The Graduate

Today (actually yesterday — I forgot to post this), Sha and the kids and their girlfriend and boyfriend will drop over at suppertime for a quiet family celebration honouring Danica's graduation from high school. The actual ceremony will take place tomorrow, but, with seats at a premium, we won't be attending. We do, however, already have a copy of her grad photo, and just maybe there will be an opportunity for our own photos if time and weather permit tomorrow.

I first posted about Danica on the day of her birth, April 19 2007, and she became the star of my blog for years along with her brother, Jonathan after he joined the family. I looked back at that post, Freight Train Smudge, to see if any of you were with me back then. You weren't, but a few of you might remember her when she was still young.

We took tons of photos for many years, and, especially in the early years, we also took many videos. If memory serves, videos were a little tougher to post back then, at least partly, due to slower uploads speeds, but I did manage to get many up on YT although not too many here on this blog.

One video that I recall and, indeed, I don't need the video to be reminded, was that I would dance with the baby to get her ready for bed if we were over there at the time. Sue and I did line dancing in those days, with a favourite being Waltz Across Texas. We would play it for Dani and dance her around, and I would often sing along and change it to Waltz Across Lanark, the county in which we reside.

When Shauna brought over a huge card for everyone to sign, I decided to write a message hearkening back to those Waltz Across Lanark days.

It seems like yesterday to me, although a lifetime for you, that I waltzed across Lanark with you in my arms. From there you have waltzed through kindergarten, elementary school and high school, and soon you will waltzing off to university. We no longer step as closely together as we once did, but I will always hold you close in my heart, and in my own way, I will step with you as you head off to Carleton U.

Congratulations on your graduation and for stepping so very well through school. I send best wishes and hopes with you as you step smartly into the next phase of your young and beautiful life.

Somewhere, there is a version with the actual music playing, but this is just me trying to sing a Capello  – no, I am not a good singer. Just play it for a few seconds if you are so inclined. (By the way, we called her Smudge for blogs and videos back then.) 

What is in Bloom at the end of June

Although it is ever-so-slightly cooler today than yesterday's 35C/95F, it is still pretty steamy. I went out to open the car while Sue was still getting ready for our very brief stop at the grocery store. Then I thought to copy Granny Sue and others and post about what is blooming now. 

I pulled out my phone and started to take some quick shots. My first photo was of the one little salvia/sage plant in the very dry and hot spot near both the driveway and the sidewalk. There were once two of these plants in the vicinity, but this is a really tough spot, so good on this one for trying its best.

Beside the salvia and even closer to the sidewalk is the penstemon/beardtongue. It was rescued from a spot where the shade was doing it in, so I just stuck it in here a few years ago, and it has decided to expand its horizons this year. The picture isn't good, but these are small pinkish flowers on a plant where the leaves are a bit purplish.

In front of those two and even closer to the sidewalk than the previous perennials is a bought pot that is showing quite well.

So much for the border along the driveway, the main part of which is full of daylilies, but they won't bloom until July.

In the centre garden, I planted a Shasta daisy this year. We tried them elsewhere in the garden some years ago, but they gave up the ghost. But I like daisies, so I purchased one plant this year: so far, so good.

The one flower that takes off in our garden is echinacea (coneflower), which is a plant that I really like. Over the years it has spread itself on the sunny side of the garden while vacating the shadier side. It has even spread beyond the edges of the garden into the lawn. The first flower unfolded in the heat yesterday, and there are several more blooms today. There should soon be quite a good showing that will endure for some time.

Finally, we have heuchera or coral bells. As far as I understand, gardeners tend to call the shady-tolerant variety heuchera and the sunnier-loving ones coral bells, but I won't die on that hill. The flowers are tiny but pretty although I think heuchera is mostly grown for its purplish leaves that look good in the shade. We have it beside a Hosta, which is not in bloom right now although the leaves are looking rather grand.

The photo does not do it justice, but I am not going to get
too picky in the heat.

Finally, I took a shot of the front of the centre garden as one would,  more or less, see it from the street.

I have finished the coffee that we picked up after our little shopping,  and I am going to brave the heat for 10 minutes or so to do a little watering.

The Night that Was

This was not going to be a bloggy day. I didn't have a topic or anecdote in mind, and I was okay with that. Although I post frequently, I have never committed to being a daily poster. However, as I was doing my daily puzzles and whatnot on my tablet, I thought that I simply must post about last night.

