One down, two to go

I'm not sure how far back in the week I can go this time round, as I don't think I remember all of it. It's been a bit of a gong show, what with trying to get the studio sorted out for the show/sale of this past weekend, an unexpected but always welcome photo op with the Gypsy cobs, a field trip with a couple of my "barn lady" friends, trying to keep up with the regular round of riding five or six days a week and getting some artwork done in addition. And then there are the on-going anxieties and vet visits with Mickey (one of my Boxers) who has been enduring a nasty and prolonged allergic reaction to some bodily insult, likely a bee sting. The short version of it is swelling of the head and neck, lumps all over the front half of his body, and breathing problems. Not anything either of us wants to be dealing with, although that's exactly what we have to do. We're on round two of the little pink pills which did an admirable job while he was on them, but as soon as we finished them up all the symptoms came back, so now we're looking at another couple of weeks medication. Hope that will be the end of it. I am grateful that at least there is something that works for him, no matter how long he has to be on it.

I think I did an adequate job on most fronts, although by today we were pretty well out of eating options since getting to the grocery store wasn't one of the things I could fit in, and I have to confess to not having seen my horse since Friday. Got the groceries topped up today and will resume riding tomorrow so my world will be back in balance again for the short term at least. Another show next weekend and the big pre-Christmas one the weekend after that yet to be dealt with, but if it wasn't for deadlines in my life I'd likely get nothing done at all.

Shot one today is from the North Fork Gypsy cob shoot. I haven't done many shots of their stallions, and I got a call to say that Tully, the new young stallion, was going to be turned out into his big grassed area and might give me some good chances at action shots. I got there a bit after mid-afternoon on Wednesday with nice conditions (i.e. dry and not too cold ) and not bad light. At this time of year the sun is quite low in the sky by four, so shadows are part of the equation, and you just have to work with them and with the nice backlighting possibilities afforded by the sun position. All this is assuming you have a camera that is willing to co-operate with you, which much of the time I didn't. I've mentioned my intermittent camera woes before. I've been nursing my "big" Nikon along for a while, but this shoot pushed me to the limit of my tolerance and I will be sending it off for diagnosis and rehabilitation this week without fail. I did get a good number of nice shots of young Tully, but missed many as well due to mechanical problems with the camera. It kills me to be parted from my camera, but it's overdue and at least I have the "baby" Nikon to keep me from going into the unpleasant zone of total withdrawal from photography. That's Tully in the foreground of this photo, with the older stallion Tumbleweed keeping pace with him in the next pasture over. There is a no-man's -land strip of several feet between the fence-lines of these two pastures so that the stallions don't make direct contact over the fence but can still see each other and visit at a bit of a distance. Each stallion has his own live-in mare as well for company. I love to see stallions that get to live like normal horses with lots of space and with a companion. Such a simple thing in many ways, but a lot of stallions never get to experience either.

As noted in last week's blog, I had several guest artists join me for my open studio sale. My grandson Mark was one of them, and shot two shows one of his photos of a daylily that was popular with the customers at the show.

Shot three shows part of the studio during the sale, with Mark enjoying a bite of lunch in the foreground, and Ric the sculptor in the background, possibly wondering what he would have to do to get some lunch himself. There were five of us in all, fitted into various nooks and crannies of the studio, and we had a good time and worked well together. We didn't see the numbers of visitors that we hoped to, but we did our bit and the rest is really beyond our control. I do have to say, though, that despite the somewhat limited number of visitors we had, they were all a pleasure to visit with and I was certainly grateful that they took the time out of a busy weekend (and they're all busy weekends at this time of year) to come to our event.

Shot four is one I have been working on intermittently since the last ghost town shoot. It is shot from inside the grain elevator towards the old store and other buildings. I had the idea of incorporating an old family photo into the scene, so used one of my grandfather (from the early decades of the last century) and his team as a "ghost" image on the grass area, and then threw in Arrow, my "grand-dog" to round out the picture. Also added an overlay of a fabulous "crackle" texture that I photographed in one of the old buildings of the ghost town. Those interiors are a treasure trove of texture and faded colour.

