The Tamaracks Make Their Final Appearance of 2025

When I was displaying the tamarack trees in their glorious autumn colour not so long ago, someone asked when the leaves would turn green again. Of course, they won't. Although they are coniferous trees, they also behave like deciduous ones, dropping their leaves in autumn and growing new ones when spring rolls around. I thought I should show this by returning to the park where I hoping to see the trees with reduced foliage and the nearby ground around littered with fallen needles.

The tamarack trees in another spot — on the left of the path — were totally denuded with their needle leaves almost carpeting the path. 

Since we are here, back with the tamaracks, I will use this as an opportunity to show one more photo that I missed posting previously. It was the day after the big snowfall, just 10 days ago. 

Bonus: you haven't seen one of these most glorious selfies for awhile, and I know you miss us terribly. lol

A Photo Process

As you know, Sue follows a photo prompt daily. I do not. I am not clever enough to come up with ideas, so I just follow my own photography nose and click if something catches my interest.

But our local FB group does put out challenges, and I, occasionally, very occasionally, feel a pricking, not in my thumbs but in my conscience, so I partake in some small way.

The current challenge: red and round.

When we passed a store window with red Christmas balls, it was too easy to pass up. I knew that it wouldn't be a commendable photo by any means, but it should show my cooperative spirit. I also wondered what I could do in post.

Here's the original: cropped and straightened a bit because I can't take a level photo to save my life, but that is all. It is banal, as I knew that it would be. Of course, there would be reflections —the passing car and building from across the street, but that is partly why I wanted to take the photo.

I wanted to see how well Lightroom's new reflection removal algorithm would work. The next photo shows the reflections all gone. All you can see, beyond the window display, is the interior. I simply clicked Remove Reflections, and it did just that.

Of course, I didn't want to see the interior either, so I then sent the photo from Lightroom to Photoshop, and I asked Photoshop to remove the background. I thought it would just erase the interior background and that I would need to replace it with something Christmassy, in a subsequent step. Surprisingly, however, the program did that on its own, somehow knowing that a woodsy winter scene would be just dandy. I suppose that I could have asked for a different background, this this one was good enough.

I thought that I was done and so I posted all three ↑ photos, to the group. Later, however, I decided to play a bit more, so I sent the photo along to ON1 Effects where I applied some filters and added a border.

I am not fooled. I didn't start with a great photo, and it is far from great at the end of my process, but it kept me busy for a while, and it's not absolutely terrible.

A Big Bang

A enormous bang sounded somewhere to my left. I wondered if Sue had fallen down or dropped something very heavy. 

When I looked in that direction, I saw that the door of my adjacent pop fridge was ajar.

I soon discovered that the pop can in the freezer had exploded. Indeed, it was ripped asunder with its frozen contents plastered around the interior of the fridge  

That's the sort of thing that can happen when you leave pop in the freezer for 10 hours.

I am sure that inquiring minds would like to know why I had pop in the freezer.

Well, I am going to tell you, even if your mind isn't of an inquiring bent.

Late morning, I saw that I had no pop in the fridge. I put cans on the shelf as one does but also decided that I should cool off a few cans faster in the freezer because I greatly prefer my Diet Coke very cold. In point of fact, if it were to have little ice crystals, that would be hunky dory.

Knowing that I have a mind like a sieve, I asked Alexa to remind me to remove the cans in 90 minutes. I subsequently impressed myself greatly when I remembered to take the pop out about 30 seconds before Alexa's reminder. I thought, what a clever boy am I.

I drank and enjoyed my nice, cold Diet Coke.

Unfortunately, I totally forgot that I had actually placed 2 cans in yon freezer and only taken 1 out.

I am not so clever after all.

Two Lights and Two Pots

Let us begin with a picture of these planters by the garage and from there work backward and then forward again.

First, you must picture the planters a day earlier: bare and frozen. Sue habitually adorns these baskets for the Christmas season as you see in the photo, but you just can't stick things in frozen soil, or at least not soft things.

To thaw them out on the previous day, I had lifted the planters onto a makeshift table, inserted them into plastic garbage bags, and carried them into the warm house. 