Whenever I got to sleep, possibly 11:30-ish, I awoke at 1 o'clock to go. . .  well . . . you know where.

As I returned to my chair in my still sleepy state, even I couldn't help but notice the lightning. I was seeing flash after flash to the point where it never went dark between flashes. There was nothing to do about it, so I rolled over.

There was a loud noise: a noise I interpreted at the time to be a sudden power outage that caused my surge protector to stop and restart immediately.

I was wrong about the noise, which turned out to have been an Emergency Alert on our phones. At this point I am a little foggy about the following sequence of events, but I shall do my best.

I felt a beep from my watch, which I do usually wear to bed because of my Sleepwatch app. But who can read a text message on a tiny watchface through bleary, sleep-shot eyes? I could see that it was an Alert of some kind, but once again, I decided to try to go back to sleep. As you know, sleep is an issue in my life, so I like to hold on to it when I can.

Sue burst into the den with tablet and phone in hand and going on about a tornado warning and heading to the basement. That's about all that I heard because I was sans hearing aids, and she was more or less talking in her normal but rapid voice, or at least not amplifying enough.

I think I growled something about not going to the basement and, once again, I made an effort to get back to sleep. My mind, however, was finally beginning to kick into gear. Beginning.

I realized that I should read the Alert, so I grabbed my phone and, through squinting eyes, read that there was indeed a tornado warning with the advice to head to the basement.

Meanwhile, the lightning was ongoing. It was quite something.

Whether I heeded the warning immediately or whether it took another minute or two, I can't be sure, but I soon concluded that I should, perhaps, be taking this seriously.

It was a hot night, so I was just in my loin cloth, as it were, and under a thin sheet to at least give me some cover from the overhead fan. But it was a little cooler by then, so I dressed myself in a tee and pyjama-type pants.

Sue came back into my room, once again with tablet and phone in hand.

We gazed out the back window. We gazed out the front window. The lightning was becoming less frequent. The peak of danger seemed to be past.

I went to bed, our shared bed this time, and managed to go to sleep until sometime after 5, close to 6, I think. I then brewed a coffee, played some games, and read some blogs. I brewed another cup of coffee.

Eventually, Sue staggered into my den, and I do mean staggered. The lady was not in a good state of being. She'd had a terrible night with the thunder and howling wind keeping her up. If that wasn't enough, she then developed  one of those recurring pains in her wrist, the kind of pains that pretty well make sleep impossible.

One of the very meagre advantages of being very hard of hearing is that the thunder and winds had been much softer on my brain, and so I had slept at least for some hours.

This morning, FB posts reveal that we were, indeed, in the absolute heart of the tornado warning. There may have been a touchdown or near touchdown on a local street with trees being downed, cars being damaged, and power being lost. But I think that is all although I am sure that it was enough for those who were affected.

And that, dear blog and bloggers, was the night that was.

Friends of the Cane

We drove into the city to drop off the dodgy monitor. At the store, everyone ahead of us seemed to be having major issues, so we spent what seemed like a long time in line before we could explain our predicament. At least it felt like a long time to my aching back. Once we got to the head of the line, we were met by the fellow who sold us the monitor in the first place.  

He plugged it in, and it worked fine. Of course it did. After much discussion, they accepted it and did the paperwork to send it away. Who knows what will happen next.

From there, it was off to lunch before hitting the Outlet mall. Frequenting malls, especially big ones, is not the kind of thing we do, but Sue’s feet have difficulty with shoes, and there seemed to be shoe outlets aplenty there. We hit the first shoe store, but happiness was not to be found. We both did better in the second store: Sketchers. 

That’s the setup: now to meet the brothers of the cane.

I habitually avoid taking my cane into stores because I have an annoying tendency of leaving it behind., but there was walking to be done in this mall, so I brought it along. 

After we did our browsing and trying on of shoes, I heard another nearby senior muttering something about forgetting his cane in another aisle, so off he went to retrieve it. When he returned, we engaged in conversation. His name is Garry. with two r’s he wanted me to know. Eventually, Sue, ever the observant one, noticed that in addition to each of us porting canes, we were dressed, at least partly, in red and black. Sue, being Sue, bless her, took a picture.

Garry commented on my shoes. He said, being ex-army, he couldn’t be seen wearing shoes like that. I will just leave that with you for the moment and continue with the anecdote.

