I am feeling a bit melancholy today. Not only has Christmas ended and the kids returned home, but the dog has died, making the nest feel even emptier than usual. We only found out about Cosmo’s heart condition a few weeks ago. It was still in the early stages; so much so that we hadn’t [...]

I was in a life threatening Wii accident over Christmas. I want to blame it on the weather and the oil patch. For more than a decade I have got my daily winter exercise by going for a walk down our quiet rural road. Our group mailbox is located a mile away making it a [...]

I’m lucky this year. Both of my sons and my daughter in law are coming home for Christmas. In anticipation I started airing their rooms, putting on fresh bedding and dusting. And then things started to get out of hand. Have you ever noticed how a house that feels pretty clean gets dirtier the more [...]

With holiday music filling the air and shoppers rushing home with their treasures, it only makes sense my thoughts would turn to mushroom hunting. As others sought out wrapping paper and turkey, I went down to our local bookstore and was delighted to find a huge selection of books on mushrooms. Maybe this could be [...]

Humans like to differentiate themselves from animals based on creative cranium capabilities. We think we experience a range of insight and emotions animals lack. We cite how we’re capable of reason while animals are merely guided by instinct. It would seem humans are gifted with superior brain matter while animals rely on things like speed [...]

A recent poll in my hometown revealed some shocking statistics. Well, shocking to me anyway. It would appear that 86 percent of my neighbours feel Christmas starts too early, 10 percent think it can’t start early enough and four percent feel the season is being overlooked altogether. At the risk of slapping a target on [...]

The two most useless words in the entire English language have to be ‘Calm down.’ Have these words ever had the desired effect on anyone since the conception of time? No they have not. In fact, tell a person to calm down and quite the opposite range of emotions occur. It’s like duct taping a [...]

Neurologists estimate a person is aware of 2,000 separate bits of information per minute. If that sounds like a shocking amount, hang on to your socks. The human brain actually is presented with 600 billion bits of information per second from which it selects 400 billion items per minute as being note worthy and from [...]

What a wild week weather wise. It’s been snowing pretty much nonstop for almost two weeks in our neck of the woods; this after almost five months of drought. Moisture starved as we are, people seemed to be unusually cheerful about receiving a couple feet of snow in a month that normally holds our most [...]

Last week I talked about how being part of a family is like attending World Peace University. It’s a training ground for learning how to get along, despite the inevitable differences. Tolerance, kindness and a great sense of humour are all important weapons, but I’d have to say the one that has brought the most [...]

Memories of Thanksgiving are flying away like the last dried leaves of fall and soon we will be knee deep in jingle bells, tree baubles and (whisper) the white stuff. I was over-the-moon grateful my kids made it home for Thanksgiving and things are looking hopeful for Christmas as well. Truth be told, sometimes I [...]

I was walking through the horse pasture yesterday when suddenly Mindy, our Morgan, pricked her ears forward and stared at the forest that edges the pasture. Then she started to snort and prance. I looked towards the spot that had caught her attention and saw a dark shape moving steadily through the trees in our [...]

I once read only a crazy person would consider extracting honey inside their house. Of course, the author is right. Extracting honey inside your home are the actions of a mad woman. How do I know? Because I have been extracting honey in my home for the past three summers. For the small beekeeper with [...]

I can’t believe we’re going through another NHL lockout. I don’t think there has ever been a time where the owners and players have been so out of touch with their fans. While things are a bit better here in Canada, in North America as a whole the economy has been crap. People are losing [...]

If you were asked to jot down the top ten dangerous ways to spend your weekend, making pickles probably wouldn’t come to mind. Well, I’m here to tell you otherwise. I made pickles on Saturday night and almost bit the green wiener. Something – when you pause to think about it – that would look [...]

Well, we’ve certainly had a hot one. Three months of temperatures in the mid to high twenties and scarcely a drop of rain. Despite the drought fruit trees had a stellar year in our area. One friend told me how an apple tree that hadn’t bore fruit for 26 years burst out with a bumper [...]

The other day someone asked me if I still kept bees and I was astonished they had to ask. When I got my first hive everyone knew I was a beekeeper because bees were all I could talk about. I managed to work it into every conversation. “Doesn’t the bride look lovely?” “Gorgeous. Interesting isn’t [...]

I am standing in the horse shed with my bare hand wrapped around Mage’s tongue thinking, “These are the sort of things you never consider when you decide to keep horses.” I am also trying to look nonchalant. Like holding onto my horse’s tongue is no big deal. After all, I am a woman who [...]

This summer I took three days away from gardening and used them to go on three garden tours. Good grief, hey? You know you’ve let yourself become a tad consumed when you use your only days away from gardening to look at gardens! Another clue was the afternoon I came in from the garden, plopped [...]

I just finished reading Kathryn Stockett’s novel ‘The Help’. It came out three years ago so I’m a little late. In fact, it has already been made into a movie starring Emma Stone, Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer which I haven’t yet seen. The book gives a telling account of life as an African American [...]