It wasn't a hard thing to do, but my back being what it is started to stiffen and spasm by that evening. Of course it did.

That night was also the night of my great fall, as described in yesterday’s post, when I landed rather heavily and bruised my unfortunate rump. 

With me being effectively out of commission the next day, Sue, herself, moved the thawed pots back outside and decorated them as you saw in the photo with nary a concomitant ache. She did this while manly me was nursing my hurts in my easy chair upstairs. It's doesn't actually feed my male ego, I tell ya.

We don't decorate for Christas much outside by stringing lights or erecting ornaments, but addition to the pots, we do insert a light over the garage that makes a rather nice night display.

We have a similar light inside the porch, so the place looks pretty festive without a whole lot of effort — just two lightbulbs and two flowerpots.

Another Nighttime Tumble

Sue heard a crash at 3AM and hurried to the bathroom to find AC lying on the floor with his head on the heater that he had knocked over. 

It was pretty well a repeat of what happened just a few months ago. I had been feeling very unsteady and reached to stabilize myself on the counter, but I toppled over instead.

Like the last time, I was pretty helpless. Sue instructed me to just lie there while she got a pillow, but I wasn't computing very well and, somehow, managed to pull myself up against the counter. But then I was stuck and could barely even lift my head for quite some time. Well, it seemed like a long time, but it probably was no more than 10 or 15 minutes.

We have a walker in the basement for an expected surgery that never eventuated. Sue brought it upstairs, and with supreme care and effort, I made it to the bed. 

I think that this fall occurred because back pain drugs were affecting me. If I had been more coherent in the middle of the night, I would have recognized that as soon as I got up. All I had to do was lie back down and let the dizziness pass.

Instead of using what little brain that the divine has granted me, I proceeded to the bathroom and ended up landing very hard on the left side of my rump. I can tell you that I am pretty sore there in the aftermath in addition to dealing with my already aching back  

Back in bed, I pretty well fell right back to sleep, but poor Sue had quite a time settling down after being well-shaken from her deep slumber  

No, I didn't go to the doctor. I did that last time in August. They checked me out thoroughly and found no cause for alarm. While this sort of thing isn't exactly common, it is not all that unusual either.

I shall have to be more aware and vigilant in my nocturnal ambulating. When I fell, I seemed to come alarmingly close to hitting my head on the corner of a little cabinet. Indeed, my fall actually jarred the cabinet a little, but I managed to avoid severe damage. If I am not more careful, I might not be so lucky next time.

Caturday 85: A Poinsettia for Lacey's Podium

Sue and I are pretty much joined at the hip, but she did run a few errands on her own yesterday whilst I rested my wonky back at home. Among a few other things, including coffee, she returned with a poinsettia for Lacey’s podium.

That one ⬆️ was taken in my iPhone's macro mode. For this one ⬇️ I used one of the special portrait modes. 

The Calandiva plant was still holding up well enough, but the plan has been to place a poinsettia plant there for Christmas. I know that it is early, but the plant was inexpensive, and poinsettias do tend to last for a long time, so there we are.

Point Form: Fragility

• One Halloween blog post that I read awhile ago mentioned how elaborate Halloween costumes had become. That caused me to remember paper costumes. I wore a paper clown costume one year: when I was 7, I think. My paper pants didn't survive long. My mother told me to make the best of it by announcing myself as, "The clown who lost his pants." Paper costumes were definitely of a different era.
  
  
• With Lacey gone and with me eschewing breakfast these days, I have no reason to go downstairs in the morning. Ergo, I tend to forget morning vitamins and pills. I could get Alexa to remind me, but I know that I would tend to put her off and still forget whereas I could only ignore Lacey for so long.
  
  
• I try to prepare a dinner every week or so — one that will supply us with several meals. This one was a chicken casserole that I thought looked good on paper and video. It took some effort, but I managed to assemble it all and put it in the oven. Then I turned on the oven. The wrong oven! The lower oven instead of the upper one. The only thing that I can say about this faux pas is that is that what was required was more of a heating up than a cooking, so we just had to wait an extra half hour after moving the dish to the lower oven. But I was both disappointed and furious with myself over my lapse. I tried so hard and then did something stupid. And it wasn't just my mistake that irritated me, but the whole recipe was a mistake. It just wasn't very good. There is both time and expense involved in cooking a dish like this. I could have kicked myself.
  
