Christmas

Boris outdid himself, creating a massive carved shoe rack for Jo and dragging home an immense lathe for me. The stand is impressive, with cast iron legs linked by huge threaded rods running through steel pipes. He put it together in the tractor shed, and there it is. Most of it seems to be pieced together out of various pieces of steel stock--though the legs bear the name "Allen" and seem the right dimensions for a lathe stand. About the rest, I'm not so sure. Boris reports that it spun a two-by-four lustily, and then flung it across the room.

As I left the shed, I was startled to find the upper storey of the house illuminated as though by a spotlight. Against a sombre sky, the setting sun was striking upwards.

It lit up the tops of the elm and the larches, leaving the pines strikingly dark beneath them. As always, it was a fleeting effect, largely vanishing before I could dig out my camera.

Ice Storm

The ice storm was bad enough to make driving unthinkable. Ice began to collect on the wires, but the temperature rose and they shed their load quite quickly.

The apple tree still carries its fruit. We should have harvested them properly. Next year, with the pine well cut back, we will tend them properly--the tree is so bountiful, after all, and the apples so good.

It was hard on the trees while it lasted; the white pines were badly hit, as was the red oak. Next morning, the roads were passable, though marred by shelves of stubborn ice. We stopped at the church on the way home and I fixed the organ--it was the usual problem with the bulb in the expression pedal photocell having burned out.

Highs and Lows

On Friday it was -23.5; today, Sunday, it is 0. All the little cobwebs have frozen in the eaves.

I tried to drive down to the church to fix the organ. I got as far as the Williamsburg road and I was sideslipping like mad. Turning around was easy: I cranked the wheel and hit the gas. I had to bash through the dense slush berm at the foot of the driveway.




On the night of the 14th, the Geminids were supposed to be near their peak. I clumped around trying to get a shot but finding nothing but a bright moon and the fixed stars. Eventually I realized I was facing West, not East. This didn't help. I discovered the 24mm could capture smoke from the chimneys that I could not see in the dark. Next time I will use a tripod.

Birthday Boy

I have a new Rokinon 24mm 1.4 lens--and I tried my hand at some morning sky shots. Mostly rubbish, but I think this is going to be a VERY interesting addition to the stable.

These are the morning stars, partly flared out by the rising sun. From the window, the sky looked totally black. It was strange that the lens found so much colour.

It was remarkable--the black night sky turned blue. I'm still fumbling around with this thing, but I think there are interesting possibilities.








I didn't take this on purpose, but it looks just strange enough to keep. There's a vaguely Darth Vader vibe here.

Ice Curls

I woke up to this: ice curls. Here we have snow with its own interior lighting. It was warm enough to keep the whole sheet slowly slipping down the roof, but it kept freezing as the lower edge was exposed to the air. On the lower end, it was already pressing against the glass.

Notice the upstairs dormer with its wrap-around shades. With those blinkers on, we can be sure it won't shy at any white picket fences (not that they'd be visible).

 I squeezed underneath the overhanging mass and gave it a solid shove as high as I could reach. I thought I might clear the section above the door, but the whole sheet broke off and collapsed. Whew!

Snow Days

After 48 hours of snow, the schools and universities finally all closed. The roads were covered with treacherous layers of ice and slush--Jo did a 360 on the McLaggan Flats, and ended up the wrong way round on the wrong side of the road. We put in a hard afternoon's shoveling, and I brought out the snowblower--which started very readily, once I remembered to turn on the gas valve. In the morning, we found that a thick mass of snow had curled over the edge of the sunporch roof and was pressing against the glass. I brought it all down with one heave. And now it looks as though we might finally see the sun again.

Snowvember II

After some initial dustings and two more serious snowfalls, we got clobbered in earnest. Last weekend's snow gradually blew out of the trees and began melting on the ground.

There was just a thin carpet of snow in the woods. Some had partly thawed and then frozen to the pine boughs.

Just after I tarped Boris' car for the winter, a thin sleet began to fall. Joanne came home in the evening and the road was slippery. Later, large flakes came down, and by morning we had about 16 inches.

