Celtfest 2015

This past weekend witnessed our tenth attendance at Celtfest, a free festival just up the road from us in Almonte. The venue is Gemmill Park which forms a pretty fair natural amphitheater that you can see in the two following pano stitches. The crowd became pretty full by the end of Saturday evening.

It is almost invariably a hot, sunny weekend, and you can see how the crowds try yo cling to the shade.

These are three of the performers from the festival.

Jess Gold, drummer for the Steel City Rovers, playing a cajone (ca-hone) in this photo.

Dave Parton of The Peelers a Celtic Punk band. He raised his glass quite a lot.

D'Arcy Furniss of The Peelers: a very active and captivating fiddler.
At this point, he had jumped from the stage to the speakers in front.

The firetruck came by to help cool the kiddies and provide a bit of diversion. That's danica off to the left.

There is usually some impromptu dancing at some point in the proceedings. Danica and Sue (in first photo on the left) both joined in.

At one point, Danica commandeered my camera and had fun shooting with it. You can see me looking on somewhat nervously.

I may do another post with more photos later.

My Girl

I have two great grandkids. They both receive attention in this blog, but this one is all about Danica.

She is chuffed to have her first bank account and bank card.

The rest of the photos are from a little picnic and walk at Blakeney Rapids.

How come her face looks so much nicer than mine?

Hugs for grandma too.

She's an explorer.

What enthusiasm for life.

Just the right amount of tude.

Blakeney Rapids

Bedrock is close to the surface here, and too far from our town the actual Canadian Shield (ancient Precambrian rock) begins. You can begin to see this ancient rocks exposed at Blakeney Rapids.

Blakeney Rapids is a small but very interesting conservation area, near Blakeney and a little north of Almonte just off highway 29. (click for larger image)

I had all but forgotten about this wonderful little place until my daughter announced that she was going to take the kids there on Saturday. So, we decided to tag along.

Just off the parking lot, before you walk the paths, there is a little open area with a picnic table and this view of the Mississippi River. ↓

Once you begin to ramble through the woodsy area, there are several footbridges.

View from a bridge.

The paths can get rocky in places, but it's an interesting environment.

I liked this boulder with its lichens and moss. ↓

The trails lead to a more major branch of the river, and you can climb down if you wish.

Back at the picnic area, the kids did a little wading.

JJ found the remains of a crayfish.

And we watched this fly fisherman ↓ for awhile before heading out.

Mostly from the Cottage

For Canada Day (Happy Belated 148th birthday), I had the rather bizarre notion to present this photo on Facebook.

Permit me to explain.

At one point it was called Dominion Day as Canada was often referred to as the Dominion of Canada even though we were always just plain Canada.

So my punny (as opposed to puny, although that might also apply) mind thought of minions. So I found an image, pasted a maple leaf on it (as in our flag), and called it Da Minion of Canada.

Sorry, I just can't help myself.

The next day, we drove to the cottage to deliver and leave stuff that we'll need later in the summer but might not have enough room in the vehicle for everything then. We only stayed for one night, and I wasn't even motivated enough to get out the camera ... until Sue noticed a rather spectacular full moon rising.

So, I did go out and try to capture it. Shooting the moon is not always easy; either to moon is too bright or the rest of the photo is too dark — unless you have a long enough lens to shoot just the moon and nothing else.

After some experimentation I put two shots together in a composite. The foreground image was shot at 13 seconds. I could have shot longer, and did as a matter of fact, but I actually was picking up lens flare by doing that. Anyway, 13 seconds gave a hint of foreground which I felt was all that I needed for this photo.

The moon photo was shot at 1/125 seconds. I then pasted it onto the foreground photo, and I did make it bigger that it was in the original photo ... because I wanted to for effect, and it really did seem huge to my eyes that night.

The next morning I stepped outside of the cottage just long enough to take this photo of the light on the grass near the garage.

Then I took this closeup of an old wagon wheel. I like the textures and shapes.

Finally this of a crowbar hanging by the gate interested me although the photo didn't turn out all that well. Still, the textures and shapes are somewhat interesting — to me, at least.

Daytrip: Kilborn's, Newboro and the Locks

We've lived in this area for a decade but had not yet managed a trip to Kilborn's in Newboro. However, when looking for a specific item last week and having heard much about the place,we made the trek.