Today's field trip was to Solar Gardens with a couple of my riding friends who hadn't been there before. They are open weekends from now until Christmas, or by arrangement on other days, and Mondays are the only days we are all available and not at the barn. Shot five shows Dylan, one of the resident very large dogs, having a romp out by the greenhouse area. He had his beloved chicken in his mouth, and he really wanted the ball as well, but wasn't willing to set the chicken down to get it. Sometimes we just have to make choices in life!

For Saskatoon and area residents, I will be participating in a group show/sale upstairs at Persephone Theatre next Sunday (the 29th) from 7-11 PM. Food and drink will be available in addition to the artwork. Hope to see you there. The following weekend (Dec. 4-5-6) I'll be at the Sundog show at Credit Union Centre, upstairs.

October, at last

Now that it's chronologically mid-November, we are finally getting the weather we should have had in October. Seems only reasonable since we had November weather then. Back a number of weeks ago when we were experiencing snow, ice, and freezing rain, and driving was potentially a hazard, I got spooked into booking my snow tire installation. Guess everyone else was on the same page as me back then, as the earliest appointment I could get was for this coming Wednesday. I'll of course follow through and get them put on, but goodness knows when I'll really need what they have to offer with the mild and dry conditions we have settled into. This is not a complaint. I like snow and winter in general but I'm happy to keep on with the current weather status for a good while longer. Dog walking is so much easier with good footing, and the riding areas around the stables have finally dried up enough that the occasional ride outside is once again a possibility. The light of late fall is also totally different in years like this when there is no snow on the ground and I'm enjoying that aspect of it as well, not to mention the fact that I can keep up my photo endeavors without too much stress on either photographer or camera.

Speaking of camera stress, I'm actually working myself towards sending my "big" camera off for diagnosis of an intermittent but irritating and ongoing problem, which I sincerely hope can be cured with the usual administration of time and money (and the technical know-how of the Nikon people). Sending my camera away and being parted from it is a pretty serious state of affairs in my world. I had to do it once before with my first digital SLR a number of years back, and it was a traumatic experience. I'm handling the prospect better this go-round as I have the "baby Nikon" for backup, but it's still going to take an act of will on my part to let the big one go. I keep trying to convince myself that the problem is either getting better or has gone away, but I had another go-round with it today and I know that a fix is required. Maybe next week.

Today's shots are a mixed lot, representing a few of the activities of the past week and one of the week to come.

Shot one--

I got a " Mom's Photoshop help-line" call from my daughter in Nelson BC to say that she needed some amending done to a shot she took of their "new" dental clinic building, which was to be featured in an ad in the local paper. This is a fine old heritage building built in the 1930s as a Scandinavian Church, and which has been through ups and downs over the decades. They purchased it a couple of years ago, and it has undergone extensive renovations in preparation for its new life as a dental clinic. The inside has been gutted and remade, but there are restrictions on how the outside can be dealt with due to the heritage designation, and I think they've done a great job on it. Haven't seen the inside in real life since it was finished, but from the photos my daughter has sent, they've done a superior job there as well. My job with this shot was to remove some distracting clutter in the form of builder's signs, street signage, roofs of the neighbouring houses, and adding some nice grass to the area in the photo where it was badly needed. She seemed happy enough with the end result, so that was one more job done.

This coming weekend I am hosting my annual open studio show and sale. This is the first of three consecutive show weekends for me, so by the end of the third one I'll doubtless be fairly happy just to collapse for a while. In the meantime, I've got to get this studio pulled together which is in itself rather a daunting chore. I almost opted not to have an in-house sale this year, then decided that I would go ahead with it but would liven it up a bit by inviting a few other artists to share the space with me. This is a first for me with a studio sale, and assuming I can clear the area enough for them to display their work, it should be a fun weekend. Shot number two is the show announcement/invitation. Anyone in Saskatoon and area is welcome to come and take a look.

