Click on image to enlarge!

Good Morning.

Starting things off we are in the midst of some clouds this morning which kinda looks as if we are in for a shower or two. Which we sure could use being so dry an all.

Highway 522 is very quiet this morning, traffic-wise, but truth be told, it has been quiet for most of our summer. And I think part of the reason is pretty simple: our powers that be have us strapped in so tight with taxes that the working man can hardly afford to do anything or go anywhere anymore.

Right now, they are taking damn near half a man’s paycheck before he even gets a chance to spend it. That’s something they shouldn’t be doing at all. They already get plenty of our money through all the other taxes we pay on just about everything we buy.

So there they sit in their offices, wearing their fancy suits, while you and I go out and do the work. They aren’t the ones getting up every morning and earning that money, yet somehow they figure it’s warranted to take a big chunk of it right off your paycheck.

It makes me shake my head sometimes and wonder what the hell Canada is becoming.

A free country, they say.

Yep, it is , as long as you do what they say.

On another note being so dry our vegetable garden is or has been struggling this year. We do have enough for ourselves which my lovely wife has been putting away for winter. We used to sell our surplus out by the road but this year I don’t suspect we will be doing much of that. At an rate it is what it is not much we can do about that. Just have to be happy that we have enough for ourself.

But all in all, we have had a pretty good year with our gift shop, with lots of people dropping by and picking up some of our one-of-a-kind items.

The biggest sellers this year were my wife’s paintings. She started off with fifty of them and has sold well over forty, in all different sizes. Her painted gift cards were also a hit, along with her other paintings on wood.

Next on the list were my books. I have twelve now, to be exact. I finally managed to get my latest one, Strange Occurrences, finished. It is a hard-boiled private-eye mystery with science-fiction and supernatural elements, and it is the first in a series called The Clay Moretti Files. Folks seem to be liking it a lot, which is sure nice to see.

With the help of my wife, I also put out two children’s books. One is Elmer, the tale of a small pig I raised many years ago. The other is Untold Tales, a story about my grandfather, who used to survey for the railway down through the United States many, many years ago.

In that one, my grandfather and his guide, Jeb, stop at a small cabin to get in out of the cold. What they find inside is a woman and her two children in a bad way. It’s one of those stories that has stayed with me for a long time, and I’m glad I finally got it down on paper.

And that’s not forgetting my other books, each one filled with more than fifty short stories. Those are made up of all the stories I’ve been writing for my newspaper columns, which come out every Saturday through Postmedia, the largest media company in Canada.

I write fifty-two columns a year for those folks, and I’ve been doing it for more than twenty years now. It keeps this old mind of mine on the straight and narrow, which is something you need when you get up there in years.

I also managed, in between all the writing last winter, to make twenty new Native American wooden flutes. Every one of them is made with different inlays of different kinds of wood, and they are all tuned to the pentatonic scale, in the keys of D, E and F, with some in between.

That’s just one more thing I’ve added to my list of life’s projects. And for those who don’t know, I’ve been making these flutes for more than thirty years now.

An old Native friend of mine, Grey Wolf, taught me how to make them many years ago when I was just a boy. Over the years, I perfected the craft, using his way of doing things along with some of my own ideas.

I’ve sold a pile of them over the years, and every one is one of a kind. No two are ever exactly alike, and I suppose that’s part of what makes making them so enjoyable.

So other than that not much else happening in and around our old homestead. Have a great day.

Click on the image to enlarge!

Good Morning.

Hope everyone is well this morning. My wife and I are not doing too bad at this end these days. A few issues for the both of us, but… we are handling them.

Regarding the weather here in our small town, things are slowly getting back to normal. Most of the blackflies have left us for another year, which makes it much nicer for all of us wanting to enjoy the outdoors. I found this year wasn’t as bad as other years, at least on our property. The reason being, I made a mess of birdhouses, and every one of them was, and is, full… no room at the inn, so to speak.

I couldn’t believe how many swallows we had along with wrens. It’s a good pair to have around, as they both make black flies and mosquitoes their main meal. The swallows nest first, and then after they are done raising their young, the wrens get busy and have their young ones. The good thing is the wrens stay all year round, maybe having two batches of young ones, whereas half of the swallows or more leave.

So all in all, nature has her own way of doing things, and if one learns these things, well… it can make your life a lot more bearable. Oh, and we can’t forget the dragonflies, as yesterday they were out swarming all around our heads. They are another that relies on flying insects to survive.

