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So this week (or rather the rest of this week and part of next week) I am going to try and update daily with SOMETHING. I've had quite a few urges to write stuff, but the poetic stuff slips away quickly, and paper is not condusive to my writing. I get about half a sentence and then I lose whatever was in my head. Apparently lines are just really distracting perhaps?
SO, today's post is about the little excursion my mom and I took up to Lucan to visit The Lucan Area Heritage and Donnelly Museum. It's been there for a few years, and it's rather tiny (as are most of the small town museums around here. Ontario is filled largely of small towns, most of which are touristy and they're either open only in the summer, or only in the winter depending on what they do. Very few have much open all year round.) They expanded last year(?) I think, and now own another building which they use to house exhibits and they have the replica Donnelly cabin and barn. The reason we went was not to see the Donnelly cabin and barn though. We went to see the quilt exhibit - “Threads of Freedom: Quilts and the Underground Railroad – Fact or Fiction?”
First off, I want to say the exhibit was very interesting, and I do reccomend people interested in quilts go. Admission is by donation only, so it really doesn't need to break the bank. Of course now that I say that I remember most of the people that read this don't live in the same country... hahaha oops. Well, if you ever visit, the quilts that were involved with slaves will still be in the province at another museum... Now you're probably wondering what I was getting at so here we go. The exhibit is titled "Threads fo Freedom: Quilts and the Underground Railroad - Fact or Fiction?" and the description on the website is "This exhibit explores quilts as art forms, functional art, as history and their significance to the Underground Railroad." These would probably go together better if I'd read all the little fact file question things on the walls, but I was rather distracted by the amazing quilts and taking pictures of them. A lot of the info prominently displayed without having to lift the little file thing was mainly about how fabric was made back in the 1700 and 1800s. I did find it odd however that they only verbally told you which quilts would have been used to give messages to slaves, and had nothing obviously visible beside quilts (that wasn't a lifty file fact thing.) The reason I was surprised was because then I think you end up with what we saw while we were looking - two women and a young boy come in, put their donation in the bin, hear the little blurb about the 5 quilts associated with slaves, do a quick turn around, then headed out the back door to look at the cabin. And they weren't in the cabin when we left, so I hope they didn't consider it a waste of their time.
Second thing I want to say, and this will be shorter, is a small blurb about the Donnellys. Mainly I'll give you a link and you can explore them on your own, this post isn't about them. The Donnellys were a family from Ireland that were murdered on Feb 4th, 1880. 5 of 7 were killed. It was vicious and nasty and no one was ever convicted of the crime even though pretty much everyone knew who did it. Links are HERE and Wiki link HERE.
When I first heard about this exhibit I wondered what Lucan had to do with the Underground Railroad (for those who don't know what the Underground Railroad is, look HERE) because looking at the demographics of the local area it was all very much Irish, Scottish, English, and some Dutch. There were almost no other ethnicities. This is changing though (which I think is good as the high school I went to was NOT very tolerant of anything considered different.) I knew the Chatham area was involved in it - but then they openly advertise Uncle Tom's Cabin and they're closer to the border with the U.S.. After some looking, I learned that Lucan was originally called Wilberforce and had been originally settled by freed slaves from the United States in 1830. Mainly of the freeds slaves left though.) The exhibit shows a couple quilts given to Rev. William King by former slaves, 3 quilts whose patterns would have been used to signal, and a large number of quilts from the mid 1800s to present day. Now, since showing all the photos would be horribly long, I shall link part of the descriptsions to photos I took.