Grandson Mark and I went on a photo shoot to the zoo on Remembrance Day as he was off school. We did the usual zoo animal shots, but for me the most exciting part was the flocks of wild geese coming in to land on the open water areas of the zoo wildfowl pond. Wave after wave came in, all calling loudly, circling the open area, and jockeying for position and landing space. I got a lot of shots where they looked more elegant than this, but I was fascinated with the ones like shot three where they are in "touch-down" mode, with feet spread and outstretched, wings set, bodies all puffed up, and heads looking very tiny compared to the rest of them. Not pretty, but it gets the job done. I'd like to get back there again this week while there is still open water, if I can take the time from studio prep.

As shown in shot four, we finally have actual dust on the country roads, taking the place of the eternal seas of mud we have endured for the past couple of months. As long as you can keep your camera out of it, dust is the photographer's friend, as when it is backlit it can transform the most ordinary scene into a thing of beauty. I was just leaving the stables in late afternoon last week when a car went down the grid road, send clouds of dust into the backlit trees and bushes. I've taken a few liberties with this shot, pushing the colours and levels to maximize what the camera captured.

Shot five is one I have been working on from the ghost town shoot. I took one of the interior shots of an old house, overlaid peeling paint texture onto it, and created a new view out the window. I'm working on several variations of this one, with different horses and landscapes outside the window, just feeling my way through the concept and its possibilities. That's one of the many reasons I love Photoshop--it doesn't have to be an "either/or" situation, rather one of exploring all the variations and possibilities, at least the ones I have time for.

Ghost town, the sequel

Since the weather has finally settled into a steady and reasonable pattern (i.e. dry, sunny and not too cold) I have been happy to extend my usual outdoor shooting season. Granted, I do shoot year-round, but serious winter shooting is challenging and hard on hands and camera, so I'm quite content to carry on with what we've got for the foreseeable future.

I made a pilgrimage to the Gypsy cob farm on Friday, which was a ridiculously warm +17 C (about 62 F) albeit with an absolutely ferocious wind to temper things just in case we might actually start to enjoy ourselves. I love big winds so I was quite happy with the whole state of affairs anyway. Didn't get quite the shots I hoped for as the stallions I wanted to shoot were not in their pastures due to construction work, but I had a great time nonetheless visiting the brood mare pasture and checking on the progress of the youngsters in the close-in turnouts. I think my best shots from that visit were of the young dogs, tussling and tugging on their pull-toy that I finally gave in and threw for them at the end of my visit. I've learned not to start a visit by throwing things for the dogs or I'll never get as far as the horses. If you are interested in seeing one of the young mares in action, click here for the video of Violet's debut at Spruce Meadows this past September. For a youngster with only three months of training, she came through like a trooper in surroundings that can intimidate even seasoned horses.

The unseasonably warm weather apparently brought out some unseasonable stinging insects, as when I got home that evening it was to discover that my poor dog Mickey had been stung by something and was having a nasty allergic reaction. This has happened to him before in the summer with bee stings, so that's my working theory for this go-round as well. Odd though it is to think of bees being out in Saskatchewan in November, my brother-in-law reported seeing a bee in their yard that afternoon, so it does seem possible. Mickey's neck and head were swollen and his head had lumps all over it. He was breathing OK, thank goodness, but couldn't hold his food down (or the antihistamines that I had given him) and was generally a very pathetic creature. Luckily within twenty-four hours he was back to normal, but I did feel very badly for him in the interval.

Since the weather is holding for the moment, it seemed a good idea to make a repeat visit to the ghost town of the Hallowe'en day shoot, this time without the low clouds, wind, snow and freezing rain. A couple of indulgent friends came along with me for this outing, which we made today. We were able to get into several of the ghost town buildings, which for the most part seem sound enough underfoot and overhead, and in general had a good poke around. Second stop on our route was a return visit to the house down the road with the wonderful staircase and all the interesting peeling paint textures (it doesn't take much to make me happy) to add to my collection. Since it wasn't pouring rain this time, we made a third farm call to the one that we passed by totally last time.

