Fall and culture

Wow!  This one is overdue...........

Greetings from fall in Ontario.  Fall has been absolutely beautiful here this year, with lots of bright colours and generally great temperatures, with one or two nights of frost to tweak the leaves to change colour.

This week, we have had strong breezes and rain, bringing the leaves down by almost 75%.  Only the beech and the oaks, traditionally late changers, have been clinging to their foliage.

Earlier this week, we went for a walk in our woods, and you can see the colours and the leaves.  Red squirrels had again left their mark, hiding mushrooms in branches.

We have some extremely old trees along 3 of our fence lines, and were checking them out.  I don’t know how well this shows up in the picture, but this huge old oak has grown enough to “ingest” the barbed wire fence that was strung up along it.

We got an opportunity to get a little unexpected culture a couple of weeks ago.  (These pictures were not great because I took them from my cell phone, but it’s the thought that counts….)

The city of Barrie is twinned with a city in Germany called Zweibrucken.  This year, a German band came over and played several performances.  Brian and I had been invited, and were kind of expecting an “oompah” band, but were we ever wrong!  Yes, they did play some drinking songs, but they also performed some rather spectacular sets including a trio on alpenhorns.  That was a first for all of us.

They also had some performers who did some rather spectacular syncopation music slapping their hands, feet, etc, as well as doing a great skit with saws and axes.  This is highly recommended entertainment if you ever get the chance.

Although we got 2” of snow within the last week, it was all gone in two days, and we are looking forward to some double-digit numbers (with no minus in front of them) for the next few days.  As you see, we continue to suffer out here…………..