The first couple blankets were woven in the area back in the 1800s and were for sale. I almost had a heartattack learning they were only asking $175 for them. So, I will mostly focus on the quilts connected to slaves, even though the others were gorgeous. The two quilts made by slaves were exquisite. A lot of the female slaves learned how to quilt so they could avoid being out picking cotton. One thing I really liked about the first quilt made by a former slave was the designs quilted into them. Pineapples, lemon designs and flowers...or something. The quilt was handmade circa 1850. It was given to Rev. William King (1812-1895), founder of the Elgin Settlement for Black refugees near Chatham, ON. The quilt is on loan to the Lucan museum from the Buxton National Historic Site & Museum. I'm not sure what the block pattern is. The second quilt was a stunning log cabin quilt was made of silks and velvets - something I really haven't seen before. It was also given to Rev. William King and was made by former slaves, circa 1865-95, and is also on loan from the Buxton National Historic Site & Museum.
The next three quilts I will talk about are the code quilts. Now, there is speculation about the validity of the claims of the fact quilts were used as code - mainly because there are no written records. Of course, when you think about it, why would you keep written records of it? That would have been like people hiding Jews keeping records and having the Nazis find them. Some of you may be shocked that I make that association, or laugh at it, but it's rather true considering even in free states you could be punished for helping slaves etc. They also argue this isn't overly likely because part of these patterns did not exist in those times. Anyways, the first of these quilts that I will talk about is the bowtie pattern. The bowtie quilt was used to tell escaped slaves that they were welcome at this house and that they should/would be able to clean themselves up.
The next quilt is the Flying Geese pattern. This quilt was hung out to show slaves which way to go.
The last quilt dealing with slaves was the Drunken Sailor, and this quilt was used to tell slaves they would have a hard journey ahead of them.
The next special purpose quilts I'll talk about are the signature quilts. These are usually used for fundraising - you pay a fee and then they quilt your signature onto the quilt. The quilts I think were either then kept by the organization that made them to raise money, or they were possibly raffled off (though I can't see this being done in modern days with all the fraud and what not lol.) The Lucan museum had 4 signature quilts dating from a Red Cross quilt in 1918, most likely to raise money for the war, to newer quilts.HERE is the red cross quilt and one of the others. My mom had fun looking at all the embroidery on this bottom quilt and going "The points don't line up." (We're perfectionists. My mother once ripped out quilt blocks over and over and over until she was VERY angry just to get the points to match up.) The points, by the way, line up from a distance, but they're noticably off when you get closer. The other special quilt I was going to talk about was a Canadian Centennial quilt. This one is special because the coat of arms for each province is not pieced together like a quilt block. This prompted my mother to ask questions. Can you order them like that? Are they iron ons? Did they cut the coat of arms off of flags? Are they painted on like the other quilt on the other side of the room? The answer from both museum ladies was a polite "I don't really know..." So, closer inspection was needed. Getting under the area the quilt was hanging over I looked at it and I noticed little shade lines. The entire thing has been drawn/traced BY HAND and coloured with some sort of marker.
So, if anyone local reads this and wants to go - I suggest you do. Admission, once again, is by donation only and the donation gets you the quilt exhibit and the replica cabin and barn. The museum is located at 171 Main Street Lucan, and it has big letters on it that say what it is, and it's the last building in a stretch before a little grassy area and a parking lot. There are lots of nice quilts, they covered the balcony railings with quilts to make the area more appealing and the designs range from fans to stars to tumbling blocks to 9 patches, and many others.
So this may be a long rambling post, but oh well, it's been a while so it's all good. Also, it's my blog. And if there was a similar feature like on LiveJournal where I could use a cut, I would. But that I know of, there isn't. I was going to do an entry on a more occult theme, perhaps how I stumbled into it, but well, it ties into the topic I was inspired to write about by the last episode of Slings & Arrows, where Oliver and Geoffery talk about what they are REALLY doing, and essentially the purpose of life. Or in Oliver's case, death/purgatory as well.
So, the purpose of life. I've long been pondering this one, and, well, really, I've found the best way to find out is to look at other species on the planet. Do THEY have a purpose? Aside from being eaten, the only thing I've been able to figure out is they're here, and all they seem to do is eat, poop, and breed. A bit of a grim outlook on life, but it's true for the most part. We are all going to die eventually, and by deduction, we're all born to die. And hey look, all humans really do aside from fucking everything on the planet up, is eat poop and breed! The rest, is filler. Only we give it meaning.