Highway 522 has picked up traffic-wise, and we have been starting to see a few more folks drop by our gift shop, picking up our one-of-a-kind items. Nice to see new faces. It will get busier now that bass season is about to open and the black flies are all but gone. That said, we still have to deal with the mosquitoes and deer flies for most of the summer. Joys of living here in the north. One can’t have everything their own way.

On another note, my wife and I pretty well got the hard work out of the way for another summer. We still have to get our firewood for winter delivered and piled, which we should be doing, oh… I would say by next weekend. If there is anyone who wants to make a few dollars, let me know, as I will be in need of an extra set of hands this year to help.

So with that, I am off for my breakfast that my lovely wife has put together for me, and will then head out to our front porch and enjoy a cup of tea and some front porch sitting, taking in our beautiful property. I don’t believe there is a nicer place anywhere in our area. There isn’t a spot you can go or sit that… well, it’s just too nice to even put into words.

You all have a great day, and with that: Keep your minds open and your stories alive. George Walters

Good Morning.

It’s looking as if we are in for a really nice day here in Northern Ontario, Canada. The sun is shining with hardly a cloud in the sky.

It’s the kinda day that makes a feller want to sit outside with a cup of coffee and enjoy the front porch. Which I think I might just do once I finish this post. The coffee is already calling my name.

On another note, my wife and I took a drive down to Coldwater over the weekend to see a friend of ours. Glad we did as she is feeling poorly. We had a nice visit and hopefully cheered her up a bit.

After that we took a drive over to Buckhorn to see what it was like there. I have to tell you, other than a restaurant where you can dock your boat and eat, along with an ice cream place, there wasn’t much else to see. But I will say this, the ice cream shop’s chocolate mint ice cream was mighty tasty. Mighty tasty indeed. So tasty in fact that I may have had two.

After that, seeing as there were no motels around the area, we drove on north to Huntsville and stayed there for the night. I kinda half like Huntsville for some reason, not sure why. Maybe it’s because my wife and I used to go there a lot with the kids way back in the seventies. Good memories have a way of making a place feel like home even years later.

At any rate, we spent the night at the Best Western. The room was…. well, let’s just say it was a roof over our heads and leave it at that. The price for the night though was outrageous. After taxes it came in at a smidgin over two hundred dollars. For two hundred dollars I was half expecting a butler and a mint on the pillow. I got neither. With them prices I can see why the parking lot was empty, and so were the ones right beside it at the Holiday Inn and Motel Six. At any rate I was tired and didn’t want to drive anymore, so not much one can do about it.

You know, the more my wife and I look around in other towns south of us here in Port Loring, the less I am liking it. People down there are so rushed. We were out in the country going the speed limit and folks were coming up behind us, swerving out to pass, blowing the horn, giving us the finger. You know that middle finger that seems so important these days. I always thought that finger was meant for pointing at things worth looking at. Apparently not.

Even in the small towns we stopped at along the way, most folks were so unfriendly that I would never go back. One place we were about to go into, and the person working there said, “Sorry, it’s four o’clock, we are closed, you will have to leave.” I guess they never heard of being courteous. At our store, or should I say gift shop, if someone comes in to look around even after we are closed, we accommodate them. Old school way of doing things I guess, but call it what you will, it’s the way my wife and I are. Been that way all our lives, even way back on the farm when we went to market selling our produce.

Other than that we had a good trip, but still really happy to be back home.

Bug Report: We did notice the black flies have eased off some, but them blood sucking parasites the mosquitoes were annoying us something fierce and forced us out from under our old basswood tree and back to the front porch. But it is spring and we do live in the middle of the bush, so it’s to be expected this time of year. Once the dragonflies awaken for another year they will make things more bearable for the rest of the summer. Although with every one of our bird houses being occupied this year with swallows and wrens, they have cleaned up a lot of them annoying bugs already. Between the birds and the dragonflies, the mosquitoes don’t stand a chance. At least that is what I keep telling myself.

Highway 522 has picked up some traffic wise, and will get even busier once large mouth bass season opens up, which is in a week or so.

Not much else has been happening around our area lately. So with that I am off for my breakfast that my lovely wife is making for me, and will then see if we can sit out on the front porch and enjoy a cup of tea. Then… well then I am not exactly sure what I will be doing. Will just have to wander over to my woodworking shop and I am sure something will find me that needs doing or looking after. Always does.

You all have a great day, and keep your minds open and your stories alive.

George Walters

Click on Image to Enlarge!

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