Out on the ice

For about a week now, Kingsford Lake, at least the portion that our house looks out over, has been frozen over from one shore to the other. While there were a couple days of -10 oC (14 oF), it hasn’t been exceptionally cold for a long stretch. Looking out at the ice from the house, [...]

The living trees

This is my 200th post. That second hundred felt like it passed more quickly than the first hundred (which I commemorated here, and also commented on how quickly it arrived). It did, actually; the first hundred took 6 months to write, while the second hundred only took me five. Part of the reason for that [...]

Today at Kingsford – Puppy in the snow

The last few days we’ve had regular precipitation, which has variably been in solid or liquid form depending on the temperature outside. Temperatures dropped and stayed low enough overnight last night that when we got up this morning there was a lovely blanket of snow on the ground, the first solid couple of inches we’ve [...]

Bird seed surprise

One of my responsibilities while house-sitting for my parents is keeping the bird feeders well-stocked. With the period of extremely cold temperatures (at least for this time of year – we’d be laughing come February) the feeders were a hive of activity, and the seed levels dropped steadily. The sunflower and thistle seed feeders were [...]

Today not at Kingsford – British Soldiers

It seems I often find myself at my computer late at night, just starting to compose a blog post long after a reasonable person would have gone to bed. Part of this is due to not having to be up at a set time in the morning (for instance, to go in to the office), [...]

Braving the cold

It was another busy day today, a follow-up to yesterday’s car-shopping. I took my sister back up to Ottawa so she could pick up the plates from her decommissioned car, and then dropped her off at her house before returning back to my parents’. The outing ate up most of the afternoon, and by the [...]

Today not at Kingsford – How to separate your shadow

I am back at my parents’ new house again for a few days. My mom asked me to come to look after the horses, which have made the move to the new property, while she returned to the old house to meet with realtors, visit the dentist, and other tasks. My sister was going to [...]

Relicts of a past age

An interesting thing about the countryside is how many old, discarded pieces of equipment and other junk seem to be found in the middle of the woods. Cars are a favourite, or piles of rusty buckets, farming equipment such as plows, and other abandoned items. They’re often deep in the middle of the forest, and [...]

Today at Kingsford – Ice, ice, baby

Surely I’m not the only one for whom that line of the song starts running through their head when they start to think about ice. What, I am? Um. Okay. Forget it even came up, then.
Today when we got up there was ice covering most of our sheltered little bay. Just a thin sheet, and [...]

Recent news: Doe with antler

We get two local papers here, the Frontenac News and the Frontenac Gazette. An interesting thing about rural and small communities that you don’t really get in larger cities is these community papers. Of course, the larger cities have their own papers, too, they’re just serving more people so they lose that intimacy, that sense [...]