April 16, 2008

More Spring today! By 5pm, we had achieved a temperature of 16C (60F), the sun is shining, the birds are singing. I got my hands dirty in the garden, although I only spent a few minutes out there. It seems my thyme survived being buried under 4 feet of snow and it is growing and green!

Some neighbours were out talking about gardening. One fellow was already raking. I'm not going to rake even after the last of the snow goes because the lawn is too tender right now but it will soon firm up. I talked with another neighbour and she told me that she has actually seen the nefarious beaver in Centrepointe park! She was walking her dogs in January during the big thaw we had then and the animal walked right across the path in front of her. And her dogs went crazy of course. We wondered and don't have an answer for where the beaver came from. But she said it has done even more extensive damage in the park. I may call the animal control people to have it removed to a more suitable location because it isn't doing our trees any good out there.

I notice there is a roof line forming on the first of the new housing units to go up.

There are still unmelted piles of plowed snow all over the place, but most of the rest of the snow has gone.

Except for here on the bike path. I rode out this afternoon to see how far I could get going north to the river. Some of the bike path had been plowed in the winter, as evidenced by the grit all over it. But when I got to the Queensway transit station, it suddenly stopped. I guess they figure no one walks north from the Queensway. I walked the bike over the small bit of snow and ice at the station but when I crossed the road and headed toward the creek, I decided to call it a day when I saw quite a bit of snow still on the path. I could have walked through it but it probably would have gone over the tops of my running shoes and I didn't need wet feet. I figure there must have been one huge drift here, for this fallen (not plowed) snow still to be unmelted.

March 31, 2008

I have noticed dried thistles poking out of the snow lately and realize that they are the source of the phantom voles I think I see:

You can see how, at a distance, I could mistake this large thistle head for a mouse all hunched up and having a bad hair day.

This is that tree that was and still is buried by the snow plows. I thought I saw branches from which the bark had been chewed by rabbits but I can't see them now or in this photo.

However, I did see rabbit foot prints hopping up this snow bank and onto the roof of this carport, so I may have been right that rabbits have been chewing the bark in the high branches of trees that they would never normally have access to. Time will tell - in the Spring when the leaves start out, the girdled branches will likely be dead. At least, I know that when young trees are girdled (bark chewed off all the way around the trunk), they die.

Every day, you see lost things like a single mitten, obviously fallen out of someone's pack or pocket. And I usually try to put the item up somewhere where it will be seen if the owner travels the same route again. I am not the only one who does this:

In a 20 foot stretch of sidewalk at the transit station, I came across two found items hung up for the owner to see.


I saw hundreds of webbed foot prints beside the bike path.

At first I thought they were duck prints but then I realized I had not seen any ducks but I have seen seagulls. And I guess they are not "sea" gulls but just some other sort of gull. At any rate, it looks like they were having a meeting at this mud puddle!

March 26, 2008

We're finally getting a whiff of Spring here.

I took this photo of the construction site early in the morning when the light was low and golden. It was still minus 12C that morning but the sun was strong.

This is a slightly different view of the site, showing the progress that is being made. I'm still surprised that they are using 2x4 construction in the walls, but then, I don't know what they are using for floors.

All winter, they've been plowing some of the paths off to one side. Now we have to walk through mud.

This also shows me that when people pave where people have worn a path, they often make a more "artistic" path and don't go where people (and plows) naturally tend go. Of course, they may have just wanted to make the path cross the street at right angles to make it safer.

This photo shows how much the snow has melted under its own steam, so-to-speak. Plows and shovels don't go into this centre island and so any snow that fell on it, stays on it. At one point, you couldn't see the top of the stylized "N" that holds the Nepean bell but now you can see quite a lot of it.

This is the snow bank near the Centrepointe Theatre, which faces roughly west. It hadn't started to melt yesterday morning when I took this picture but it is dripping today!

March 17, 2008

Not much green on St. Patrick's Day, except for what people were wearing. Nice sunshine though, even if it was unseasonably cold at minus 14C this morning. Ouch.

On the weekend, you could really see that things were melting nicely but you only see bare pavement if it had been scraped earlier. The city is still working at removing snow banks and probably will be until summer.

We passed this dog and his owner out for a walk. He is not even a year old - a great big puppy. I think his name was Meiko. He was lovely.

The construction is proceeding. More foundations are going in and the Stone Slinger was there, slinging stones. This one building now has some structure above the foundations. I see they are using what looks like proper safety barriers at the edge of the top level. I learned about them during the "Fall Prevention Course" that I took at Safety Training Inc..

Speaking of falling, someone has dug out the storm drain at the base of the snow mountain where everyone walks every day, to get into and out of the 'hood. There was a huge puddle there and so it's good that it is draining now. But that first step is a whopper! It is actually about 4 feet off the ground, if you are standing on the storm drain, trying to get over into our neighbourhood.

Thankfully, some intrepid souls have stomped out some new foot prints in the snow bank to the side and so I can take a short detour and still use this path. Not for long however, as once it starts to melt in earnest, everything will crumble. I just don't want to be standing four feet off the ground when it decides to give way.

March 14, 2008

The Equinox is almost here! And this morning I heard the Cardinal singing again.

