No camera (again)

It turns out that I had to send the camera back to Casio for repair (again)! I had just got it back too.

Bird mortality

Despite our best efforts, with putting up screening and stickers on the windows, Freda found this little bird on the deck on Friday when she got home from work.

And when we were taking Tawny for a walk this morning (Sunday) we saw a bear ambling across the road several hundred feet ahead of us. We turned around.

More beautiful roses

Tawny is cleaning up the neighbourhood again. :)

The view of the house from Howie Road.

Gardening

Freda is very pleased at her rose garden and her new flower bed she put around the light post.


The soil here is well, sand mostly. So the portulaca should do very well.


Sorry, I had to include another beautiful rose picture.


You haven't seen any photos of Tawny for a while, so here's one. This was actually taken about a month ago, when she insisted on carrying this huge log that must have weighed about 25 pounds when we were walking around the lake. She was exhausted after that episode.

Beautiful Roses

After resting comfortably in the basement all winter, the Stone Duck has come home to roost.


The rose garden from the other angle. A profusion of blooms everywhere.


A mass of blooms.

The smell is heavenly!

Perfect!

Amazing!

Pano June 14th

June 14th, 2007

A beautiful summer morning. (although it is still officially spring! :^)

A hard working weekend

Sorry, I have no photos. I dropped my camera a few weeks ago, and the LCD screen broke so I have had to send it for repairs. The camera still functions, except for the display of course (I took the photos of the sodding "blind", and posted those photos last weekend). However, since you can't see what will be in your photo and you can't see what the control settings are, it was pretty difficult to use. Hopefully I will get the camera back soon.

But what about this weekend?

Freda and I worked very hard this weekend. Here is some of what we did:

• shopped around for some appropriate patio stones for the bottom of the stairs from the deck, we found something that fit the space almost perfectly at Home Depot.
  
• put together our home made composter - made with scraps of 2x4 and a short piece of chain link fencing that was in the garage.
  
• went to seed some packages of wildflowers that we had, only to discover that area we intended to seed had a healthy crop of thistles! It took me about 4 1/2 hours to fork them out. We spread them out for the sun to wilt them & kill them. I wonder if we can put them in the compost bin after that?
• planted "snow in summer" and another perennial (seed) on the top of the septic bed. Hopefully it will germinate and take over as ground cover there.
• created a few small flower beds in the back yard.
• we had planted peonies in our front flower bed, but we couldn't see any ants on them so their buds wouldn't open. Freda called a few nurseries and found that ants apparently do not like that setup, so we had to move the peonies, so we:
• discussed a location for the peony bed - decided to create a somewhat curvy shaped bed beside the driveway
• found and moved three big rocks to anchor the ends and the middle of the new peony bed
• mixed up a bunch of peat moss, black earth, and compost to create a nice soil for the peony bed
• pulled back all the rocks from the peonies, dug out the five peonies, and transplanted them in the new peony bed
• planted three new roses that we shopped for in three of the holes left in the front flower bed: Iceberg, Adelaide Hoodless (hardy Parkland series, but not as hardy as Explorer series), and Freda's favourite rose Morden Centennial (an explorer rose).
• planted two bee balm plants in the remaining two holes from the peonies.
• although it was threatening to rain (it never did) Freda decided to take the opportunity to dig out a rose that did not survive the winter and planed an aster that she transplanted from another flower bed.

So, all in all, a very hard working but productive weekend!

What can you do about incompetence?

This is the former RCMP Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli. He resigned following his flip-flops over whether he knew or did not know about the RCMP's involvement in the US' "rendition" of Maher Arar to Syria, where Arar was tortured.

Around the time this was going on in Sept/Oct of last year(but before Commissioner Zccardelli's resignation), I heard Maher Arar's lawyer being interviewed on the radio. At the end of the interview, it went something like this (not a transcript, clearly!):
Announcer: So it sounds like Mr. Zaccardelli was just incompetent. But what can you do about someone who is incompetent?
Lawyer: Well, in law we have a term for incompetence. We call it negligence.

So what does this have to do with anything? Well, more than you might think. We shall have to see what the future brings.