Newboro is a tiny hamlet, part of the Rideau Lakes municipality. When we pulled to the store, it too seemed to be tiny, and I wondered what could be so grand about it. But there were also about ten cars parked in front, so it did seem to hold some promise.

When I parked the car in front of the left side of the photo ↓ by the main door, I thought that was all that there was to Kilborn's. However, once inside, I was impressed enough to go back to the care for my camera, and I took this photo. ↓

It was then that I realized that almost the whole block had been swallowed up by the store, which appears to be an amalgamation of 4 or 5 buildings. In fact, the whole thing is wide enough to require two shots (then merged into one) in order to get it all in the frame — and that was with a wide angle lens!

Because of the various building merges there are a number of different levels as you move from one part of the business to another. This was a main staircase. ↓

As you might expect, women's fashions rule the day, but there are other sections such as a small furniture section, a christmas room, a food area, and a men's section etc. There is even a log hut in the furniture area, but it is roped off in such a way that I couldn't get a decent photo. This is about the sum total of the men's shop. ↓

There is a western area, but it was mostly for women as well as far as I could see. ↓

There were all sorts of interesting corners.

Mission accomplished: Sue was able to find the Tilley hat that was the main reason for the trip.

Kitty Corner (or katty korner, catty corner, or whatever)  to the store was this rather grand house with an impressive roof. ↓

We found that we were near several of the Rideau Locks, so we drove to Chaffey's Lock ↓  ...

... and then to Davis Lock, just because we could.

We were also close to Westport, but we chose to head home where we grabbed a very nice supper from Cravings, which we took to Riverside Park to enjoy. I had the fish and chips and liked the crispy, well cooked batter (no mushy goo). Sue enjoyed the schnitzel.

If you live in this region and haven't made this particular pilgrimage before, you might enjoy it. There is a restaurant beside Kilborn's called the Stage Coach Inn, about which I have heard some good things although we didn't try it. Perhaps on another day. Or you could take a picnic lunch to enjoy at one of the locks, or even eat out in Westport.

The Attack of the Yellow Slime Mold

We experienced a most bizarre attack last week. We woke up one morning to find a yellow, spongly patch in the part of the backyard that we have mulched over.

It had appeared sometime overnight.

Later over the next few days, we had 6 more attacks: some in back and some out front.

From Wikipedia: "Slime mold or slime mould is a broad term describing some organisms that use spores to reproduce. Slime molds were formerly classified as fungi but are no longer considered part of this kingdom.[1] Although not related to one another, they are still sometimes grouped for convenience within the paraphyletic group referred to as kingdom Protista.

"Found in a wide variety of colors, more than 900 species of slime mold occur all over the world. Their common name refers to part of some of these organisms' life cycles where they can appear as gelatinous "slime". This is mostly seen with the myxogastria, which are the only macroscopic slime molds.[citation needed] Most slime molds are smaller than a few centimeters, but some species may reach sizes of up to several square meters and masses of up to 30 grams "

Whatever the science, I think it's kind of creepy.

It seems to be in the mulch that we applied this year. Yuck!

Here's a video of the stuff: not mine, I assure you.

Summer Hols: Day 2 Report

On Day 2 of their summer holidays, we took the kids for the afternoon. Once again, pool time was the main activity, but first we visited one of the many local chip trucks for a healthy lunch.

There is a waiting bench that the kids have been playing on for years now. I'm not sure why Danica was holding her nose.

Then, it was off to the neighbour's' pool. I had my shutter set to a higher 

speed than on the previous day, so the action shots were sharper.

Danica watches in amazement as JJ and his twin both jump in.

The Joyful Gulp

The Monster from the Deep

For whatever reason, they find it a great thrill to climb aboard my back and almost drown me.

We, or rather I, had great fun that day. The sun was out and I wasn't miserably cold, so I played better with the kids. We had a blast. It's a long video — more than 4 minutes — so don't feel obliged.



After the swim, Danica cajoled me into taking this video with my iPad, which did a reasonable job, especially since I am not too fussy about video quality. She explained how her security system worked. She is really quite taken with this gizmo.



So ... our two day beginning-of-summer stint is done. We will have several weeks with them in August, but it will be hit or miss with them until then. I am sure there will be some hits though.