I snapped a photo out the back, upstairs window with full (albeit limited) telephoto on. Then I cropped it to make him as big as I could. (If you hear a Cardinal, and they are the loudest birds around here, look up because they like to sit in the very tops of trees.)

He's all pixilated but he still looks lovely to me.

On the way to work this morning, I saw that the snow banks had started to crumble in onto the sidewalks. I suppose I cannot complain because there are places that don't have clean sidewalks at all.

I also noticed yesterday that the fire hydrant that would service the houses in my area has not been uncovered. I knew approximately where it was but couldn't remember exactly.

Here is what the island with the two trees on it looks like. The hydrant is somewhere in the middle, or so I thought.

So I looked through some old photos and here is the puppy we raised for Guide Dogs, not interested in the hydrant but showing where it is. If you compare the two pix, you will see where one would have to dig to find it. I think there must be at least 3 feet of snow on top of it but because it is at the back of the island and near the car that isn't coming out until Spring, it will be difficult to dig out. I was going to go at it with a shovel but it really has to be attacked from the road side (because the car is on the way) and that means using a small snow blower to get near it.

March 11, 2008

We're still digging out. Apparently, we had 52 cm (20 inches) of snow and with the 10 feet or so we had before this dump, there's no where to put it. And it's not melting much yet. Crews are clearing for vehicles first but there are a few spots cleared for pedestrians.

At the big intersection at Woodroffe and Navaho, where many people coming from the bus station cross to get to Algonquin College and to the College Square shopping plaza, they have done a good job clearing the way.

They haven't cleared in all directions so you may have to walk out and then over but at least you can manouever.

At the shopping centre, there are still huge piles of snow, waiting to be taken away. Where, I am not sure.

They haven't bothered to plow the bike path behind the bus station - it's not a priority. The wind was strong during the snow storm and after and the snow has drifted into pretty shapes.

Along this section of the path, I saw some nice wind-sculpted shapes yesterday. Today, they are being broken up a little by people walking along and touching them. You don't even have to bend over to touch these drifts! What you can also see is how the sun is melting whatever is left on the pavement. If you could navigate some of the snow banks, you could be riding your bike in some places.

Compare this photo to the one I took on December 17, 2007. The Nepean bell is almost completely buried now.


This is where I usually cross Centrepointe. In the past, I have complained about how they don't plow a path through the snow banks at the crosswalk. This time, there's a nice clear path but nowhere to go!

Once you cross and head south on Centrepointe, the cleared sidewalk ends abruptly and you have to walk in the road. I guess I can't have everything.

Finally, I wonder if the path between Plunkett and Castlebrook will be cleared any more this Winter. After the second last snow fall, they didn't clear it and now it looks like a lost cause. Apparently, it's not in our snow clearing contract so they have been doing it just because it's there.

However, now, we are walking about 2 feet off the ground. The main problems are negotiating the mountains at either end of the path, and going off the narrow packed path and up to your hip in snow. And hope you don't meet anyone walking the other way on the path. It's just like the good old days!

March 10, 2008

People are still digging out. There are enormous snow banks to traverse - I feel I should have ropes, an ice axe and pitons. I wore my a-line skirt today and the knee high boots and was glad I had for climbing the snow banks. A narrow or pencil skirt would have made it impossible and anyway, I wouldn't have wanted to hike it up because of the cold this morning. Yikes! Talk about insult to injury. It was minus 17C this morning not including the windchill. With the sun out, it has now warmed up to - 7 but really, I think it is supposed to be warmer. But even so, the sun is melting snow and ice. Every few minutes, something slides off my roof and smashes to the ground. It'll be a while before the grass sees the light of day again but there are stretches of bare pavement here and there.

This morning I saw a large sun dog and tried to get a photo of it and failed. You'll have to take my word for it - it was quite pretty through those bare branches.

March 9, later in the morning

Even though I was pretty sure not many people would be at my class, I decided to act as if I was going anyway. I got up and had breakfast and organized myself and then spent about 20 minutes shovelling a path to the street, which itself was not yet plowed.

Nice neat path! The wind was from the East all night and our side of the quad drifted in more than the other side. That snow was about 2 feet deep and packed in. Before I took these pix, I had seen and talked with another neighbour who was out taking pictures. Right after I finished shovelling, I got the phone call that my class had been cancelled so I decided to take a few extremely local pix of my own. I didn't even get out of the quad, although I could now that they've started plowing.

I saw Robert across the way shovelling out.

I got a little closer and noticed that he didn't have Logan out with him as usual. Can you spot the dog?

There he is!

They have all the machinery out today.

John is saying, "Where are we going to put it all?!"

When John first shouted "hello!" from near the garage door, I could barely see his head above the snowbanks.

But. We still have not broken the record from 1970-71.

March 9, 2008

I just went to get the paper and when I opened the front door, this is what I saw:

And there wasn't a paper, either.
I took these yesterday afternoon from my sewing room window.


In this photo, that lump to the left of the tree was a car.

Peter took this one last night. The car has completely vanished.
More pix when I get out to get 'em.

Update:
I just remembered to look at the weather on the web.
Environment Canada says:
Ontario provincial police in the upper Ottawa Valley and Northumberland have resorted to snowmobiles for transportation.