder. Christmas lights around the neighbourhood brighten it up in the evenings, but…maybe it’s time to remember the summer garden. Lots of bright spots there!

Like my patches of echinacea and brown-eyed susans. I have great respect for flowers that seed themselves. They don’t give you any problems; instead they reward you with glorious color and happy faces standing tall in the sun. Bees and hummingbirds love them. When the flowers are done, the tall stems support full seed heads that the chickadees can nibble on into the winter. I know I can look forward to seeing these beauties appear again next spring, in even larger clumps than last year. In fact, there’s always enough to dig out and give away….spreading the joy around. Come to think of it, that’s how I got those brown-eyed susans in the first place!

Rudbeckia, aka brown-eyed susan

Can you see it?  It’s a barred owl, nicely camouflaged among the birch leaves in this tree at the bottom of my yard. I would have been easy to walk right past without spotting it. The bird stayed for a couple of hours one afternoon, long enough for me to get the camera, creep as close as I dared without spooking it, and capture its photo.

The barred owl is quite large, with round head but no ear tufts. It watches for small animal or bird prey with dark eyes. But it has to be on the lookout for the great horned owl, its enemy, and a species close to its size that inhabits the same forested areas. The barred owl is widespread in eastern North America, but its range has expanded to cover the eastern part of BC.

This is the owl whose call is thought to sound like, ‘Who cooks for you….who cooks for you-all’. And it does! We camped overnight in Allegany State Park in New York state last fall, and in the evening, that very call echoed through the woods. We didn’t see the owl, but we didn’t have to. No mistaking that line of dialogue!

A mountain midwinter's day

Winter solstice — December 21 — is interpreted in various ways across the globe. In some cultures, it is considered the first day of winter. Others, though, see this turning point as midwinter. I’m in that camp, not because of country of origin or religion, but simply a personal preference for logic and symmetry.

I enjoy Canada’s four seasons. I like the varying temperatures, and hours of daylight and darkness, anticipating the cycle of plant growth and the migration of birds, all of which give the calendar year its predictable parts. With spring and fall as transition seasons, it leaves a bigger chunk of time to allot to summer and winter.  It breaks down fairly evenly, really: March and April bring the longer days and warmer spring weather, and by May, it can be downright hot where I live. Summer continues through June, July, August…but by September, there’s a distinct change in the air. It’s fall! A couple of months later the leaves have turned, fallen, and there could be snow by early November. In fact, in many parts of this country, overnight temperatures are below freezing meaning snow will begin to stick on the ground long before the winter solstice arrives. It makes sense to me that winter begins with November, and continues until the end of February. That makes winter solstice, ‘midwinter’.

Logically, it is the shortest day and the pivotal point when things begin to turn around. That sounds like ‘middle’ to me. It’s the same for summer solstice: June 21, the longest day. Another point of change. Surely it’s what Shakespeare had in mind for ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’.

Every year at this time, the media laments over the huge dumps of snow in some parts of the country, ‘when it isn’t even winter, yet’. But if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck…you know…. To the folks shovelling it, it’s winter. And think about it this way: if this is only the beginning of winter, and the first day of spring is March, it means Canada only has a little over 2 months of winter. Bah! Impossible! What Canadian would believe that? On the other hand, if this is midwinter…hurrah, for those who will tire of it soon and begin wishing for spring…it’s half over.

Midwinter...overlooking the lake

Footnotes by ursus americanus

Reports have been flying around the neighborhood for a couple of weeks…

Across the road, an iron post holding up a bird feeder was bent double.  Someone walking saw huge round tracks–fresh–in the snow, and decided to take the car instead.  Another surprised a “big, dark fluffy thing” in his driveway as he went outside. It ran across the road, up the hill towards the trees. And, of course, there have been discoveries of large piles of scat here and there. Hmmm. Seems we have a bear wandering the subdivision.

It’s neat to hear about wildlife so close to home, but shouldn’t bears be hibernating by now? We had an Arctic blast with windchills that kept us all huddling indoors for several days last week. And any bear in this area should be fat and happy after chowing down on sockeye salmon for weeks. Apparently this bruin isn’t quite ready to call it a night.

I’ve been watching ‘the back 40′ as daylight fades in mid-afternoon. Closest I’ve come to seeing the critter is a fresh trail of pawprints in the snow on a driveway just a block away. Crisp and clear, showing each toe and claws, they measured over 9 inches.

