January 2020

Well, that year went fast!  And this month has gone quickly too!

Update on Brian

               First of all, the most important news is that Brian has turned around completely and is on the rebound.  Regrettably, December was a really tough month for him, and he ended up weighing only 148 pounds.  I was starting to consider him for my New Year’s weightlifting program.

               He had an appointment with his oncologist on January 5, and she quickly clarified a misunderstanding he had had on his medication.  Now he is eating anything in sight, and is gaining energy sufficiently enough to start chasing live food.  He has gained 2 pounds this month, and although that doesn’t seem like much, it has made a world of difference to his sense of well-being.

Winter in January

               This year has been unlike those before for us, for we had a number of snowfalls which required Brian to blow the driveway 8 times.  Then we had mild periods where all the snow melted and we had big roof avalanches to get our attention when we weren’t looking.  Lake Osoyoos froze over mid-month but then started opening up by the end of the month.  Describing winter in few words is a challenge.

Critters

               The game camera has been the source of most interest this month.

               We saw small tracks in the snow outside our coffee deck and expected to find pictures of rodents, but not so.  Instead, we were surprised with a short-tailed weasel (an ermine!)  The pictures are fuzzy because those critters move extremely quickly, but you can see the long body and the black-tipped tail.  Pictures I deleted were mostly those of eyeballs in the rock gaps—quite funny.

Life is for the Birds

               The bird feeders continue to provide lots of amusement.  One of the things I do is spread cracked corn on the ground beneath the feeders to attract ground feeders such as the Stellar Jays.  Little did I understand the appeal to the big “birds” as well.  I looked out one morning to find a magnificent stag pawing the snow and eating as much of the corn as he could find.

               One time I focused the camera away from the feeders and got a surprising number of good pictures on a small mound of snow at the base of a tree holding the feeder line.  We achieved some reasonable pictures of a Cassin’s Finch, a Magpie, and Ms. Downy Woodpecker.

Self Improvement

               Brian’s Christmas gift consisted of a 4-day personal workout plan developed by a woman who runs a body-building gym in Edmonton.  He had sat beside her returning from Ontario in October and was very impressed.

               In the meantime, Helen had a personal trainer in Osoyoos develop a fitness regime for her to complement other exercises she does.

               Stay tuned for Mr. and Mrs. Universe as these routines turn us into Iron Seniors!

That’s all, which isn’t much, but things are moving forward well this year, and stay tuned for more excitement in February.

December 2019

Wow, that month went by fast!  What happened?

Winter started out officially and efficiently on December 1 with our first snowfall—all of 1”, which disappeared fairly shortly afterwards.  Then everything settled down to a somewhat sedate state with moderate temperatures, fog and sun, and little bits of snow now and then.

The fog can be anywhere from a wisp to pea soup, the latter of which is unwelcome, but it does have the side effect of creating beautiful hoar frost.  Every picture becomes that of a Christmas card.

Our neighbours at the bomb pit continued to amuse us hugely; after trucking a large number of loads of rock out, they then trucked in even more loads of sand.  It looks like they have laid out the area for the foundation of the house (doubt if they will have a basement!) and all is quiet until next summer.  The mild December permitted more work time than they had expected.

The deer continue to wander back and forth on a fairly regular basis, and one doesn’t even need the game camera to get a good shot.

We have been going for ambling walks through the neighbourhood to keep Brian moving, and just at a 90 degree angle to our road you can look over a completely different terrain.  

Looking to the south, instead of looking at grapevines and orchards, you can see the rolling hills of cattle county, complete with wide open grazing areas. 

We came across a funny sign in our neighbourhood.  Lots of properties have ‘No Trespassing’ signs on them, and in the valley there are a lot of signs saying ‘No National Park’.  This sign just appeared to be vehemently negative.

Christmas festivities got started on December 15 with our annual Fire Hall Potluck Dinner.  It is extremely well attended with well over 100 people, and a monstrous spread of offerings from all participants.  Door prizes, table decoration draws, and speeches keep things moving smartly.  Everyone chips in a few bucks for our road clearing crews, and each crew member generally gets a $50 Tim Horton card to thank them for their efforts.  Our roads are well taken care of!

The next event was on December 21 when one set of our neighbours invited us to join them at a school concert in Midway, about an hour’s drive east of here.  They were really pumped about the event, so we accepted the invitation even without knowing much about it.  It turned out that this was the secondary high school in Midway (population 694) and the music teacher was an extraordinary woman who used to sing opera, and got the kids totally involved.

Six performers did two sets of music, the first of which was more traditional melodic Christmas songs, and the second which included excerpts from The Sound of Music.  (I was so engaged I didn’t get a picture of them for the Christmas portion, but they looked excellent in formal evening wear.)  Then they started singing!  Their voices were absolutely professional sounding and very touching given the small community (lots of family members there to cheer!) and the intimacy of the small theatre in the school.