This was an absolutely fabulous place for those of us interested in taking shots of old and decaying items. The workshop was full of stuff: tools, horse harness, bridles, metal things, you name it. The house was in really poor shape and not safe to enter (although my friend Donna *really* wanted to) but we could move around the outside and peer into windows. There were books and a child's report card in one room, coats and sweaters hanging on the wall, tables and dishes in the kitchen, and in general it looked as if the family had just gotten up and left one day and never came back.

Then there was the machinery. All sorts of old grain trucks (every single windshield with multiple bullet holes), and one of the trucks with the keys still in the ignition. There were old wagons and wagon wheels, ancient combines, and many antique farm machines that were a total mystery to me (I am a city person, after all). There was even an ancient (relatively speaking) classic beetle-style Volkswagen out behind the henhouse. I don't know how we would go about finding out the story of this place, but I'm sure there is one. As with our first two stops, this one definitely merits several return visits in other seasons and varying light conditions.

On to the shots for today. Now that the sun is setting so early (around 5 PM at present) I have been able to get some nice sunset shots on the way home from my afternoon rides at Ebon. Shot one was taken last week on my alternate route home from the barn. I was struck by the reflection of the sky in the water, showing around the edges of the ice in the middle.

The rest of the shots are from today. Shot two shows the back of the store with all its interesting roof angles. The orange snow fencing on the right of the building marks the open well. Good to know where it is!!

Shot three was taken from inside one of the houses (actually it might be the only house, as none of the other existing buildings seemed very house-like), showing classic "old farmhouse of the previous mid-century" decor, complete with an old TV in the corner.

Shot four shows a detail of some of the horse tack hanging in the shed of the last farm, and shot five is the interior of one of the old grain trucks, where you can see the keys still in the ignition. Poor exposure on the windshield, but not much to be done about that.

So far the forecast is for the weather to continue much as it is, so here's hoping next week's photos are still "late fall" ones, and not "early winter", although we have had a taste of that already.

Hallowe'en ghost town

This was a reasonably busy week for me in a photo gathering sense. Mid-week I was asked to head out to Ebon for indoor shots (in the usual challenging lighting) to get the first "under saddle" photos of one of the many nice home-bred youngsters that is starting her education as a riding horse. I don't dread these requests the way I used to, as I have finally figured out which camera/lens/settings combination will allow me to get shots that I'm not completely ashamed of. Outdoors, no problem. Indoors, a challenge, at least the indoors that I have access to. Those shots turned out well enough, so then management decided to up the anxiety ante for me by requesting a return visit to get some chute jumping shots on Friday morning. Normally indoors chute jumping is my most dreaded assignment of any given year, but this one went strangely well all round. I stayed calm, didn't make too many technical errors, have noted the one I did make so I can avoid it next time, and the whole thing was actually a reasonably pleasant experience. Quite unaccountable. Who knows, a bit more practice and I might actually start looking forward to it. Even a tough photo shoot is better than no photo shoot in my world, and it is satisfying to feel that I have learned enough along the way to be able to do this type of shot adequately.

We (daughter Margaret, grandson Mark and I) had made tentative plans to go shoot the twisted trees of the Hafford area on Saturday, but it being Hallowe'en day, it seemed to me much more in keeping to make another attempt at the ghost town that we failed to locate on our August attempt (see my August 3rd blog post for details) . Unlike the last time, we had a map that actually had roads on it (not the large blank area with a place name in the middle of nowhere of the last map), we had gas in the van (were running on empty in addition to being lost last trip), and we had a GPS. Perhaps most importantly, two out of three of us were women, who are actually willing to *consult* the maps and pay attention to the GPS, although I have to confess that Mark was the one who noticed when the GPS had useful information to impart. Margaret and I were going on intuition and forgot to check it. The short version of all this is that this time we actually got there.

