Worth Getting Excited Over!

It's a long time since we've seen something this good. Funny though, we quite often get a good stretch of weather in February, although last year not so much, well more like not at all. 

Thinking Spring!

Forecast

 

Today

• 8°C
•  
• 30%

Fri

• 9°C
• 1°C
•  

Sat

• 11°C
• 3°C
•  

Sun

• 12°C
• 5°C
•  

Mon

• 12°C
• 0°C
•  

Tue

• 13°C
• 1°C
•  

Wed

• 13°C
• 1°C
•  

Issued : 5:00 AM PST Thursday 2 February 2012

A Glorious Afternoon.

The clouds parted, the sky was blue and the sun shone.  Feb. 1 must be sunny quite often, just like it was today.

Because this was Feb. 1 last year, 

And this was Feb. 1,  14 years ago

Larry's 64th, 63rd, and 50th birthdays. 

You'd think we'd have something better to do than go to the dyke.

But then there are always dogs to be walked, and that's as good a place to go as any.

I bet that old stump will still be there 14 years from now.

This was on the way home.  After four o'clock and the sun is still shining. Yay for lengthening days.  Lots of water sitting on the fields in Glen Valley.  

And because I forgot to mention another birthday, here's a cute picture of Calli.

She turned 12 years old on Jan 26th.  

She's still doing really well.

Trying to Herd a Bearskin Rug

Nelson, are you in there? Move...damn it!

Hot Date

Unfortunately not the kind of date the title might suggest, even though it didn't happen until after 10 this evening.  The kind that involves a lot of hot fruit and sugar and jars and a canning pot.

Every other Sunday I take eggs out to White Rock for some of our market customers.  This time I happened to mention to them that if they needed jam, they could let me know, but I had a limited selection.  I've avoided making jam since the last market in December, and I was in no rush to get back into it. I did have to break down this week though and make a case (12 pint or 500ml jars) of raspberry jam.  I have a customer who buys raspberry jam by the case.  He says his 90+ year old dad lives on the stuff.  Anyway, he is running out, so I had to make a couple of batches this week to keep the old fellow happy.

I figured I might get one or two requests from my egg customers, but I sadly underestimated that.  Everyone wanted blackberry. Weird. I had requests for 10 jars of it.  I had one jar in stock.  So I convinced myself that since I had all those blackberries in the freezer (remember those 60 buckets we picked?), I might as well just make some.  So two batches of blackberry tonight, and another one of raspberry for good measure.  I was just cooking, literally.  I had my pant legs rolled up and sleeves pushed up.  I was hot!  Anyway, all done.  The jars have all sealed, and I'll have to wait until morning to see if they've set. Fingers crossed.

Please Tell Me It's a Mirage!

Supposed to turn to rain later, and warm up, and then they are dangling a carrot at the end of the week.

Forecast

Today

• 4°C
•  
• 60%

Sun

• 8°C
• 4°C
•  

Mon

• 7°C
• 6°C
•  

Tue

• 9°C
• 5°C
•  

Wed

• 8°C
• 5°C
•  

Thu

• 10°C
• 4°C
• 60%

Fri

• 11°C
• 4°C
•  

Issued : 8:39 AM PST Saturday 28 January 2012

Leash Arrest

Jake had another trip to the chiropractor's on Wednesday. At least this one wasn't during a snow storm.  His pelvis was 'out' again.  After the last visit, we were to keep him quiet for a day or two, which we did, sort of, and the adjustment held for a couple of days.  But then after that he was limping again when he got up from a resting position.  No doubt running around in the snow, slipping on ice, etc was his undoing. 

Dr. Lana said he wasn't quite as bad as the first time she adjusted him, and this time told me to keep him quiet for five days.  So I wanted to know how quiet was quiet.  She said on leash, no opportunity to do any crazy erratic movements, no scrambling on the wood flooring, no mad charges down the stairs.  Thankfully the snow is just about gone, although there is still some in the bush, and it is old, icy stuff.  

Really though, Jake is a relatively easy dog to keep on leash, although he can really look 'sad' and make you feel sorry for him.  There is a gate at the top of the stairs, and he only goes down on leash.  We don't make any fast moves, no mention of taking dogs for a walk or out for a pee.  Those words by themselves can create a mad scramble to charge down the stairs, made much worse because each dog figures they should be the fastest and the first.  No tossing toys in the house.

So when we go outside in the morning, Jake is on leash, and wondering why he can't race with Luna from the back door to the first gate.  After dragging him around with me into the chicken coops and the sheep barn, I was reminded that actually he DOES. NOT. WANT. to go in there.  And the sheep were totally freaked out too.  So now he gets taken so far, and then I have a big clip thing on the leash handle, and I just clip that to the closest fence.  He waits patiently, and will sometimes lie down.  I haven't taken him through the bush, because of the icy snow still on the trail, and he just can't figure out why the change in routine.  Why is it just me and him walking up the road first thing in the morning, when he'd rather be racing through the bush with Luna.

He's a dog that is quite happy to stay outside after we come back from the morning walk, and lay on the driveway.  Can't let him do that, because all of a sudden he might leap up and charge over to the fence to see what the chickens are cackling at.  Yesterday was an absolutely beautiful day.  The sky was clear when I woke up and stayed that way all day.  The kind of day that just kept you in a good mood and smiling.  So Jake got to share in it too, from his vantage point on the deck.  

I am doing my two mile walks still, and it is fast enough that he keeps up a steady little trot.  My theory is that some steady trotting like that, with his pelvis in the correct position, is good.  It gives the muscles, ligaments etc. a bit of a gentle work out while everything is in the correct position, some practice so to speak, at holding it all in the right place.  Dr. Lana said that would be fine, we are just trying to avoid any erratic movements. 

Two days down, three to go.  Pretty minor in the grand scheme of things.

10k Training

We were supposed to start our training sessions for the 10K Sun Run last week.  Unfortunately the snow ended up causing it to be cancelled, so now we are starting a week late.  Meredith and I did go out last Saturday, when the road had finally cleared off enough, and we tried out the first session.  And it seemed pretty easy.  I do hate to run, but we start out so slow, with our shuffle of a run, that I'm sure that we are moving faster when we are doing the walking part.
This week we do repeats of 'shuffling' one minute, and then walking for two minutes, with a five minute warm up and cool down at each end.  This past Monday was the first official training session.  Our group of 'learn to runners', which consists of about 25 or so, all went out together.  The first session was 34 minutes, and then we did a bunch of stretching at the end.  We are out in the dark, so we have to be pretty conscious of the traffic.  The group leaders are all wearing bibs with reflective stripes on them, and then the rest of us are wearing whatever reflective stuff that we have.  There was some packed snow still in spots on the sidewalks, and the sky had cleared and some of the bare pavement was icy.  Everyone made it back safely though, and it seemed relatively easy.
 We have a group session every Monday night, and then we have to do two more each week on our own.  Tonight Meredith came over and we went out together, again in the dark, and by that point it had started to rain.  We just ran on what we thought was going to be a quiet street in front of our place, but there were still more cars than we expected going by.  No sidewalks and still snowbanks down each side of the road.  I wore a reflective safety vest and Meredith had reflective wrist bands and a head lamp.  Guess it doesn't help when you chose to run at the same time that people are getting home from work.  Most of the time we were able to step over the snow piles and get well off the road. Thank goodness the rain was only light.  Not like yesterday when it was one dark miserable wet day, and we walked the dogs on the dyke in the pelting rain.  Hopefully we can do our next session on Saturday in the daylight.