Then we discovered we knew the father of two of the singers and had met the son Mattius while his dad was doing some work at our place.

Here they are singing about the Little Goatherd.  The second from the left is Antonia who is the twin sister to Mattius to her left.  Clearly not identical!  Mattius is at least 6 foot 6 inches tall, very slender, and has the most amazing bass voice.  No matter how carefully dressed he was, his shirt cuffs always extended beyond his suit jacket by at least 3”!

Christmas decorating started in fine fashion, with Caribou now pulling a sleigh with a solar panel to power the sparkling lights on the rim while Eagle was carrying in bows for gifts.  Regrettably I missed Sasquatch, who posed as a snowman this year.  The boys at home were prepared to welcome their holidays with their usual exuberance.

Our five bird feeders are well attended, and we are getting a good assortment of flying pigs coming around.

Mountain Chickadees (see their white eyebrows?)are fearless and will come to the feeder even if I am inches away from it.  The Hairy Woodpecker is also reasonably comfortable with my presence, especially because the Stellar Jays and Clark’s Nutcrackers will dominate all the feeders unless I am around.  Mr. Nutcracker hopped from branch to branch, trying to figure out how to approach and not be seen by me, without any success whatsoever.

Brian and I had a great Christmas, and we are very proud to announce a new member of our family, born on Christmas Day.

Meet R2V2, our robotic vacuum, named after my favourite movie hero.

Now you have to understand us old farts.  For years, we would go to other people’s places, and if there was a baby they would place it in the middle of the floor, and we all would watch the baby.  This obviously puzzled those of us who were childless.

No so now!  On Christmas Day, we got R2V2 all charged up and then let him loose.  We generally run him on a random pattern, and he beetles about, crisscrossing the floors, until he has determined that everything has been covered to his satisfaction.  For two hours, Brian and I followed V2 around, marveling.

It actually is amazing to consider the programming in this little beast to make him work around furniture, avoid falling down stairs, and inspect every corner thoroughly.  If he runs into problems, he beeps to call us to rescue him.  When his charge is near the end he beeps, works for another 10 minutes or so and then docks himself back onto the charging apparatus to get properly fed.  The first shock was how much dust this little sucker picked up.  The second shock was how must dust he could again pick up 3 days later.  I might have to decorate him with little antennae just to give him that little extra jaunty touch.

Here’s hoping that 2020 will be a good, happy, and healthy year for all of us!  Thanks for visiting.

November 2019

The weather--naturally

November has come and gone and we still have no snow on the ground so it can’t be winter yet--really?  The ski hills have been opening up regardless since there is more snow to the north of us.  We’ll wait a bit until the base gets a little deeper.

Despite the lack of snow, we have been getting typical winter conditions for this time of year.  Although the lowest temperature has been a little below minus twelve, we have received very little frost because of the low humidity.

We have already had a couple of our winter fogs that envelope the house completely. 

The side benefit of fog, in contrast to the terrible driving conditions, is that we do get hoar frost, which highlights some of the cobwebs on the exterior of the house.

If the fog doesn’t rise up to the level of our house, we get to enjoy it from above while it fills the valley.

We have enjoyed some really spectacular sunsets this winter, and it is very easy to stay up for them since the sun set at 4:03 pm on November 30.

You would think that winter would be marked by the stoppage of the fountain at the waterfront.  NOT!  The Santa Claus Parade was held on November 29 and the fountain was still running despite the icicles.

Snooping on the neighbours

I have mentioned in previous blogs our fascination with people building below us down the hill. 

Summer featured numerous blastings of rock.  This was followed by huge rearrangements of rocks, including trucking out at least 100 heavy truckloads of blasted material.

This last week a huge piece of equipment was moved back to the site and numerous truckloads of sand were delivered.

We had to check it out!  The rock hill has been hollowed out, and sand established for the foundation of the house.  Down the slope you can see the huge amounts of rock tumbled over the edge.

In our (often) idle moments we ponder how much the blasting, excavation, removal of rocks, and delivery of sand has cost.  This is without even starting to build the house! (And they had a well drilled, electricity brought in, and will have to arrange for septic before they even get a building permit…)  A little fixing up on our property looks positively benign in comparison!

The Saga of the Game Camera

While we were in Ontario last month, someone snitched our game camera.  The most likely suspects were a survey crew who worked on the neighbour’s property during that time, because it wasn’t in any obvious view.  After grumping for a couple of weeks, I relented and bought a new one.

The pictures seem good and clear, and we got a couple of surprising ones featuring birds (stellar jay and woodpecker). 

The deer cooperated by moving by nicely although the darn stag first stopped on the patio to try eating my plants.

The deer decided to prove that we didn’t need the game camera so we got some great shots from the bedroom windows over the last couple of days.