The pine boughs are heavily laden; on the way into town we saw many trees had collapsed, some onto the power lines and some into the road. The road was very rough--as though the crews had given up as soon as school was cancelled. The lights were out at several intersections in the city. All in all, it was a rough commute.

First Snow

The first snowfall has arrived; it's now on its second day and seems inclined to linger.
It's not early in the season;
it's not especially late.
Just winter.

This is one of our "Druidic burials": a clump of uprooted trees that have been trimmed so the disturbed earth settles down again, and the rent in the landscape is healed. This one will yield some pretty good firewood!

The grove at the edge of the wood. The even-aged stand of red pine, all crown-lifted to the same height, create odd lighting effects.

Here is the Lone Pine in its winter array; if only there were some sun!

The light scattering of snow on the branches emphasizes the darkness under the closed canopy. Even in winter, with the leaves all down, it can be quite gloomy.

Last of the Fair Weather

This may be the last weekend with temperatures consistently above zero. When I got up, it was about 2.4. The woodlot was drenched, but we took the dogs back to the campsite. Here is another pet tree: the only white pine south of the Five Thousand, apart from that poor waif by Panama. It grew up with balsam fir packed tightly around it, so there are no low boughs at all. We gave it some room a few years back.




This gives a fair impression of the lot today: a dull sky above whose light fails to penetrate to the forest floor, and dark, wet trees below.

We bravely decided to cut away some clumps of uprooted trees to let the ground settle again. Lots of wedge-work: the saw got pinched in a cut twice. One was an enormous old trembling aspen, the largest diameter tree I have cut yet, I think.

Supermoon

Still struggling with astrophotography. There was a slight haze beginning, but I managed a few fairly clear shots of the moon. It was a beautifully warm evening for it, and indeed, it is only 2.5 C (above!) this morning.

Dawn

On the day of the Supermoon, we greet a sombre but beautiful dawn. I opened the front window and made a panorama:

We had a solid frost last night, but we're still hitting low 10s during the day. These are good working conditions; we raised the crowns on the front lines of red pine over the long weekend and chipped up all the brush.

Pet Trees

While we have planted thousands of trees--hundreds of which lived!--there are still some special ones. This, for example, is one of the very first we planted: a white pine. I ran over it with the lawn mover regularly; its growth is, as a result, somewhat retarded. At some point between running it over and today's rather brutal pruning, we lost track of its growth, which was wayward. I think we'll get it back on track eventually. The main bole split into three co-dominant stems, so it's been putting much of its effort into branches low on the tree. These grow upward to challenge the leader for height. Next fall I'll take out one of the three.

This is a balsam fir that shed almost all its needles one hot summer. Instead of cutting it out, we left it--we really did nothing more. Gradually, it put out new growth and the skeletal tracery of dead branches was replaced by an increasing minority of green, which has now become an overwhelming majority.

We had the misfortune to plant a cedar directly over the access hatch to the septic tank. It was well established by the time we had to have the tank pumped, and we ending up moving quite a large tree. We had to cut away most of the root system. It looked dead for two or three years, and then sprang back to life. It is obviously less lush than the line of cedar to its right, but that is because I did not subject it to the indignities of pruning and pollarding!

And this is just a flowering shrub--catching the light of this mild and beautiful November day.

That Time of Year

Autumn fires:

Winter fires:

No Vember

No sun—no moon!
  No morn—no noon—
No dawn—
  No sky—no earthly view—
  No distance looking blue—
No road—no street—no “t’other side the way”—
  No end to any Row—
  No indications where the Crescents go—
  No top to any steeple—
No recognitions of familiar people—
  No courtesies for showing ‘em—
     
No knowing ‘em!
No traveling at all—no locomotion,
No inkling of the way—no notion—
“No go”—by land or ocean—
  No mail—no post—
  No news from any foreign coast—
No park—no ring—no afternoon gentility—
  No company—no nobility—
No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,
  No comfortable feel in any member—
No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,
No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds,
  November!
                                         --Thomas Hood, 1844

Hallowe'en

Some of the most interesting pictures are accidents. After a long morning's work pushing over deadwood and hacking down deadfall, Joanne carved the pumpkins. I stuck in candles and took some pictures. This evil spirit appeared out of nowhere.