So there's the other purpose of life - make your own purpose. If you want to feed the poor, feed the poor. But please don't make them pledge alligence to some god who may or may not exist in order to get food. That's not very nice of you. And you'll notice Jesus didn't make people do that. And if you do do that, YOU MAKE BABY JESUS CRY, DAMN YOU!
And this I guess is where my stumbling into the occult comes into play a bit more. A lot of people (okay, I think the majority) look to religions/faiths/beliefs of some sort as to what happens in life and after. Christianity wasn't really cutting it for me, and as a rebellious teenie bopper I put on a pentacle going "Oh I'm Wiccan!" Hey, all the (not so) cool kids were doing it. Then eventually I thought to myself "I wonder who I'm insulting the most by wearing this. Maybe I should look into it a bit more." And well, (Neo-)Wicca didn't cut it for me either. I think it was that whole Goddess minus the God thing. It didn't balance out. Kind of like Christianity with the God but no Goddess thing. Although a Jewish Christian I went to high school with did once mention - and I apologize for this now because I don't really remember it well - that in Hebrew one of the words translated for "God" is actually unisex, but in Hebrew it becomes masculine for some reason. All this balancing stuff could be because I'm a Libra, who knows. I'm *STILL* trying to work out what I believe with my interest into the occult (which I will go more in depth into in another post) and all that.
Is there a god? I don't know. I do know that if there is and following what a lot of people say about god etc... it kind of makes our planet like his little doll house. If he created us, and we're here to do his will and all that jazz, it's very much like a dollhouse. But seriously, if you ask me if there's a god, I will say "no" or "perhaps." Although really, it's not like it matters in the end. I'll die either way, and whatever I did between birth and death may or may not matter. Though all that actually seems to matter is that you follow societal pressures. Get a job, make money, try to be as rich as possible, be successful in marriage, follow the usually natural urge to breed, do random crap until you die.
Seriously, like why are we here. What happens when we die? I think pondering this is the purpose of life as well. Gives us "intelligent" beings a reason to be here. Well, when we die... we... die...? It's a frightening prospect because we know fear beyond "OMG IT'S GOING TO EAT ME!!!" Or maybe we only know more complex versions of that. And if there is reincarnation, I'd like to opt out. My purpose so far has been to be beaten up. And I'm really tired of that whole "Oh you had a middle class life and nothing ever really happened to you and you have no reason to be sad/depressed/suicidal etc" Yeah, sure. Okay. I'm sorry I feel this way, and that I feel this way without living in a third world country where everyone has AIDS and is starving to death. I'm sorry my problems are different than someone else's. I'm sorry this is how the planet has developed. 'Cause I totally control that. Fuck off. I've worked hard to do all that figuring out who I am and what not. And to wake up one day as someone else would be fucking scary. Not that I'd really know, because the old me would be long dead and gone. It wouldn't hit me until later in that new life, and the process would start all over again.
Maybe our purpose in life is to ponder the WHYs. Although really, once again, that's just random crap to kill time until we die. We got here, somehow. Mainly because we learn in science class that random particles stick together and make stuff. And those particles can reproduce in some fashion etc etc and make more particles. So really everything in the universe looks like germ colonies in a petri dish. Awesome.
So this has gotten long and rambly and mainly a post on "The purpose of life is that we're born, we waste time, we eat, we breed, and then no matter what, we die. And we don't like dying, but we die, so life really has no purpose except whatever one you want to give it." And I kind of got off that last bit... so I guess I'll stop now haha.
I shall finish with one of the most sensible statements I've ever heard in response to the phrase "I wonder what death is like." And that response was "I would imagine it's somewhat like what it was like before you were born."
And fluffy baby animals to make you all feel better. Because everyone loves fluffy baby animals.
