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Good Morning.

It’s been awhile since my last post reason being that spring is here and there has been a lot going on around our home here. Vegetable gardens needed tilling and then planting, Grass is growing leaps and bounds, gift shop is opened which took a lot of work in-itself along with a lot of little things that needed attending.

That said, my wife and I have all them things looked after now. The only thing left to do now, other than the weekly chores, is piling firewood for winter. I have been holding off getting it delivered as it has been so wet where I want to pile it, and the truck wouldn’t be able to get close. So, I figured I would wait for a bit. But with this warm weather, it is drying fast, so I suspect I will give my friend a call next week.

I always feel better knowing we have two years of heat piled up where it is dry. Especially with the price of oil and propane these days.

It makes you wonder where our powers that be’s minds are these days, allowing the price of fuel to be so high. For a country like Canada that has more oil than most, there should be no reason we here are paying so much. It just shouldn’t be this way. We have the resource right under our feet, yet we’ve tied ourselves completely to global market pricing instead of looking after our own people first. On top of that, we ship a massive amount of our raw crude south to the States and overseas because our own refineries aren’t set up to handle it all, leaving ordinary Canadians to pay the price for a world market we can’t control.

Highway 522 has picked up a wee bit since things warmed up a bit and fishing season is officially underway. The pickerel opened up back on the third Saturday of May, so the boys have already been out on the water dropping jigs. Mind you, if you’re looking to land a big old large-mouth bass, you’re going to have to bide your time just a little longer. The regulations keep them shut down until the fourth Saturday in June—that’s the 27th this year—to let them finish up their spawning on the nests.

Now for a fellow with a Sport Licence, you’re allowed four pickerel in your possession, though only one of them can be over eighteen inches. Come late June, the bass limit sits at six. It’s a good system to keep the lakes healthy, even if navigating the rules takes a bit of doing.

Now, there is one major perk to having a few extra miles on your personal odometer. Once you cross the sixty-five mark, the government figures you’ve paid enough dues, so they let seniors fish without having to buy a license at all. All you need to keep in your tackle box is your photo ID to prove you’ve survived this long, and they give you the full Sport Licence privileges for free. It might be the only time in a man’s life the taxman gives you a handout instead of putting his hand in your pocket, so you might as well take them up on it.

Also, seeing the trucks rolling down the 522 with aluminum boats hitched to the back always brings a nice bit of life to the area. It gets a man thinking about the water. But for now, my eyes are still mostly on the backyard, waiting for that truckload of winter heat to arrive.

Bug Report: Well them black flies are annoying folks a lot these days and to top things off the blood sucking mosquitoes are starting to show themselves too. The old rule of thumb around here is that the black flies like to hang around from Mother’s Day clear through to Father’s Day. I suppose they just want to make sure both parents get an equal share of the misery. So, it looks like we will have to put up with them and practice our swatting for a bit longer.

So with that bit of information I am off for my breakfast that my lovely wife has made for me and will then enjoy a cup of tea and then… will see what the day has in store other than what I have planned.

In Closing keep your minds open and your stories alive. GW