How to treat a steer.....

Many who share their homes with dogs have laughed over their dogs' antics around treats -  pleading looks, pawing, jumping up, sitting pretty, trying every trick in their repertoire in hopes we will cave and give them 'just one more'.  And who hasn't seen those comical photos of dogs almost cross-eyed as they patiently sit with a treat on their nose, waiting  for the release word so they can just eat the darn thing?

Most animals like treats, no matter what their species.  Allie comes running at the sound of the cat cookie jar lid or the rustle of a bag of Temptations.  The pigs I've fostered all knew where the treats were kept, and I've had more than one jacket pocket ripped off by an enthusiastic piggy snout.  Even Martin, the alpaca who came with the property I rented in the Fraser Valley, came running at the sound of a container of apple slices or carrot chunks.

So it comes as no surprise that Theo, the giant steer at RASTA sanctuary, likes treats.  And one of his favourite treats appears to be the leftover pizza rounds which a local pizza place donates to the sanctuary when they overestimate how many to prepare.  Plain rounds of cooked pizza dough, with no sauce or toppings, suits Theo just fine.   Think of them as very large dog cattle cookies.

On Thursday after our volunteer shift, Nancy and I grabbed a couple of rounds and headed over to the shelter where Theo, Romeo and Tango were hanging out.  And here's how it went down:

Yum....thank you!
But why is that person pointing the camera at me?

Doesn't she ever put that camera away?

What's Theodore eating?
Is he getting a TREAT?

Nom...nom...nom..
Gawd, she's STILL pointing that lens at me!

Pizza!  May we have some too please?

Oh. Wow.  Best Treat Ever!

Hey! Quit squishin' me!
My turn, my turn! 

Look, lady, if you really want a picture,
I'll give you a picture. Right now, while the donkeys are eating.

Help, there's a metal bar through my neck!
(Heheheheheh - how'd you like that one, camera lady?)

Me:  Theodore!  You are one silly steer!
Now I've got pizza crumbs on my camera lens! 

Oh, here, let me clean that off for you! 

There's no such thing as a day without a smile when you live with or work with animals!

MY ol' red sweater - by Mitzi

Deah blog readers,

If you red read  Mama Jean's story yesterday, you prob'ly think she's the only one in this hows house wiv a red sweater.  Well that's just not true!  

Mah ol' red sweater is just as comfy and just as interesting as hers.  No, nobody coloured a picture to win me a shopping spree at some northern store.  And, no, my sweater prob'ly isn't thirty years old. 

But mah Mama Jean bought it at the Cowichan and District SPCA Garage Sale a few years ago, which as you know is a HUGE annual event.  And who knows what other amazing, sweet, cute, wonderful, clever dog had it before that?  Maybe even more than one. An' I think maybe Belle or Shiloh, two small shelties that lived here, wore it for a while too.  So it has a loooong history, and it exemplifies thriftiness and environmental awareness - we is not fillin' the landfill wiv this one till it is well and truly worned out.  

Anyhow, after all those other dogs,  now it's mine, and I don't mind it at all even though I'm not really a clothes sorta dog. But since Mama Jean keeps the house rather cool (yes you do Mama Jean, you keep it freezings!), I like to have my sweater on at this time of year.  

Sometimes I even sleep in it!  It is very snuggly.  And I think it looks rather nice on me....don'tcha think so too?

Love and kissesses, 
Mitzi 
xxoooxx

The Old Red Sweater

As I puttered around the house this morning, I picked up my old red sweater which I had carelessly tossed on the armchair the night before.  It is a ratty old sweater, but like many ratty old clothes, it is to my body what comfort food is to my mouth.  Familiar.  Pleasurable.  Comforting. 

I obtained the sweater in 1984, when my young daughter won a $100 Hudson's Bay gift certificate for me in a Mother’s Day colouring contest.  We lived in a very small town in the Northwest Territories, a town with a little general store, a tiny Bay, one hamburger take-out joint, one eat-in restaurant, one motel, some government offices,  the college where I taught, and about 750 people not counting the students temporarily in residence.  As any serious shopping required a flight out to Edmonton or an excruciatingly long drive on rutted gravel roads to Yellowknife,  and we had been in the North for nearly a year, I used it to replenish my rapidly depleting and somewhat boring closet.  I don’t remember what else I bought, but I do remember falling in love with the bright red sweater.

As I walked down the hall, sweater in hand, towards the bedroom this morning, I noticed a seam under the arm that needs mending and a button that is loose.  A seamstress I am not, and mending usually means the rag bag or perhaps a donation to the thrift store,  but the thirty year old sweater will be mended.  Too sloppy to wear for going out, it is my go-to sweater when I am chilly in the house.  It is warm, it is comfy, and it is full of memories.  And, as I hung it up, I noticed it is a medium – a size I haven’t worn for a very long time – which really makes me smile as it isn’t the least bit too small for me.  

