200924 Quebec Trip Notes

Sept. 23: Below: found this person in the garbage can. tipped it down so he could escape. He was bigger than Fig! doesn't look in there.

The mud room at the back door is becoming a mumma yaga plant-drying shed. Flowers from Rain's garden, and several mints. I am drying some bulrushes on the deck for weaving. Of course, I googled how to prepare the rushes and The Weaver Woman was there to answer my questions! what a world! I will put her link at the footnotes.

Wild Turkeys. Do they fly south in the winter? Do they know it will soon be turkey hunting season?

Below: This saw wheel is about five feet in diameter. What a relic! Does it still work? Paul Bunyan's table saw.

sept 24

Yesterday and this morning it has been so warm. We had frost on the weekend. So is this "Indigenous Peoples' summer"? When I was a child it was called Indian Summer, the brief return of warm temperatures and sunshine following the first frosts; in Ontario it occurs in October like brief magic.(There is also "Saint Luke's Little Summer (UK), but not sure of its parameters.) Here, since we have already seen two days of frost, is this warm stretch a last goodbye? Summer's encore, last bow, a reminder perhaps, that she will come back. (Watch for return gig next year: dates to be announced.)

Fig was quite lame yesterday. He was favoring a couple of legs. He let me touch him all over to look for swelling or a pain flinch, but nothing. He let me lift him down and up the stairs and into the car. (If he doesn't want to be lifted he will growl.) Perhaps some arthritis. This morning he seems better - no limping. He hasn't gone off his food. Rain is his favorite person. They bonded when he was just six weeks old. He is so happy to be seeing her: can't understand why she lives at the farm and not here, I expect. He has only met her dogs through the car windows (closed!). They are boxer crosses handsome and strong: Fig will have to be introduced at a neutral location that doesn't belong to them or him.