Photo Poser 7

Recently I noticed that I often flash the 'peace sign' when my picture is taken. I'm either trapped in the sixties or ordering two more cans of Guinness. You decide.

[Photo by a waiter at the 2010 Wiarton fish fry]

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Please click here to view Photo Poser 6

Photo Poser 5

 There are several ginkgo biloba trees at or near the corners of Elmwood Ave. and Wortley Rd. Leaves seem to be just starting to make a decent showing.

Are they early bloomers? Late bloomers? Or are they right on time?

[Photos by G.Harrison]

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Please click here to view Photo Poser 4

The Workshop: Cedar feeder and its lifespan

Some readers will know I use new and rescued lumber to make birdhouses and feeders and that I’m particularly fond of cedar.

One 8-foot long board is all that is required to build a 14-inch tall, 18-inch long feeder, as per photos, and even boards from Home Depot don’t break the bank if rescued boards don’t suit the design.


So I know the cost and what lumber I like to use, but what I don’t know is how long such a feeder will last. I suppose in another 30 years I’ll have part of the answer, but that’s a long-time to wait.

Do you know how long a cedar bird-feeder (5/8th-inch, unfinished) will last? And if I coat it with linseed oil, will that add 10 years to its life?


["I shouldn't cut cedar. I should frame it as art!"]

I bet I’ll know more when I’m 100, but help me now if you can.

[Photos by G.Harrison]

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Please click here for another trip to The Workshop.

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I Ask You: Do adults suspend belief like children?

Grandson Ollie likes to consult Mr. Expert to hear the pronunciation of common words.

“How does you say ‘sock’?” Ollie asks.

Mr. Expert says, “Soock. That’s really how you say it, Ooollie.”

“What about ‘movie’?

“You should say ‘meevie’, Ooollivoor,” says Mr. Expert.

And the expert should know. After all, he’s one smart potato and has been to college. At least, that’s what I tell Ollie.


["How do you say 'cookie'?: photos GH]

Ollie loves little chats with Mr. Expert, and they will continue for a few more days, until the spud is needed to make Mr. Irish stew.

I like how children suspend belief and play along with grandfathers.

In the real world, however, I think adults have been suspending belief for far too long.

The way we run our economy and treat our environment has run its course, yet many still believe in ‘business as usual’ - as if prosperity will continue as it did in the past few decades on the back of cheap oil.

Mr. Expert would say, “Goood loock with that.”

I ask you: Do we suspend belief like children?

***

Please click here for another I Ask You.

http://itstrikesmefunny.blogspot.com/2011/11/i-ask-you-is-our-empathy-for-people.html

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I Ask You: Is our empathy for people growing?

The following letter appeared in The London Free Press, April 2003;

Needs-based society knows no limits

A wise man once observed, “If you put the bird food out, the birds will come.”

Why can’t politicians grasp this simple concept?

Restrict Hydro’s ability to prevent cutoffs and people with excuses not to pay for hydro skyrockets by more than 200 per cent. The excuses seem unlimited, their challenges too daunting, their ability to milk the system, uncanny.

For seemingly all the right reasons, London’s THAW program began as a modest $10,000 proposal only four years ago. The cost to the taxpayer has already soared well past $200,000, soon to be $300,000, with no end in sight. Of course the need is always overwhelming.

There is no end to a “needs”-based society. There is no end to the “sacrifices” taxpayers are asked to make to pay for it all.


[Link to "One little junco, so quiet"]

Can you imagine if the government ever got involved in other “essential” necessities of life, such as food, shoes, clothes, automobiles or dentistry? Where once there was “plenty” and “lots of choice”, there would soon be “countless needs, chronic shortages, lineups and waiting lists”, as we already see in social housing, education, health care and now utility relief.

Wisely, Quebec Premier Bernard Landry said, “If a small bird with a tiny brain can house and feed her young and look after herself, why can’t people?”

Robbie Smink, St. Mary’s

The following week I wrote a response to Smink’s philosophy of life in The Londoner.

Stay tuned for another episode of “IT STRIKES” Again.

Meanwhile, I ask you: Is our empathy for people growing?

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Please click here for more “I Ask You.”

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The Workshop: “Will birds live next to a feeder?”

Occasionally, when I display birdhouses at a local coffee shop, I’m asked where the seeds go, and I assume the person has a desire not only to house birds but to feed them at the same time.

