Sorry, SK

It's the end of October and for so many years as a prairie gardener I was racing to make sure everything was put away and ready for winter - this had to happen by the Thanksgiving weekend. Today I picked raspberries at my friend Mary's place. They are big and there are still plenty of them. Behind the bowl of raspberries is the bouquet I picked on Thursday. I heard about the prairie blizzard on Monday - sorry, SK, but this extended gardening season is just keeping me pretty much happy. My worry seems to be if those dahlias and glads will dry out enough to keep from rotting over the winter.

The Joy of Singing

It's been a couple of years since I've posted anything about our singalong group here in Kaslo. We get together about once a month and have an old-fashioned sing-song, with a little help from a book entitled Rise Up Singing and from our pianist, Gail. Usually, there's about 30 people who show up at this event and we sit in a very big circle and each pick out a song. Gail plays and we sing. It's a great time. We sing everything from "Home on the Range" to Lennon-McCartney. About the only time we "rise up" is when "El Paso" is selected (a song I don't really enjoy now) and "The Mary Ellen Carter", and it's pretty much impossible to sit down during the singing of that song. The songbook has interesting notes about the origins of song and I'm always pleased to see how many really good songs were written by Canadians. Joni Mitchell stands out as one of them - hurrah, Joni! For a couple of hours, for me, this is JOY!

Last Hike?

Today, a friend and I headed up to Fishhook Lake, pictured here. Not a great picture and not a great looking lake. It doesn't even have a mountain behind it to show itself in reflection. However, it's a good workout to get there, the approach is right off the highway, and we can get there and back in under 4 hours. These were all qualities that Bernice and I wanted for our hike today. The sun was glorious, the views of Kootenay Lake were stunning, but I didn't want to bore my readers with another shot of the Purcells above Kootenay Lake. There's some nice old growth forest enroute to Fishhook and the trail is REALLY steep for the first 30 minutes. Hope we'll get out a couple of more times but I know winter is a comin' - happy trails to all hikers out there.

Mt. Loki (revisited)

I finally got around to downloading some pictures yesterday and discovered this good shot of the top end of Mt. Loki - covered in snow. I didn't actually get back to climb this mountain, but a couple of weeks ago the Wednesday Walkers did a hike near Procter and we had beautiful views of Kootenay Lake, Crawford Bay and the Purcells. Mt. Loki stood out in all its glory. Feels good to have completed it.

Happy Thanksgiving!

This is my favourite Canadian holiday because harvest is so very special. This year, unfortunately, it hasn't been much of a harvest. The tomatoes I brought in have largely rotted from the inside; those tomatoes outside are doing the same thing on the vine. We did manage to put a few bags of apples into the freezer (apples pilfered from roadside trees) and a friend gave me a box of plums which allowed me to do 7 quarts for the winter. I think I had 5 or 6 cucumbers that managed to mature, we've had some zuccini and last week I harvested 7 Hubbard squash. That will be part of our feast tonight. A thing to celebrate this year - Thanksgiving with my parents, one of my sister's and her family, our daughter and son-in-law. Give thanks for what we do have!