Once Sue settled on her acquisitions and I on mine, we made our way to the checkout. Garry was ahead of us amd just finishing checking out. He began to walk away from the counter, but I quickly notified him that he was once again forgetting his cane.  How observant of me! On this occasion, I am proud to say that I never forgot mine on this outing. What a clever boy am I.

We met Garry and wifey again outside. There was more talk, and somehow it came to pass that I was to post the photo on FB. Sue gave him my business card, so he could find me online. (I have no business, but I do have a card. Sue carries a few copies around with her own non-business, business card for occasions such as this.)

I don’t post to FB much, but it had been determined that I would post this photo, and I so have done. But I am more keen to tell you the story here on the blogs. Which I have now also done. However, in conclusion, I will also add that Garry found my FB post and commented on my shoes once again, writing that he should also have a pair for the next time we meet,

10:10

Yesterday afternoon, I dropped into Service Ontario to renew both my driver’s licence and my health card. I had received a notice by mail that my licence needed to be renewed. I somehow already known about the health card without being notified. Perhaps they hadn’t alerted me yet because it is still good until September. There was fee attached to the licence renewal, but the health card would be free although it is almost worth its wright in gold because it gives me access to free health care.

There was a small line in the little storefront facility, but the transactions ahead of me were taking forever, so I stood and stood, but my own session wouldn’t take long because I had brought the forms with me after filling them in at home.

But first I broke the camera. Well, not quite, but the camera wasn’t liking me and the photos weren’t turning out. She told me to move back after several failures. My body brushed the screen behind me which the notice said not to do, so I inched back forward. More camera clicks but still no joy.

Almost in despair, she told me to move to the . . . Then she had to stop and figure out whether it would be my right or hers. It’s was to my right, so I shuffled over.

“No, not that far. Move back a little.“

So, I did, and we finally achieved a result.

Then, and this was really to be the point of the post, but I do go on and on, I was asked to draw a clock.

She shoved a form toward me, one that had some information at the top. She pointed to the space at the bottom of the paper. “Make a circle in this space. Fill in all of the numbers of the clock. Show the time to be 10 minutes after 10 o’clock.”

The request surprised me. I know they do this test for octogenarians, but I am two years short of that wondrous milestone.

I made a very imperfect circle, filled in the numbers not terribly evenly, and drew a little hour hand to near the 10, trying to get it a little past the number to show some movement of time since the hour. Then, now get this, I drew the long minute hand also to the 10. 

I began to slide the paper toward her but snatched it back in the nick of time, for I realized that I had marked 10 to 10 and not 10 after 10 as requested. I quickly scratched out the erroneous minute hand, drew it correctly toward 2. It was a mess, I tell you, but at least it was a corrected mess.

To think that I almost failed to draw a flipping clock.

I am not a very precise person, and I make many daft errors like this on a somewhat regular basis. Thank goodness, I caught this one in time.

Wisdom is an Albatross

I know that I am late, but today is World Albatross Day, and this is an albatross named Wisdom.

Wisdom and chick in 2011

Her barely visible band was applied way back in 1956, so Wisdom is at least 70 years old. She was she was still incubating eggs as late as 2024, and was last seen in February 2025. 

The USGS has tracked Wisdom since she was first tagged and estimated that Wisdom has flown over 3,000,000 miles (4,800,000 km) since 1956 (approximately 120 times the circumference of the Earth). To accommodate her longevity, the USGS has replaced her tag a total of six times

. . . Albatrosses lay one egg per year, and usually have monogamous mates for life. Smithsonian speculated that, due to Wisdom’s unusual longevity, she has had to find several successive mates in order to continue breeding. Biologists estimated that Wisdom has laid some 30–40 eggs in her lifetime and that she has at least 30–36 chicks.

 This is identified as her chick, spotted in this February (2025), but, apparently, that is her mate in the video.

Heat and Photo Processing

Today we celebrate the solstice and the commencement of  astronomical summer. We had to beat the rush, however, by turning on the AC – the other AC 😜 yesterday –  with temperatures creeping into the 80s, humid 80s, I hasten to add. It will be even hotter on Sunday and early next week. The other news, now that summer has officially arrived, is that the daylight hours will now get shorter..

Meanwhile . . . 

Sometimes, I am able to do something in post that will assist Sue with her photos: not often, but sometimes. This playground train is an example.

On that day, Sue was prompted to photograph a train, but the theme for the week was also blue. Unfortunately, the train was red, but I managed to change the colour in Photoshop. I was also able to replace the dull sky with one with a bluer one.