I think it’s a great desire to have, but most of my birdhouses don’t have a spot to place seeds where birds can easily see them.


["A bit of trim is still needed to pretty it up."]


I build feeders with a protective roof and some larger birdhouses that include an open feeding surface (e.g., on a roof, sloping at 5 degrees, or on a separate platform off to the side), and recently I designed a small birdhouse with a protected feeding area - right in the house’s back yard.

I’ll make two or three and see what people have to say. I’m sure, if it’s placed on a 5 - 7 ft. high post in a yard, birds will find it very quickly and begin to visit it to feed.


[Photos by G.Harrison]


["A coat of linseed oil will help it stand up to Canadian winters"]

But will a bird nest in a house that attracts a lot of traffic? I’m not sure, though I don’t feel that it’s likely.

What do you think?

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Please click here for more thoughts from The Workshop.

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Live Small and Prosper PT 4: “I love my three-wheeled truck”

[“Our local and provincial governments should put their heads together and find a way to reopen the Ford Talbotville plant and manufacture small three-wheeled trucks.” G. Harrison, Sept.21]

In the future - when I own my three-wheeled truck - my monthly transportation costs (car payment, insurance, gasoline, repairs) will be lower than at any other time in my life, except for the two times my wife and I did without a car.

And driving around Wortley Village to pick up groceries and the odd bag of nails in a three-wheeled truck will make me the outstanding rebel of the entire community.

I so look forward to driving a new “Made in Canada” vehicle, the cheaper costs and my top position in the Village’s pecking order. (I’ll try to remain humble).

Of course, a large committee of politicians and community leaders still need to meet and formulate a plan to REOPEN and REUSE the now closed Ford Talbotville plant outside London, Ontario as a three-wheeled truck maker, and - just as important, eh - a manufacturer still needs to build them.


[“Let’s REOPEN Ford Talbotville aka Falcon Heights”: photo link]

The plant is absolutely huge. Three-wheeled truck making won’t fill the place, so perhaps the aforementioned committee will consider other uses for the building at the same time.

For example, I see my three-wheeled truck as the second-last vehicle in my life. Once fuel prices get right out of control (“It’s stratospheric, Baby, stratospheric!”) I’ll talk my wife into sharing an industrial tricycle with enclosed cab and small red cedar box on the back (homemade, perhaps) for carting our weekly groceries and specialty beverages.


[“I see red paint and a red cedar box on this perky model”: photo link]

The REOPENED plant, aka Falcon Heights (a Ford Falcon was the first car off the line in 1967), could be home to a hundred other useful, sustainable enterprises as well.

For example:

Recycled plastic could be reused in picnic tables, chairs, benches and dozens of other products built on site

Rescued lumber could be reused in birdhouses, tables, chairs, boxes (for the back of adult funcycles) and dozens of other products built on site

Local landfills or refuse destined for landfills could be mined and sorted for reusable materials or products on site

Rescued landfill materials, e.g., plastic, lumber, metal, etc., could be reused on site or sold to other manufacturers

The arable land around the plant could be farmed annually and its produce sold at the Falcon Heights Farmers Market on site

Some of the acres of tarmac, once covered by newly-manufactured Fords and the parked cars of plant employees could be removed and recycled and the land (once returned to full health) used as a reforestation project by Reforest London - to help them reach their goal of planting one million trees in ten years

Other acres of tarmac could be covered with solar panels and wind turbines built on site - to help power certain enterprises

Many other ideas will spring to minds more fertile than my own.

Let me know what you think would work at Falcon Heights.

Do you love your current or future three-wheeled truck as much as I do?

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Please click here to read Live Small and Prosper PT 3: “I love my three-wheeled truck.”

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Life on the Edge PT 1

7:42 a.m.

Already this morning I’ve taken two chances.

Moments ago I threw the dregs of two types of coffee into the brew machine without measuring amounts.

Result - surprisingly delicious.

Now I’m showing you a close up of a piece of BC cedar and asking for help with a math/mantel question.


["Be careful. I lost my place and started over three times!": photo GH]

Approximately how many years of growth will be seen in my 8-inch wide fireplace mantel?

And if you like that question, try this one on for size. If the cedar had a diameter of 4 feet, approximately how old was it when it fell, or was felled?

Where did I get the slice? Tune in tomorrow.

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Please click here for another post about a wood project.

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I Ask You: Do mud nesting sites crumble and fall?