Not to say our trip was uneventful. It was (as usual) cold, overcast, dark, and chilly when we headed out of town. By the time we were a few kilometers beyond the city limits, it was snowing quite heavily and a strong wind had come up. Then we went through several combinations of snow, rain, and freezing rain, all the while making hopeful comments that "maybe we would drive out of it", and "so far the roads don't seem *too* bad", followed by "well, we can always turn back if we have to". We stopped once by a large slough which had a large gathering of corvids (couldn't tell from a distance whether they were crows or ravens) for me to get a couple of shots of their rapidly retreating forms, and I was encouraged to see that the camera was picking up a lot more light than actually seemed to be around. That made me want to carry on, as I'll put up with a lot of bad weather as long as the light is remotely adequate for shooting.

Eventually, following the twists and turns of the map on ever smaller roads that remained surprisingly good for navigation, we came to our ghost town. I had found some photos of it online as part of my research, so I knew it had a grain elevator, which was a great help in spotting it from a distance. It was well worth the time and effort we had invested (both times) to see this place. For someone in love with photographing ruin and decay, as I am, it holds endless potential.

Today's shots are primarily from the Saturday outing. Shot one shows the grain elevator with Mark leaning into the wind on the path up to it. Shot two was taken inside the elevator, and shows some of the working mechanisms. There is still grain sitting inside on the floor, and the odd thing that I noticed, both in the elevator and in the other buildings, is that there was no evidence of mice, rats, or any other living creatures. I would have expected that, at least in the elevator, and for the grain to be gone or disturbed, but no. Very strange.

Shot three is the broken north window on one of the houses. Windows on three sides of the house were damaged, but intact on a fourth side. Again, odd.

Shot four is taken from the front door of an abandoned farm-house south of the ghost town. I loved the colours and textures of the surfaces in this house and want to go back again when there are better light conditions and it isn't pouring rain. That said, I'm impressed with the job my lens did with no flash and available light. I'm a sucker for crackle texture and this staircase had it in spades. I took this shot from the front door jamb. There are safety issues involved in entering old ruins, with the potential of falling through the floor, having the upstairs floor fall on me, or breathing in who-knows-what in the old dusty and moldy surroundings (hantavirus, anyone?). Then there is the respect issue. I tend to feel fairly strongly about making minimal impact, not touching or moving things, and generally taking only my photographic images away with me. After all, these buildings still belong to someone and I don't want to get on the wrong side of the owner if he happens to come along while I'm in the midst of my shoot.

So, all in all, a very satisfactory way to spend part of a Saturday, despite the weather handicaps. I'm already planning a return trip before the snows make getting there too difficult, but Hallowe'en day was the perfect time for our first visit. I'm thinking it might need to become an annual pilgrimage on that day.

The final shot is one that I have been working on in the computer. It features one of the North Fork gypsy cob stallions, overlaid onto a page from the Book of Kells. This is one of several variations on the same theme that I am developing.

Big tree

Another week of busyness and scurrying around, which seems to be my lot in life of late. I'm almost looking forward to the weather totally shutting down so that I can hunker down in my studio and actually do something interesting with my photo collection. I did generate a few new photomontages this past week, but no room here to post them so they will have to be viewed another time. Of course the charm of being trapped indoors due to severe ongoing winter cold tends to pall after the first few months, but for the moment I can see that it might have some attractions.

One of the points of interest of the past week was my stint as a judge (one of three) for the photo part of the Saskatchewan Wildlife Art Association's annual fall show. I did this for the first time last year, and felt that being invited again this year meant that I must have done at least an adequate job. The photo part of this show seems very complex in the categories and divisions, but we had a number of experienced and knowledgeable herders/assistants who made the big job as easy as possible under the circumstances. Grandson Mark was off school that day so he came along as an observer and, ultimately, a show helper. Likely it was just as educational an experience for him in its way as a day of conventional schooling would have been. There were a number of works of sufficiently good quality that coming up with placings was often a challenge, although ultimately we managed to achieve a consensus without too much debate.

