Thoughts on UFO's

Now that I have your attention, I've got one thing to say:

No.  It's not a UFO.  It's just...it's just...(waaaaahhhhh!)...the new lights from Highway 30, slated to open some time in December, after more than three years in the making, and over thirty in the planning.  I actually meant to walk the length of the highway this past weekend before it opens to traffic, just for the heck of it.  Now that the lights are on, I'd better put it on my to-do list for this coming weekend or forfeit my chance forever.

I was worried about those high light standards, and well, all I can say is they're there, and they're lit.  Impressed I ain't.  Cue more crying...waaahhhhhhhhh!

Because my photography skillz are virtually nonexistent, (exposure? aperture? huh?), I wasn't able to capture the shot as it views to the naked eye, but the peak of our barn falls square in the middle of the above photo.  I liked looking out of the window into darkness, but that's a thing of the past now.

While I embrace the progress that is NA30, I have mixed feelings about the encroaching urban environment.  I don't want to end up the crazy old bitch who ends up padlocking herself to a barn while bulldozers move in to build yet another Walmart, but que sera, sera. Hopefully, I've got a few decades to plan my exit.  Who knows how things will end up?  Maybe the new infrastructure will direct new development away from us?  Given our crumbling infrastructure, the "30 in 30 (years)" is a welcome change on the horizon.  It's just too bad it had to change our view.

Not to let you down, I've got a UFO of a different kind to show you:

Yes, a knitterly UFO, hopefully soon to be a FO, or finished object.  UFO of course stands for unfinished object, every knitter's nemesis.  This blanket fell from grace months ago, yet with colder temperatures heading our way, I thought it would be nice to get it back on the front burner, pun wholly intended.  As with every project, there's always something to procrastinate about, and the crochet steek was my hurdle.  I downloaded Kate Davies' overly-explicit instructions, printed everything up, and pored over the material as though studying for an exam.  I crocheted.  I cut.  Simple as pie.  Why in dog's name did I procrastinate about this?  I'll never know.  The question that now begs to be asked is why am I procrastinating about picking up the 780 edge stitches?   I suppose because it's 780 edge stitches.  Why oh why do I do this to myself?  Why? Anyone?

Actually, the above photo does serve a purpose, besides showing my wonderfully manicured digits.  What it shows is the crochet steek with the central knit stitch exposed.  This is my cut line.  On the left hand side, you can clearly see the dark brown edge (half covered by crochet), where I piled my darks one atop the next, in a precise vertical line.  This is not my first steeked project, but it is my first with 5 steek stitches.  I started out with clear vertical light/dark/light/dark/light lines.  Then neurosis struck, and I checked other Rams and Yowes projects on line.  Seems many people chose to do a checker-board pattern in their steek, and being the proper sheep (punny me), I changed my modus operandi to the checkerboard pattern.  WRONG.  Wrong on so many levels, I don't even know where to start.  Those clear light/dark lines are perfect for crocheting into, and the checkerboard pattern...well...not so much.

Observe:

While a nice checkerboard pattern might give the uninitiated the impression you know what the hell you're doing, you need a freaking magnifying glass and those mega-watt light-standards from highway 30 to do a nice job.

In doing clear vertical lines where you haven't staggered the colors, observe the nice proper easy-to-follow lines:

When you crochet steek, you're crocheting into one half of EACH light and dark stitch.  The central light stitch will get cut open.  Crochet into half of light stitch, and half of dark stitch.  Do same thing on OTHER side of cut stitch.  You will have 2 rows of crochet, and you will then cut between these 2 rows.  Just trust me, the light/dark/light/dark/light striping method will be much easier to crochet steek and cut.

There you have it.  The truth about UFO's.  I'm so glad we had this little talk.

Now excuse me while I find another distraction to keep me from picking up those 780 edge stitches.

Cooper and BobCat's Most Excellent Adventure

Saturday dawned bright with mild temperatures hovering at the +2C mark.  It was the perfect opportunity to go and check how the drainage work for Highway 30 was progressing on the mid-point of our property.  We've seen the equipment off in the distance, and what looks like piles of snow pushed aside, so it was time for an inspection.

With Cooper leading and BobCat in tow, we started out:

Here is a little oak tree we planted in our hedgerow.  Check out the little bird's nest!  This tiny tree comes up to my hip, if that.  The nest probably belongs to a song sparrow.  Of all the trees to choose from, I'm not sure why he or she didn't set their sights higher.

The excavation work for the drainage of Highway 30 isn't supposed to begin before February 20th.  Why this little tree has already been bulldozed down is beyond me:

I'm sure by the end of this drainage fiasco, we'll find even more trees damaged or bulldozed over, since the work hasn't even technically started.  Well.  It looks like someone's been having fun driving the bulldozer around by the looks of the snow piled up on  the right side of the photo:

So far, we've received 3 registered letters about the work, plus Eric's attended one meeting, so we can't say we weren't warned.  The engineers do what consultants do best, which is dot their i's and cross their t's.  Maybe someone should have informed the excavation company that they were supposed to be accessing the ditch from the other side, don't you think?  Or am I the only one who knows how to read a map?

Getting back to business.  Note BobCat in the above photo.  The big tub normally abandons us at this point, if not well before.  Today, he must have been in a good mood, because he decided to tag along.  My goal is to make it to the construction of the actual highway which is just beyond the far end of our property.  We need to walk 1300m to get there.  The above marks our approximate half-way point.