Recently I spotted barn swallows (aka mud swallows) feeding young birds safely housed in mud nests under Riverside Drive near downtown London.


After I parked my bicycle on the path out of Harris Park (directly under the roadway) I enjoyed photographing the antics of the busy, determined parents.


["Somebody is there but won't sit up for me": photos by GH]

Yesterday I returned to another similar nesting site - under the lone bridge on Hunter Crossley Line (the road begins 2 miles south of Belmont and runs east to Imperial Line) - and all I found were the remains of the many footprints of former mud homes.


(This morning I reviewed past photos to estimate how many homes had been under the bridge in previous years. Easily, there had been dozens).


["In June, 2008 dozens of homes were clumped together. Where are they now?"]

I wondered, where have the birds gone?

Perhaps they move around because of an increase in predators or decrease in food supply. I saw many swallows yesterday, so their population appears healthy, and one set of parents was feeding young in a mud house attached to the wall of a productive birdhouse workshop in Courtland. (Highway 3, a few km. east of Tillsonburg).


Swallows like man-made houses too, but if mud is plentiful, they make sturdy houses that must come - I’m guessing - with some sort of expiry date.

Note - the top photo shows one inhabited mud house built atop a vacant one.

So, I ask you, do swallows not trust the veracity of old mud? Does the mud dry out and fall off the cement or steel girder after a year or two?

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Please click here for more I Ask You.

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The Workshop: Am I spending too much time in the shop?

I think I must be. The weather is brilliant and I’m thinking about finishing two birdhouses before I take off on the motorcycle.

Also, and this is happening more often, important messages and plans are jotted down on chunks of wood rather than notepaper.




["Photos by Dusty Jeans"]

Really. I should go for that bike ride right now.

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Are you writing notes on chunks of woods? Do you need a break?

Please click here for more dusty stuff from The Workshop.

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I Ask You: “Who’s down there?”

My 20-month-old twin grand-daughters are visiting soon and to keep them from falling off the deck - face first into the ferns, violets and irises - I’m building a fence at the deck’s edge.


While cutting cedar and pressure-treated posts I spotted a pair of holes - like owl’s eyes - staring back at me from a piece of scrap.


An identical pair stared back at me from a post already in place. And upon closer examination, I found a single hole on the outside of the post.




Something - not someone - had drilled one hole on the outside of the post but had drilled twin passageways inside the post.


["Like owl's eyes - staring back at me": photos by GH]

I ask you: Who or what is down there?

Any ideas?

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Please click here for more I Ask You.

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I Ask You: Some things have to go into the garbage. Right?

What does one do with old ‘duckies’?


Because they are starting to leak (Sorry. I lied. They have been leaking for a few years!), I thought I could apply duct tape to solve the problem.


No good. Too far gone. Holes too big. Tape doesn’t stick well to 10-year old boots.


Then I thought I could put them into Declutter Box #3.

No good. Too far gone. Holes too big. They wouldn’t pass the Good Will Industries sniff test.


["No holes. Good for ten more years": thrillin' photos by GH]

So, they’re in the garbage can now, and I’ll start wearing my old pair of cut-off rubber boots around the yard. No holes.

But, I ask you, should old duckies just go to the landfill?

Is there something else I could do with them in the “recycle-reuse” department?

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Please click here for another I Ask You.

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I Ask You: Would a potato ruin the porridge?

I am used to adding the following perks to the regular batches of porridge I make:

Red River cereal

bran

flax seed

sliced raisins

currants

chopped apple


["And, I do like potatoes": photo GH]

Because of the raisins, currants and apple, I no longer add sugar to sweeten it. It’s sweet enough. (A lot like me, really).

However, while stirring the pot this morning I wondered how it would taste if I added one chopped potato?

I ask you: Have you ever added potato to your porridge? How did it taste?

What would be the pros and cons?

Would I even notice a potato in my porridge?

Is this type of thinking too far outside the box?

What box?

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I didn’t add potato to this morning's batch. Maybe next week.

Please click here to read more I Ask You.

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I Ask You: How much is one cup of coffee?

I know I already get a deal when I fill up my travel mug at The Red Roaster. (I am charged the ‘one mug’ price and grab my own refill when the staff is distracted).

And I know I get a better deal - price per cup - when I buy bags of Red Roaster coffee and brew my own at home.


But... and this is a big but... how much is one cup of coffee when I brew it at home?

Why do I ask?

