Inconvenience in the Wilds of North Middlesex:

Here in North Middlesex, we seem obsessed with inconvenience. Take the the future of our high school; a city bigwig’s suggestion that E-learning might help the enrolment problem found few backers. Better to be inconvenienced by having your children go all the way to London apparently.  Wind turbine farms have generated more than the expected electricity: some local residents have lain down on the road to inconvenience truck drivers delivering the turbine blades. On another front, even though, as our newspaper solemnly reported, “January is a time of no mosquito issues,” concerned citizens reviewed plans to render life as inconvenient as possible for next year’s crop. Well, who can quarrel with that!

Nevertheless, for me, living in a small village means things are handy: You can go to the library and be home again in 10 minutes — and that includes checking out the books the librarian called you about when she realized that Hotmail failed to send the automated message.

Recently, one of the wardens hurriedly left church just as Communion was starting. I didn’t quite catch her explanation, but apparently she was coming back. I was last in line and tried to delay — in both kinds   — in case she returned in time, but she just missed.  However, she did partake of the final hymn and the dismissal. She had just put her house up for sale.  A Sunday morning showing was scheduled, so she had to dash home to put her cat in the car.

And things are made handy: Take the bright yellow port-a-potty behind the sign on Main St. advertising the Parkhill Area Horticultural Society (aka the Hort).  Apparently, the municipality asked the company to remove it during the last postal strike for reasons I am not clear about, but it has reappeared — like a winter aconite in a snowy garden.

A letter to the editor in the Parkhill Gazette reminded readers that our local sanitation company donated it not just for families tobogganing on the hill beside the post office but for all visitors to the town. It gets serviced weekly, has a hand sanitizer dispenser, and is available for use “no matter what time of the day or night.”

There are other washrooms, but they are at the Leisure Club, a distant stroll on the other side of Coronation Park (past the famed Royal Oak, carved to commemorate William and Kate's wedding) and, inconveniently, they don’t open until May.

Speaking of trees, had you attended the general meeting of the Hort, you would have learned something handy about landscaping. The owner of the local nursery advised against spending hundreds of dollars on a formal landscape design. Just bring your house measurements to their garden store, and she’ll draw an outline of your house and yard in the gravel driveway and place plants in it until the desired effect is reached.   Then you can spend that money on plants rather than paper!

Also, everyone knows about the convenience of mulch for the garden especially when it provides nitrogen for the soil. A lively and somewhat unexpected discussion ensued as to the nitrogen-providing benefits of human urine. Apparently, it is very handy for re-invigorating compost heaps, and if you can get urine from a male of the species, it can be used to ward off unwanted critters. This surprising information raised a few titters amongst the mostly female audience. Practically speaking, we could use some around our neck of the woods as we have been shocked by a threesome of semi-feral cats, enlivened prematurely  by the mild weather no doubt, engaging in unmentionable activity on our lawn.

But alas, there is a downside to convenience. We have been subjected to more than our share of door-to-door inquiries especially about natural gas contracts and subscriptions to the London Free Press, neither of which we want.   We accept solicitations from the Heart and Stroke Foundation, however, as their representative is also our neighbour and has used his Bobcat to clear snow from the foot of our driveway  (before we got our own beast — whereupon, as you will recall, it stopped snowing).

Anyway, the other day I was meandering around the kitchen in my dressing gown when the doorbell rang. It was only 10:00 in the morning, so much too early for the Mr. Heart and Stroke. I shrank down beside the sink until I was sure whoever it was had gone. To add insult to injury, there was another knock on the door several hours later. By this time I was properly clothed but still not convivial.  I am an introvert so for me, answering the door is like answering the phone: if it’s important, they’ll call back. 

And sure enough they did.  As I was making dinner, another knock on the door. I said to Greg who’d arrived home a few minutes before, “For goodness sake, that’s the third time today! Can’t they get the point!”  He said rather firmly, “I think you’d better answer it.” This startled me, as his attitude to unasked-for social interruptions is much like mine.  But I did as I was bidden, looked out and saw a grey van parked in the driveway. Turning to come back up the porch steps, there was the driver. He was carrying a huge bouquet of flowers. 

Yes, it was the chap from Frontier Flowers delivering my Valentine’s bouquet.

Blow, blow thou bitter wind

Another dispatch from the Wilds of North Middlesex — likely #10

 

Like many Canadians, even those in faraway Prince Edward Island, renowned for its winter storms, we have had an unusually mild winter so far.   In fact, some bulbs are up, and a winter aconite was on the verge of blooming a few days ago before the mercury fell again. It’s the yellow dot near the centre of this photo :

I expect many people attribute the balminess to climate change, but I know the real cause. We decided, after several years of snow shovelling and drifts as tall as I am (not that much of an exaggeration), that it was time to get a snow blower.  Since then it has snowed —feebly — twice.  

