That's no way to treat your wife

 

As part of our tick avoidance scheme we decided to have designated outdoor clothing, mine are tick repellent. These were hung on hooks outside the cabin. After a very cold night Helen went to put her sweater on and found a tiny field mice looking up at her. They are now stored inside. 

We have had Baltimore Orioles around the cabin for many years one nest is to the side of the porch. We never had much luck with an Oriole feeder, it was expensive, ignored except by a determined hummingbird and now it leaks. When I saw them trying to use our nice sturdy hummingbird feeder I put out navel oranges. The other day this became a bone of contention. But I am sure like most marital squabbles they will work it out. None of the other birds have shown any interest in the orange which is just as well. Sunflower seed are a lot cheaper.

“Neighborhood What do I care that they’re tearing down the nice old houses and putting up brutal ones? Before very long, I’ll be just a breeze blowing around town, trying to avoid all the wind chimes.”

Billy Collins, Music Tables:Poems

Cabin June 3 2021

 

Last year we did not stay at the cabin. Instead we spent two weeks at the farm and the rest of the time in Calgary. We have been here a week and I have some observations. It is incredibly dry. We have noticed green popular leaves falling from the trees and blowing in the wind. I have only seen one Franklin’s Ground Squirrel in front of the cabin. Whether the colony has been reduced or whether some are  still denning I cannot say. We have not seen the Snowshoe Hare so far. For many years we only saw one. Two years ago we had a pair who produced several litters. Typically they take longer to habituate to the presence of us, dogs included. (one just showed up and was soundly barked at)  I have not seen a Red Squirrel but we can hear them. I have seen a couple of Least Chipmunks.

Catbird

Red Necked Grebes have nested in the slough in front of the cabin every year we have been here. This year the only visible nest seems low in the water  and I have only seen one bird so I wonder if something has happened. There seem to be more species of ducks at least visiting the slough including Scaups, Canvasbacks, Buffleheads, Goldeneye, Mallards, Blue Winged Teal, and a pair of Ring Necked Ducks which is a new species for us. We have seen the Bald Eagle, Turkey Vultures and Franklin’s Gulls flying overhead. The first morning we were here I photographed a female Oriole on the porch and one or more pairs has been around most days. We also have had Hummingbirds, Goldfinches, Chickadees, and a female Rose-breasted Grosbeck at the feeders. There are Phoebes and a Robin nesting on the cabin. Again there do not seem to be any Barn Swallows. We have had three pairs nesting on the cabin in one year in the past. There appear to be Tree Swallows by the hayfield, as well as Kildeer, Song, Vesper and White-throated sparrows, a Catbird and a Great Blue Heron. The beavers are omnipresent the number of trees continue to decline. 

I initially came to western Canada to participate in an archaeological field school excavating at Fort George, a Northwest Company post. Every year at the cabin I try to read some history books to expend my knowledge of the subject. Primarily these books focus the fur trade in western Canada and the culture and history of the indigenous people of Western Canada including the events of the North-West Rebellion. Sadly the discovery in Kamloops did not come as a great surprise to me. I would recommend the book Loyal till Death Indians and the North-West Rebellion by Blair Stonechild and Bill Waiser if you want to get a sense of the attitudes leading up to the situation we find ourselves today. I am currently reading Waiser’s A World We have Lost  Saskatchewan Before 1905. 

My wife looked out the window this morning and there were 

three males Orioles sporting in the Saskatoon bushes.

 Can they be getting ready to leave already?

“He was thinking what a long and wide thing time is, to have so many happenings in it.” 

                                               

 from Soonchild

    by Russell Hoban

"I remember you. You're the one
who lifted your ancient bones
of fossil rock, pulled yourself free
of the strata like a plaster figure
rising from its own mold, became
flesh and feather, took wing,
arrested the sky."

 

from Stone Bird

by Patttiann Rogers

 

 

"here is nine o'clock, harbor-wide,
and a glinting code: promise and warning.
The morning's the size of heaven.

What will you do with it? "          

 

from Long Point Light

Mark Doty                

"Midway upon the journey of our life

I found myself within a forest dark,

For the straightforward pathway had been lost.

 Ah me! how hard a thing it is to say

What was this forest savage, rough, and stern,

Which in the very thought renews the fear.

So bitter is it, death is little more;

But of the good to treat, which there I found,

Speak will I of the other things I saw there.

I cannot well repeat how there I entered,

So full was I of slumber at the moment

In which I had abandoned the true way."

                                from  Inferno Canto 1

                                      Dante, Longfellow's Tran.

Some dour quotes hopefully the birds
will brighten this up.

We had a couple of rarer visitors to the

cabin this year and although the photos

were not great I thought I would post them.

We had lots of White Crowned Sparrows and

the Phoebes are always around keeping an

eye on things. 

" Old age is always wakeful; as if, the longer

linked with life, the less man has to do with

aught that looks like death. Among sea-commanders,

the old greybeards will oftenest leave their berths to

visit the night-cloaked deck."

                                                             from Moby Dick

                                                                  Herman Melville

Back at the farm this pine has been dying by

inches for years but it is such a popular roost

it has not been removed.

“Were this world an endless plain, and by sailing eastward

we could for ever reach new distances, and discover sights

more sweet and strange than any Cyclades or Islands of King

Solomon, then there were promise in the voyage. But in pursuit

of those far mysteries we dream of, or in tormented chase of the

demon phantom that, some time or other, swims before all human

hearts; while chasing such over this round globe, they either lead us

 on in barren mazes or midway leave us whelmed.”

                                                                  from Moby Dick

                                                                           Herman Melville