Now that winter is almost upon us, several of us camera-oriented family members have perversely decided that "destination" photo shoots would be a good idea, these being ones to a specific place that we have not previously visited, within a reasonable (up to a couple hours drive) distance from the city. Don't know how many we'll actually get to before the weather makes it too dodgy, but we made a good start on Saturday by visiting the "big tree" that is about 45 minutes north of Saskatoon. Today's shots all relate to the tree outing.

Daughter Margaret, grandson Mark and I (accompanied by Arrow the wonder dog) were the itinerant photographers. She had actually been to the big tree before so more or less knew how to get there (it wouldn't be easy the first time unless you knew what to look for) plus she has a four-wheel drive Jeep in which to do it, which as it turned out was a good thing as some of the roads were pretty questionable from all the wetness we've experienced most of this month.

Once you get to a certain point on the highway, you are supposed to start looking for the "tree" signs at the side of the road, which indicate that you should turn down that road and drive for an indeterminate distance until you see another "tree" sign pointing down another road. Generally the farther you go the less hopeful the roads look, although luckily for us the ultimate road to the tree, which is fairly steep and winding, was in surprisingly good shape. Shot number one today shows the penultimate "tree" sign. The dim light and low cloud cover is sadly typical of the weather we have endured this month, and indeed much of the year to date. Sigh.

Photo number two is fairly self-explanatory. I have some concerns about the comma placement in the first sentence, but we'll let that pass. Shot three shows the tree itself, a rather sad and battered remnant of past glory, but certainly impressive in reach, if not boasting its original height. You can see Margaret standing at the lower mid-left of the picture to get a feeling of the scale. I've seen truly big trees in other parts of the world, but for around here, this is pretty big. I don't know to what extent it would still leaf out in summer, but there did seem to be some remnant leaves on at least some of the branches. This tree and the surrounding trees and bushes are located in the river valley and quite close to the river itself, which would provide the water needed for growth.

We stopped at a gas station/diner/antique store along the road on the return trip. I had noted various items of interest for photography at this location and hoped to check out the antiques as well. Turns out there hasn't been an antique store there for several years, but no-one has yet gotten around to taking the sign down. No matter. This was a very entertaining stop due to the wonderful mother cat and her family that we met there. Shot four shows Mark in his role as a "cat whisperer" with the friendly and curious felines grouped around him. There were another couple that weren't on camera. I don't get to see kittens very often, or even outdoor cats, for that matter (city bylaw here against cats being at large) so this was a fun event for me and I indulged myself with the camera. Shot five is also from this stop, showing a truck emerging from the ground (or sinking into it, depending on how you interpret it) , one of two like this, in what I like to think of as a "Truckhenge" in progress. I'm already pondering the Photoshop potential.

Today was herd health at Ebon, when Alpac got his various annual and semi-annual shots and medications, so he should be good to go for a while now. He's no spring chicken but unlike my poor retired Thoroughbred of last week's post, Alpac is in seriously good shape, fit, and full of vigor. I hope to keep him that way for many years yet to come, with the assistance of the resources of the university veterinary college professionals that we are lucky to have on hand here.

Next weekend's projected outing is to the twisted forest of Hafford, weather permitting. I think I'm starting to detect a tree theme happening here! A reminder to readers in the Saskatoon area that my show in the Amber gallery at the Mall at Circle and 8th continues to November 21st. Check it out if you are in the area.

Carrying on---

Another week of not much to report, or quite a bit that has happened, depending on how one chooses to view it. No big events but many of the small happenings that keep the days full and busy, which is overall how I prefer things to be.

