Good news and bad news

The good news is that my computer is back from the Apple shop sooner than I anticipated. The bad news is that despite their confidence that the email problem has been resolved, it is still exactly as dysfunctional as it was when I took it in this morning. My great happiness at getting it back early has provoked an equally unreasonable and irrational state of peeve that it still isn't fixed. Luckily for them, by the time I figured this out, they had closed for the day, and doubtless by tomorrow morning I'll have recovered my sense of perspective and will be able to be civil when I take it back in again. I hope. 

Prairie skies and wildlife are the order of the day for today's images. We've had some lovely sunsets (all that molten gold colour) that I've been catching on the way home from the barn. Unless I change my riding times, there won't be a lot more as the sun is already quite far off the horizon now when I am heading back to the city. This one is from last week.

 It's been a good raven week for me. I've managed to get some shots of the neighbourhood ravens as they go about their business in my vicinity, although mostly I see them overflying the house just after first light, as they head north from wherever they roost to the fast-food raven buffets on the commercial street a couple of blocks north of us. I counted seven flying over one day last week. I can never get those shots as the light is feeble at that hour, and by the time I can run down from the studio and get outside with the camera, they'd be long gone and settled in at McDonald's or KFC. Shot two shows a raven I photographed at  strip mall on the south edge of the city, gleefully making off with a food prize. He was hotly pursued by a number of other ravens, all keen to scare him into dropping it so they could pounce on it. I'll have to lurk around that mall more often, as that was really a very good site for my purposes.
On a sadder local raven note, Jim came home from an outing on foot to report a dead raven at the base of a power transformer in an alley on our block. I hot-footed it out with a plastic bag to gather up the body, which is now reposing in our garage freezer. It wasn't a recent death, I'd say, as the remnants were very dessicated. I have some interesting photos of it, but I'll spare you those.

Shot three is poor quality, having been taken through my very dirty windshield, at a distance, and into a shadowy area. It's the Brevoort Park rabbit, who was making his way along the front of the school as I drove by yesterday. He was in freeze mode here, hoping to blend into his surroundings, and doing a reasonably good job of it.

 I got this shot this morning as I was heading out the door to walk over to the British Food shop to buy some tea. As soon as I spotted this raven on the corner lamp-post, I shot back into the house for the camera. He was using the top of the light as a table, and had several bits of gathered food set out for his eating enjoyment. I have a wide selection of offerings on my platform bird feeder that I think should appeal to ravens (bacon, sausage, beef fat and peanuts) but so far they don't seem to be coming in for them. Jim thinks we need to put the food in fast food containers to get their attention. I'm actually thinking about doing this.

The final shot today is one I have been working on in Photoshop. The basic image is one I took in late November when we had fantastic rich late afternoon light and no snow yet. I've layered it with a photo of "rust" paper that I created in the studio, and with a soaring raven added as the final touch.

Heads up

I plan to take my computer in to get my email problem sorted out tomorrow. It might not get back in time for the coming week's blog post. Do not panic. I am fine and the computer will be fine too. Regular posts will return next week, and with any luck, tomorrow's will be on schedule as well.

Another good-bye

We ran out of time for one of our dear dogs this past week. After over a year of struggling to keep Mickey's health problems under control and still give him a good quality of life, we had to concede the battle. His medications were failing on a regular basis, his dignity, comfort and sense of pride were under assault by his illness, and the equilibrium between good and bad days was tipping in the wrong direction. His refusal to eat in his last couple of days was the final message we needed to make the decision to let him go. Many times over the past year, when we were experiencing a downturn in his condition, one or the other of us would cautiously and carefully mention that maybe his time was coming. The other person (we traded back and forth on this) would say "no, not yet", and indeed he would rally and we'd see him return to a reasonable quality of life. Last Wednesday was the first time that we both agreed the end was at hand. 

As it happened, we already had a vet appointment for the next morning, as Oscar needed some blood work done. Since it was a viciously cold morning when no-one would voluntarily go out, we thought our chances of getting Mickey into the clinic at the same time were good. That turned out to be the case, so we all set off for Mickey's final journey. He went very quietly in lovely surroundings at Forest Grove vet clinic. They have a comforting room with big windows, many plants, comfortable chairs, and a rug in front of a fireplace for the departing friend. On thinking about it after the fact, I'd be happy to lie down in front of that fireplace and go peacefully myself when my time comes. Jim, Oscar and I were all with him, and for what it was, it was the best it could possibly be. Go in peace, old friend. 