I love my old red sweater.   I love its cheery colour.  I love that it still fits me without the least discomfort.  I love that it has lasted over thirty years.  And, most of all,  I love that it was a gift from my child who coloured so carefully in the hopes of winning something for her mama. 

The old things in life are often the best :  old friends, old dogs, old recipes, old sweaters. 

Tranquility

Grise Bay
Tofino, Vancouver Island BC

Good Friends, Good Reads

I have blogged before about the amazing number of writers in my circle of friends and the books they have published - some, such as Lorelei Rondeau's "The Gutsy Cookbook" now in its second printing - and today I'm excited to tell you about two more books written by two more friends.

Liz Maxwell Forbes was one of the very first friends I made upon moving to the island.  We were not only in the same writing group, proofread each other's stories, and for nearly five years co-authored a regular column for a local paper, but we have also hiked together, looked after each other's dogs, and shared endless cups of coffee and delicious chats. She holds a very special place in my heart.

And so I'm delighted that she and her partner, Grant Evans, have launched their own website, Osborne Bay Books, and that Grant's first book View from the Tower will be out just before Christmas.  It's an interesting and often amusing story of his days as an air traffic controller in the 1960s,  in Port Hardy on the Vancouver Island. Anyone who loves BC history, aviation, and/or personal memoirs will enjoy View from the Tower.  

Liz's  first full-length book (she has published several short stories) will be ready for publication in the new year. Growing Up Weird tells the story of her childhood in Oak Bay, Vancouver Island.  I love Liz's storytelling, in which characters of her past come to life, everyday events evoke memories of my own childhood, and humor blends with pathos and brutal honesty. I'm so looking forward to the release of Growing Up Weird.

You can read excerpts of both View from the Tower and Growing Up Weird on their website:  www.osbornebaybooks.com.

Both Grant and Liz are already at work on their next publications, and Liz documents their journey in her new blog, which can also be found via their website. Check it out and follow along!

PS:  You just might recognize the photo in the header on their website......  

Rainy Days and Mondays....

Rainy days and Mondays - or rainy Mondays - are good days to continue editing the thousands of photos I took this fall.  This one - taken on a rainy day at Tofino in September - seems an appropriate one to post this rainy Monday:

Woman and Dog
Chesterman Beach

Bird on Sunflower

I was working in the garden today when I glanced over at my neighbour's yard where many tall sunflowers have died back to leave only the seed heads on which the birds feast.  The colourful stripe in this bird's wing caught my attention - he was flying with a group of starlings and had the mottled colouring of starlings, yet had the wing stripe of a red-winged blackbird.  But the red-winged blackbirds I've often seen among reeds up at Crofton lake are a glossy black.  Is it possible the two species of birds have intermingled and mated to produce a hybrid?  A red-winged starling?  A starbird?  A blackling?  Or perhaps it is just the red-winged blackbirds winter coat?  Whatever it was, it made for an interesting photo.

Dream Big!

Yesterday, my friend Marina (for whom I occasionally horsesit) asked if I could use my photo editing skills to help her envision a change she wanted to make on her property - building a barn closer to the house, near the top end of the driveway.  I've only recently begun to explore the fun things one can do with photo editing, using an online program called PicMonkey which is very user friendly, has great tutorials, and most of which is free (though I opted for the premium version which cost me a whole $35 per year, or thereabouts).  Even though my skills are still pretty shaky and amateurish, I like fooling around with this stuff, so I figured "why not?"

I started with a few photos of the property, like this one:

And a stock photo of a barn design that appealed to Marina,

And using the same concept I use for watermarks - an overlay - I inserted the barn photo into the property shot, 'erased' the parts of the barn picture that I didn't want, and voila, Marina had a barn. If I'd been really patient, I could have cloned the exterior of the house onto the barn walls so the colour of the two buildings would match. I'm not that patient.

Then I used the same process for a couple of other property photos, to give her a perspective from the road and from her patio.  Here's what it would look like from the road:

And from the patio, located on the rear corner of the house:

Once the barn is built, a fence added, and Boo and Magic move over from their present stable near the front pasture, the view from the patio and living quarters will look more like this: Okay, it looks like she traded in Magic for a mini horse, but you get the idea!

Of course, I couldn't leave well enough alone.   So with the help of a few of my other recent photos, I encouraged my friend to dream big.  After all, what's the use of acreage if you only have a couple of horses?

Dream big, Marina!  

A tired princess and her sock monkey

Mitzi
October 2015

Little Splashes of Colour....