The weather continued dismal and dreary for much of last week, although the snow did eventually go, to leave everything rather drippy and soggy. One thing the early and unexpected cold and snow did was to spook me into dealing with a few things that I needed to get sorted out, such as booking an appointment to get my snow tires on. Turns out this can't happen until November 18th by which time I will likely need them, so it's good that I got the booking made. I've also got a game plan for getting the various weights of filthy and disgusting winter horse blankets cleaned and repaired, which will happen later this week. Hope they won't be required for a while yet, but I'll be ready when the time comes.

Saturday was the one nice day of the week, and it was absolutely lovely, certainly by recent standards. Any other fall and it would have been just another day, but this year it stood out as one of the few nice ones. I wisely opted to get as much yard work done as possible, despite running right up against a deadline for an art show which I was hanging on Sunday. Good thing I did this, as Sunday was another really bad weather day (very dark, cold, windy and raining) so my outdoors work wouldn't have been possible then. And I got all my images printed, framed and hung in time anyway. Just had to hustle a little harder to get it all accomplished. I'm not sure why I was spending the evening before the show went up doing my framing, given that I've had almost two years advance notice for this one, but there you have it. In my world deadlines are always met, but usually just barely. Keeps things interesting. If any of my Saskatoon readers want to check it out, it's in the Amber gallery at the Mall at Circle and 8th (right by the movie theatre entrances) and will be up until November 21st.

When I got up this morning I was a bit concerned about what images I would find to post this evening (ones from the show were going to be my fall-back if all else failed) but the day provided me with a number of photo ops, being quite bright and dry, if not overly warm.

This morning was the herd health vet appointment at my friend Donna's place. She runs the "old boys club" for my retired Thoroughbred gelding, her own Appy gelding, and another Thoroughbred. My Native at age 29 is the youngest of the group!! He's been retired for almost ten years now and Donna has done a spectacular job of keeping him and the other old guys in excellent condition. Sadly, things are starting to go less well for poor Native and I think if he sees another summer he'll have done well. He's lost weight, and if anything we always want to see them a bit on the round side heading into a harsh prairie winter. The vets couldn't check his teeth during the spring herd health visit as he was in a panic that day (for reasons totally unknown) and was almost unmanageable, so this was the first look they'd had in a year. Turns out he has almost no teeth left, which would certainly go a long way to explaining the drop in weight. In the spring they determined that he has cataracts and is virtually blind now, although he manages well enough in the pasture that no-one had actually noticed this. All this said, he seems in good spirits and is enjoying a decent quality of life, so until something major goes wrong, he'll carry on as usual. We have worked a plan for getting more calories into him and Donna will modify his feeding regime to optimize weight gain, but other than that there's not a heck of a lot we can do. It's my dearest hope that he will just fall over dead one day, but that's not an option many old horses get to exercise. For the moment, though, he's doing fine.

Shot one shows the lovely patterns of the frost on my windshield when I went out to start the car to head off to Donna's. It was so pretty I had to get the camera out to take some shots, although the front windscreen (the one with the best patterns) is rather steeply slanted and was difficult to shoot. I'm thinking of getting Jim to leave his van out of the garage one of these nights so I can get more of this type of shot. It has a bigger window that is more vertical and would potentially be easier to photograph.

Shot two shows the frost outlining the fallen leaves in the front yard on the wood-bark mulch. We took our front lawn out some years back and are very happy without it, as are the hundreds of lady-bugs that burrow into the wood-chip mulch every fall to overwinter.

Shot three shows Native in the pasture this morning, just before he got led into the barn for his medical. He still looks pretty reasonable for a 29 year old horse from a distance, as he has kept in shape and his top-line is still good, but up close you can see the toll the years are starting to take on him, and it's a bit sad to see.

Shot four is a favourite clump of trees that I often photograph in various seasons en route to and from Donna's.

Shot five comes from this evening's event, which was a reading (at a local bookstore) by author Ted Barris who is touring in promotion of his newest book "Breaking the Silence". The man in the photo is my great-uncle Gavin McDonald, who is featured in the World War I section of Ted's book, and who was one of the "stars" of tonight's reading. It's a long story how we got Ted and Uncle Gavin's (he fought in the trenches in France and Belgium throughout the whole of the first World War) war memoirs together, but suffice it to say that it's another example for me of how everything and everyone of interest can be accessed either at the barn or through my riding acquaintances. Ted is an engaging speaker and both knowledgeable and passionate about his subject matter, and we were glad to have had the chance to attend his talk.