On another day that continued the blue theme, she was also asked to photograph steam. She had Shauna bring over her kettle, which, you are about to see, lights up in blue when it boils.

It was a tricky photo to set up because it needed backlight to highlight the steam, but that threw off the rest of the photo. In the end, Sue hid the light under black construction paper as best she could. I didn't do much in edit except to thicken and highlight the steam just a little bit more to help make it more visible.

Sometimes, I play around with my own photos, doing this and that to see what will happen. This is another version of an iris photo that I showed you last week. I extracted the flower and played with adding a new background.

Finally for today, I repeat the photo of Sue's grandfather that I showed recently in another post.

I took it with a flash many decades ago, but the flash left a very large and dark shadow on the right side. after some fiddling and faddling, I managed to remove the black shadow, but that left a hole in the background, so I replaced the background completely. By trial and error I managed to come up with an acceptable photo. 

For me that is often the purpose and fun of Photoshop — to improve a poor image to an acceptable quality. Of course, the best way would be to get the photo right to begin with,in camera, but that is often not possible. I do find some satisfaction in occasionally being able to bring a problematic photo up to the level of acceptability.

Peonies In the Garden

At the museum on Father's Day morn, I found peonies here and there in various stages of blossoming, and, of course, I took photos accordingly. Other than that, there is not much more to tell except to say that when I show my photos, it is because they are part of my daily life, but I do not necessarily consider them exemplary. Having said that, i rather like the second and third images  

I lke the composition of the next and final photo, but I should have brought back just a bit more light onto the flower. 

Compact and Spry

He came into my cubicle and told me that it was time to move me to the operating room. Nice guy and a very competent orderly, wheeling me through the narrow doorways and corridors, also taking care to assure me that all would be well.

After recovery whilst in the discharge process with my two ladies, we were receiving instructions about what to do next at home. The same orderly walked past us pushing another gurney.

When he was well past us, the nurse quietly confided to us that the man was 75 years old.

Seventy-five and in the finest of health, conveying usually younger patients (not me) hither, thither and yon.

I reflected that in my lifetime I had encountered two other older fellas who were, shall we say, of compact stature but were spry beyond their years.

Sue's grandfather was one such person. In 1971, we moved our belongings to another city on one of those steamy hot, summer days — one of the hottest days ever in point of fact. Our team consisted of Sue and me, in our early twenties, Sue's 28-year-old brother, Sue’s 40-something father, and her 70-something grandfather. Temperatures soared to 100 degrees as we carried  our belongings in the hot sun past the hot, bricked units to the seemingly distant centre of the townhouse complex where we would abide for my first years of teaching..

We four younger ones were all flagging in the heat but not grandpa. He just kept going back and forth and forth and back, carrying this box and that box. When we stopped to rest and replenish our dwindling resources, grandpa just kept going and going.

You guessed it; he was a compact and spry guy and fitter than us young-uns.

I also recalled one more encounter with another older man of similar compact stature. 

We were visiting Canyon de Chelly in Arizona, our fourth and final stop before motoring back to Phoenix and flying home. As we drove into the parking lot, a younger couple (we were in our fifties) that we had met at Monument Valley were there and just about to embark on a desert tour with a Navajo guide. Sue readily agreed to join them, thinking that we were about to take a jaunty jeep ride as we had done at Monument Valley. She was quite taken aback to discover that we would be hiking through the desert.

We descended the very steep steps into the canyon and staggered into the hot desert following our compact and spry elderly guide. He required no water as we walked along and no food as we stopped for a shared lunch with our fellow touristy hikers.

Like Sue's grandfather and my hospital orderly, our guide was one of those older guys who still exuded energy and stamina in his compact and spry body.

Grandad, by the way, lived to be 105 years old. In one of the oddities of life, he was buried beside his brother who died at the age of 2. Genetics are a crapshoot.

Father's Day Weekend

My expensive, high-end monitor refused to work, but other than that, it was a good, Father's Day weekend. There was a trail walk with the bordering greenery almost engulfing the path in places.

There was a visit to the museum gardens where I took some close-ups of peonies while Sue photographed various compositions, both large and small. I will save my close-ups for another time.

The heron was in the pond and a family of Canada Geese, swam by all in a row as Sue was photographing the heron. Now, that is a great photobomb. 

Sha dropped by on Saturday afternoon with donuts, coffee and gifts, including the tee-shirt: The Man, the Myth,  the Legend. Somewhere, I have a mug with that same epithet from another Father's Day.