In grade twelve my Writer's Craft teacher (who was also my archery coach) told me my poetry was full of "emotional splats," and that poetry should be refined and smooth - write a journal entry first, and then write the poem after. Needless to say, I didn't take his advice (I have a horrible time writing journal entries, I really do. Blogs are a bit different, but not by much. It mainly comes down to I can type faster than I can write by hand, and I can keep up with my thoughts.) It didn't matter a lot, he even said so himself - he was cool like that. He knew artists and writers needed their own styles and methods, and unlike a couple of my English teachers, was very specific about what he wanted to see in assignments and what NEEDED to be in each thing to make it the thing he was asking us to write, but other than that, pretty much everything was free game.
I did take what he said somewhat to heart, but not until after high school. Rereading poems I saw what he meant, but at the same time, I wasn't about to change the poems. Mainly because I figured that would change the meaning of what most of them were about. But it also got me thinking. Poetry is rather like sex. Some is smooth and refined, sensual; some is rough and raw. Others seduce you, and some just surprise you. Some are combinations, some are short, others are long. Some start hot, and stay hot, others start hot and fizzle to nothing. Some are written full of love, others meaningless and full of revenge. I could keep going, but I don't think it's necessary haha.
And of course now that I've written this I see the same thing I see when I try writing journal entries... and I think it comes from my English classes where everything was supposed to have a point/specific purpose, like an essay. We did A LOT of essay writing... yeah...
And now, a photo, which probably has very little to do with this post, but in some round about way it does...
Recently (as in the last 3 months) I saw this article/opinion piece on the local newspaper's website about how cursive handwriting is apparently a dying art, and not really needed in this age of technology.
Well, to be honest, it kind of is - but only kind of. I learned it back in grade 3 or 4 - I actually recently found my cursive writing book not that long ago while cleaning up some old school papers. After about grade 5 in elementary school most of our schoolwork was expected to be in cursive. Some teachers didn't care, others did. High school on the other hand, was a different story. They wanted it all typed. In-class work could be submitted in LEGIBLE hand writing - if the teacher couldn't read it, they docked marks -which I felt was only HALF fair. We *could* have been offered the option of taking it home and submitting it beginning of the next class, provided it wasn't an in-class essay etc. If it was an in-class essay, and you knew your writing was only legible to you, they would make arrangements for you to type it, but no internet access etc was allowed obviously. Some teachers would say so long as your writing was legible to people other than yourself, you could submit hand written essays etc, so long as it followed the proper formatting.
My cursive handwriting is mostly legible, though I often did, and continue to use the computer for school assignments, as well as most other things. I have horrible posture, and I write too quickly, which causes my letters to be deformed and smooshed. Also, if there are no lines on the paper my sentences will form a curve up and to the right. My typical writing is a mixture of printing and cursive. It takes me a looong time to neatly construct a whole letter in cursive writing, and I often forget things I was going to jot down or switch words and what not.
Shortly after seeing the above article my mom and I were over talking to my neighbour who also brought up the fact the younger generations don't have nice handwriting - printing or cursive - in a discussion about the younger generations inability to do math in their heads (which she doesn't hold against us, we were taught in school to do pretty much everything via calculator.) It was this time I mentioned I've been thinking about practicing mine again, and trying to clean it up. I don't know if cleaning it up will happen, but maybe with time.
I suffer mostly from my starting of letters, and a lot of them looking the same. My capital Y, Q and Z all look about the same, hence why I created a bastardized printed cursive versions. But I have a plan. I shall work a bit on just doing repetitions of the letters (probably by printing off some of those lovely free teacher worksheets on the internet) and then maybe going through the dictionary and doing 10-20 words a day... which also may help increase my vocabulary hahaha.
I may also start looking into penpals. Maybe. Snailmail can be fun! I also think I might take up calligraphy... when my writing has improved haha.