Shot one shows Mickey and brother Oscar as tiny puppies, photo courtesy of their breeder. Oscar is on the far right, Mickey is resting his head on Oscar. Their life story saw them separated as puppies, to different owners in different provinces, then as their intertwined fates evolved, Mickey ended up with our family as a young adult, having had two previous owners before he came to us. Brothers reunited. 

Shot two shows the boys as six year old adults. That's Mickey on the left. His first owner campaigned him as a show dog, hence the cropped ears. I have always stayed with natural ears for the Boxers I have raised, and even the show world is slowly evolving to accepting non-cropped ears. It was often quite hard to get a good shot of Mickey. He was a very handsome dog, but somehow contrived to look neckless and squat in many of the shots I have taken of him over the years. 

Shot three shows Mickey more recently (earlier this year), greying out but with a lot of mature dignity, in a characteristic position catching some of the morning sun in the dining room. 

   
Shot four is one of my favourite shots of Mickey, showing his alert good looks when he was in his prime.                                

                

Shot five shows the fireplace-mantle shrine commemorating our boy. It features an art image I did a number of years back from the photo above, flowers sent by my daughter in BC, and a stylized pen and ink work by Mickey's second owner, who lives in the city and has kept in touch with him over the years.

Sad as it has been to see our boy go, we are grateful to have had him in our life. He was the one who worried about us, kept track of our comings and goings, did security patrol in the back yard, welcomed guests with great enthusiasm, and generally took on the responsibility of keeping everything in hand on the home front. Oscar, the entitled brother raised by us, was more than happy to hand over all responsibility to Mickey in order to log more time on our bed. Mickey was the "what can I do for you?" brother, whereas Oscar is all about "what can you do for me?" Doubtless I went astray somewhere with the one I raised! Oscar has changed his patterns a bit since Mickey left us, and now seems to feel the need to check on us a bit more often, but he certainly lacks Mickey's dedication to the job. I think for Mickey it was a calling and one he fulfilled well.

A change in the weather--

In the big scheme of things, nothing much (as usual) of great import happened this week. Since we mostly live in the "small"scheme of things in our day to day lives, I can report a couple of notable items. One is that we finally have winter here. Not just a bit of winter either. We are plunged into a classic Saskatchewan January deep freeze. We've gone from daily highs a few days ago of around 0 C / 32 F or a bit warmer, to today's high of -25 C/ -13 F, with the windchill making it feel like something in the mid minus 30s. Throw in the weekend's high winds and relatively heavy snowfall, and it's "instant" winter here. 

The other notable family news was that my daughter in Nelson BC acquired two littermate brother Boxer puppies. This wasn't a planned acquisition, but when the little guys turned up in the local SPCA Jen's husband (that would be the one that didn't want either any more dogs or a Boxer) made the arrangements to pick them up and brought them home for her as a surprise. The only thing more surprising than this was his comment that if the third brother hadn't already been spoken for, he likely would have taken all three. Thank goodness for whoever took the other brother! I love my Boxers but I've never raised two from puppies at the same time, and that will be enough of a challenge, I'm sure. 

I'll try and get some photos from Jen to share on this blog. Sadly, because of my *own* littermate brother Boxers, now in various degrees of health decline due to their age (they're 11, breed average age is 8), we can't go out to visit as our boys can't be left at a boarding kennel any more, so we stay pretty close to the home front these days. 

Shot one today shows the leading edge of the weather front that brought us winter. The ditches and fields that are relatively bare in this shot are now covered with snow.

Once the snow has fallen, it's easier to appreciate the individual shapes and forms of the roadside weeds and grasses, that up to now were just part of a gold-brown mass in the ditch.

I was surprised at how much snow came down overnight on Saturday. Jim spent a good portion of Sunday working at clearing the walks and driveway, with the snowblower and shovel. I was concerned that my perennial plants would be hit hard by the predicted cold as they were uncovered and open to the air, but now that they have a good insulating cover of snow, I'm not too concerned for their welfare. This shot shows our front yard, complete with several bird feeders which are suddenly much more popular. 

Here are the above-mentioned fields and ditches with interestingly sculpted shapes formed by the blowing wind.