The grands came by on Sunday with more coffee.

Twas a lovely weekend, and the monitor will get sorted in due course. In the meantime, their father has loaned me a basic but serviceable monitor. It came fresh in a new, sealed box. Their dad is not in a real big hurry to get it back because he has 11 more at his place, so that takes some pressure off while I figure out the repair protocol and probably wait the interminable wait.

Trying to Explain our Vexation with America

I was browsing around Substack when I came across an article by Paul Wells. Paul was a student in my grade 9 geography class, sometime around the mid-seventies. This was in Sarnia, which is cheek by jowl with Port Huron, Michigan. He mentions Sarnia in the post and how close we were to Port Huron and, indeed, ro the USA, in those days. We'd pay a mere quarter to drive over the bridge for ice cream, gas, tennis balls, a Whopper, or what have you.

Paul went on to become a well-known Canadian political columnist. Many years ago, I contacted him after reading one of his columns and found that he best remembered me for giving him lines to write for a minor misdemeanour committed from his seat in the back of the fifth row. But I won't comment directly to him now because on Substack that privilege is only available to paid subscribers, and one could become poor by paying for myriad subscriptions, no matter how deserving they might be.

His post, O Beautiful, attempts to explain to non-Canadians why we are so thoroughly vexed by Trump's America. He posted it here on Substack, but except for omitting one early paragraph, I have copied the column verbatim, below. It was not behind a paywall, so I am trusting that he wouldn’t mind. I have also emphasized (bolded) a couple of points: my emphasis, not Paul's.

And Paul, if you do happen to see this from some sort of feedback mechanism, I can tell you that you are able to subscribe directly to Britbox without involving Amazon Prime.

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O beautiful

I've never known how to be Canadian without being partly American. This year has felt like an amputation.

Last month a European ambassador stationed in Ottawa invited some Canadians over for lunch, so we could try to explain this elbows-up business to visiting colleagues from her country’s government. Why are Canadians so worked up about Donald Trump?, the visitors wanted to know. Why the ragtag boycott of American imports? Why the sudden drop in visits to the United States? What are you afraid of? What do you hope for?

All good questions. The unspoken subtext was, You Canadians really are being a bit silly. There are worse outrages in the world than Donald Trump’s Truth Social page. There are Americans who agree with you about Trump! Why can’t you just be neighbours? And I thought I heard a second layer of bewilderment below the first layer. You Canadians are always so pragmatic. Boring, even. And certainly not prone to mass hysteria. What’s got you all stirred up, all of a sudden?

I surprised myself, and I think I surprised my hosts, by getting emotional as I tried to explain it. On the eve of what promises to be an eventful weekend, I thought I’d revisit some of those thoughts.

. . . 

I grew up in Sarnia, five minutes’ drive from the bridge to Port Huron, Michigan. I used to shop at Full Moon Records in Port Huron because the selection of albums there was better than at home. Other friends liked to cross the bridge to eat something called “Chicken in the Rough,” whose pleasures I never sampled. One car in thousands might be stopped at the border for a thorough search, but for most of us, most of the time, the border barely existed.

My high school’s football coach recruited a star player from the Michigan side, who moved to Sarnia, or claimed to, for his last couple of years. We all called this kid “The Ringer.” He was tall and broad-shouldered and spoke English with a Michigan accent, which was unspeakably exotic, given that he’d grown up closer to me than I lived to Toronto.

Those of us who loved music or sports learned early that there was plenty of both on offer in Toronto and Detroit, but that given a choice, we’d have a better time in Detroit, because Detroit audiences would make themselves part of the show.

I guess I’m saying that for me, in those early years, the difference between Canada and the United States was sometimes hard even to perceive. Yet throughout this period my father preferred not to travel into the United States because he was furious about the U.S. war in Vietnam, long after it ended. I didn’t even notice this personal boycott was going on until years after it ended. He’d always take me to Detroit when I felt the need to go. The ways a father finds to express his love.

Most Canadians grow up juggling these contrasting impulses, the fascination and revulsion in the face of a neighbour that does everything to excess. Heroism, cruelty, creation, greed. Robin Williams said Canada is like a really nice apartment over a meth lab. Sure, but it’s as true to say our apartment is upstairs from the Algonquin Round Table or the Selma March or the 1995 Chicago Bulls or Emmett Till’s open casket. You can’t sum a place like that up without resorting to caricature. It’s too big. You just thread your way through it all, weaving some parts into your own sense of yourself, recoiling from others.