We’re going to hear a lot of news and negative reaction related to rising food costs; but the move toward brewing our own coffee and cooking our own meals (in order to save money) will seemingly take forever.

Some people will react like this reader who emailed the following in response to an earlier post about ‘dropping the drive-thru’ coffee habit and making java at home:

“I don’t have to. I don’t want to. And I won’t.”


["How much does a hearty breakfast really cost?": photos GH]

So, when people start complaining I want to be able to tell them - honestly - how much they’ll save by using the room in their house with all those shiny appliances.

I ask you: What’s that room called again?

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I Ask You: "Have you ever seen this LP album?"

I’m in the process of decluttering the house, one room at a time.

But I suffered a setback the other day. I brought someone else’s stuff home. I took it right out of his trunk. Three LPs. One rugby shirt. That’s no way to reduce the amount of gear in a house. I know.


["Eddie, you're getting to be a drag!": photos GH]

However, one album just had to be photographed before it goes back out the door. (I showed you the other two yesterday).


["That's right, Baby. Earl and I got things to do."]

I ask you: Have you ever seen this album? Do you own it? How much would you pay for another one?!


In my opinion, it’s very funny on a few levels, but... now that I’ve taken the picture, it’s 'locomotion' time, right out the door, baby.

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Please click here to read another I Ask You.

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I ask again: Last snowfall of the season?

I think last week’s snowfall will be the last until next winter.


And yesterday’s will be the last.




["Snowy photos" by GH]

Of course, I have been wrong before. Like, just last week!

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Please click here for a snowy 'Zoom w a View.'

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I Ask You: How can the one pair look better?

I hung up my marathon running shoes several years ago. I was too old and tired to keep racing. (My wife described me as decrepit. I don’t even want to know what that means).

And now it’s time to toss two old pairs of Nikes because they aren’t comfortable anymore - even for cutting the grass.

While dusting them off I noticed something unusual. Thought I’d ask readers about it.


On the one hand, the pair on the right still looks very good, but the tread and cushioning is wasted and worn out, as if enfeebled with age and infirmities.


On the other, the pair on the left also looks wasted and worn on top, seemingly dilapidated, but the tread and cushioning looks and feels as good as the day I first slipped them over my toosties.


["On the one hand, but on the other...": photos by GH]

I ask you: What gives?

Another 'I ask you': Can you spot the words above that are used to define 'decrepit' in the Concise Oxford dictionary? (Yes, I just had to know what it meant!)

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Please click here to read another exciting episode of I Ask You.
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I Ask You: Does this illustration make perfect sense?

Paul Lachine provided the illustration for a recent column.

I think it's a very good one.


However, I think Uncle Sam should be standing knee deep in more than IOUs and a representative for Canada should be standing next to him.

I ask you: Who should be the Canadian rep?

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Please click here for more I Ask You.

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I Ask You: Did you have this much fun at age four?

Grandson Ollie turned four in December and the photo below, from his birthday party, is stuck to my fridge with a magnet.


Ollie and bestest friend Angus discovered how to operate a small disco ball and are showing off their excitement.

I ask you...

is excitement the best word?

Enthusiasm? Wonder? Youthful energy? Zaniness?

I can’t open the fridge door without a chuckle when I see the photo.

Did you have this much fun when you were four years old?

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Maybe I don’t laugh as hard as I used to, but my life can be pretty darn exciting too, ya know.

Don’t believe me? Morning Vignettes right here.

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I Ask You: Have you ever been to Beamsville?

Recently, when I realized a reader had visited from Beamsville, I confused the town with Beachville. I wasn’t driving at the time so I didn’t get lost.
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I did, however, begin to wonder at the time why Beamsville sounded so familiar. I later realized it was because on one of my last motorcycle rides of the season I past through Beachville on my way to Woodstock.

Another reader left the following comment:

“Beamsville is in Niagara. I think it is near St. Catharines.”


The reader is correct. And two years ago, on my way to Niagara Falls, I drove down highway 81 for a stretch and past through Beamsville. (I live an exciting life as my memoirs will reveal).


["My dad once owned a car very much like this": photos GH]

Photo files reveal I stopped at an abandoned garage/motel/mystery building and took a few photos of an old sedan in the parking lot.


I ask you:

Have you been to Beamsville? Seen this car? What type of car is it? Do you know the year?

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More about Beamsville vs Beachville here.

There’s even more here if you’re truly interested.

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