With Cooper following his nose and BobCat trailing a few steps behind, we make our way to the end of our field and into our woods.  In the 10 years I've lived here,  I've walked to the end of the woods exactly once, and I didn't even do it on our property - I followed a trail on a farm a few properties over.  Today, we're trailblazing.

It looks like a Pileated Woodpecker's been here recently.  I didn't see any birds today, but I did hear a crow calling.  The woods were quiet - there were no coyote tracks, no deer tracks - just a few fox and bunny tracks.

I wonder if this is a bunny den?  The tracks lead right into it, but I didn't want to disturb it.  There's enough disruption with all the heavy-equipment work being carried out here that the wildlife's taken refuge elsewhere.  We'll leave these bunnies undisturbed.

I knew we had a dump at the front of our forest, what I didn't know is that we have a dump at the back of our forest, too.

Lots of galvanized metal, old mattresses, metal pails, washer drums and what-not.  This has probably been rotting here for the past 50 or 60 years or so.

I can turn a blind eye to metal, because it will eventually rust to bits, but the tires?  Oh, the tires are going to have to come out of here.  There were about 4 or 5 in various places.  Who knows?  Maybe we'll find something exciting when we get around to pulling these out.  If you look really closely at the above photo, you can see one of the yellow dump trucks used for building the highway off in the distance.

Here you go.  I've zoomed it in for you.  I have no clue why there were 5 or 6 trucks parked in a row here.  Probably so they're out of reach of vandals.  No fools venture out here, except for me.

At the ditch-line that signals the end of our property, we find evidence of beavers hard at work:

I don't know if this is a type of aspen or poplar, but they were busy little beavers.

BobCat is crossing the ditch that marks the far part of our property on one of the trees felled by the beavers.  Cooper's already walking on the ice that covers the ditch, and with all the construction work going on here, I'm not sure how deep it is, so I've called him off in the hopes that BobCat would turn back too.  My strategy worked.

Cooper's back beside me, and I'm looking down at what I'm pretty sure is the access to the beaver's den.  There was a lot of track activity around here, so I wanted to get Cooper back on terra firma.  The last thing I need this week is my dog breaking through a beaver dam.

I've never been this far on our property before, so I don't have any references to orient myself, save the ditch in the above photo, and the drone of the highway.  I figured I'd walk out the same way I walked in, following my own footprints in the snow.  That worked out really well until I looked down and discovered I was walking in Cooper's prints, and I wasn't quite convinced if they were coming or going.  That worked out well, didn't it?  Now, I've got a really good sense of direction and I'm pretty sure of where I am within 100m give or take.  I wasn't worried because if push really came to shove, I'd simply walk back on the highway under construction, and make my way home from there.  I found my way back through the woods and exited about 50 m from where I went in, but it was a slog.  I had snow over my knees a few times (hence, into my boots...) and at this point, I just wanted to get home.  BobCat too:

When I lost sight of him, I'd call his name, and he'd reply with the loudest meows I've ever heard him make.  I'm not sure if he enjoyed the experience or not, based on the wide-eyed expression on his face above.  Once back on open field, my wet feet decided we'd had enough, so we took the path of least resistance and returned on our neighbour's property, and his tractor path which made the walk infinitely easier:

The whole walk took us about 2 hours to complete, and I was happy to come home.  Bob spent the entire night on Cooper's dog bed in the kitchen and Cooper spent the entire night on our bed, so I'd qualify both as exhausted at the end of their most excellent adventure.  I slept pretty tight too.

Solitude

We used to have about 3,000 cars pass by our house every day. We're located near one of the busiest highways in North America, the Montreal-Toronto corridor. We're also located near one of the highest accident areas, and it was not uncommon for the Ministry of Transport to re-route traffic over our street in the event of an accident. Not only is our road very narrow, it is also pock-marked with potholes and features crumbling edges. It's so bad, in fact, that when the lines are painted in spring, most of the outside lines are painted in the gravel and last about a month before washing away. It's not the most conducive for 18-wheelers and morning commuters hell-bent to get to work on time. Traffic used to wake us on many mornings, signaling another work day ahead.

But on October 16th, all of that changed. Thanks to the construction of NA30, a new highway that will create a periphery around the island of Montreal, our road became a huge crescent, and our house, as luck would have it, is smack-dab in the middle of it. This means houses to the north go north to get on to the highway, and houses to the south go south to get onto the highway, and we're left in the middle, enjoying our peace and quiet. It makes for a 6 km detour for us to get on the highway, most of it in the opposite direction of where we want to travel, and has added at least 5 minutes to every outing we make, but the solitude we gained is worth every bit of extra inconvenience.

It is wonderful to have windows open on warmer days, and not hear the endless drone of speeding cars flying by. I'd say 90% of the traffic that went by was not local traffic, but people in a rush to get to where they were going faster than if they went by the highway, ironically. We complained to the city and police numerous times about the fact the posted speed limit was 50 km/h, but the median speed clocked closer to 80 or 90, not to mention trucks with over-size loads using our road to circumvent the truck scale on the highway, or drunks leaving a popular "cruising-bar" close by using it to avoid police. We'd hear them speeding by in the middle of the night after closing time, and wondered who their next victim would be.

Walking along the street was virtually impossible, but now that we've become a crescent, people can walk their dogs in safety again, and kids can ride their bikes. People can actually use the street again.

To say that we're delighted is an understatement. People who live near by are generally courteous and drive close to the speed limit. We finally have the peace and quiet we feel we deserve.