There’s a current of rote, simplistic anti-Americanism running through Canadian culture, but to me it’s never felt dominant. Most Canadians I know don’t define themselves in opposition to Americans. The relationship is far more intimate and ever-changing. I’ve never known how to be Canadian without being partly American. My first visits to the Village Vanguard and Carnegie Hall, Bourbon Street and Cape Canaveral, helped make me me. American books and movies influenced the way I talk and write.

I haven’t been to the United States since January and I don’t know when I’ll be back. I cancelled some US subscriptions. I won’t have anything delivered by Amazon. We kept Amazon Prime so my in-laws can keep watching Britbox. Who among us is pure.

It’s a shocking loss to me to write the United States off my list of travel destinations. It feels like an amputation. I’ve been to something like 40 states. I woke up in Edmonton on the morning of September 11, 2001; my first instinct was to rent a car, drive into Montana, and figure it out from there. I just wanted to be with Americans. When some visiting Europeans ask, politely but with a note of scorn, whether this elbows-up stuff is a rational response to the rantings of an addled U.S. President, I have to answer: Of course it isn’t rational. What are the chances of the United States annexing Canada? Zero. How sweeping and effective can a rag-tag, improvised, cultural boycott be? Not very. Whom does it hurt? Disproportionately, creatives who voted for Harris and will march against Trump this weekend. What’s the end game? Haven’t got one, sorry.

I told the visiting diplomats: When Donald Trump was re-elected, Canadians were surprised and concerned, more or less like people in a lot of other places. There was no particular reason for the Canadian reaction to go further than that. Even if he had simply imposed his stupid tariffs on Canada the same as on other places, it would have been a mechanical application of bad policy and not worth any emotional response.

But when the twice-elected President of the United States of America spends months on end telling anyone who’ll listen that my country doesn’t deserve to exist, and that message is amplified in the White House Briefing Room and on the border by the lipsticked Junior Brownshirt who adorns his surreal cabinet, my pretty strong response is: Let me help you out with your homeland security. I’ll stay home, thanks. You go ahead and stew in your own juices.

There’s not just anger in the response, or wounds to a national pride I haven’t always known I had in me. There’s something tragic in there too. Americans do tragedy in excess like they do everything else. We’re talking about a country that fought a civil war because a critical mass of people would rather fight a war than lose their slaves. Even as it was becoming a powerful force for good in the world, America has also always been a venue for horror. Both at the same time. Now its federal government is led by a man who says it’s “divisive” to study that contrast and learn from it.

This weekend, once again, the factions in the American drama will face off in American streets. I wish I could help the good guys. Most Canadians I know put their whole heart into the way they feel about the United States. We’re a little afraid of it, but mostly we’re worried for it.

 

3 + 1 pics

I am just going to post three non-related photos today: the first from our pre-surgery walk on the weekend.

We were walking over the swamy area on the trail when, looking down, we saw an iris. Sue took a photo and later in the week was able to use it for a prompt that involved adding text. I like both the photo and the quote.

This ↓ is me once I was changed and settled in my waiting cubicle before surgery. Notice the tubing. It was leading from a heater to a plastic contraption under the blanket with the intention of keeping the patient warm. They were also keen to heat me up post-surgery but with a more conventional heated blanket.

After the de-tethering yesterday, we did our familiar lunch and coffee at the park. Despite it being the twelfth of June, it was windy and cool, so we stayed in the car while still being able to appreciate both the park and the river.

Oh wait . . . I think I will add one more photo: this of our trip home from the hospital on Monday. There was traffic and much rain. Oddly, it was fairly dry once we got back to our town, and we were told that it had hardly rained here at all.

It is almost 9am, and the cat has now been waiting for hours for me to take her down to the kitchen, so off I go. 

The Other Flowers

For those who have been following along, I can report that I am now untethered. We wait to determine whether the plumbing will work as it should.

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While I did have irises chiefly in mind at the museum garden, once I was done with them, I photographed other flowers too. These are not phone photos, but I did use the iPhone to get some information. This first flower was  identified as Milk Thistle, and I like the photo a lot. In fact, I think I am liking these photos better that yesterday's iris photos, which had been what drew me there. You just never know what is going to look best in the photos.