Since the bear is minding his own business (only yours if the garbage or birdfeeder is accessible), I hope he’s allowed to choose his own bedtime. I may have to change my plans to walk to the Community Centre one evening this week, though.  I’d have to pass right by that driveway, and out there, I’d rather not meet up with anything big, dark and fluffy.

A miracle of nature unfolded underwater in streamers of red…sockeye red.

This fall saw a record number of sockeye salmon return to spawn in the Shuswap Lake area of BC. For most, the destination was the Adams River that reaches north into Adams Lake and into the Cariboo. Spawning channels were stuffed with fish as they made their way past Roderick Haig-Brown Provincial Park. It’s the easiest place to see them as you walk along the wooded trails or find your way to the lakeshore. Millions of people came to do just that.

 This is the end of a 4-year cycle for these fish. They hatched from eggs in this river system, spent a couple of years in the lakes before working their way to the sea, down the Fraser River. Science being a less than perfect art, no one is exactly sure where they go in the oceans, or how they find their way unerringly back to the starting point of their lives. But they do, in varying numbers. This years record return of over 5 million exceeded predictions by a bundle. Now the question: is this a blip in nature’s scheme, or does it show that the sockeye isn’t as endangered as we all think? Will the next big run in 2014 be as big? Many questions, few solid answers.

Best to simply enjoy this spectacle. We took two walks around the park, one early in the run and one when it was about at peak numbers. As the count rose, so did the odor of dead and rotting fish along the beach and river banks. It seems such a waste of life. In fact, the forest and its inhabitants have been vastly enriched this fall, in this area. From eagles and bears to the trees themselves, a wealth of nutrients has passed back into the earth and water. We’ve seen gulls hanging around longer than usual, likely giddy with the banquet offered for many weeks. I asked a park ranger if they had to remove any of the heaped up bodies of fish. The answer, even at such a high count, was no, that all the fish would be eaten or decompose and disappear over the winter. Nature, giving back to nature…

Getting up close and personal with a sockeye

All will die so that other life forms can thrive

In the garden, which borders a small woodsy area and an empty lot, I usually try to keep senses alert. We’ve had bears and even cougars pass this way, bytimes. The other day, though, head in rhubarb, I was miles away. Heard a soft rustling on the other side of a line of wild rose bushes. And a snort! Yep, I thought, that’s definitely a snort.

I looked up to see a large light brown body through the bushes, moving slowly. What? I was only about 3 metres away. I stood up, and caught sight of velvety antlers. Whew! Maybe not a bear or a cougar. But, having seen a recent news item about aggressive deer, I backed up toward the house just in case.

Sir Buck–white-tailed–strolled unconcerned down the line of roses then crossed into the bottom of my yard. He nibbled a few raspberries, then turned and saw me watching. It was a stand-off for several minutes.

Did you want to take my picture?

Okay, I thought, maybe there’s time to get the camera. Into the house, grab it, hope the batteries were still live (Yes!), back out. Sir Buck hadn’t moved. In fact, he posed rather coyly for me to snap a few shots. Some were blurry, and I didn’t want to get closer. After the photo-op, Sir Buck ambled off down the back into the trees. Gone among the shadows, silent and unconcerned.

That's all the time I can give you today.

I love living where nature wanders through my little garden patch….even if I have to share some produce now and then.

Something fun for a first post….a visit to the Turtle Valley Donkey Refuge.

Not knowing donkeys at all, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Well, I do know Eeyore; doesn’t everyone?  The road in was dusty, the day growing hotter as noon approached. I was surprised to see many other folks at this fundraising event. A little group of donkeys clustered by the entry fence. They obviously looked forward to the visitors, to be scratched and petted. Fed carrots; darn, I didn’t bring any. I didn’t hear any hee-hawing, yet.

More donkeys up the hill, alongside a ‘wall of fame’ profiling all the residents that have been rescued from various unsavory situations and given a safe, secure and loving home. Not to be sold, or bred, just to live out their donkey lives in peace. A wonderful idea, and great way to use a rural acreage in a lush, green valley with a lake nearby.

I met Jose, who has vision problems (Jose, can you see….? Sorry, couldn’t resist) but who had the loveliest mop of soft, curly hair to scratch, and like all of the others, huge ears. I think I like donkey ears the best. Jose was very well mannered, only getting a bit skittish if someone approached from the side, as he only sees shadows.

Meet Jose!

If I decide to ‘adopt a donkey’, it will be Jose. What kind of life would it be if one couldn’t see?