Vote Early, Vote Often

Why are all these people standing in line?
Waiting for a bus? A two for one price special at Walmart? Waiting for the Bingo Palace to open?

None of the above.

They are patiently waiting for more than an hour outside the Ormond Beach Public Library for their chance to vote early in the US Presidential election. Daily voting hours have been extended to 7:00am to 7:00pm to accommodate the unprecedented crowds who want to take advantage of the early vote.
So now the big decision is.... who to vote for. McCain & Palin or Obama & Biden? There's not much danger of forgetting their names on the way to the polling station.

But wait.... perhaps there's a third choice..... LEX!

Lex told us he has trained dolphins for the FBI and the CIA, and he was in Texas at the same time as Princess Diana and helped with a murder investigation at the hotel she was staying in, until they ran him out of town.

I guess we know who The Space Cadet is voting for!

Rush Hour at the Beach

The Space Cadet has been out with his camera again.... click to see the details!

My apologies for not blog checking or commenting, our current internet connection is sporadic... that's cos we are being very naughty by piggybacking wi-fi from the condo next door.... Shhhhh don't tell anyone!

Stormy Weather

Our first two days on the beach were ideal, hot and sunny.
I made the aquaintance of Mr Sand Crab. At first he thought he could hide from me in the sand.....

..... but after a while he was ready to stand and fight! Or maybe he just wanted his picture taken.

Then two days of strong winds, rain, and high seas.

But the sun's out again today so we're off to the beach.

A Short Break

By the time this is posted, we'll be on the road.
I've shopped for chips and fruit and peanuts and bottled water and snacks for the 2 day trip, the sandwiches are made, the bikes are in the back of the van, the suitcase is packed and we're ready to roll!

Get ready Florida, here we come!

I'll try to post from Florida if I can, but forgive me if I don't comment on your blogs, we may not have a reliable internet connection.

Meanwhile.... Happy Eight Month Birthday to Callum!

Crocs 'n' Socks

I can always count on The Space Cadet, a man who prides himself on his impeccable good taste....

... to be a trend setting Fashionista!

Tew's Falls

After Webster's Falls (see previous post), we headed towards Tew's Falls making our way along the footpath through the trees at the edge of Spencer Gorge.
This is part of the Bruce Trail which connects Niagara with the Bruce Peninsula. The trail took us up these steps... there's YoungerSon halfway up making sure he gets in the picture.

The Autumn colours this year are stunning. The TV Weather Man said it's because we've had a rainy summer.

If that's true, then these colours make up for the wet weather.

Almost at the Falls and this is the view from the top over the Dundas Valley.

At Tew's Falls, little Logie's Creek plunges 41 metres (135 feet) to the rocks below, a few metres less in height than Niagara Falls. The falls are 9 metres (27.4 feet) wide at the top.

Tew's Falls got its name from Johnson Tew who came to Canada in the year 1874. This land, the falls and ravine were owned by the Tew family until the Spencer Creek Conservation Authority purchased it in the 1960s.

The Tew family provided mechanical services to the surrounding area in their day, and there is a rumour that on one foggy day a team of horses pulling a plow took a wrong step and went right over the cliff.

Remember, it's only a rumour.

Webster's Falls

It was a gloriously sunny late fall day when we visited the Spencer Gorge/Webster’s Falls Conservation Area on Thanksgiving Sunday.
Webster's Falls is where Spencer Creek plunges 22 metres (72 feet) into the Spencer Gorge. Not on quite as grand a scale as Niagara Falls, but pretty impressive.

The Falls are 30 metres (98 feet) wide. The thunder of the cascading water can be heard from qute a distance.

Local folklore says the princess daughter of an Attiwendaron chieftan lived near here. She was promised in marriage to a young chief of the Erie Nation. But she had fallen in love with a high-ranking Indian from the Seneca Nation.

