Predator and Prey

Today amidst the dryer repairman letting his mouse out of the house and painting the garage door, I stumbled upon the predator on my deck. I turn on the tap and there he is just sitting there watching, waiting. Right on my deck.

"Hello, like, there, hawk dude, like, we're not rodents and, like, so the dryer repair dude might have some mice to, like, let out of his shorts, dude."

Tonight, we found the prey. Mr. B. Bunny hiding under the neighbours shed. From talking about the bunny, I turned to *Steve* and told him about the hawk that I photographed earlier in the day. When we told *Steve* about the hawk and showed him these pictures all he said was "Why is our car parked at the bank?"

Me: "Because I let *Mila*, our 5 year old, take the car over there today when she went to apply for a mortgage on a treehouse. Nutbar! That's not our car!"

Sometimes the wonderment of nature ceases to amuse him. He's better off appreciating nature on a 55" Sony while watching a Blu-ray version of King Kong. Ah, nature at its finest.

signed, the willow

Work this into your weekend

Photo credit: Melissa Brandts

Seriously. So, you're sitting there waiting for your camera to snap a timer shot and this little bugger comes along and sneaks into the shot. All I can say is, at least he didn't block the lovely couple. See, that would have been my luck. My husband with his new wife the squirrel.

Your challenge is to take a photo and sneak a squirrel in. Apparently it's all the rage on the internet. Really. I know, the internet left you behind again.

signed, the willow

Red Cooler Baby, Red Cooler

In our family, we have an on-going tradition of missing red coolers. This would be my brother's red cooler. He's missing it. I have it. My parents are missing their red cooler too. Someone calls them occasionally and keeps them updated on how their "orange" cooler is doing. IT'S RED! IT IS A RED COOLER!

A few weeks ago we came back home and passed by our misty friend, the Sleeping Giant:

Not to be confused with this guy, the Friendly Giant:

(source: cbc.ca)

Northern Ontario shrubbery being hauled out of the wilds of Ignace and on to its future as a sheet of paper or 2 x 4 in Thunder Bay?

Your driver today will be this guy. At times he annoys his with his impersonation of a cab driver. Cartoon cab driver that is.

Sleep number one of many sleeps on the travels home. I'm sure they love it in the motels when we arrive at 11 pm with our well-rested daughter who jumps on the furniture and flies through the air for 2 hours. "Great, it's the Amazing Traveling Walldoon Circus again!"



signed, the willow

Winning Big with your Ice Cream Recipes!!!

Now that I am in trouble with 'Lady of the Lake' I am not going to indulge you with any more of her anecdotes. For this week, anyhow. Here we go again with my boring stories about my vacation this summer.

This mansion atop an island all to itself is just slightly famous in my hometown. Riss' Island, as it was know, was owned by the Riss family for many years. Legend be told that Jimmy Hoffa's body was disposed of here. Whether or not that is true or not, I did have the luxury of playing pool on the billiards table there once with Jimmy Hoffa's pool cue. Enough already!

Here we have *Steve* and our charming daughter *Mila*, who insists on wearing that undersized life jacket because it is pink, swimming in Abram Lake.




Making sandcastles with gardening tools and sticks. We're primitive.



Making new friends is so important in the Sioux Lookout summers. Somehow, I always envied the kids that visited Sioux Lookout each summer. Each summer they would enjoy the beaches, lakes and blueberries and each winter they could get the hell out of there and enjoy city life. Now my kid is one of them, a 'citiot'. My brother and sister-in-law take full credit for inventing the word 'citiot". If you have to look it up, you might just be one.



All good things must come to an end. Maybe we should have had another child, just to see if he/she would look like me. *Mila* is the spitting image of her dad, and acts just like me. Aren't I lucky? It's like having *mini-Steve* scream her demands at me. Yay!
Now that we are home, we finally bought that ice cream maker. Yeah, I know. Now the challenge is going to be finding great ice cream recipes that involve little fat, little egg yolks and tons of flavour. Here's my challenge to you: Comment here on what your favourite flavour of ice cream is and if you have a great recipe and name it after me, then I'll make up a custom prize for you. Really!