In the "who knew?" department, we finally got to see some photos that were taken in the late 50s (I'm guessing 1958 or 59). I came across an old film tin in the spare room, and knowing that my grandson likes artifacts from the "old days" of film cameras, I offered it to him. He opened it to find an unexposed roll of film. We had no idea how old or what it was, so Jim thought it worthwhile to take it to a specialty camera store and get it processed and put on a disc. Imagine our surprise when old family photos appeared in the end result. This is one of the shots, showing my friend Heather on the left, me in the middle (great glasses, eh?) and my sister Jean. Location looks to be a hill on the side of the river where the cars were lined up to take a river ferry to the other side. Photographer would almost certainly have been my Dad. 

                                       

Still November

So far this year, it's more early November yet again. Mild temperatures (mostly a bit above freezing) by day, a little cooler at night, and very little snow on the ground. That's somewhat offset by an excessive amount of ice underfoot, but for the most part if you are careful you can navigate most of the streets by foot. Since we have yet to experience winter here ( although it is projected to be colder in a couple of days) I was particularly interested today to hear the reports out of Cordova Alaska, where they have had 15.5 meters /18 feet of snow in the last three weeks. At the moment the National Guard has been called out to help the locals deal with it. Since the prairies are a generally dry climate (with the occasional stunning exceptions) year-round, we tend not to get a lot of snow at the best of times. We specialize in dry cold (usually *darn* cold), sunshine, and wind for the most part. Just not yet this year. 

With the nice weather, my "winter" photography has continued. Last week I went out to visit a friend and get some photos of her new puppy, Noah. Noah is an Italian mastiff/catahoula leopard dog cross, favouring the mastiff  side of his heritage so far, with a calm demeanor and low-key energy. This photo shows him in one of the horse turnouts with his "big brother" Gus, who is a Boxer/Mastiff cross. 

After we finished the dog photos, I wanted to check on the part of her horse herd that was close at hand, so we went to visit the young stock in the east pasture. Something was happening off in the distance that had the attention of all the horses. I was running short on time by the time we got out to the horses and didn't get that many shots, so I hope to make another trip soon to spend more time with the equine population at her place. 

With the potential end of the nice weather forecast for later this week, I thought I'd better get out to the zoo today to see what I could photograph. I try to go there fairly often, but it's been quite a while since I last got out there. The swans and waterfowl live indoors in the winter, but have access to a fenced yard outside, and that's where I found this swan today, enjoying a good preen in the outdoors.

Many of the animals were quite active when I was at the zoo, including the male lion. He came here a year and a half ago (if I recall correctly, not a given) as a juvenile, but has certainly grown into solid adulthood in the interval. He is now a father as well. The female and the two cubs were in the indoor enclosure and apart from him, and I think he is likely missing the company of his mate. 

Here is a close-up shot of his head with his now abundant mane.

Off we go--

Off we lurch into a new year, which for me has started in a somewhat uneven fashion. I've added another year to my personal count in the past week, with my birthday falling between Christmas and New Year's day. If you're old enough to remember the Beatles' song that has the words "will you still need me, will you still feed me..." you'll know how old I now am. 

We had a low-key "in between" week, and a quiet New Year's eve as well. I got a few rides in here and there, working around the riding workshops, schooling show, and "New Year's barn dance celebration at the stables" preparations. Didn't go to the barn dance partly due to dog issues and partly due to my aversion to large gatherings, but of course in retrospect I now wish I had, as it sounds like it was a great event.  Maybe next year! :-) 

We walked the dogs on New Year's eve, a first as best I can recall since it's normally way too cold for any of us, then vegged out for the rest of the evening. I ended up watching "Airplane" on the comedy gold channel, which was ridiculous (somehow I've never managed to see this movie in the several decades since it came out) but strangely satisfactory viewing for the occasion. Got up New year's day to realize that a blood vessel had burst in one of my eyes overnight and I now look as though I binge-drank so much that my eyeballs started to bleed. Not really an effect I care to cultivate, but not much to be done about it. I didn't even have a glass of wine the evening before, never mind anything stronger!  

The strangeness continues with a murdered body having been found this morning on the south side of the highway I take to the stables every day. I often drive down the little gravel road adjacent to the highway, where the body was located, since I can stop to get photos without being in danger from other traffic. Glad I wasn't the one to happen upon the scene today!!

