Well, apparently I was a bit premature in my reports of a return to good (or at least acceptable) health last week. I had two days of carrying on as if everything was all right--rode Tuesday and Wednesday, then pretty much crashed and have been slowly climbing the hill ever since. It's exactly the trajectory Jim and several others of my acquaintance, who are all a bit ahead of me with this one time-wise, have followed, but I was convinced I was the exception and that I had recovered in record time. Guess the universe wasn't going to let me get away with that bit of false pride! I've been logging a fair amount of photo editing time as that isn't physically taxing, and getting out to the barn to say hello to Alpac and do some basic tending, but don't think I'll be able to ride for a while yet. Thought I would be able to by tomorrow, but a small photo shoot today and a brief dog walk have pretty well laid me out, so I'll have to continue to exercise the small amount of patience that I have for this and not fall into the "too much, too soon" trap again. We finally got a bit of frost in the past week, and a large amount of rain which was needed to set the farms and fields up for the winter, so things are a bit more seasonal after all the heat of the past weeks. There was a "winter storm watch" yesterday for the southern part of the province, and some areas did apparently get a fair amount of snow and nasty driving conditions, but it didn't get as far north as Saskatoon. I always enjoy a nice bit of rotten weather (because I can opt not to go out in it!) so was a bit disappointed, but I'm sure our day will come.
I've spent a bit of my computer time sorting through and organizing (an endless task with the number of visuals I'm dealing with, spread now over two different computer systems) some of the shots from this fall. In the new computer, I'm trying to stay at least current if not ahead of this task, and so far it's do-able. Not so in the old (full) computer, where I frequently feel like running screaming from my studio, but can't indulge in that desire as that's the computer with all the client shots and I need to keep cranking them out to my customers who are waiting patiently for their shots. Sigh.
Shot number one is one from a few weekends ago, when we had the annual fall birthday breakfast for husband Jim and daughter Margaret, whose birthdays are only a few days apart. This year the weather was utterly beautiful for this outing, the nicest I can recall in the years we've been doing this event. Pike Lake is a provincial park about a forty minute drive from our part of the city. It's a popular location and the birds of the area get pretty accustomed to having people around. Chickadees, being quite bold and self-confident little things, can be convinced to feed from a person's hand (or head), and we try to remember to bring bird seed and nuts along with us on this trip. Usually the squirrels will come right up onto the picnic table to check out what we've brought along, but this year one of the things we brought along was Mogo the mini-dachshund who fancies himself a mighty hunter, so the squirrels weren't much in evidence. This shot shows grandson Mark serving as a living bird feeder for one of the chickadees of the area.
Another country destination for some of us (that would be the women) is the Devic centre, which is vaguely in the Pike Lake area, so we did a detour to check it out on our way home. This is a wonderful bit of unspoiled prairie landscape with original native grasses, bush, walking trails, a (contemporary) medicine wheel, labyrinth, various meditation structures, a meeting hall (with excellent bathroom facilities!!) , lovely gardens, and in general a whole host of interesting things to see and do. We walked the labyrinth before going over to the crystal and gifts shop in the house, and were joined, as is often the case, by the white cat who acted as our guide to the labyrinth. He got carried by various members of our group, and only left us for the safety of the nearby bushes when the resident dog appeared. In this shot he's peering intently at something while being carted around the labyrinth. I was going to say he was staring at the incoming dog, but that can't be right since I was the one carrying him when the dog came, in which case I wouldn't have been taking this shot!!
Shot number three is of my grand-dog Arrow, who is staying with us for a bit while her family is off in England and France. She's been doing well with the Boxer boys and has fully indulged her hobby of cat-watching with our elderly orange cat, who luckily doesn't mind being stalked. To say that Arrow is interested in cats is kind of like saying I'm "interested" in horses, if by interested you mean a total obsession that involves eating, sleeping, talking and dreaming about the object of "interest". In any event, it works well for her (and for me, for that matter) and she isn't pining for her family, which is all to the good.
Final shot was taken on the photo outing of this afternoon. Jim is into genealogy these days, and one of the things that family researchers do to help each other is take requests for photos of gravestones for each other. Since he had a couple of people from out of province wanting shots of specific family stones in Saskatoon, that was what today's outing was about. Mostly this was his gig, I was just along for the ride and to see what I could see. I don't think I'd ever been to this particular graveyard, which is one of the oldest in the city, but I did know there was a rabbit. Actually, there's likely a number of rabbits, it's just that if anyone mentions having been to Woodlawn, someone else will inevitably say "Did you see the rabbit?" And the first person always *has* seen the rabbit. So we tootled about on a very benign late fall afternoon, checking the map (this is quite a big place) for the areas we needed to go to, and found both quite nicely. I started to wander off after the second one, and there was the rabbit! Just as advertised.
There were a couple of interesting things about this rabbit. One is that he is in process of shifting from summer brown to winter white. He (just go with me on this, I don't really know if it's a he or a she) seems to be starting from the top down and from the bottom up, since one ear is white and one is brown, and the legs and underbelly are white. Everything else except for a small ring around at least one eye, is brown. The other thing was that this is the slowest rabbit I've ever seen. I guess it's likely because the graveyard is a pretty protected environment on a number of fronts, plus it is surprisingly busy with visitors (well, I was surprised anyway) so it's likely fairly habituated to people. In any event, it tolerated a much closer approach than I would have expected, and when it did feel the need to move off, it just kind of lollopped away in a very odd slow-motion fashion. Quite entertaining and well worth the trip just as a rabbit viewing expedition. I quite like the idea of a cemetery rabbit as a benevolent and gentle caretaker and overseer of the area and its inhabitants.