The girl's father threatened to imprison her unless she agreed to marry the chosen man, so the young lovers decided that life without each other was impossible. Locked in each other's arms, they jumped over the precipice to meet their death in the rock pool below.

When the water level is high and the air is filled with a silvery mist lit by the full moon, the princess and her lover can be seen to rise to the edge of the precipice, where they again pledge their endless love.

The Space Cadet looks like he took the plunge too, but he managed to keep his feet dry.

To get the the bottom of the falls, we had to negotiate this narrow zig-zag staircase down the cliff face. Not for the faint of heart.

I have only one comment to make about this impressive waterfall, surrounded by the glorious autumn colours, and obviously someone else had the same opinion....

WOWZER!

Already Planning for Spring

It's never too early to plan for Spring flowers. Once the snow is starting to melt, I'm out there every day searching for tell-tale green tips breaking through the frozen ground. I'm already excited about seeing these beauties bobbing in the breeze.

These daffodil and tulip bulbs will be planted today. I just hope the neighbourhood treerats squirrels aren't watching and making little maps that say "X marks the spot". The mangy flea-infested rodents dear little furry creatures are quite partial to a mid-winter dinner of my juicy spring bulbs.

Bear

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BEAR by E.B.Cox

This sculpture is a few steps away from Bill Lishman's GOAT... see previous post.
I can't find much about the sculptor, Elford Bradley Cox, other than he was a respected Canadian artist born in Botha, Alberta, in 1914 and died in 2003 at the age of 89. Many of his sculptures were carved out of blocks of solid limestone, like this one.
BEAR is part of the Sculpture Walk installed near the Art Gallery in the early eighties.

Goat

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GOAT by William Lishman.


This steel sculpture stands in front of our small Art Gallery, as part of the Sculpture Walk. The artist, Bill Lishman, is well known around here not only for his art and his underground house, but for his experiments with ultra-light aircraft and migration patterns of Canada Geese.

You can find more about him here and here.

In 1993, Bill Lishman successfully led a flock of Canada geese on a winter migration from Ontario to Northern Virginia. His ultra-light flight inspired a movie in 1996, you may remember it.... Fly Away Home.

Season of Mists and Mellow Fruitfulness...

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;

Remember learning John Keats' poem Ode To Autumn back in your school days? I do.

(The whole poem had to be learned perfectly by heart or Miss Winterbottom the English teacher handed out a detention. I can still remember most of it.)

Last week we had some of those delightful warm end-of-summer days that Keats wrote about.
The Canada geese are gathering at the reservoir. Some of them fly south, but many of them stay here in Ontario for the winter.

Autumn on a sunny day is easy on the eyes. The leaves are starting to change from their summer greens to their vivid reds and golds, and everywhere there are splashes of glorious colour.

Make the most of it while it lasts. Winter will be here all too soon.

No frost yet, but the evenings are getting colder. Time to get the winter duvet on the bed and fire up the furnace.

Happy October to you!

Planning a Move?

There goes the neighbourhood......

Gives a whole new perspective on the term "I'm moving house", doesn't it?

Brickworks

The man across the road was renovating his front steps this summer, and was throwing out some nice old red bricks, so The Space Cadet found a use for them around the front of the house. We hate seeing good stuff thrown away. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle is our motto!

1. Starting to dig up the flowerbeds ready for...
2. a layer of plastic and then pouring a solid concrete foundation to support....
3. a double layer of bricks and then a horizontal row to finish it off.
4. It was my job to fill the new gardens with soil, and rearrange the plants.

Once the garden wall was finished, my neighbour from the new house next door wanted this ugly old tree stump disguised, so this time The Space Cadet used leftover textured bricks from when their house was built 4 years ago.

Marking it out.... getting the bricks laid out... then the same procedure, the concrete foundation, and a couple of layers of bricks, fill it with dirt and Voila! No more tree stump.

Pretty good for an amateur brickie.

Apparently Sir Winston Churchill liked to lay bricks as a hobby so The Space Cadet is in good company.