On to cheerier topics and the photos for this week. Shot one is of a Gypsy cob filly at North Fork stables. I went out there on the 31st with my friend Ed (the rocking horse carver) and his extended family. Ed might have a Gypsy cob rocking horse project in his future, and he wanted to take the chance to meet the real thing. Luckily for him, one of the largest herds in the country is just north of the city, so off we went. It was mild but really windy that day, as you can see by the wild mane of this young mare and the dancing snowflakes. It has been a long time since my last visit to the Gypsy cobs, and I don't want to let that much time go by before my next visit. They are endlessly fascinating to photograph and observe. 

We've had a touch of snow since Christmas, so the country landscape looks a little more wintery than was the case in the past month. Shot two was taken from the side of the road on another very windy day. Come to think of it, we've had a number of windy days in the past few weeks!

I got a couple of very nice additions to my raven collection for Christmas. This shot shows the wonderful raven silhouette lamp that my daughter in BC gave me. It got slightly damaged during transport, but today I got it mended and installed in the living room. I'm thrilled with it!

My grandson and I went down to the riverbank one day last week for a photo shoot. The light was poor but we toddled along the pathway from the art gallery to the weir and back again anyway. Shot four shows Mark lining up a shot, likely of some of the ducks that are still around on the open water. The footing was quite icy and at one point I slipped a bit, which caused a bit of a reaction from Mark. Thinking how nice it was that my grandson was aware of my advancing years (I think this was the day after my birthday) and concerned about me, I made the comment that since I hadn't broken anything when I went off my horse a couple of months ago, I likely wouldn't have hurt myself if I had fallen. His comment was "but you're carrying *two* cameras!!". Oh, right. Heaven forfend the cameras should be in danger!

There are some interpretive installations along the riverbank walkway, giving information about the various species of birds and animals to be found in the area. While I'm not generally in approval of defacing public property, I did find this little bit of graffiti to be quite funny.

It came and it went

As it does every year, Christmas has now come and gone, whether we were ready or not. My festive season seems to get simpler as the years go by, so none of the run-up was too stressful. Despite never really going "shopping" as such, I acquired the "family and friends" gifts one way and another over the year, and with one exception also got them dispatched around the country in a timely fashion.

We did our usual family to-and-fro from one household to another on Christmas eve (game night, playing Joker/marble Pursuit -although we have a hand-made wooden board which is visually far superior to the one featured in this link), out to my local daughter's home for gift opening and breakfast on Christmas day, then back to our place for turkey dinner, with me going to the stables in between to help bring in horses and give Alpac his special Christmas beet pulp. One way and another, the entire day pretty much consisted of driving back and forth and food preparation and consumption. We also managed to squeeze in a pack walk with the dogs (our two Boxers and the mini-Dachshund we are baby-sitting) which is a first in many years for Christmas day as it's usually too cold for the dogs. We are sitting on or slightly above freezing temperatures these days so it's really very acceptable for outdoor activities.

One day last week I spotted this coyote in the ditch as I was driving to the barn. He was pretty relaxed, so I was able to get the car onto his side of the road, get stopped, and get the camera focussed on him. He gradually worked his way farther off into the roadside grasses, and the trio of shots below show how he just fades into the surroundings as he gets deeper into the grass. 

The lack of snow and warm temperatures here are really remarkable. Normally we'd be looking at 20 below C and snow cover, but not this year. I got shot two as I headed home from the barn last week. It features our barn man exercising his horses in the fields north of the stables. Those power pylons are a real blight on the skyline at the stables, but not much way to avoid them most of the time in pictures. 

Shot three shows what was the undoubted hit of this year's Christmas gifts in our family. My daughter bought this wonderful vintage typewriter (we think it's from the early 1930s) for my fourteen year old grandson Mark. Mark is all about "old style" things and has expressed interest in "real" typewriters for several years now. This one was an amazing find, sourced via the local Kijiji listings. The other keyboard gift for Mark this year was a solar-powered computer keyboard. I think he's just about got the bases covered now for keyboard technology, old and new.

We went down to the Mendel Art Gallery today to check out the shows, and took a little walk on the riverbank pathway afterwards. Another seasonal first for us was seeing a kayak on the river. Again, totally unexpected, notable, and really quite wrong in so many ways for Boxing Day.

Today was overcast with little light and low cloud cover right until late afternoon, when the sun emerged briefly before setting to give this wonderful light for photography. I was just leaving the barn at the time and took the long way home via the back roads so I could make the most of the photo op. Shot five is one of my favourites from this shoot.