Every night just after supper we go for a short walk. Sometimes we stay on the paved road in our subdivision but usually we follow one of the trails back into the bush behind the houses. A few days ago I took my camera along and here are some of the things we saw.
On Wednesday I hit a big rock and blow up one of my car's tires. On Thursday, while we wait at the service station for my replacement tire and rim, Andy shatters the rear sliding window on The Big Guy's truck as he tries to crawl through from the back into the cab. This morning one of the back tires on my car is completely flat with a screw embedded in the tread.
Tomorrow I plan to stay in bed.
Show us the very last picture you took. No cheating!
This is the very last photograph on my camera. I'm glad it's one of the more interesting ones and not one of the boring over-exposed pictures of rocks I took on the same day.
I took this photo on Tuesday. It's sort of a weird shot Distance and the angle I was shooting from make the three main elements (the house, the trees, the field of broom) look quite different in relation to each other than they are in reality.
Inspired by Janette's word cloud, I went to Wordle and made one for myself with an extract taken from the book I just started reading. It's an interesting way to look at a book. The words are there and you can spot what seem to be the important ones but the context is all scrambled.
Today I was driving home on the highway from a shopping and errands excursion in Victoria. It's about a 45 minute trip up The Malahat. I was in traffic, doing about 100 km/h, rounding a big bend near the Summit where there's only one lane going each way and nothing but a solid yellow line between the northbound and southbound traffic. The SUV in front of me suddenly swerved, over the centre line and back, around a large rock in the centre of our lane.
Things happen pretty fast at 100 km/h.
The same maneuver was impossible for me - oncoming traffic on the left and a steep slope (cliff, actually) on the right. I did the best I could, crowding the yellow line but I hit the rock anyway.
There was some very bad banging and thumping under the car and then heavy vibration. I thought I was dragging the rock underneath and that it was disemboweling my car.
After I pulled over onto the very narrow shoulder there was so little room between my driver's side door and the traffic roaring by that I had to wait for a clear spot in the traffic before I could open my door and get out.
It wasn't quite as bad as I thought. Basically, the front tire on the passenger side blew up. A few more inches and I might have missed the rock altogether.
Anyway, to make a long story short, several hundred cars and trucks and one police car flew on by before someone pulled over. By this time I had the spare and the jack out, had searched fruitlessly for the lug wrench and was standing in the ditch on the edge of the cliff trying to decide whether or not to call for a tow truck on my cell phone.
They were a family, tourists from Florida who had already been on the road most of the day with bored kids in the back seat. The man was incredibly gracious and helpful. He found the lug wrench, changed the tire for me and laughed at my ranting about all the Canadians who had zoomed by without even slowing down. He had even spotted the rock and said that I had broken it into pieces.
I have been in Florida several times and have always liked the people there. Now I like them even more.
The weather has not been very good for painting outdoors this week but the painters did manage to get one coat on most of the outside of the house.
This is my office. My view to the south is our front yard, the roadway, trees on the other side of the road, and between the trees further uphill on the other side of a field of Broom, a couple of our neighbour's houses.
Unfortunately, on sunny days the light and heat make it impossible to work at my computer. I've ordered shades for the window.
The Scotch Broom is in full bloom all over the place here. The stuff grows anywhere where the ground has been disturned or fill put down. It doesn't seem to like shade so it's never right underneath trees. Broom was imported from Europe in the 1800's and here on Vancouver Island it's considered a noxious weed. It spreads really easily from seed and crowds out native grasses and plants. Once the plants get established they are really difficult to uproot.
We have a little under an acre. Most of it is woods. The rest is bare dirt and stones around the house with a few weeds and stubborn ferns poking through.
Painters came Friday to start on the outside of the house so these are the last pictures I have of the house in its plain and boring primed phase.
Show us the loveliest flower in your garden.
Submitted by Allio's blog.
This is a King Kong Coleus. I love the colours on the leaves! The helpful lady at the garden centre told me that I would only need one of these in my 3-foot long planter since it would grow that big, no problem. We'll see.
Saby lives at my sister's place. Usually. When the family is all home. She hunts for her family, specializing in big fat juicy still-living rats served up at 2:00 am.
We've had this Rhodo in front of our house, the house we just moved out of, for at least 20 years. It's always been a skinny, awkward plant, sprawled over an impressive amount of space but never with enough leaves on the brittle branches to look good. These things are supposed to produce lots of big white or pink flowers in the spring but ours never produced flowers on the ends of more than five or six of its long, mostly bare stems. Some years it had no flowers at all.
We moved out of the house on April 30th. On May 15th I went back to the house to check it over, air it out and pack up the last few odds and ends that were left behind.
And the Rhodo picks this year to put on a big show! It was covered with big fat bright pink blossoms. I took a few pictures.
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Recent Comments
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Janette said:
My guess - the weather is bad and there's some fighting going on...Your cloud is more legible than mine -... read more
on Chapter One -
Janette said:
Scary!! I'm glad that you suffered nothing more than a burst tyre.So much for friendly helpful Canadians eh! :) Just... read more
on Let's Hear It For Floridians -
Roewan said:
I sit here and watch the neighbourhood go by. There are dog walkers, people riding horses, deer, ATVs, house builders'... read more
on Paint, View, Broom -
Janette said:
Broom is pretty, but it's a noxious weed in NZ as well. It creates havoc on the farms, crowding out... read more
on Paint, View, Broom
That's pretty close. It's a mercenary named Durine walking along in some nasty cold wet sleet thinking about how glad... read more
on Chapter One