It makes this more conventionally wicked picture seem tame by comparison. No rolled eye, glowing nose, or tongue of fire. Just a Jack o'lantern.

Happy Hallowe'en!

Autumn Chores

Autumn seems to be a time of brake jobs. I finally changed out that seized cable in the Honda, completing a four-wheel brake job in the process. Here are the lovely new drums--it almost seems a shame to keep the other components (too shabby). Finally, we have two sets of shoes responding to the emergency brake.

 I also serviced our pellet stove--22 years old and still going strong, so far as I can recollect. The fans are oiled, cleaned, and, as a consequence, quite quiet.

Fall Clean-up

Here it is, mid-October, and the scaffolding is all tucked away in the tractor shed. For once, I finished shingling and painting before the snow flew!

Although I liked the look of the natural shingles against the white paint, in the end I painted everything. It is hard to maintain the look of cedar; it tends to blacken. I still have some touching up to do on the corner boards, but that can wait for next year. We still get the occasional warm day, but it is really too cold for further painting. Next year, we plan to replace five windows, including the two side windows on the lower bay, and the one in the front corner, second floor--this will be the main focus of the summer work. This time, we're going to rip off the vinyl and apply cedar clapboard! 

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Blow the Man Down

Last weekend a crew went by on the far side of the road pollarding trees that threatened the power lines. I thought I'd better get busy, and spent the Thanksgiving weekend dismembering the hophornbeam. Luckily, Boris was on hand.

The bole had forked into four main stems with minor branches adding to the mess. I wanted a clean, predicable felling path for each, so we started by clearing away anything that threatened to obstruct the line of descent.

We worked from the scaffolding, always dropping the limbs away from the platform--and the power line.

By the end of Thanksgiving, only one stem remained--tall, but relatively small in diameter. This weekend Jo and I tackled it. I brought the scaffolding around to make a felling notch on the driveway side and then dropped it with a cut on the opposite side. We put a rope on it to make sure it didn't back onto the power line, but it actually fell quite close to the intended direction. It diverged a little to the right (following the downslope of the driveway), clipping the maple to the right of it. This knocked off a co-dominant stem, saving me the trouble of climbing up and cutting it!

 It has a strange totemic appearance now. I thought I'd leave it up for a while, at least until Hallowe'en. From some angles it looks like a giant hand scrabbling at the sky with its stumps of fingers.

Now I'm engaged in chopping it up for firewood and hauling it away to the woodpile (I'm taking a break right now--that is HEAVY wood!).

I've been chipping down the smaller branches; the chipper complains a little but chops it up quite well. I'll save some pieces for Colin--he wanted to try using it for engraving blocks. That split up the main trunk looks quite black inside. I wonder if it was hit by lightning after all?

Transitional Project #7322

I found a nice transitional plane at an antique warehouse in St. Jacob's, Ontario. It was complete, the beech body had no checking, and the only thing that seemed to be broken was the rear grip. It looks like a Stanley #28, but it is probably a knock-off; I didn't see the brand name in the end stamping or on the cast pieces.

There was a sizeable chip out of the top of the handle, and it was cracked right across near the base.

At another antique warehouse, I found a pile of handplane handles (for $3 each--wish I'd bought a bunch!). I thought I might use one on the transitional.

The metal shaft for the old handle was a #12 NC 24, so I dug out a die and threaded a slightly longer metal rod to match the new handle.  The new handle had a more upright stance than the original, so I had to make a sharp kink in the shaft near the base. It was also bigger--it actually fitted my hand, which the original did not.

Here's a small bonus: the lateral adjustment lever does not scrape my fingers, as it did in the original set up. I thought the less acute angle might hamper the action, but it seems fine.









The new handle is also very attractive--rosewood, possibly. I'm not a fan of antiques for show alone, but I like the ones I can use. Some folks scoff at transitional planes, but I find them appealing. Although they don't have the snob appeal of the all-wood models, they are quick to set up, durable--and cheap! Mine was CAN$35, which isn't bad for a decent model. I suppose I've ruined its authenticity now, but transitionals don't really have that kind of cachet to begin with. Maybe I'll drill it through and add a guide!