December 31 2014 "A mix of Sun and Shade"

Our last shoot of the year. Alanagh Molly and I thought the forecast quite prophetic really, for isn’t our life truly a mix of sun and shade: how we see it / frame it, what we do with it? We decided therefore, to go to some of our familiar haunts to see the play of light and shadow on life and in the sky. 

A special thanks to you Josee Gunville, for making my notes “happen” as a blog on Rideau Lakes Horticultural Society Web site during 2014. http://rlhsmaggiesmoments.blogspot.ca

To you, my friends, and to yours, wishing you all that is beautiful in sun and shade.

Goldenrod in the shade but hit by a shaft of sunlight

Ice jam on Indian Lake at the Isthmus between Indian and Clear Lake

Davis Lock Upper channel 

Davis Lock Lower channel

By-wash Davis Lock

Stump roadside hit by sun

Field and woodlot between Chaffey's and Davis Locks

Maybe we will go to Maberly

Maberly was first named “Maberley” in 1865 by the Canadian Post Office Department Secretary, William Dawson LeSueur, in honour of his counterpart in the British Post Office, Lt-Col William Leader Maberly. “Maberley” became  “Maberly” in 1976 to make it consistent with the spelling used by our former Canadian Pacific Railway. 

Maberly straddles the Trans-Canada Highway, some 25km from Perth, about an hour’s drive from Ottawa, and twenty five minutes from Newboro! Highway 7 slices thorough this area of granite outcrops, creeks, streams, lakes, swamps, and forests. That is why we thought we would go to Maberly.  Alanagh, Molly, and I, thought we might find a variety of water conditions, life, and lighting, on this brilliant December 30th 2014, on our way to Maberly.

We headed out later than normal, and I think we paid the price, seeing scant birdlife, however, a small muskrat that looked to me to be "August vintage" entertained us.

Muskrat mating occurs immediately following spring break-up in March, April, or May. Muskrat pairs do not form lasting relationships; instead they appear to have many mates. The birth of five to 10 young occurs less than a month after the pair has mated. The same female normally has another litter a month after the first, and sometimes yet another a month after the second. 

Breeding continues throughout the summer, with the last litters born about August. There is lots of food during the summer and the young grow rapidly (like mice). They are basically large field mice with large hind feet that act as paddles as they  swim. 

Today our little one was foraging along  “Creek 32”. We watched it partially submerged under ice, fully submerged under water than rise again on the other side of the bridge swimming hard against the current.  Today’s food-hunt was much easier than sometimes under a metre of ice and snow, in almost total darkness, as they are known to do in severe winter conditions. 

One of the neat things, I think, about muskrats is their teeth.  Their teeth grow ahead of their cheeks and lips and this allows them to chew on stems and roots underwater with their mouth closed! How cool is that?

Large beaver lodge in frozen pond

Midmorning long shadows across the creek

Open water sounded like music

Waiting for the skates: Westport

"It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that bling"

Clouds shone as silver swords in the sunlight

Flat across the horizon this dawn,

That is-

Before that self same sun transformed those swords to pink ribbons, and bands of gold.  

The greyness that has been our week, 

The dampness that eked into our bones 

Is gone. 

Gone! 

Gone, with the flash of swords laid down, and cameras loaded up, 

Molly, Alanagh, and I heading out to that bling!

Merry Christmas dear friends, family, and my Township of Rideau Lake neighbours that I have met and those I hope to meet.

and Happy New Year https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNVHKA4_sHM

Ever,

Maggie

Queen Anne's Lace

In the thick of things

Ice at stream's edge

Like crystals fallen off the bough

Ice feathers

Alder

Iron stained rock and whit paper birch

Red squirrel

Just plain simple

I mentioned to Alanagh and Molly today as we rolled the back roads that I think that it is the simple things that please me the most. Then I thought: 

What is “simple” about ice flower crystals on a newly frozen pond?

Of  life emerging from an old growth tree guillotined by the rising waters of my beloved Rideau?

Crystal collars around reeds?

Pines growing out of knurled rock? 

Is it simple that Bittersweet is poisonous to us

But songbirds, ruffed grouse, pheasant, and  squirrels eat the fruits?

The mottling of a female mallard’s wing

The male mallard’s emerald sheen 

The lift off of rising flocks? 

The rush of water and the surge of wing?  

These are not simple.

123 is simple.

Ice flower crystals

White Cedar on old growth

Ice mushrooms on reeds

Crystal bells

Lace

White pine

Bittersweet

Female Mallards

Male Mallard's emerald sheen

The lift off

It is not the "Sickly Season"

It is not the “sickly season” now. There were sickly seasons, deathly sickly seasons, in Newboro, or as it was once called, "The Isthmus”.

Robert W. Passfield tells me in his Military Paternalism, Labour, and the Rideau Canal Project  (2013),  that in 1828 almost all of the men working on the Rideau Canal were sick with Malaria. In Kingston Mills the mortality rate reached 13%.

At the Isthmus, in 1831, the "swamp ague" and "remittent typhus" poisoned people as they worked to scrape and quarry a canal, to push back the forest, drain the swamps, and tend to their families. Fifty-one artisans of the 7^th Company of the Royal Engineers,(RE) their Captain Cole R.E., and two members of the Commissariat Department were at the Isthmus that sickly summer. With them were twenty-seven women, and forty-six children, of the 7th Company, and two camp followers. Within two weeks, 50.9 % of the men, 40% of the women, and 43% of the children were ill with "swamp ague”. Eight of the artificers were diagnosed as having “remittent typhus”.

Dr. William Kelly ordered all but a handful left to guard the stores, to evacuate to a site just completed by Bell Richardson & Co: The Narrows. 

I think especially of these people when I go to the Narrows, or when I watch birds at my feeder in the comfort of my home on “The Isthmus.” 

~*~*

Snowy day at The Isthmus:

Just for fun

"You mirror me, and  I’ll mirror you, and we will mirror together,

You mirror me and I’ll mirror you, in cold and wintry weather."

Red-bellied woodpecker

Nuthatch

They travel together

At the Narrows Nov. 20 2014