Maple leaves in my garden

Yesterday was a glorious day, with blue skies overhead but a definite nip in the air.  As I mowed the soggy grass one last time, cleaned the mower and the rest of the garden tools before putting them away,  and laid newspaper and mulch over an area where I plan to plant more shrubs come spring, I found myself thinking I had to finally accept that winter is on its way.  Slowly the plants were dying back, the ground beneath my feet mucky from rain, the leaves on my shrubs and trees becoming sparse. The predominant palette, with the exception of the little dogwood and maples I'd planted this year,  was grey and brown and mottled green.

Dogwood adds a splash of fall colour

I fetched the camera to capture the beauty of the sun, low in the afternoon sky, illuminating the maple leaves, and then looked around to see what else I might photograph.

And what I found astounded me.  Though lacking their earlier profusion,  there were still many flowers in bloom this mid-November afternoon, many little splashes of colour. .  Fifteen, by my camera's count, though I may have missed a few.

Some were in pots, some in raised beds, some in borders, and some climbing fences.  But they were there, in my dying November garden - and suddenly my dying garden was very much alive.

A saying of Dr. Wayne Dyer's came to mind:

"If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change." 

How true of so much more than just gardens!

Remember...

"There was never a good war, or a bad peace."
~Benjamin Franklin~

Smashing Pumpkins

It was Smashed Pumpkin Party at RASTA today

At the end of a productive afternoon at the sanctuary, there's always time for a little fun - and today it was Smashing Pumpkins.  No, not the rock group (though we did move a lot of rocks). Volunteers at RASTA sanctuary today had the privilege of smashing pumpkins for the pigs to eat - and for all the other critters too.
Watching the excitement of many hungry piggies running here and there with big chunks of pumpkin, chowing down on freshly smashed pumpkin, stealing each other's piece of pumpkin,  made for lots of laughter, picture taking, and ear-to-ear smiles (on the humans AND on the pigs)!  

Here's some of my favourite shots from today:

Nom nom nom....

This is SOOOO good! 

Why thank you nice volunteer!

Even Theo loves his pumpkin!

Delicious!

Benson the dog gets some too!

Toby's the only one who wasn't that interested.
His grazing muzzle had just been removed and he
was intent on scarfing down the green grass!

Every pig has his/her pumpkin

Thanks Lucie for the Great Pumpkin Party - there are few things more fun than watching well loved animals having fun!

A beautiful day for a hike!

Sally and I have known each other for almost sixty years.  Hers was likely one of the first families my parents met when we immigrated to Canada, and her mother and mine remained best friends for the rest of their long lives.  By virtue of our parents' friendship, and our mutual involvement in Guiding and church activities, Sally and I spent a fair bit of time together throughout our school years. Then we moved on to different places and different lives and kept in touch mostly through our moms.

Shortly before the deaths of both our mothers, I moved to the island and ended up living less than fifteen kilometers from Sally;  we reconnected and got together a couple of  times a year.  In a recent conversation, I mentioned the loss of hiking friends as well as my hiking dog, and learned that although Sally loves the outdoors and has lived here for much of the past forty years, she had not done many of my favourite hikes in this area.  So we choose a date, and today we went to Crofton Lake.  It was the perfect day - an overcast sky in the early morning soon turned into puffy white clouds and then beautiful blue skies, lovely reflections, and a glorious day for a hike.

The trail up

Reeds and Reflections

Looking across the lake

Fall colours against a blue sky

A view of the Salish Sea, Salt Spring Island, and the
North Shore Mountains
from the loop trail back down

We discovered we are well matched in pace and ability, and have already noted on our calendars our plans to hike again next Monday, weather permitting.

Down a Country Road

My friend Pat and I took the poms, Cosmo and Lexi, for a walk down a quiet country road today.  Along the way, we made some new friends. We saw some cows in a field, but too far off to introduce ourselves.  These three horses,  at least one of which had been rolling in the mud, only gave us a passing nod before resuming their interrupted afternoon snack.

Soon we saw a couple of donkeys who were as interested in looking at us as we were at them:

Hey! Who are those people?

They shared their field with some sheep, and soon they trotted over to say hello:

We better check this out!

The poms were on their best behaviour - they didn't bark even once!  The donkeys were quite curious about the little fluffballs on leashes:

Hmmm....what is this fluffball?

Meerkat?  Skunk?  

I dunno what he is, but that smells like Cookie Breath to me!

Lexi wasn't quite as enamored as Cosmo, but soon decided to say hello too:

Hello Mr. Donkey
Please don't eat me!

I took a few more photos of the sheep, with their lovely faces that always seem so full of grace and serenity:

Then it was back up the road, admiring the old farm buildings and the beautiful fall leaves:

Countryside in fall colours