Strolling around Yellowknife

Some days I don't have many words to say, and just let the photos do the talking.

Evening sun over Frame Lake, just outside the City Hall.

I'm not the only one out for strolls. Other foxies do that, too!

No, he did not go Ring-ding-ding-adinga-ding, either.

I might just take up Lichenology just for fun. The sheer amount and diversity of lichens here is amazing.

A Foxnukshuk

A species of Saxifrage. The name came from the Latin words: Saxum (Stone) franga (breaker). They are prevalent in holarctic region and does what their name describe: Break Rocks .... albeit very very slowly

More Lichen. Historically, the area of Yellowknife is within the path of roaming caribou herds who subsist on lichen (and other shrubberies), but with the hunting pressure in the region, the herds now steer clear of Yellowknife and roads... and lichens go absolutely nuts everywhere. No one else eats them, as far as I can tell.

The Evil Plot continues

Hello! Hello!

Spring has sprung:

It lets you know
with noses bunged,
and snot that flows!

Indeed it is spring/summer here, and as implied in the poem above my sinuses suffer greatly from it! But despite that fact my snot flows, my eyes itch, throat feels raw and I sneeze endlessly like someone with the 'flu, the garden monkey is swinging around in the garden.

I did cheat and planted a bunch of sunflower seeds indoors in end of April, and indeed they bloomed nicely last month:

The Anne Marie (named so after a friend who looked after it while we were away 2 weeks in May)

A friend fostered her seedlings at our flat as we have a south facing window, and the plants simply mutated and grew all Triffiddy in the light, despite the fact the temperature was below zero (at night) until 2 weeks ago.

Peppers and Tomatoes galore, ready to take over the world!

This year we managed to get a garden plot in the communal growing area. A decent sized 6.9 by 2.1 m (odd size, I know). Would have preferred it to be a bit narrower so we can water the middle easier, but it'll have to do.

The soil was very poor, sandy and depleted of organic material, so into it went 40 x 20kg bags of well composted Sheep Manure, 5 x 20 litres equivalent bags of sphagnum moss, and additional 50kg of Steer Manure (supplied by the communal garden organiser). A lot of turning of soil ensued. It was hard work, partly because the provided (depleted) soil was frozen at the core still when we got the Shit (haha!) together.

Several days of foeces flinging and jokes about how much Bullshit goes on in the garden .... and waiting for the frozen core to thaw...

The first things to go in was Potatoes! A whole bunch of Yukon Gold potatoes buried in the middle trench (where it's awkward to water properly), surrounded by a couple bulb thickness of red onions.

In the meantime, a whole bunch of seeds were sown in toilet rolls and egg cartons. Admittedly I had to buy the black seedling trays just so water don't seep everywhere inside. Seedwise, it's all seeds that I had from 2 years ago. Didn't get a chance to do any gardening last year due to the C. Difficile problem. Still recovering from that, even after technically being "eradicated" of the colonies in the colon (ha! I joke!).

If you ever get C Difficile superbug, get treatment, pronto. That nasty stuff can kill you in days if you are immunologically impaired. Even post-infection, it still takes a big chunk of your energy away, not to mention being completely dependent of having a toilet nearby (within 2 minutes, I'd say), 24 hours a day.

Toilet Rolls, egg cartons, fruit cups, yogurt containers, not to mention an instant noodle box, all are suitable seedling containers

Enough shitty stories, so after a couple of weeks, they looked like this. With exception of the Fluffy Black and White Thing on the Fluffy Cream Thing. That was not grown from seed. That is the Grumpy Cat of our Apartment. He hates having to share sun space with plants. He ate a few seedlings, too.

Transplanted the egg carton seedlings into the yogurt pots after they grew true leaves. There's something oddly calming about obsessing with leetle teeny seedlings...

Getting a bit crowded in here...

A lot more photographs of the garden plot to come, I'm still figuring out how to transfer the photos in my phone to here.... but as of Thursday 12th June, the peas sown into the garden on Monday (9th June) have hatched. The Plot gets plenty of sunlight, now that it's close to summer solstice, and this far North, it's roughly 21.5 hours of light a day! And a lot of watering. Lots of it! Otherwise things start to dry out and die ....