  
• That unfortunate dinner does not enthrall me, and nor does my occasional phantosmia generally enthrall me. But while sitting in my chair playing my usual games and such one recent morning, I smelled, or rather I seemed to smell, a most pleasant odour. I asked my beloved if she were wearing a new fragrance. No, she wasn’t. I was not surprised because I had been noticing it when she was not nearby. (Yes spellcheck, phantosmia is word. You say it is so your very own little self here.)
  
  
• I have such a fragile body. Yesterday, I moved two fairly big flowerpots, and by nightfall my back was letting me know all about it. I hadn’t been trying to move mountains eh, just flowerpots, and just two of them, and not too very far. It's a wee bit disconcerting to have such a vulnerable body. It's odd because all of my vital inner organs seem to be in decent shape. Joints and muscle not so much.

Shooting the Shots

What I am going to say to begin this post is that as much as Sue and I seem to like each other, there are times when either of us could, quite literally, shoot the other. 

We feel it so much that sometimes we even shoot one another shooting.

I shot her over coffee and blueberry scone snacks after she neglected to order me a take-away cookie.

Yesterday, we went for breakfast for a little outing to break some of the tedium that goes along with November. Sue wondered why she was served fried eggs instead of poach that she had ordered. I think she was almost ready to shoot someone other than me for a change. But she decided that not to shoot the young server for getting her order wrong.

One day she caught me shooting my beloved tamarcks

I rely on Sue, but I do try to hold up my end of the bargain, especially when she is desperate to shoot her shot of the day.

I was ready to shoot myself after I turned on my phone in the park, and it accidentally switched to selfie mode. Sue can't stand it when I don't smile giddily for the camera, so she made me laugh. I guess it is better this way and much better than shooting myself in the foot, so to speak.

These have been some odds and ends photos that have been languishing in the queue. There will be more to be found there now that the shooting ain't so hot out there in the cold wild.

Snow on the Tamaracks

After the Sunday snowfall, Sue got us out early on Monday morning to see whether the boughs of the tamarack trees might be holding onto snow. We began to walk there, but we soon opted to drive because the sidewalk was very slippery underfoot. We have grippers for our boots, but we hadn't accessed them yet, and I don't really like fussing with them anyway.

The snow or some snow was, indeed, clinging to the branches, which is of course exactly what we wanted. I stopped at the very first tree close to the park entrance. Its crookedness pleases me, but it, apparently, the opposite of what we expect from tamarack trees.

Tamarack trees (Larix laricina), also known as American larch or eastern larch, are naturally characterized by a straight, upright trunk. This is one of their defining physical characteristics, along with a narrow, conical crown and horizontal branching, which becomes more irregular as the tree ages 

Farther along, there was another tree, of which this is not your first glimpse.

At the farthest end of the pond lay the subject for my final photo — final for the day and quite possibly for this year, but that remains to be completely determined.

It was most satisfying to see and photograph this rather unusual juxtaposition that I hadn’t witnessed previously and quite likely will not see again, After all, the snow doesn’t usually fall in measurable amounts when the tamaracks lie in this colourful state. 

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Lest We Forget

It is Remembrance Day here in the Great White North: a day when very solemn observances are held to remember and honour and those who have died in wars. In Carleton Place, soldiers, veterans and even serving police officers will march the short distance from town hall to Veterans Memorial Park where the Cenotaph* is located. Many wreaths will be laid, and a deafening gun salute will sound.

We have attended these ceremonies more than once, but we stay home now, and this post becomes my observance. However, last week we did visit the new memorial crosswalk leading to the park and cenotaph.

Sue removes a leaf for a photo

We took a few more pictures while we were there: most include the Cenotaph. 

The Ontario and Canadian flags fly at the Cenotaph

*A cenotaph is an empty grave, tomb or a monument erected in honour of a person or group of people whose remains are elsewhere or have been lost.

