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Thursday, October 29, 2009

Like a wet facecloth hitting the side of my face.

Posted by Melanie at 18:11 1 comments It's been snowing all afternoon, time to get out the ski wax

The days leading up to winter really suck, the ground isn’t frozen, the thermometer hovers around zero and it alternately snows and rains. The heavy wet white stuff is awesome for making snowmen and forts, except with both kids gone I’m not into that anymore.

At five AM today I lay in bed listening to it thudding off the roof. Yesterday it was dark when I arrived home. I had a lot to carry so I parked up near the back door, dangerously close to the side of the house. Sure enough, when I went outside, I was forced to shovel the fallen snow away from the car, before I dared try to move it. I was sucessfull but got stuck in the driveway anyway, and I have snow tires on the car!

I’m embarrassed to say I do not know how to use the snow blower. I don’t even know how to turn it on. Last year when we got the thing I resisted all Robert efforts to teach me how to use it. I didn’t want to know how to use it because I didn’t want have to bother wasting my time, when I could be skiing or running, snow blowing the driveway. The back of my mind feebly tried to remind me that Robert is away a lot and if it snows.. However, I firmly squashed my feeble thoughts and forgot all about it until today.

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Friday, October 23, 2009

Feelings of Security

Posted by Melanie at 15:37 0 comments

When Callum was up here at Thanksgiving we went through his boxes of stuff, he has stored in the basement, indulging ourselves in a nostalgia fest. I managed to convince him to put aside some stuff to take back with him, but the only thing to make it into his car was the black garbage bag full of lego. I guess he has gotten over his worries about what his friends will think of him still playing with Lego.

Below is a grownup thing one can make with lego. I think it is cool. Unfortunately, even though Callum has a LOT of lego, he does not have enough to make this. Via unplggd

102009_rg_LEGOKitchen_02.jpg

I never felt the need to store any of my stuff at my parent’s house so I don’t understand why both my children insist on leaving their stuff behind. Charlotte came home the other day with even more stuff to add to the boxes she already has stored in the basement. Maybe it has something to do with letting go.

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Thursday, October 15, 2009

Climate Change and the Mountain Pine Beetle in Northern British Columbia

Posted by Melanie at 12:22 0 comments

written for the blog action day on climate change

Every year I mentally resist the signs of winter. As the skin baring days of summer get shorter, tree leaves turn yellow and fall off, mornings are white with frost I struggle to come to terms with reality. But, like an early snowfall which melts and snows again, finally sticking around for the duration my mind and body eventually resign themselves for the long haul.

I live in Northern BC. Winter is a full seven months long. Before it is half over I’m fed up. I’ve lived up here for half my life. At first I found the intense cold and the bottomless layer of snow that settled in and stayed till spring unfathomable.

One year, winter arrived and melted in two months. I remember standing outside on Christmas day in a tee shirt, unheard off.

Winter may go on for months but the temperature moves around, from minus forty, or lower, back up to zero and back down again. Spring comes when the days of zero and above zero temperatures become more frequent and stay there. Really low temperatures make getting around difficult. The extreme cold air hits ones nostrils instantly turning to ice and as Environment Canada keeps reminding us- exposed skin can freeze in a ridiculously shot time. We compensate by covering our bodies in layers and layers of wool and down, for the short dash from house to the car.

Scientists have been telling us for two decades that the number of extremely cold days have been getting fewer and fewer. At first glance this may seem like a good thing especially for us fragile humans but it also turns out that warmer winter days are a good thing for the insect population.

during a normal winter a few weeks of extremely cold weather, minus thirty degrees celsius or lower, is enough to kill the Mountain pine beetle, (MPB), Dendroctonus ponderosae, and its larvae but this has not been happening for nearly two decades allowing the pine beetle population to increase to epidemic proportions.

Female beetles bore into a mature pine tree (one that is at least eighty years old) secreting a pheromone that attracts male beetles. The tree responds by secreting a toxic resin in an attempt to kill the beetles however, each beetle carries spores of a blue fungus in its mouth. As they tunnel their way under the bark of the tree they release these spores. As the fungus spreads through the tree it stops the spread of the toxic resin. The beetles lay eggs and the larvae from these eggs feed on the fungus as they develop and in turn carry the fungus spores onto the next tree when the present one is dead.

As well British Columbia’s forest management practises, to limit forest fires, have increased the stands of mature lodgepole pine making it easy for the beetle to eat its way across the northern part of the province.

Usually, without the influence of humans, the mature trees become crowded with other trees and the forest becomes susceptible to fire. As the trees burn the pinecones drop to the forest floor releasing their seeds, which need heat to germinate. A new forest grows up and the cycle continues.

The beetle infestation is devastating for BC’s forest industry. Beetle wood has a characteristic blue stain due to the fungus present inside it. Harvesting this dead wood has to be done quickly, within five to eighteen years before the trees lose their commercial value. Back in 2006 my husband and I built our log house out of beetle killed pine.

A beetle killed pine tree is a characteristic orange easy to spot from a helicopter or when driving down the highway.

The other devastating problem for all this dead pine is the massive forest fire potential. The city of Prince George, where I live, has cut down most of the dead pine within the city and immediate surrounding area.

Private homeowners have been encouraged to do the same. The dead pine is reused as firewood or sold to lumber mills.

Today the only surviving pine trees are those too young for the beetle to bother with. The lack of food has forced the beetle to move on, find another source of food or die. The dead pine trees still left and there are hectares and hectares of them have mostly lost their orange colour because their needles have dropped off. This wood is good for nothing except a giant forest fire.

