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The Greenwater Report for September 29, 2003 |
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jaunt |
September 28th, 2003: I am writing this early, as we are off again on a jaunt, and may not be home by Sunday. Will give you the details of our trip next week. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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 One winter, when we still lived up on the hill, I heard some great horned owls hooting back and forth. The hoots had different pitches, which puzzled me, and every once in a while there would be a hoarse squawk. Well, I just had my questions answered in Birds and Blooms, another of the dozen or so publications that Doreen subscribes to. It says that the female's hoot is usually slightly higher in pitch than the male's. Eggs are laid in mid-winter and are incubated for about a month. The young stay in the nest (usually stolen from another bird) about a month, but are still unable to fly when they leave it and are dependent on their parents for food. That hoarse squawk is made by the young hollering for dinner. On the railroad, there was no place I could really call home, as I would be in one town for two weeks, in another for a month, and in another for a day or two. Sometimes I was lucky enough to find a boarding house, but often I slept on a cot in the freight shed and ate sandwiches and cokes. Station agents weren't fussy about having a stranger in their living quarters, so I had to make my own arrangements. |
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horse |
In Weyburn, I slept in a room in a freight shed, and took my meals at a boarding house. There were six or eight boarders there, and they were pretty good meals, with lots of steaks, roasts and burgers. One Saturday, our hostess advised us that we had been eating horse meat for the past week. I don't think a soul at the table suspected it! | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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 I quite often stayed at the local hotel, if there was one. The room door locked by sticking a knife into the doorjamb, if you had a knife. Sanitary facilities consisted of a chemical closet at the end of the hall, or maybe on the next floor up or down. For washing, a jug of ice-cold water and a porcelain basin. They were always cold in winter, and with gaps of a couple or more inches under the doors, they weren't very soundproof, though I can't recall being kept awake by beer parlor noises. It sounds primitive now, but at the time I thought it was pretty good accommodation. The color is changing fast at Greenwater! Two days ago, I thought there wouldn't be much colour for a good week; now I should be out with my camera. Our tame gooseberry bushes turn a lovely bronze color in the fall, but there is a wild one down by the shore that is bright scarlet. Next spring, we will be welcoming another new arrival to our community. Kelly and Raelynn Chase had a baby boy. His name is Luke, and he was born September 13th, a brother to Will and Ben. Congratulations! |
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Doreen & Jerry Crawford Box 100, Chelan, SK S0E 0N0 (306) 278-3423 http://www.greenwaterreport.com/ |
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