The First Walloping

My post yesterday was about the beginning of the Christmas season, but yesterday turned out to be the beginning of winter, or at least the beginning of the snowy season. It was quite a walloping for November the 9th. I don't recall seeing so much snow so early in our previous 20 years.

Our morning walk took us to the park where I wanted to juxtapose the snow with the tamarack trees, but the flakes were light at that time, and there hadn't yet been much accumulation. This was the best I could do.

That early in the day, there was just enough snow to cover the footbridge along the trail.

But it kept falling all day. After dinner, our good neighbours came over to clear the front and garage doors. A bit later, Sue scraped away the new-fallen stuff (next photo). Our plow guy came by overnight to do the driveway to begin to earn the small fortune that we paid him up front.

Quite an accumulation for so early.

While Sue was doing that, I took a quick pic from our garage of the house across the street — quite a difference from the single tree that was there just the day before. Bless their hearts for bringing their exuberant, festive lighting to the neighbourhood.

November snow usually doesn't last, especially when it falls this early, but that was a significant amount, so we shall see.

It Begins

Our neighbour took down is Halloween display this week. Here is what he was doing yesterday. Although he will unpack and add many more ornaments, he wanted to get this up before the first snow, which is supposed to be coming today.

Another neighbour was getting his lights up. In neither case did I get them on the ladder, which is what I would have preferred, but I also preferred not to linger.

Sue has pretty well transformed our interior already. You've seen the cardinal-snowy thing recently, but there are little things here and there. This one piece ↓ has been in three places already, but I think that it is going to stick here, in the downstairs hall, until Christmas. There are many other seasonal objects that I might or might not reveal over time. Some are specific to Christmas, but others are just more general winter decorations that shall be displayed longer. I imagine that the next big change will precede Valentines Day.

Last night, I took a picture from my den. Sue opines that we have the best view on the street. As I wrote earlier, it will get pretty crowded over there before too long, but this simple display is very nice, indeed.

I understand that many of my more southerly friends will think this to be rather early, but it is getting cold already, and unlike you, we don't have an intervening big holiday. Our first storm is about to hit, and it is time to begin lighting our world as the darkness descends.

Losing Track

Yesterday, I made a point of paying cash at the store. It is something that I just don't do. I prefer debit or credit because I figure whatever cash I am carrying should stay in my wallet in case of an emergency.

But it is Remembrance Day next week, so poppies are by checkouts everywhere. I wanted to purchase two poppies, one for me and one for Sue, but I wasn't about to stuff a twenty in the box.

So, I paid cash for my purchase, received the change, and then jammed a fiver through the tiny slot.

Minutes later, I pulled into my driveway, began to exit, and reached for the two poppies that I had placed on the passenger seat.

Except I hadn't. Not that time although I know that I had placed something there recently.

The fact of the matter is that I had left my donation for the poppies but not taken them.

I drove back. It's not far, just around the corner really.

Back at the cash and said to the guy, "You remember me, right?" I didn't want people to think that I was just grabbing poppies without donating.

He did remember me and said that he had wondered why I had donated but not taken any poppies. 

I took my two poppies and skulked off.

This is the kind of thing that I do regularly. I don't mean at stores particularly but just forgetting little things that I had intended to do but then forgotten. For example: I might go downstairs for something and come back upstairs empty-handed.

I would tell you more about some of the things that I forget, but, quite frankly my dears, I forget what they are.

Could Not Resist

As soon as we walked into the pharmacy we were both smitten with this delightful, lighted ornament. We don’t make many snap purchases like this, but it was seniors discount day, so we were rendered helpless. What with winter almost here and Christmas coming soon, it will work as a decoration for both situations, so we splurged. It will be a source of light and bright in the dark, wintry months  

In the evening, I decided to try both a photo and video, just holding the phone freehand in the low light. Whatever editing I did subsequently was on the phone. The photo doesn’t carry the total impact of how strikingly pretty the ornament really is, but it does yield an approximation. The frame is very white in the daylight but yellow like this when the machine is on and when the snow is swirling around the cardinals.. 

I also had a short video, but Blogger is not liking it this morning, so that’s it — short and sweet today. 