Photo by D. Huber

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Friday, October 9, 2009

Malabrigo

Posted by Melanie at 20:20 0 comments

I’m a sucker for pretty colours As soon as I saw this on the shelf at Urban Yarns I knew I had to have it.

Malabrigo

I thought I might knit it into a vest, something with buttons up the front or ties, something cool like this.

I love the texture of this yarn and it’s uneven thick and thin thread. Whatever I make can’t help but look arty and homemade. Of course My $30 gift certificate helped cut my total spendage in half.

The yarn is Malabrigo, hand painted pure wool, from Uruguay. It's from the aquarella series, colour 15 floresta.

But wait, before I dive into this exciting new project I want to finish the somewhat boring thing I've been working on for several months. It’s a top down raglan cardigan from Laura Chau. This was the first sweater I knit in Patons Merino back in 2006. This time around I'm knitting it in a variegated wool also bought at Urban Yarns with a gift certificate. I'm making it as long as I can with wide, deep ribbed cuffs and bottom. I want it to be big, like a coat almost.

The only thing is I have already unraveled the main part of it and re knit it because it wasn't wide enough to go around my hips. It is still too narrow so ...

Blue

Note: Maybe first I should look through my stash to find something pretty, to knit myself a pair of warm woolly mitts, to keep my hands warm on my runs through the chilly Autumn air.

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Wednesday, October 7, 2009

It can snow if it wants too

Posted by Melanie at 19:49 0 comments

For the last time this year I hung laundry on the line. After I unpegged the last dried t-shirt I piled all the wooden pegs and the metal line thing, that keeps the laundry from dragging on the ground, into the cloth laundry bag and put it away.

I pulled all the tomato vines out of the greenhouse, harvested the last of the frost bitten broccoli, cabbage and collard greens piling the remains on the compost bin. I ripped all the pea vines and the dead potato tops out of the garden, dug up all the potatoes and laid them on the deck to dry in the sun. I cut the green stuff off the tops of the carrots and the turnips, laying the turnips in the sun and bringing the carrots inside to be washed.

compost bin

Like last year my beet crop sucks. All I got was a couple handfuls of teeny tiny bulbs? I know my soil this year was not of a consistent tilth or nutrient balance and in some areas it was probably too acid. However, next year after adding copious amounts of compost and manure it will be nearing optimal conditions.

Garden Cleanup

I thought I harvested all the tomatoes from the greenhouse last week before I went to Vancouver but twice I’ve been back inside and managed to pick a whole lot more, several bowls full. This means that even with the door open the green house can withstand several degrees of frost. You can bet next year I will be taking full advantage of this knowledge.

Purple Viking

This year I planted four types of potatoes, I worried I had planted them too close together but both the Purple Viiking and the Fingerling Banana ones gave me huge crops anyway. I'm going to credit the soil in this area as being partly responsible for the amazing crop. The russet potatoes and another variety called Warba did not do as well. The soil was not as good where these tubers were planted so that has to be the reason they did so poorly.

I spread the last of the compost and manure on top of the garden beds and put a handful of lime underneath the lilac bushes. THey need a slightly alkaline soil to flower. In the greenhouse I stacked all the stakes on the floor, putting the empty pots, watering cans, empty milk containers, I fill with water for a heat sink, and small garden tools on the shelves. Bigger tools like spades and rakes I propped inside against the wall then I shut the door until next spring.

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Monday, October 5, 2009

Vancouver

Posted by Melanie at 08:48 0 comments

Most of the staff in the stores and in the Hotels speak English with a discernable accent. Even though English is their second or third language it is impeccable. This makes you feel like you have two left feet.

You give up trying to get advice about buses, you think you will be able to figure it out except the buses no longer go where you think they should, given their numbers, and you don’t pick them up on the same street you used too. Since you don’t want to run back to your hotel, to use the computer to google your questions, you ask a young girl. She is stapling a poster for an indie rock concert to a hydro pole. She gives you a blank look. You could have sworn she was a native.

Canadian

The Grouse grind is a lot harder to climb than you think. You doubt anyone ever runs up this thing. The most you can manage is a walk at railway pace. By the halfway mark you are visibly slower.

Entrance to the Grouse Grind

Nine out of ten people doing the Grind are Asian or of Asian decent. One out of three people, including you, are wearing something from Lululemon. Only three people pass you. Two of them are guys, you can hear them coming up behind you so you move to the side to of the trail to let them pass.

The Grind is mostly stairs made of wood, mud and rock. The wooden risers vary in height from a few inches to more than a foot high, making any kind of consistent pace unattainable. Mud and water trickle down the Grind in equal amounts.

You spend a lot of time trying to dodge around slower people. You think to yourself they must know you are behind them since you are breathing heavily and loudly, so why don’t they move? You also think to yourself that maybe you’re a tiny bit impatient. Terrified of slipping you keep your eyes fastened on the ground.

After an eternity you pass the quarter mark then after an eon the halfway mark. Another eon goes by and you overhear a girl, talking into her cell phone, saying she thinks she is near the top. Unbelieving you lift your head to see sunshine pouring through a big hole in the trees. Suddenly new energy courses through your limbs.

You feel something touching your right arm. You look down to see a women, older than you, her brown muscular legs and arms and lithe body make you envious especially when you realize the reason you didn’t know she was there is because she’s not even winded. Feeling guilty you step aside and say, sorry, watching as she bounds effortlessly in front of you.

Finally you pop out onto the rock exhilarated that you have finished. You look at your watch to see it has taken you fifty-five minutes. Later when you tell your son, he says, I thought you would be faster. Your sister says, that’s not bad.

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