Truths and Half Truths

My Day So Far

6:12 :   Wake up.  Clear sky, so a hint of light from the impending dawn, but it looks cold.  Maybe try to get another half hour of sleep in.

6:22 :   Wake up again.  Yeah, the half hour?  Not gonna happen.

6:30 :    Downstairs, make a fire in the woodstove, take Roxy out to get the newspaper from the mailbox up the lane.  She doesn't read the newspaper (well, except for the Sports pages), but she seems to enjoy our time together, peeing and pooping.  Well, we don't do that together.  It's more a solo pursuit for her.  Still, it's good times.

6:35 :  Brace myself, then go into the office.  The ambience is, how shall we say, fragrant - palpably so.  Puppies stink.  A lot.  And it's the tears-in-your-eyes kind of fragrant.  But I plunge in.  And here's how it goes:

Fill bowl of puppy food - take Ty out to bond over a few throws of a tennis ball - fill Ty's bowl with kibble - leave her outside - go in, puppies still focussed on food, good - hop into cage, almost gag as I gather up soiled newspapers - take them out to compost - come back, spread new papers in pen - let Ty in just as puppies finish eating, watch them mob her, looking for milk, watch her dodge and weave ("Sorry, kids, those teeth are SHARP!") - then make sure all the water dishes are full, Juliet has her medicine ... and finally ....

7:00 - Collapse on the floor and play with puppies.  That's the nice part.  Puppy breath?  Still intoxicating.  Their teeth are sharp and they get pretty rambunctious, but when they get too nippy I'll pick them up and flip them in a somersault.

Oh, stop.  it's not mean.  We're supposed to manhandle them a bit, broaden their experiential base.  And the funniest thing is to watch Ty play with them - slide her nose under a pup and then *flip* ... puppy tipping.  And if all this was so mean, why do they get up, shake their adorable lil puppy heads ... and charge right back in for more?

They're all asleep now - shagged out from wrestling and exploring.  So I've got a couple of hours before *sniff sniff* ... (sigh) ...

I'm only kinda complaining.  It's a pain, but I know it's not for much longer.  People are starting to come over and sit down on my office floor and let a puppy pick them.   Yesterday a lovely older couple came over and fell in love with Ophelia.  They went to fill out adoption papers at the Humane Society.  Ophelia is the first to get chosen.  It's a bitter-sweet thing.  She's still here, and will be till everyone is fully weaned ... but I know she's moving on and somehow that changes things, in a semi-sad way.

And - AND - adoption papers have been filled out for Ty.  She's such a wonderful dog, I'm happy for the new owners, who we know are kind and sweet.  And of course I'm thrilled for Ty - that was worrisome for us, because she's a five year old dog.  There's a line-up for puppies at the Humane Society, but dogs her age are harder to find homes for.

This is starting to feel like "Mission Accomplished".

How's YOUR Saturday going?

Beyond Cute

OK, I'm sorry.  It's just painfully cute to watch them frolic and gambol about.  They are miles past adorable and it breaks my heart that they'll only be here one more week.  You know, until it comes time to clean their pen ... then I'm okay with their leaving.

But tell me you don't want to scoop them up and rub your nose against theirs and smell the puppy breath and hear their teeny, adorable, puppy growls.  No??  Then you are dead to me.

Oh, and just so we're clear?  This is my office, people.  I work in this space.  With this happening around me.

Where I Live IV

This weekend my oldest friend in the world, Gord, came to visit.  Gord and I have known one another since elementary school in Winnipeg; he was Best Man at my wedding, has always been my closest (and sometimes only) confidante, knows (almost) every secret I have; and when he and I get together after six months or a year or even two years of not seeing one another, the conversation picks up as if the time before it had ended in a comma.

Circumstances being what they are, Gord has not been down this way before, so this was a chance to show off my Island, albeit at a time of year when it doesn't have its makeup on.  But true beauty doesn't need makeup, does it?

We started off on Friday going into Charlottetown - I live a few kilometres North of the city, which is the largest metropolis on the Island.  And to give you a sense of just what that means, here's a view of the downtown core:

 

Looking for a building higher than seven stories?  Good luck with that.  The two church spires at the left in the distance are the tallest structures on the Island.  There are two (count 'em, two) escalators in town.  The main downtown street has diagonal parking.  That tells you all you need to know about its size. 

As you can see, it was a blustery, rainy day, and after lunch at the restaurant where my son-in-law is the chef, (and it was delicious), we only spent a short time exploring the city.  There was food to buy for supper and a liquor store to hit and other errands, and that night we ate Atlantic salmon and mussels and drank and talked late into the morning.

On Saturday, we did the real Island tour.  We went to the North Shore of the Island.  It's 120 miles long, much of it like this:

And this:

And this:

The surf was up ...

And, as I'd hoped, the Island was both beautiful and dramatic ...

So ... even without makeup, the Island was gorgeous.  I love showing it off to visitors.  Like Gord.  Or ... you know ... like you.

Before and After

There's a reason it's called "Fall".  This was a week ago ...

 

... and this morning ... the same scene ...

