Laura's Wild Edibles Workshop 2007

I assisted on this wild edible plant workshop again this weekend. I helped out last year too. It was fun and my body loved the food.

You can reach this wild woman of the wilderness directly at eatwildedibles at yahoo dot com. She's hosting a three day survival workshop in the fall that will have instructions on some a few very primary outdoor skills. She likes to make fire the hard way. :D

Breakfast - acorn muffins and wintergreen jelly with dandelion root coffee



Burdock quack grass



Cake - hand stealing - dandelion root cake with mint, just like chocolate



Cake - no chocolate, all dandelion root



Cars first stop - St. John's Wort



Chickweed, wood sorrel... - for the salad



Crazy Tangi with burdock root - Gorbo



Dinner Plate - Cat tail stuffing, milkweed fritters, 8 species wild salad, oyster mushrooms, wild rice



Dragon Fly - thistle





Dragon Fly - branch



Gail and Werner - skinning off the cat tails



Gardening - plantain, lambs quarters, shepherds purse...





Janet and Mile



Janet and Peggy



Kitchen work



Laura - sorting nettle from mint... oops



Laura - laughing



Lunch





Lydia



Lynn



Stinging nettle soup



Peggy with onions from far away



St. John's Wort

MHS meeting in Senkiw - June 2007

Another meeting and another good experience getting together with like minded fans of herpetiles. The company yesterday was filled with good natured humour and lots of energetic fun.



The environment here is very clearly dominated by the natural world. There are hatches of various insects that come in waves through the spring and summer that can sometimes make it uncomfortable to be outside. I'm sure the folks that attended yesterday's get together thought that it was an intense day for picking ticks yesterday and they would be right! Everyone was a good sport about whatever difficulties they might have been experiencing.

The ticks were out in full force, but on the bright side, they are slow moving and relatively easy to deal with. In the weeks leading up to this I was scared the mozzies would be so thick we wouldn't be able to breath. There was a good breeze all day and although they were present and accounted for, they weren't nearly bad enough to discourage our bush whacking.

The weather looked iffy all week, but it turned out to be a beautiful day for what we had planned.

Rich, Ashley and Owen arrived in good time and they were polite in waiting for me to get to the chore I'd left to do too late! Thanks guys. We had a look around at what I've managed to put together in the short time I've been interested in these animals and then headed outside to enjoy the weather. Earlier in the morning Manon had found a fresh garter snake shed tucked into the joint between the front step and the foundation and sure enough we soon spotted what looked like a gravid Western Plains Garter Snake enjoying the heat.

We got the BBQ going and set to work polishing off a lot of hot dogs while sitting out in the yard. The conversation was light and fun as usual.

Carlos and Isabelle came along and we got some pictures taken of some of the critters. It's great to have people around that like this sort of animal.

We spent quite a bit of time touring the surrounding bush. The soil type here is all sand and gravel which makes for good spawning beds for a lot of water loving animals. Even the small ditch streams heading down to the river are often filled with various eggs and yesterday's discoveries showed that off. Early in our walk to the river we found some small black eggs in a very small stream of water that some thought were leaches. I'd never seen them before so that was interesting.

There has been quite a bit of rain here in the past several weeks and by the time we were half way through the first walk many people had wet feet and by the end only Rich had escaped with dry feet.

We made about a mile and a half loop back to the house, had a drink and headed back out. Part of the Trans Canada Trail comes right up to our property and then the river crossing at the swinging bridge across the Roseau River is just a mile east of us. We headed up there and trekked down to the bridge. Normally at this time of year the river can be low enough that you can see big snapping turtles going about their business, but the river was flooding and filled to the brim so nothing but lots of fast water was visible there.

Once back to the house our biologist friend Laura, that had joined us for the day, went off to pick the abundant saskatoon berries and we all went off to St. Malo beach for a swim. I love having this little jewel so close to home. I can get there an into the water in ten minutes from home so it's pretty easy to go for a swim at the end of almost any summer day. Yesterday was the first time I'd been into the water this year and it was in prime condition. It's an old gravel pit that there is no sign of now, just a big sandy beach is left. The Rat River flows through to keep the lake flushed well. There is almost no population density upstream and the river flows through extensive wild bush land before arriving in St. Malo so the water is rich in tannin. It's a very nice bit of prairie water to swim in.

We were in and out of the water a few times and played soccer in between swims. By that time we were all showing signs of having been out on a UV index of 8 type of day so we had had enough sun. Swimming worked up some appetite for me and I knew there were some slabs of meat lined up at home which helped get the stomach grumbling.

While we were off on tour, Pierrette had spent a good portion of the day cleaning and preparing the trimmings that make a good meal better. The table was set and the fresh garden salad was green like at no other time of the year. PU had made a lentil stew for those that were lovers of the complex carbs over the protein and Carlos and Isabelle teased us with mussels steamed in white wine and dressed with some butter, onion and garlic. OMG these people have to come back!

We drank beer and wine and talked and laughed our way into the evening. The kids lit a fire in the fire pit and headed out there to enjoy the evening and then it was time to wind it down.

MHS meeting at Timshel's in Senkiw

Owen's post at the MHS forum about the day he had.

Darker Red belly snake


Lighter shot facing the other direction


Two in the bottom of a deli cup


Owen on the grass with the Jungle Carpet Python


The group holding the Jungle Carpet Python


The group crossing the Senkiw swinging bridge on the trans Canada trail


Columbine on the tail to the swinging bridge

The weather in tornados

Increasingly tornadoes have become a fixture here in the summer. In the past few weeks we've had more than we are used to and apparently some brave souls have captured some of the best video available of these monsters.