Unlike Greg, who eschews comparison shopping, I have learned a lot about snow blowers.  My enthusiasm for on-line investigation likely warmed since there was no snow to shovel, which I actually enjoy doing in moderation, and it was raining, which dampened my eagerness for taking a walk.  See raindrops in this accompanying, somewhat dreary, photo :

According to Wikipedia, snow blowers are a Canadian invention first devised in the 1870s.   For some reason, they are now called snow throwers, and they come in one- and two- stage models.   You have to both pick up and then throw the snow; a one-stage does that in one operation, whereas in the mightier  two- stage type, one mechanism draws the snow into the augur and then another blows it out the handy chute.   We bought the latter variety; I call it the Beast.

It is a wise idea to familiarize yourself with its operating ins and outs (no pun intended). This includes how to start the Beast. In this regard, Greg had a small role to play in the ongoing history of Cub Cadets in North Middlesex. The day after we bought it in early December about an inch of snow fell.  Greg hastened out to throw snow. Nothing happened except for ever saltier language , not befitting that of a man of the cloth nor my gentle readers.  I suggested the motor /engine thing might be flooded, but I was ahead of the curve. 

A quick trip back to Parkhill Outdoor Products, and problem solved. You need to prime it first.  News travels fast here, and Greg’s adventure has already entered local lore:  Over coffee at my neighbour’s later in the week, her son-in-law, a truck driver and buddy of the salesman since high school, asked if we had had any more trouble getting it to start. 

Not a good idea, we quickly learned to blow the snow too far and have it land on your neighbour’s driveway.  Your irritated neighbour may soon land on your front porch. Also, it should come as no surprise that wearing a floaty accessory like a scarf is discouraged.  No one want to channel  poor Isadora Duncan.

 And that’s not all.

Things like garden hoses, rolled-up newspapers and forgotten small  toys may lurk under a pristine blanket of snow waiting to  jam the works. Not a wise idea to unblock the augur while the machine is turned on even if it is not actually running.   The misadventure of a local doctor entered the annals of local of history many years ago.   He tried to take a jammed-up newspaper out of the scoop at the front and lost two fingers in the process.  Even though this happened in Ailsa Craig, it is still used as a cautionary tale around here.

My re-entry into normal January activities pales by comparison. Low mobility exercise class resumed a couple of weeks ago.  As we bent and stretched to the usual pre-holiday tunes.  I was rather sorry not to be doing front roly-polies and climbing over the imaginary log to Ave Maria and O Holy Night, but there is always next year.

Speaking of January, I have resolved to make better use of my skates. After trying them out over Christmas at the rink at city hall in Toronto, I decided, once we got home, to go to the holiday community skate over at the arena. 

Toronto has a reputation in these parts for big-city lawlessness. In fact, someone at cantata practice insisted to me that the murder rate in Toronto was higher than that in Detroit, but she was from Sarnia, so I expect I should cut her some slack.  Anyhow, at the rink in Toronto, skaters travelled in the same direction, did not roughhouse, did not play throwing games with hats, did not carry  their toddlers on their shoulders, nor did they pound down the ice like Moose Vasko.  I expect it was because most of the Mega-city skaters were either arthritic (like yours truly) or still learning. Note number of skaters with both feet on ice:

But herein hockey country, it was a different story and a hair-raising experience for me.  Even though Tim Horton’s sponsored the free-for-all  (in every sense of the term), I am going to pay $2 and attend the moms and tots and seniors sessions from now on. There is a two-year-old who plods straight across the rink on the blue line, but I think I can dodge him.

Off to get some spring bulbs

With apologies to Bulwer-Lytton, it's a dark and gloomy morning. However, it is not as cold as yesterday, and the wind has died down. I have just finished re-reading Wuthering Heights so there seemed to be a bit of pathetic fallacy going on: certainly the poplar trees in the back yard were endlessly sussing.  Wuthering seems a bit too strong a word for the pastoral village I live in. And Heathcliff is definitely not a spring bulb sort of guy.  Malignant grief contorted him ...well anyway, I will try for a better grief...and perhaps plant snow drops as a memorial.
I am heading out to get my spring bulbs today and not leave it so late that  I have a poor selection and must plant in a snow shower.  No tulips because the squirrels eat them as a delicacy.  I want the very early bulbs (winter aconite, grape hyacinths, crocuses, and the snow drops I already mentioned) to fill up the bare spots under the bushes in the garden. Planting them in the fragrant humid earth and then months later, after the iron-hard winter, seeing them  actually come up are one of my life's pleasures. 
I have planted grocery-store, forced daffodils once they have finished blooming, and after a year or so they revert to their natural growing rhythm and start to multiply. I am full in agreement with Wordsworth: everyone should have a host of golden daffodils.