Brian is Improving

After being taken off the immunotherapy drug, he is starting to regain energy, appetite and better sleep.  This will take a while to get back to fighting trim because he is a svelte 156 pounds (maybe 25 more than me) and he is working hard to ensure I don’t pick him up in a fireman’s carry and force him to do housework.

We’re looking forward to December and the festivities and hope you do too!

October 2019

I don’t think it matters where you are in Canada, but Fall is a beautiful season.  Here in the Okanagan, you don’t get the same in-your-face colours as you do in Ontario, but there are still a lot of photo-worthy landscapes.

As you might expect, generally colours in our part of the country are the more muted greens and browns associated with aridity.

A calm day on Lake Osoyoos can lead to this relaxing scene.

There can be more arresting pictures when you get precipitation on the heights. We have had snow on the mountaintops that has endured through the month.  This is Mount Baldy, our local ski hill about 45 minutes from our place.  Although this picture only hints at the future, the larches turn bright gold against the greens of the Yellow Pines and Douglas Fir, providing striking views.

You sometimes will get a little red (especially if someone plants a variety of maple) but even more interesting is the variation of colours in the orchards which turn out to be showpieces in themselves.

On October 6, we decided to take an hour’s drive east to Greenwood, on the Crowsnest Highway which is practically at our door.  Greenwood was a mining town that was huge in the early 1900’s with a large pit mine delivering silver and copper.  The mine is no longer operating but it had a huge impact at its time.  The town highlighted that mining history with a good museum, local sculptures featuring mining activities, interesting dining establishments (like the Mine Shaft Café—very good!) and a walking tour highlighting some of the important buildings in town.

The City Hall was at one time a very luxurious home, while across the street the Fire Department is housed in a typical wooden building of the time. 

The names of the streets are interesting and apparently there is very good water at Greenwood (so they say!)

One of the most poignant attractions was a park featuring Japanese-Canadian friendship.  Apparently, Greenwood was chosen as an internment camp for the BC Japanese during WWII.  Unlike some communities, Greenwood welcomed the Japanese, put them to work wherever possible, and generally gave them respect not necessarily found elsewhere.  Although many Japanese returned to their original locations at the end of the war, a significant number stayed in Greenwood and continued to be contributing citizens.  This park is a reflection of that spirit.

On the Thanksgiving weekend, we flew out to central Ontario to see a special ceremony for his brother, who had been appointed President/Principle of King’s College in London, an affiliate of Western University.  I didn’t take enough pictures of the ceremony, which was held in a large beautiful chapel nearby.  (King’s College is a Catholic college; while Dave is not Catholic he was hired because of his expertise in philosophy as well as his huge contributions in his position at the University of Regina.)  To my amusement, the induction process is called an “Installation” which makes me think of an assembly plant process.  Not in any way, shape or form!  

The formal ceremony, held in the chapel, featured a string quartet, a wonderful choir and a soloist as well as various clergy decked out in clerical splendor.  Even more striking were the robes of the various scholars from different academic institutions who presented Dave with certificates of acknowledgement.  (This is really where I missed the boat…)  The robes of many colours were only surpassed by the hats, many of which resembled large squashed pancakes perched on top of the head with a large silver or gold tassel hanging off the side.  (I talked to one woman afterwards who said these robes often cost $1500 to $2000.)  No signs of poverty here!

One of the nicest parts of the event was that all four Malloy siblings were together at one time, which hasn’t happened for many years.  My photography skills were nowhere to be seen—when I finally chose a picture that didn’t have terribly weird expressions on at least one face, I merely put a large lamp behind Brian’s head.

Another nice event was having many of us together for brunch before the ceremony.  On the front right of the picture you can see Dave, Val (his wife) and Bronwen, one of their girls.  On the left are Brigid (second girl) and Gaelen behind (one of two sons (the other was in Mongolia I believe and couldn’t get out easily.).  Various outlaws and spouses lurk behind.

On the way back, we saw my oldest brother Jim, who came out to the Edmonton airport when we had a couple of hours waiting for our flight back to Kelowna.

As enjoyable as this was, we did almost 2000 km of driving that week, from Toronto to Port Dover (sister Barb) to London for the ceremony (Dave) and then to Ottawa to briefly see his mom (Mary, who will turn 100 in early February).  With 5 beds in 7 days and 3 hours of jetlag, this is less appealing to us old farts, and we have vowed not to do any more of this nonsense for a while!

Brian’s oncologist has decided to stop all treatment because he was suffering a rare reaction to it that affected his glands in nasty ways.  The fatigue and lack of appetite that plagued him in Wales are still major setbacks to overcome.  My mission in the next few months is to try to get him back into a “Chubby Chicken” status as soon as possible.  Well-rested Chubby Chicken.

Thanks for checking in, and hopefully November will be a fascinating month for all of us!!