Living anywhere under the thumb of Mother Nature has it's risks. Even in lotus land the fault lines work toward humbling humanity. On the plains, we have our storms.

Sleep came last night as a welcome relief from the ongoing threats we've had going on for what seems like an eternity.

I want a little bunker with a secure dome top to watch the thrills and spills.

grad images

Bonnie's grad is over and soccer is over. The Manitoba Marathon is over, as is the triathlon weekend in St. Malo! BBQ anyone? I've been honouring wee too many of the social obligations and work is suffering and so am I. Today I can hardly muster the will to run. It's a bird of a day too. Maybe I'll see if Manon wants to go. It feels so good to be in a dry flow after all the heat and humidity that spawned a lot of nasty and dangerous weather lately.

Boo graduated with first class honours and did very well with the scholarships she won. It was a happy celebration filled with good humour and light spirits. We are going to miss her here next fall.

What follows are the bulk of the images from Bonnie's big day.

Boo and Dan outside the school


Boo standing at the red carpet


Boo and the Jeans outside


Boo and Mr. O on stage


Carol on the red carpet


Boo and Dan dancing


Boo laughing


Boo and Papa dancing


Heather, Melisa, Bonnie and Kim


Papa and PU outside the school


Justina and PU


The kids and their boyfriends


Leslie and Micho


Mamie outside laughing


Manon and Kevin inside


Marc outside


Manon inside


Meite - smiling at the hall


Meite - bright and happy at the hall


Meite - wine note


Meite and Drew laughing


Meite and Drew smiling


Snoot and Jean


Snoot and Micho

Hisser video and centipede image

A couple of videos for the curious. Snoot picked up this hissing cockroach that's really quite cool. I mean it's dead gross and all, but it's big enough that you can actually appreciate the exotic nature of it's well adapted features.

The hisser

The roach colony

There are bears everywhere just now. I don't want to run with company though, OK? Cubs with sows just isn't my idea of entertainment. I must remember to strap on a bell tomorrow before I go out.

I picked up another centipede recently to replace the one I had die on me last winter. It's a beauty, but man is it fast. It's a tiny thing compared to the 18 centimeters the last one measured. It's a Vietnamese centipede - Scolopendra subspinipes dehaani "Mau Chau" and will send you to the hospital with some serious problems. Boys! What's he thinking!! Get down from there! You'll break your neck! Put that down, you'll poke your eye out and don't put that in your mouth! Grow up!

Ah the voices of reason still rattle around in my head, but to no avail.



No eggs from the anerythristic corn snake yet, but it must be getting close. The nesting box is in place and the incubator is built and running. Anyone up for a baby corn snake in a couple of months? heheh I actually sold my first snake last weekend so there's hope for the babies when they come I suppose. Too bad it's all hatching here at the end of the season when the market has already been flooded for months.

Symptoms Found for Early Check on Ovary Cancer and over due update and images

For a cancer that has so few early warning signs, this offers some hope, albeit limited.

I'm sorry I'm so often absent here. Life is frantic with work, Bonnie's grad and a life filled with teachers in the latter part of the school year.

I have begun to run again. This is week two since finding something goofy in my foot after the run across the ice in March. I've now got some serious gait analysis behind me and some CAD produced orthotics in my shoes. Unfortunately that all hasn't produced much change in the symptoms.

A few years ago I tore one of the quadriceps muscles in my leg quite badly. During recovery, the physiotherapist cautioned me strongly to guard against being fooled into thinking the muscle needed protection long after it would be just fine to work it hard. She proved beyond a reasonable doubt for me, that this phenomenon had indeed been occurring. I thought it was wild to consider that the body would lie so clearly. Apparently quads are particularly bad for this.

I'm taking the same approach to my foot. I'll either make the injury bad enough that what is wrong becomes clear to any professional care giver or it won't. So far the foot is fine and marginally better now that I've got fifteen miles on it in a week and a half. I'm encouraged, but am contradicting the professional advice from my podiatrist. The help I've had has not provided me with anything new in the way of information about the injury or the treatment so I'm taking a gamble to see if I can influence the recovery one way or the other and frankly I don't care much which way these days.

I've got an ancient old timer running after a major rebuild. It's date of origin might be sometime in the early part of the nineteenth century or latter part of the eighteenth century. It required some new teeth to be replaced on one wheel and the re manufacture of the strike fly governor. It's old enough that the clock carries only and hour hand. I really enjoy touching the past through work with this type of work. It demands a patience I can appreciate.

The mosquitoes are rising fast now. We had a very dry and scary spring, but now the water table is high and the forest flush with all the moisture it can hold. It's still raining today, but at least we didn't get the frightening forecast for sever weather we were slated for early yesterday evening. Later on yesterday Environment Canada had bold weather warnings for heavy rain, possible large hail and a lot of talk about tornadoes. By bed time all the warnings had moved onto harass the folks in Ontario. Bonnie and her boyfriend were camping in St. Malo. It would have helped me rest had Boo actually turned the cell phone on. Agh!

This weekend is the Manitoba Marathon and I'm all booked up with that, but none of it has me running anything but errands. I'm looking forward to cheering them all on, but my run club from runningmania.com with the power of orange will be where the most fun will be.

I've been playing with the camera again.

Gray Treefrog Hyla versicolor - out of the pan, into the fire



Madagascar hissing cockroach Gromphadorhina portentosa - Manon picked this and the agama up at the expo



Agama armata - Ground Agama - Not positive this is what we own



Self - looking up from below