So it's been a few days, I've been working on stuff for this, brainstorming ideas etc, but since my sleeping habits have once again shifted to the strange and unusual (read: I've royally fucked my bedtime and having a lot of disturbing dreams. It's rather like being jetlagged all the time.) To counter this, I have watched almost all 3 seasons of Due South, I've watched Passchendaele, and Men With Brooms. As soon as I have finished Due South I will be starting in on Slings & Arrows. 10 points and a cookie to the person who can make the connection between all of these hahaha. Also - WATCH THEM. They are AMAZING. DO IT! NOW!
Speaking of strange dreams, that's what I've been working on for this, however, it may have to be a series. It's getting longer and longer with every day that passes and the more I think of and remember.
I also broke myself again... Twisted my ankle, but then I think those of you that follow my blog already know this, so I'll skip the details for now. It's still a bit achey, depends on the shoes, the ground, and how I walk. Hurray for it being my driving and sewing foot, bleh.
Anyhoo, I'm heading to bed for now. I can feel my brain stalling as we go here. And this must be a good thing because this is over an hour earlier than I've been going to bed for the past week *sigh* Who's willing to bet I'm going to lie in bed for hours now? :p
This may be a title I use often, as I always enjoy finding little tips and tricks for around the home and garden. As I was cleaning some stuff in my room I came across a huge pile of old schoolwork and other mixed papers. Most of them will be shredded and then recycled, but I kept a few. One of these is a sheet I put together as a freebie hand out for a fundraiser we did when I was still keeping involved in my parents' church (Mainly to keep up appearances, as well as to get my volunteer hours for high school), and they're all little home and garden tips (it was a plant sale and recipes-in-a-jar sale) that I belive came from an old Farmer's Almanac tip-of-the-day desk calendar. I love farmer's almanacs. I bought one this year, but I'm not sure where it disappeared to... I really need to use the hole punched in the book and hang it from some string hahaha. Onto the tips!
Outdoor Antiseptics
Need an effective anitseptic while you're out camping? Look for dogwood, witch hazel, oak bark, or sphagnum moss. Boil the bark or moss in water, cool, and apply as needed.
No Topsoil?
If you're gardening with less-than-ideal soil conditions, try these perenials that easily tolerate subsoils:
- Baby's breath
- Coreopsis
- Cushion spurge
- Geranium
- Purple cornflower
- Red valerian
- Thrift
- Yarrow
Bee Stings
Apply the juice of chamomile stems, honeysuckle vines, rue, or aloe vera. If the kitchen is handy, use vinegar or garlic juice. (Also, not from this calendar but the Almanac website - Place a penny on the sting, and hold it there for 5 minutes. My mother also usually hands people a tea bag soaked in warm water, has something to do with the tannic acid I think.)
Bug Bites
Regular flavored toothpaste, when applied to an insect bite (especially fire ant bites) will immediately relieve itching. Or make an “X” with your fingernail on the bite. It helps alleviate the need to itch.
Ants? Serve Coffee.
Mix used coffee grounds with water, and pour down anthills in the yard. Ants will relocate after a dose or two. (Another idea is to put cornmeal on ant hills etc, as the ants think it is food, but cannot digest it.)
How To Mow
If you're removing the grass clippings after lawn mowing, you're depriving your lawn of much-needed nutrients. Scientific studies have shown that leaving the clippings on the lawn produces a healthier lawn - even if your mower is not one of the newer "mulching" mowers.
Sweet Substitute
Out of confectioner's sugar? Simply put granulated sugar into your blender and pulse at high speed until you have the consistency you desire.
Homemade Plant Spray
For an organic alternative to a chemical spray to ward off chewing insects, try
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon liquid detergent
3 teaspoons vegetable oil1 tablespoon cayenne flakes
2 cups water
Blend ingredients, place into a spray bottle, and spray onto plants. Reapply after rain.
A Few Handy Tips
A funnel makes a handy string or twine dispenser for the garage or workshop. Just thread the leading end of the string through the small hole of the funnel, letting the ball sit looseley in the larger cup. Hang the funnel from the wall, with a pair of scissors nearby.
Add a few coloured marbles to the birdbath to attract birds.
