Catching up on things that happened this Summer: We took delivery of our new tree, a Ginkgo, which looks puny compared to the late, lamented European Ash, which fell prey to the emerald ash borer last year. After years of not having a bird feeder, we finally worked out that something up high in the honey locust could be seen from Mary-Jo’s desk in the kitchen, and from the breakfast table. Following a summer recess, it’s back up for winter, and attracting lots of birds that we don’t usually see. Our garden did us proud, and I had lots of fun with a new macro lens, documenting flowers, bugs and resident reptiles.
We took several trips north to look at country properties (aka cottages!) but never found anything that would make us want to take the plunge. Our neighbours took a trip and were stuck with one day with no-one to look after their dog Teddy, so we had a dog-sitting day which Anna enjoyed, and which exhausted Clare. (Speaking of sleeping dogs, I looked down one day and found Clare putting her life (well, at least her ears) in my hands, trusting that I wouldn’t move the wheels of my chair!) And finally, I visited downtown Toronto to attend a seminar on flying an UAV (or drone) for taking aerial photos – apparently it’s expensive and wrapped in more laws than you can shake a stick at, especially if you want to offset the cost of the equipment by taking photos commercially. Oops, I forgot the moon. I spent the evening looking out and finding the eclipse event hidden by clouds, so I dismantled the camera and tripod. Mary-Jo didn’t believe me that it wasn’t visible, and naturally it had magically re-appeared when she went to look – so I re-assembled everything in time to catch the back end.