I'm not ready for this yet----

I can't fake a whole lot of enthusiasm for the week we've just had, and indeed are continuing to have. It started snowing on Thursday and has continued cold and snowy in small but steady increments since then. I usually quite enjoy the first few months of winter and I like the visuals of the snow, but I was hoping to wander around in nice fall weather for a month or so yet before having to dig out all the winter garments. Guess all the poor bulbs and garden produce I haven't yet dealt with are pretty much toast as well--although toast is a poor choice of terms. More like ice-cubes.

At least the garden-devouring zucchini have been stopped in their tracks. I did my best to collect the zucchini when they were a manageable size, but a few got away on me so I decided just to let them "run" and see how big they would get. A friend of my sister's actually *wanted* a big zucchini (she's English, that's the only explanation I can come up with for this) so I did harvest one of them to send along to her. First I emailed a photo of me struggling to hold it just so she'd be warned, and she wanted it anyway, so off it went to meet its destiny. Jim weighed it as a matter of curiosity and that sucker was 20 lbs (8 or so kgs). I was going to post the photo here but it has gone astray somewhere in the elaborate and variable system I have for image storage.

Photo number one was taken four days before the rest of the shots in this series. Quite a difference from the beginning of the week to the later part. There aren't many shots of me riding, but every year or so I drag grandson Mark out to the barn to take a few for me--he's *my* photographer. I can see lots of ways both horse and rider could be functioning better, but it's a nice reminder of a lovely fall day, possibly one of the last for this year, although I do hold out hope that the snow will melt and we will enjoy a few more weeks of warm weather that is conducive to short-sleeve outdoor activity. I tend to be of the optimistic type. Not only is the glass generally half-full in my world, but I'm also darn happy just to have a glass at all! So I feel that it's entirely possible that things will shape up in the next week or so.

That said, the rest of the shots are more accurate for where we are at now. Shot two shows the snow falling and accumulating on some of the bushes by the front yard bird-feeding area. These were some of the ones that had actually undergone some change in colour. A lot of the trees and bushes in and around here are still quite green, unusual in itself for this late in the fall.

Shot three shows part of the back yard. You can see how green things still were back there. That poor lady by the fishpond is likely feeling pretty chilly as she's not well dressed for the weather. I took this shot the first day of snow. Since then the water has frozen over and the ice is about an inch thick. I got one goldfish out just before the snow, and had to keep trying to locate the second one who had been MIA for several days. I thought he had burrowed into the mud at the bottom of the pond for warmth, but he had apparently got himself wedged under a rock and was trapped, as I discovered when I moved the rock and his body floated up. I'm always distressed at these things but since they had babies this year (a state of affairs that I *do not* want to deal with) I'm a little less upset than I would otherwise have been, and hopeful that one of these years I'll get lucky and have two fish of the same gender. I realize it is just a matter of chance as to what sex I will get when I buy a new companion for the one remaining fish, but surely the odds will work in my favour at some point.

Shot four features a few of the grackle flock who returned after the snow fell in hopes of getting a good feed, which they did. I love the iridescent colours on the males. This is another of the "through the window/across the deck/in poor light" shots, but you work with what you're offered for these photos. When they are in close quarters to each other they do this weird skyward point with their beaks quite consistently, which seems to be a self-effacing posture to diffuse possible aggression from others. "Who, me? No, I'm not looking at you!!"

Shot five shows a collection of jump poles at Ebon, stacked up and ready to be trundled off for winter storage. Usually they are tucked away safely before the snow flies, but not this year. The far riding ring in the background is the one I was riding in for shot number one. Notice that no-one is making use of that ring in this shot!