Always water gardens (and mow lawns) during the coolest part of the day. To conserve water, weed diligently, mulch well, and use rain barrels or drip irrigation instead of sprinklers.
Soak kitchen sponges in cold salt water to freshen them.
To make your cut flowers last longer in the vase, add a tablespoon of sugar to the water before you arrange them.
Featured above is an image of 3 of my pots of herbs on the front deck. The blue pot is spicy globe basil (which to me really tastes like black licorice, eww!) The first box is 3 types of sage, and the second box is oregano.
It's that time of year again - the rains have tapered off to typical summer thunder showers, but they're not the cold drizzly downpours of spring. House hunting weather. Living in a rural area, it's not horribly often that I see houses for sale. And oddly enough, the ones usually for sale are the ones that the owners have lived in for decades, and now live alone and are too old to do the upkeep of a large house by themselves, OR they're the city people that moved out here, but can't hack the country life. As someone who has spent all of the almost 21 years of her life living in the same house in a rural area, I hate it when city people move out here. Some I don't mind, but those are the ones who learn quickly. It's the ones that learn and adapt slowly I have issues with. Some days you really just want to take bets on how long before they move back into the city. Now then, what spawned this thought process turned blog entry? Another house a few concessions over on our road has also been sold. This just caused some reminiscing of other times houses were bought in the area. I'm not saying city dwellers are bad people, or overly stupid, just sometimes they need to get a clue. Here's a list of advice, grievances, and random things that I have for when city dwellers move to the country.
- Talk to your neighbours/people on the road. We're not going to kill you, and in some cases it could save your life, keep you from getting robbed, or just be good if you have any general questions about things and how they work. Introduce yourself, talk a bit. Out here, if anything happens, it's going to take a bit of time before an emergency service arrives in response. When our neighbours started renting the house to the west of us, they introduced themselves, chatted a bit, and eventually, after a couple months we had all agreed to keep our eyes open for suspicious activities, strange vehicles, etc at each other's houses.
- DO NOT act like you are better than your neighbours because they're JUST farmers, so they must be country bumpkins, and dirt poor. Why would you act like that with anyone? (Unless they REALLY deserve it, but usually, most people don't.) Also, without farmers, what would you eat? I once had a substitute teacher when I was in high school, it was still kind of early in the year, probably end of October, beginning of November. She usually taught at a city school, she was a city girl, she really didn't know anything about farm area (to the extent of "It took me FOREVER to get here from ____!! I thought the drive would never end!" Um, okay, that's a 15 minute drive. 15 minutes. If THAT is a long drive I hope you never have to drive all the way across the city from here.) Now then, add the time of year together with a school in a farming community and the fact this is Ontario, Canada. Yes almost a third to half the class is missing. To us students, the answer was simple. Harvesting. To the teacher, it made no sense. "Don't their parents care about their education?! Why would they keep them home?! Don't they want their children to have an education?! To succeed?!" Um... because once they're done here the majority of them will be earning their livings as a farmer...? As for how long they'll be out of school, if the weather holds, 3 or 4 days. A week tops. If it rains, they'll be back until the weather's good again. Also... why would you assume they lack an education? Why would being a farmer not be succeeding? She didn't have any answers to that, and she very quickly got back on track with the work our teacher had left.
- If you don't like the rural area, why did you move here? If you didn't like the city, maybe you should have tried one of the suburbs between the north edge of the city, and here. Still out of the main city (you can't take a bus from there unless you walk the 5-10 minutes down the hill to the mall to catch one) yet not quite into the country to require you to drive everywhere.
- No matter how much literature your real estate agent gives you, it will NEVER cover everything you need to know about living out here.
