We had a frost this morning, and the air was filled with ice fog. Once the sun came up, it soon burned off though. This morning I happened walking the dogs on the part of the road that is quite close to the lake when today's flock of migrating Canada Geese arrive. There were thousands of them again. I think this photo is quite interesting since it shows so many geese in the various stages of landing. Overall though, I think this is my favourite as this is a head-on shot of the geese coming in to land. You can see that the geese have their wings curved in a landing configuration, to give them more lift at low speeds. Also, this head-on view reminds me of the head-on views of planes, which I think are really neat.
Once again, I went to the Remembrance Day Memorial program at the Kanata Cenotaph. I only found out this morning that Prince Charles and Camilla Parker-Bowles were going to be at the Ottawa Cenotaph, but it was too late to change my plans. There were a lot of people out again this year. It was a very nice day too, which is unusual for Remembrance Day in Ottawa. A new thing this year was the school children who laid a poppy at the base of the 22 memorial trees. This was the CF18 flypast, in the 'missing man' formation. After the ceremony, this is Gordon O'Connor (our MP and former Defence Minister) and a veteran walking to the stand to take the salute from the veterans and the various armed forces, police, RCMP, cadets, etc. This is the start of the march past. The pipe band was first. The drummers followed the pipers. After the drummers, came the colours. After the colours, there was a contingent of veterans - including women's veterans, then current armed forces members, police services (Ottawa Police, OPP, RCMP), cadets, etc. I didn't get any photos of them because I put down the camera and was clapping as they went by. This is one of the memorial trees, and the poppy that was laid by one of the school children.
Here are some youtube videos:
"Canadian WWII veteran tribute"
"A Pittance of Time" Terry Kelly On November 11, 1999 Terry Kelly was in a Shoppers Drug Mart store in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. At 10:55 AM an announcement came over the store's PA asking customers who would still be on the premises at 11:00 AM to give two minutes of silence in respect to the veterans who have sacrificed so much for us.
Terry was impressed with the store's leadership role in adopting the Legion's "two minutes of silence" initiative. He felt that the store's contribution of educating the public to the importance of remembering was commendable.
When eleven o'clock arrived on that day, an announcement was again made asking for the "two minutes of silence" to commence. All customers, with the exception of a man who was accompanied by his young child, showed their respect.
Terry's anger towards the father for trying to engage the store's clerk in conversation and for setting a bad example for his child was later channeled into a beautiful piece of work called, "A Pittance of Time". Terry later recorded "A Pittance of Time" and included it on his full-length music CD, "The Power of the Dream".
We are obviously in the middle of migration season, as Canada Geese are arriving for a layover by the thousands. This was a zoomed in section of a photo that shows some geese coming in to land next to their brethren. I wonder how many landing collisions there are?? Hmmm.... This photo can give you a bit of an idea of just how many geese there are. Imagine looking to the right and to the left of this photo, and seeing the sky filled with the big birds. Their hooting and honking was actually quite loud, and - because there were so many of them - they made a lot of noise when the splashed down on the lake. Click on this photo to see the large version, and you will see that there are a LOT of birds on the lake, landing on the lake, coming in on final approach, circling to land, and approaching the lake. Wow! The roadway was graded today. The snowplow operator asked us to fix up the road (runoff had made a big ditch across the road in one spot) because he didn't want to damage his equipment. This is the end result. The gravel should pack down with vehicular traffic over the next little while. A little rain would help with that too, as long as it is not a heavy rain.
Tawny had a big play yesterday, as well as a swim in the cold water. And last night we noticed that she was quite uncomfortable, as she would lay down, and then get up a few minutes later, turn around, and lay down again, then repeat a few minutes later. She was holding her tail down and sort of whimpering. These are symptoms of 'cold tail', which is essentially when the muscles she wags her tail with get very sore, so she is unable to hold her tail up. I took this photo on our walk this morning. It was very nice yesterday, and we realized that the grass needed mowing again, so I went out and cut the front, back, and side lawns. If you look carefully at this photo, just to the right of the foreground tree, you might be able to see a swath of leaves and grass clippings that I need to rake up.
Tawny enjoying the light snowfall on our walk this morning. Pano Dec 7, 2009 The snowfall was so light that you can't even really see it in this photo. Although you can see that there was some snow because there is white snow on part of the lake - where the snow fell on the thin layer of ice that's on part of the lake.
It's supposed to get to +8C today, but it was -1C this morning. When I let Tawny out in the back yard to do her business, she decided that she would like to lick the ice in her outdoor water bowl. Very funny! She licked it for about 10 minutes. I wonder if dogs can get ice cream headaches?? There were about 500 Canada Geese on the lake this morning. You may not be able to see them very well in this panorama photo. I hope you can see the Canada Geese in this zoomed in photo. Don't forget that you can click on any picture to see a larger version.
The forecast for the weekend isn't quite as rosy now. It currently is +8C for Saturday and +11C for Sunday. That's still nice enough to put paid to the snow.
Around mid-afternoon, the light rain turned to mushy snowflakes, that mushroom into toonie-sized wetness on your windshield. This is the type of wet snow that can really get your coat soaked through very quickly. It won't last though, as it is supposed to get up to +12C on the weekend (yippeee!!!!).
5:25 pm - November 5th, 2009. Yes, just 50 minutes later!