Short Night and Tamarack Delight

It’s not 5AM, and Sleepwatch just reported 2h 15m sleep last night. Although I think it missed an hour, it’s getting ridiculous. Having to visit the loo so many times doesn’t help. I am strongly considering recommencing catheterizing before bed. I really don’t want to have to do this, but I might need to. I am scheduled to see the urologist again later this month, but if there is anything to be done, surgically, it will take time to set up, and I don’t know if, indeed, anything can be done. 

Meanwhile . . . We are back with the good ole tamarack trees again today. I think I photograph these ↓ two trees at the far end of the pond every year, but each year is different. I caught very long reflections this time.

That was a telephoto, but this ↓ is a much wider view from, probably, the very same spot.

I photographed Sue, and she photographed me because that is part of what we do together. The one of me is from the previous, duller day, but I brought some light and colour back in edit. The advantage of that photo is also having a cloudy sky. 

Look at my silly mittens dangling.

Serendipitous Autumn Splendor

On Monday, I was quite surprised to see the tamaracks (aka larch) turning colour at the park. I knew that they would, of course, but they the change had hardly begun when we had walked that way in what seemed like only a few days prior. When most of the deciduous colour is over, it is such a treat to see the coniferous tamaracks blazing away. In my experience, which doesn't make it so, they are the only coniferous trees to change colour and lose their leaves, which are needles in their case.

That day was overcast, but of course I still took photos. However, the light was pretty nice on the next day, yesterday, so I will show a few of those images.

This ↓ is the first tamarack that we see as we enter the park, with another less vibrant one behind the shrubs to the right.

Just past that first tree, they have added a new bench between two other trees. Beyond the bench, we see another tree on the other side of the pond. It is also happily reflecting in the pond.

Then, there is this tree, which, if memory serves, is the same tree as the one on the right in the previous photo but from its other side. I liked including the two trees in the distance, one on either side. Actually, there are three trees with two on the left, but the second one over there has not changed colour as much.

Finally, for today, I have a picture of the tree in the background right, above, with the pair of mallards swimming into the reflection.

I have a few more in the folder, but they are a little different, so I shall save them for another day.

November is Mitten Time

Daytime temperatures have scarcely been above freezing these days, resulting in cold hands on our walks. Gloves helped to some degree, but when I have to be holding onto a cane the whole time, and possibly removing the gloves to take a picture or seven, the poor little digits do suffer,

It was time to charge up the mitts, which you may recall, do have batteries and heating built in. They had languished unused for lo these many months.  ➡️ 

After plugging them in, the missus and I headed over to the pharmacy for both our flu and COVID jabs. Neither of us have suffered from either shot in the past, but I don't think that we have combined them like this. This morning, I can report that I am feeling fine and that I even had a half-decent sleep of almost six hours.

From the pharmacy, we headed to the grocery store for dessert and rolls for tonight's family dinner. I think it has been more than a month since we've had the fam over although we did get over to theirs for Thanksgiving a few weeks ago.

After shots and shopping we returned home to bundle up for what would be a pretty cold walk. Before heading off, I wanted to memorialize our first wearing of our hand warming devices for the impending 2025-26 winter. 

I set up the tripod. Our first efforts all turned out like this or even worse. Somehow, when I tried to trigger the phone camera from my watch, it caused lens to zoom. It was most perplexing  

After several more efforts, we achieved this ↓ result. Although it is good enough, it was still zooming in somewhat on its own and cutting off a bit of my foot. While that wasn't much of a problem, I wanted to get it right. I went back and forth between our pose position and the phone several times, but I was getting at least some zoom every time. 

We began to figure out that, somehow, it was moving my sleeve to trigger my watch that was, somehow,  causing the problem. We tried it again (we're on maybe the fifth try by now), but this time we found ourselves taking a video. Pretty funny, but would we ever manage to take the shot the way that I had set it up?

Finally, I captured the composition that I had envisioned, with Sue being the one to trigger my watch as I held my sleeve out of the way. 

Oh and by the way, I captured a very Bleak November sort of photo on our subsequent trail stroll.

The wind was howling, and then it began to rain while we were still a distance from our car.