Promising a better tomorrow! :)

summer time

It has been a while since I wrote. It is finally summer here and I have been busy minding the multitude of triffids that are slowly taking over every flat surfaces that gets decent sunlight.

I have also been out for several walks since the temperature has gotten warmer. Not serious  d>10km distances that I usually do from years past. A mere 4km walk is enough to make me become useless for the rest of the week. Such is the power of C difficile in turning your life upside down!

I've amassed a pile (in bytes) of photos of my current city.

Lunar Eclipse 14-15 April 2014, and more auroras!

Here are some photos. We had a fantastic lightshow with the Auroras dancing in the night skies, as well as the Lunar eclipse. Sorry for the very brief header -- a bit swamped with reading (taking a couple of courses on edX: Buddhism and Modern Psychology, and Bioethics). I will write a bit more when things are not so manic!

Shadow of the Earth on Luna

During the full eclipse the moon takes an orangey hue. Some people call it "Blood Moon" but I prefer to think it as Mars-ey :)

Belated Hippy Newt's Ears!

Apologies for the new year silence, I have not been too well, healthwise, for a few weeks.

Lots of writing and catching up to do! And how time flies! By the time I felt ready to write again, 2.3 months have passed.

I did take a whole bunch of photos, of some of the activities I've done in the few days when my body responds to medication. Carpe diem, as the Romans would say. On bad days, I just refer to them as Crappy Diem, take a slightly higher dose of painkillers than the maintenance dose, lie down, stay warm and hydrated and read.

And boy, did I read! 15 books were devoured in the "in between states" of pleasant, stupored, medicated, grogginess. Not quite as prodigious as my pre-illness reading habits (I usually go through about 3-4 books a week, prior to health problems) but it is a huge improvement. Onwards and upwards.

Books devoured, so far, in 2014

Here's some stuff that I've been up to, since the New Year. Went out snowshoeing twice (very short distances, 50 to 100m), which was very fun, despite having to take the rest of the week off to rest. Recovering from serious infections, and dealing with chronic pain makes the Great Outdoors somewhat a rare treat for me. But that's what makes it even more precious.

Fire Monkey has Fire!

Personally, I find the time to enjoy the smaller, easily overlooked things in life, a much missed past time.Walking s-l-o-w-l-y with snowshoes, and just looking around gives me a sense of calm that most meditation practitioners keeps telling you about. Being somewhat a hyperactive, ADHD-like fox, I usually attain the "meditative calm" when I go on long hikes, a physically intensive activity or when I go for a run (it uses up the excessive adrenaline, you see). 50-100m snowshoeing is a good start, though.

As good ole Plato once said in his work Phaedo:

“Never discourage anyone...who continually makes progress, no matter how slow.”

And the Great Spaghetti Monster knows I'm my very worst critic. LOL

Random Inukshuk like sculptures (no, I didn't build them)

My camera does not capture the colour hues correctly, so I did tweak the
saturation of the photos afterwards. Retina trumps CCD every time.

Watching the wind blowing the snow into dune-like formations is a pretty relaxing.
If you're dressed up warm

That's my other 2/3 snowshoeing way ahead of me. This was on Vee Lake.

Yes, there are wild Red Foxes here.

This is the closest I'll ever be to living on Planet Mars.

Other than snowshoeing, I did go for a couple of Snowmobiling (hanging on for dear life, really) with my other 2/3. There's an Island on Great Slave Lake that has a Bald Eagle's nest, that we came across while fishing in the summer. The birds weren't too thrilled to have us near .... so we couldn't get any good photos of the nest.

 

In the winter, on the other hand, is perfect to come close to the nest. They share the island with a family of Magpies. I hope they come back in the spring thaw. Might leave a couple of game cameras, and see if we can get some good videos of Eagle chicks and fledglings.




                            Eagle's Nest



                         Close up of Eagle's nest

Magpie nest