I knew the identity of next flower although I did feel the need to verify my identification. It is a cranesbill or geranium which is not the same as the annuals that are called geraniums but that are really pelargoniums. Incidentally, that is a name that I, somehow, dredged from my memory banks from when I was doing more gardening a quarter century ago. Truth be told, however, I did doublecheck online to verify.

I needed help to i.d. this next flower. I turns out that it is a phlox, but not the tall kind of the summer garden.

I have one more flower to post, but it is not from the museum garden. I stopped at a house that I passed on the way because this clematis impressed me so much, not just for it's closeup beauty but because of how it was situated off a corner of a verandah very near the sidewalk. I saw it in passing and had to drive around a long block to get back to it.

This ↓ is how it looked when I drove by and why I had to go back for a closer look, but it was the closeup ↑ that resulted in the better photo. Still, it was a most agreeable view from the street.

Museum Irises

Before I proceed with my pre-written post, I want to thank you for your very kind comments over the past few days. I appreciate you a lot. Now, let me gloat by saying last night was probably my best sleep in years at what Sleepwatch pegs at 8:15. I did hit 8:00 once in the past year or three, but this was great, and incredibly better that the more common 5xx or even worse. Not having to get up four times because I was draining into a bag must really have helped. However, the bag will be detached tomorrow morning after one more day and one more sleep, and it will be nice to be untethered, at least in the daytime.

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I woke up quite early on Sunday morning. After doing my normal morning things on the computer and/or tablet, I decided to head out to the garden at the museum, which I think is referred to as the community garden.

While I didn't think surgery would restrict me too much, I am also advised to be careful and not lift more than ten pounds for six weeks. Whatever the case, I thought that I would go on a quick photoshoot.

Although I took photos of other flowers as well, my main goal was to see if the irises were blooming. Indeed they were, and some were even past their best.

I stuck my macro lens on, and used it throughout, even when I wasn't getting all that close because, while it is nice to have several lenses, it is not fun to change them on the job, so to speak. I didn't use a tripod and also hoped for the best in the breeze. Oddly enough, I think I like the final photo best although it is not a macro but a photo of the whole patch with much of the image, except for the two centre blooms, out of focus.

Reporting In

It’s 4:35 in the wee hours as I begin this post, in which I just want to check in briefly on the day after surgery.

Shauna picked us up at 10 yesterday morning, and we were at the hospital by 11. Because we were a half hour early, I thought I would just check in and be told that they would call me later. However, I was ushered ight in, put in my cubicle and given a hospital gown and so on and so forth.

My procedure was scheduled for 1:30, so I had two hours to kill. Fortunately, I had the nearest cubical to the washrooms. Following my previously-given orders, I hadn’t had anything to drink since 9 o’clock, but I still had to use the facilities three times.

They kept to the schedule well, and I was being wheeled off by 1:30 and was in recovery a little after 2pm, I think. I vailed myself with the pain meds I was offered — Dilaudid. As I sit here this morning, I am not in pain or discomfort, but I am tethered by a catheter for two days.

The surgery itself surprised me. I was given neither a spinal nor general anaesthetic but sedation. As far as I recall, I was awake throughout the short procedure. I felt great pressure once or twice but not pain per se, although as reported above, I did happily accept pain meds in recovery.

I think I was monitored in recovery with many blood pressure checks until 3:30, before being wheeled back to the cubicles to await Sue and Sha along with various instructions that included how to remove the catheter in due course. The nurse did explain the process to me before my ladies showed up, but I told her to tell my better half who still has some functioning brain cells  

We drove home in rush hour through the pouring rain, but Shauna was he usual, highly competent self, so we made it in just about an hour  

This morning, Sue saw my light on, and came in to check on me, but I am doing okay. It was more body temperature and the need for liquids issues combined with my usual sleep awfulness that woke me up. She’s back in bed getting her beauty rest, and I have my tablet and you folk in a way  

I have had my first coffee, played two, expert-level sudokus, without error I  hasten to add, before deciding to check in with y’all with this quick overview. I say quick, but it has taken a while to write, reread edit and add, as I am doing right now. I should probably look it over again, but I am going to throw caution to the wind and hit Publish regardless.

Hoping

The Snoopy image seems very appropriate this morning, for this is the day of my 4th prostate surgery. 

Shauna will pick us up sometime after 10 o’clock and drive us to Riverside hospital in Ottawa. I have been commanded to present myself by 11:30 for a date with the knife, two hours later. The plan seems to be to discharge me sometime around 4 to 5 o’clock. Then, we will find our way home during rush hour.