- Yes, you pay a small fee for (basically unlimited - the city has a limit of 4 bags per week) garbage and recycling pick up in your land taxes. Apparently you thought this was a great deal, and didn't bother to read the rest of the pamphlet. They will not take your garbage unless you put a garbage tag on it. These can be bought at the convenience store in Ballymote for something like $1.75 each. Also, you smell smoke, you see everyone burning their leaves, no one else has leaves in bags down at the road that haven't been picked up on garbage day... mainly because we don't have yard waste disposal, for rather obvious reasons - You now live on an acre or more of land, covered with trees that lose their leaves... you getting the picture yet? Compost it, burn it, or leave it alone. Those are your choices.
- If anything is left at your driveway on garbage day, it could be that you put your stuff out too late, or something is wrong with it. This usually happens with recycling. DO NOT leave it at the road to get blown into the road, hit by cars, spread everywhere by animals etc etc. Take it back to your house, fix it, put it out next week.
- On this road, your garbage goes on the SOUTH side. If you look around, yours is the only garbage on the north side. The problem as to why your garbage is not getting picked up is rather obvious, isn't it?
- Stop freaking out about power outages. They happen. Espeically in this area. Particularly in bad weather. It will come back on eventually, it takes the hydro crews a little bit of time to locate the problem and get a team out here. If it bothers you that much - buy a generator.
- Stop whining about a lack of cable, and cable based internet. We do not have cable out here. Get satellite or shut the fuck up. No, living here does NOT mean "dial-up only." I should know. We've had high speed/DSL for a while now. The trick is finding a supplier that offers service in our area. There's about 6 that I know of for sure. Ask your neighbours, they would know.
- In the winter, I WILL laugh at you (not to your face though) when I see you out shovelling your very long laneway. Mainly because yours is one of the few laneways not cleared. Why don't you just arrange to have the farmer down the road plow your laneway like he does everyone else's? I know people have told you about him before. It's not all that expensive (he only charges about $10 to $15 per time, if even), and doesn't need to be done all that often unless the weather is horrible.
- Yes our road is only half plowed. This is apparently called a "traffic lane" or some such. It means the road is clear enough for one vehicle to drive on the whole clear area, or for two vehicles to pass on the road, with at least 2 tires in the clear area. And by two tires I do not mean the 2 front tires of your car will be in the clear while you force me into the ditch. Fuck you. Move over.
- The township will plow the road completely when they have time. I remember it wasn't long ago when this road didn't get plowed AT ALL.
- The people parking their cars at the road end of their very long driveways are not stupid. They are not snowed in. However, I notice you are.
- Yes, snow is blowing into your yard from across the road. You live across the road from an open field, what did you expect?
- Keep. YOUR. Goddamn. Dog. OFF. MY. Property. You live like six houses down. That's almost 1/4 of a mile or more. Your dog had to cross both bridges and then some to get to my house. And then he shits all over my yard. My neighbours' dog is better behaved than that! And there's no fence around part of our property between theirs and ours. That dog only comes over if one of his owners comes over. And even then he doesn't shit in our yard. Next time I see your "precious purebred supposedly impressivly pedigreed hunting dog that you don't hunt" with in my yard, I'm calling animal control. Enjoy your fines and expenses for breaking the by-law. Side note: I don't really mind letting your dog run loose, SO LONG AS it will come when called, and doesn't wander too far from home. Even my neighbours' cats only wander around the few houses in our section of the road. They don't cause a lot of problems, and they help control the pest issue. But some people let their animals run wild, causing damage, injuries etc. I don't want to go knocking door to door going "Do you own a dog matching this description? You do? I'm very sorry to tell you I hit it."
- It's farm country, it's going to smell like animal poop occassionally, get used to it. And yes, there will be farm equipment using the road - learn to share the road.
- You live in an area without municipal water or sewage systems. This means you have a well, and you have a septic tank. I suggest you learn about these - where they are, what they do, how they work, and who to call when something goes wrong. Asking your neighbours also helps because they may be able to tell you quite a bit, even about your own property.
Thus ends a semi-pointless to the majority of people that will read it rant. No one said my blog had to have a purpose :p
Above: Random photo looking up my road at sunset Yes, I'm aware there's snow lol.