On the topic of making things up, *Steve* made up this google sports calendar blog and I have to share with you.


signed, the willow

Overheard in the Bush

There is a fable in the land of Sioux Lookout that if you drink the water of Pelican Lake, you will always return to Pelican Lake.

And here is the proof:

Pelican Lake

Pelican Lake

Pelican Lake


I'm having trouble getting away from you Pelican Lake.

And now for something completely different.

A true story. Overheard in the bushes with some blueberry picking going on.

A couple from Sioux Lookout were out doing some berry picking when out of nowhere a dude walks along and strikes up a conversation. Remember, this is the middle of nowhere, just outside of Sioux Lookout. The couple are from Sioux Lookout or, as we'll refer to it here, SL. Ready? Set. Go!

Green Bay Dude (retells the story of his life): I'm from Green Bay, Wisconsin. Do you know where that is?

SL man (speaking in perfect English): Of course we do.

Green Bay Dude: Where are y'all from?

SL man and woman: Sioux Lookout.

Green Bay Dude: Never heard of it.

SL man: Well, you're in Sioux Lookout right now. How did you get here?

The SL man has to now describe Sioux Lookout to Green Bay Dude.

Green Bay Dude: Oh! SOO Lookout. Y'all must be French! I didn't understand the accent.

And then off he went, on his merry way, through the backroads of Blueberry country in Sioux Lookout. Imagine the tales he will tell his countrymen about the French people he met in the bushes of Soo Lookout! By the way Wisconsin Dude, the language spoken to you in the bushes of Sioux Lookout was in fact ENGLISH. It is derived from the country of ENGLAND and spoken in Canada as a legitimate language. It has not been bastardized into the "American" language spoken by y'all that does not include the phrase "eh", eh?

signed, the willow

The Summer that Never Came

Internet, meet the summer that never happened.

Well, there was this one day when the sun shone bright and so we all dropped what we were doing and hopped in the boat for a ride.

Meet our Captain:

His First Mate:

The Event Planner:

The Passenger:

More of Vacation '09 to come.

signed, the willow

Boy, Oh Boy

Take a lake.
Get some women on Birth Control pills.
Get them to pee in the lake.
Get some Fathead minnows.
Put them in the lake with the pee.
Guess what?
Bye Bye Boy minnows.
Hello Lady Boy Minnows!

For more information, please refer to the Endocrine Disrupter Study conducted at the Experimental Lakes Area (ELA) in Northwestern Ontario.

signed, the willow

Ride Baby Ride

signed, the willow

Beach to Yourself

Here we are at the end of July. We've got the beach to ourselves other than 2 people down there. Then another 2 came. Then another 2. *Mila* got as deep into the water as this. Such is our summer. It is a frozen bag of peas.

signed, the willow

Summer is a Bag of Frozen Peas

That's right. You heard it here first, in case you were living in a large cave without your iPod. Summer sucks this year. There is no sun. There is no heat. The bugs live off of people! In fact, one flew away with my wallet last Wednesday afternoon.

Meet the bugs of Northwestern Ontario:

Perhaps they are not exactly life size, as I've seen the Pine Sawyer Beetle as large as my foot one year. And they bite! Anything. Anyone. Because they are blind, if they land on you and if they believe that you might resemble a pine tree, they'll chomp.

And then I found this: The Tree of Life Web Project. I clicked on the Angiosperms (that is flowering plants, *Steve*), but you can click on whatever you like. The collaborative project has been contributed to by biologists and nature enthusiasts to gather information on the history of evolutionary existence of life forms on our planet: Phylogeny. In other words, we have all come from the same tree of life. The single celled life forms of this planet are your ancestors, mine too, and let's not forget the ancestors of the damn mosquito as well.

signed, the nerd botanist willow