I am just two years and two days from my 3rd prostate surgery and was reminded of that when I posted of the smoke yesterday. There was so much smoke in the atmosphere two years ago that our local hospital cancelled surgery. Fortunately, the hospital in Smiths Falls, where I had my surgery, did not follow suit.

Previous surgeries have been the normal TURP procedure.

TURP, or Transurethral Resection of the Prostate, is a surgical procedure to treat urinary problems caused by an enlarged prostate gland, often due to benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH). It involves inserting an instrument called a resectoscope through the urethra to visualize and remove or cut away excess prostate tissue that is obstructing urine flow. (Google AI Overview)

Today's 4th procedure will be different.

Cold knife incision of the bladder neck contracture with mitomycin C injection is a surgical procedure to treat bladder neck contracture, a narrowing of the bladder neck, often caused by scar tissue after prostate surgery. The procedure involves making small cuts in the bladder neck using a cold knife and then injecting mitomycin C, a chemotherapy drug, into the incision site to prevent scar tissue formation and recurrence. This approach is considered a safe and effective treatment option for bladder neck contracture. (Google AI Overview)

It would be very wonderful if this Cold Knife variation were to work for me. Mitomycin is a chemotherapy drug. While I don’t have cancer, this drug can also inhibit “the growth of other rapidly growing cells by damaging their DNA.”

Let us hope that this surgery is just what I need, for it is apparent that my prostate is really quite insistent on having its way with me. I am almost at my 78th birthday, and I first noticed symptoms when I was 39 years old. That is a half life of frequent and slow trickling.

Smoke

The smoke from the western forest fires reached us last week. How it travels thousands of kilometres is quite astounding. At least, I think this smoke is from the faraway fires in northern Manitoba and not from something closer. Although air quality has taken a bit of a hit, it still liveable for most of us, so we weren’t hesitant to spend a bit of time in Riverside Park on both Friday and Saturday.

I think you can see the haze well enough in these photos but also that we were not overcome. 

I was taken by the shape of the tree in the following photo. I had not noticed it before, and I am guessing that it has been trimmed somewhat recently. Perhaps, however, I had simply overlooked it, for it is very much like me to not notice things because my mind is some place other than where my body happens to be. .

Yesterday, we took yet another selfie after we finished our coffee.

Then, we got a picture of Sue to satisfy yesterday’s theme: Cover.

As I sit in my good ole chair on this early Sunday morning, a glance out the window informs me that the smoke remains. Alexa has told me that it will stay with us until late afternoon, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she extends that estimate, as she has done several times in the past few days.

Rainbow Lights

I am not as dedicated to photography as I once was. As you have witnessed, when we go on our walks, I am often content to let Sue take the shots with her better phone. Even at the raising of the Pride flag, we both used our phones, not my big camera.

However, at that event, they mentioned that in honour of the beginning of Pride month, the bridge lights would be configured to show a rainbow of colours this week. While the light the bridge in white lights nightly, they do put on a special display periodically, and there have been a few times when I meant to take some photos, but the weather and/or tiredness has made me stay home in the end.

The weather is getting better now, so this time we did go out. The conditions still weren't great with winds and an almost blank and smoky sky, but we decided to make the best of it.

We've shot the bridge lights many times before, but I wanted to get a slightly different angle, one with some foreground, so I chose a spot, lowered my tripod and sat on the grass waiting for the evening to get darker.

I decided to take three exposures. One would be underexposed to darken the sky and lights. Two would be lighter for the buildings. I would later blend them in Lightroom. After some editing, this is the result.

Having done that, I decided to take two more photos, using the three-exposure technique. Without adjusting the tripod, I did zoom in with the lens and took this photo. In my opinions, it didn't turn out as well as the other two, but when I posted all three on fb, my friend thought that he liked this best. Oddly enough, I had even debated whether to bother posting it either there or here.

Once again, leaving the tripod in place, I switched the camera to vertical or portrait mode and got this result. I think the lights came out best in this one, possibly because the night was darker by the time I took this photo. I probably started the shoot a little too early because I get anxious to get on with it.

It was good to get out with the big camera for a change for a specific shoot involving more care and thought than just raising the camera and shooting. I got into longish exposures, so the tripod was a necessity, and using it makes me feel as though I am taking the craft more seriously. Having said that, it is a bother to port it around unless one has a specific need.