Muskrat Meanderings

There's a large pond at the end of my street and I quite often go for a walk round the neighbourhood and end up on the path around the pond. A home for frogs and small fish, and a blue heron.
Last summer I noticed a small aquatic animal swimming around but it was hard to get a good look. Too small to be a beaver, and there weren't any chewed up trees. I decided it must be a muskrat.
Now that the ice and snow have disappeared, I wondered if Mr Muskrat had survived the winter, and yes, there he is, happily swimming around.

So far Mr Muskrat seems to have the whole pond to himself, but I wonder if there will be a Mrs Muskrat and some babies later in the spring. I'll keep watching. And maybe get some better photos.

AAP again

(Here we go with blog post 1001!!!!!)
A few more of the works that the AAP Collective has on display at the Town Offices until the end of May. The group started mainly to discuss art and exchange ideas, but it's morphed into an interesting blend of both amateur and professional artists who are experimenting with different creative projects and learning from each other. Among our numbers we have a potter, specialists in watercolour and acrylic, an indigenous artist, and a sumi-e artist.
I blogged some photos of last year's Town Offices exhibition here.

AAP at the Town Hall (and a Milestone)

One of the art groups that I paint with, the AAP Collective (remember Art Ain't Pretty?), is exhibiting work at our local Town Offices. We hung the work yesterday and it will be there for the public to enjoy until the end of May. Enough room on the walls for 4 pieces each.
Just recently we have been making masks out of recycled cardboard and also clay. One of our artists is a potter and he fires our clay creations in his basement kiln.
Here are a few of our works.... more to come in future posts.

Can you guess which ones are mine?

OOOOOOH! Just noticed that this is blog post number 1000!!!!!!! A definite milestone. My first tentative blog post was November 2006. Such a lot has happened since then. I've retired from my work, my children left home, I lost my partner and lived alone for the first time, become Nana to four sweetie grandies, moved house.... I wonder what's next?

Plastic bags

We've all seen shredded plastic caught up in branches and we've all heard of the discarded plastic garbage patches in the ocean. There's a huge movement to get rid of single use plastic, and yet the grocery stores in my town still offer plastic bags, charging $0.05 each.

I always have half a dozen reuseable cloth bags in my car when I go shopping, but it surprises me how many people buy those plastic bags.

Last week, I went to two separate grocery stores, and on both occasions, the shopper in front of me at the checkout asked for 6 or more plastic bags. I was very tempted to ask why they needed the bags and what they were going to do with them once they had carried the groceries home.
But I didn't. I restrained myself.
When is it polite to mention plastic bags to a stranger?
Would you confront a shopper about plastic bags?
What's your opinion about this?

Let's Go Blue Jays!

Our first Major League baseball game of the season and it snowed all day! I thought baseball was a summer game..... obviously I was mistaken. This is what we woke up to.

It was YoungerSon's birthday, so for a birthday treat the whole family met downtown at the Rogers Centre to watch the Toronto Blue Jays take on the Detroit Tigers. OlderSon arrived with a chocolate birthday cake, paper plates and plastic forks so we had our own birthday party up there in the 500 level! You get a great view from up so high. It was the first time the twins had been to a game, and they loved it.... and behaved really well!

 It was a good game.... started off slowly but got pretty exciting towards the end. The Tigers scored 3 in the top of the seventh, then the Jays retaliated with 3 including a home run in the bottom of the 8th. 3 - 3 at the end of the 9th. They went to the 11th inning, when Detroit scored in the top of the inning, but the Jays just couldn't catch up. Final score Jays 3, Tigers 4.
Better luck next time.

Let's Go Blue Jays! CHAAAAAARGE!!!!!!!!