Where I Live III

My good friend Wordgirl, in addition to having a lovely, biting essay on passing of Jane Wyatt and the role of women in 60's sitcoms, has invited us all to show off our front doors.  This is a lovely extension to Laura's  recent invitation to do a photographic essay of where we live.  As a bonus, Stacy took us inside the front door, so I think I'll do that, too.

In many homes, the front door is where guests are welcomed.  That rarely - in fact, never - happens in our house.  Here's our front door ...

There's no canopy above it, which I think is a shame - I think a porch across the front would make a more welcoming entrance.  That's part of our long range plan for the house - find a design that is architecturally authentic and will enhance, rather than disrupt, the rather austere lines of the front elevation.

But it's a lovely old farm house built in 1864, and the front door wasn't for much more than show back then.  Things haven't changed much ...

Anybody who comes to our house drives right past the front door, to a large parking area in back ... and this entrance ...

I built the deck - won an award for it, too, thank you very much.  The door opens into a small mud room.  To the left, my office - in fact, my monitor is directly behind the middle window there.  To the right is the main house, specifically, the family room.  You can see that window ...

... on the left side of this picture ...

This is the most-used room in the house.  This picture is taken from the country kitchen, and doesn't show the TV to the right.  It does show the wood stove, and beside it the Dutch door leading up to the servant's quarters - or as we like to call it, "Allie's Room".

On a cold winter's night, you don't get much more cosy than this room ...

... unless it's this room. 

This is the front parlour.  When we have parties, this is where the music kicks in.  It's also got a big wood stove, and a bay window that looks out over the front lawn, with a seat in the window that is perfect for curling up in and reading when the winter winds are howling.

If you were to come into our house via the front door - and as I say, nobody does - this is the first room you would encounter..  It's warm and welcoming and feels just right for entertaining ... but it's also a nice place to sit, late at night, and watch the fire flicker in the stove.

There's not much I don't love about this house.

Juliet Returns

Allie brought Juliet home from the Vet College today, and put her in with her brothers and sisters.  The roiling,  joyous dogpile that resulted was broken up by Ty, who wanted a good, long sniff, checking out her little girl from tip of tail to  the fine hairs on the end of her cute lil snout.

All seemed in order, and although Juliet is now definitively the runt of the litter - much smaller than her siblings - she took a healthy run at the food bowl and seems active and more or less content (if a little intimidated by all the furry bodies intent on smashing her about). 

She's on antibiotics, but her breathing seems effortless and it looks like she's on the road back to a full recovery.  Now, who was it who said "All's well that ends well!"?  Why, I believe it was the playwright who gave these guys all their names ...

One Last Spurt of Fall Photos

I've added a few more photos to the Seasons album (link to the left).  Here are some samples:

I'm a sucker for fall colours, and water and shoreline does it for me, too ...

One morning, there was this lovely mist hanging over everything - including this pond ...

This photo, with the golfer cropped out, is already in the album.  But the more I looked at it, the more I thought the golfer was part of the whole.

Stanhope, near the North Shore of Prince Edward Island.  In the background is Brackley Bay and Covehead Harbour

Update To The Photo Album

I added a bunch of photos this morning (Saturday), including this shot of the trees in my driveway.  They're just pretty scenery, I know.  But it's where I live and I want you to come visit, so go have a look.

Fall Is All Around Us

A couple of days ago I went for a walk out in the fields behind my house, just trying to capture some of the fall foliage before a heavy windstorm stripped the trees bare.  I've put them into an album with some other pics from my Island, and I'm going to try to have a running photographic record of the seasons and their changes here.

Have a peek at the album  - the link is top left - for some colours that you wouldn't expect to see in nature ...

Sat, Oct. 14 Update! A whack of new photos from Saturday ...

Where I Live II - Frosty Morning

This morning, around 7:00 AM, I took Roxy down to the mailbox with me - it's on the main hightway, about 100 yards down my driveway.  About 3/4 of the way to the road, in the middle of the yard, there's a rusted, overgrown, antique piece of farm machinery  ...

I like to believe that this hulking, delapidated skeleton was once hitched behind a horse and worked the fields in back of my house.  If you look closely at it, as I have, you will see evidence of strain and wear, missing teeth and chipped tines.  And if you listen you can hear the "Hup!  Hup!" from some long-ago summer morning, the farmer urging on a broadchested Morgan through the reawakening land.

I don't know who painted the seat blue, or when - it's really much more gaudy than this picture would lead you to believe, an odd eccentricity that pleases me no end. 

I've resisted all efforts to have it declared as junk and hauled away.  It is, I suppose, junk.  But hard work over generations should lead to a dignified, sedate retirement, and it warms me to provide just that for this old soul.

Roxy waited by the machinery as I went to pick up the newspaper.  It was a chilly morning; 2 degrees C, or 37 degrees Fahrenheit.  A clear, cloudless night meant a heavy front had settled on the land.  At my mailbox, it still clung to the grass, bushes, and trees, its cold fingers yet to be pried off by the first warm rays of autumn sun. 

I love early morning in the fall.  The leaves are only now starting their change.  In a week or two this Island will be a Wonderland of incredible colours.  I only hope my camera  - and my skills - are up to the challenge.