Middleton in March

After all the ice and snow, it was wonderful to land in England and see green grass and flowers.

Daffodils! Mother and Toni have been planting a few daffodils every autumn for the past forty years, and the result is that all at once you see a cloud, a host of golden daffodils.


Other plants were still in bloom -- crocii, primroses and a few flowering shrubs, but it was the daffodils that shone.






Wonderful!




Old Common as a Duck Sanctury


Oh look, the ducks are here!" "Well -- open the back door and feed them!"

I always enjoy the ducks and ducklings at Old Common, carefully watching where I step on the lawn -- good fertilizer I'm sure -- but I had not realized the rest of the village is not so enamoured of them. In fact they shoo them down towards Old Common! On my last visit a mother arrived with a freshly hatched brood of eight ducklings, and we watched them grow day by day -- with two of the less obedient and more adventurous ones disappearing to Duck Heaven. This time there were fewer around than normal and the main visitors were the Odd Couple -- an infertile female and a strangely marked male, who have been together for several years -- drawn together by their differences from the flock, but happy enough -- especially on three square meals a day.

Those Aggressive Moorhens

There are far more moorhens in the garden than a few years ago, and it is fun to see them rushing around, grabing some duck food and scurrying off to avoid the mallards going after them. But among themselves, they can be very aggressive -- I saw two males chasing a third one all over the front garden and pecking at him. This went on for a good half an hour, until one of the attackers got bored and wandered off. Mating season ahead? And trying to reduce the competition?

More to follow!

Thursday, March 13 A Tale of Snow

Aidan, my son, is following in the blended family tradition and working in the maple syrup industry this year -- a seasonal job which fits in very well with his music. He is crew boss for a large operation owned by English-speaking Quecbecers near his home. He works six days a week tramping around in 6 feet of snow putting taps in the maple trees so they are ready when the sap starts to run -- which it does when the temperature is about 0 during the day, and below freezing at night. Last Sunday, he spent his day off digging out from the last storm. And when he got home from work today, the police knocked at his door and told him to get the snow off his roof! More work, but there have been a couple of nasty incidents -- a house in Ottawa split apart at the apex of the roof and has been condemned, and the roof of a warehouse in Quebec collapsed killing three people. So it is wise to be cautious.

To round out his snowy day, the Montreal Canadiens suffered a humiliating defeat in ice hockey by the Ottawa Senators.

Better luck tomorrow, Aidan!

Go Senators Go!

Wednesday March 12

After 24 h to get over my jet lag we packed our overnight bags and headed down to Kingston. We left at 6 a.m. -- pitch black and snowing straight at the car. Roads slushy, slippery and dangerous for the first 50 km. Nearing Kingston it was lighter, warmer and the roads had been ploughed, so we got there in plenty of time for Bill's appointment at the hospital for another angiogram. A blocked artery was discovered, and two more stents put in. The surgeon gave us "before and after" photos of the area around Bill's heart -- fascinating as you can hardly see one of the arteries in the first picture, but in the second it is full of blood, as are the capilliaries around it. We also learned that one of his arteries was alreay completely blocked in 2006. "How can this be?" asked Bill. "You're alive aren't you?" was the reply...

Monday, March 10, Return to Canada

56 cm of snow to cope with? No problem! When Bill picked me up from the airport, the roads were as clean as the day they were laid down. The sun was shining and the plane arrived10 minutes early. We sped home in the extended daylight, in time to see the huge snowbanks and drive up our freshly ploughed driveway where, the day before, the snow was so deep it got into his knee-high chainsaw boots. Good to be home!

Sunday March 9, Mystery in Elphin

Tramping through the snow to the road, Chris Anstead came across a large patch of blood on the snow. No footsteps or tracks approaching or leaving. Grouse feathers everywhere, but no sign of their owner. Conclusion? Eaten by an owl.

Chris took this photo of his cat Pal observing the scenery outside the front door, and has entitled it "First Day of Daylight Saving Time". We are getting in step with the USA on this and are moving up the start of summer time to the middle of winter...

Saturday March 8

The start of a snowstorm that would dump 56 cm of snow on the city of Ottawa. Bill described the scene outside our window as a whiteout, a fog of swirling snow which made it impossible to see more than 20 m. Rare but exciting -- as long as you are safely indoors watching it, and have stocked up on groceries.

Of course the media is trying to add some excitement too. "Only 33 more to go" screams the Ottawa Citizen the following Monday, "Why not go for it? Ottawa closes in on record set in 1970-71 after mammoth storm..." Of course this record is not up to us at all but I suppose we can pray for it, if we are really daft.

There are also lots of stories about "neigbours helping neighbours" "the national spirit, honed by hardship" "stranded motorists" "warnings against straining your back/heart attacks while shovelling" "warnings against allowing your children to dig out tunnels in snow banks in case they fall in on them causing suffication (no reports of this thankfully). Oh yes, if you have to put up with all this snow, you might as well get as much drama out of it as possible.

I did enjoy it very much, from a distance of about 4000 miles.

February 26 - March 10

I spent two weeks in England's green and pleasant land, what a wonderful break from "Mon pays, c'est l'hiver". More details later.