"Country Living"

I was originally raised in farm country, way up north near Burk's Falls, Ontario. We always had the barn work to do, the fields to work in summer and in the winter we cut fire wood and logs for sale to the mills. We also shipped out a lot of pulpwood, which was used for the manufacture of paper generally. You know at the time I always got a big thrill out of visiting the city and envied those who lived there. Well, WW2 came along so I left home at quite a young age for that. The war ended before I could get into the thick of it.

There were only two things I wanted to do ever since I was a kid. I wanted to be in show business and/or Law Enforcement work. I joined the Police Force in 1948 and pretty well made that my life-long pursuit, with the exception of being a booking agent, MC and "Front Man" for Wonderland Ranch Enterpirises, forerunners of today's Country Music in Canada. I was listed in "Billboard" and "Variety" as the Agent for this Booking and Talent Agency for four years in the mid-fifties. and then some rather serious covert work I cannot talk about even today. Then I served a few years as a Flight Lieutenant in the R.C.A.F (Res.Ed.Br.), then back to Law Enforcement. Anyway, after spending many years living in big cities where I generally dealt with the "seamier" side of life I found that I was starting to think wistfully of my younger years in the country. As my wife, Joyce had inherited her Mom's house when she died, we fixed it up and rented it rather than sell it just so we would always have a place to fall back to. Glad we did too. We had rented it for 16 years to a nice elderly couple from England and as some old injuries were starting to tell as I got older, we both decided to take our pensions and move up here.

Well it's now 17th August, 2003 and have our plans ever changed! Joyce and I sold our home and we are now living in Port Colborne, Ontario .... right on the shore of another of this continent's Great Lakes .... Lake Erie. As a matter of fact we are only a couple of blocks from the entrance to the Welland Canal were it starts down that long drop past Niagara Falls on its way to Lake Ontario! After 16 years in Honeywood ... a beautiful country to say the least .... we finally had to admit that our age is catching up to us. The damn drifting snow in the winter time was what finally did it. The roads can drift closed in minutes there when the wind gets up and on that Niagara Escarpment it certainly does blow constanly from the west. Gave it all up and moved down here where the climate is a bit more moderate in winter but we are back into "town living" here as the population of Port Colborne is 18,450 people instead of the 150 people in the small village we lived in before! Oh well .... in time we will get used of it .... sure hope so anyway. As time goes by I shall be putting pictures of this area in here somewhere but right now I'll just be typically lazy and just update you on what we have been doing.

Joyce and I had spent a lot of our spare time while we were working our regular jobs, building a rather large multi-level marketing business which paid us quite handsomely. When we "retired" we spent a lot of our time travelling from our "retirement home" in Honeywood to many points both in Canada and the United States lecturing, etc.. We had countless numbers of Distributors throughout the world and this kept us quite active in our "retirement." It gave us the chance to not only make a pretty good income but it also gave us an opportunity to travel a great deal and meet many people. I have written much about self motivation, business-building and positive thinking as well as Natural Healing and Nutritional Supplements. We used to go on "motivation lecture tours" throughout Canada and the USA and were paid quite handsomely for them ... plus expenses. All in all ... a pleasant business to be sure.

Start GardenA Nice CropWell you saw the front of our "little house on the prairie" so to speak. The pictures left and right are the back yard of it. Joyce is the one with the "green thumb" in the family and as you can see from the picture on the left, she had just planted the garden. Not too long after that planting, I took another picture from the bathroom window again to show you what a great gardner she is! I'm afraid I was never too turned on with gardening but I did buy a Troy-Bilt Rear-tyne Rotor Tiller ... the "Horse" as they call it. It is powered with an eight horsepower electronic Kohler motor and can turn actual sod into potted soil with just a few passes. It is an amazing tiller because you just sort of "amble along beside it effortlessly" holding one of the handles and it does all the work for you. No lifting or grunting and groaning to keep it straight, etc.. My kind of Tiller. In the ten years I had it I don't suppose I put more than a hundred hours on it so I recently sold it to a neighbour as we are not keeping a very large garden any more ... can't use or even get rid of all the stuff we produced. We even grew celery, cantalopes and egg plants up here quite successfully! Trouble being ... my great nephew, Daren next door usually got to them before I had much of a chance to taste them. Nervy young pup:-)

This is just a small sample of some of Joyce's flowers that she grows around the house in the summer time. As I said above ... she is the one with "the green thumb" and a visit to the place would surely prove that point without argument. I often wondered how some people had the "gift" of being able to make beautiful things grow and I certainly found out when I married Joyce. It's something like "the old days" when she had to turn $5 into $15 because it always seemed we were short of money! How? I never did master that mystery and I am still a "spendthrift" to this day! You know ... "champagne taste but a beer budget!" .... yup .... that's me.

















These flowers were taken one year later in late June of 2001. Although we apparently have been much luckier than the folks out in Saskatchewan with their drought conditions, things were somewhat slower getting started this year. As Joyce is slated for major surgery in a day or so, 28th June, she still insists on having her garden and flowers! I'm afraid though, when she comes home to recuperate, I am going to have to "take the bull by the horns" and learn to do some gardening. I've taken many more beautiful close-ups of flowers on "macro" and am fascinated with the results. You ... of course are my "victims" as I'm going to be putting many in here or somewhere else on my Web Site. I might even have a separate section just for pictures of them .... they are such a pleasure to photograph and work on.

Here are two typical scenes of the famous Niagara Escarpment we live on. These picturesque shots were taken just a couple of miles from where we live. Just going up and down this escarpment at a fair speed can make your ears "pop." However, these two pictures are off the paved County Road on one of many sideroads of course and it is a wonderful place to simply drive through. The trees hang over the road almost blocking the sun out as you can see. Best of all it is a most peaceful and quiet place for a walk. No traffic ... no pollution ... lots of wild turkey, Canada Goose, deer, raccoon, wolves and coyote abound but they won't bother you. They are as nervous of you as you would be of them. Fresh air and lots of natural ozone and negative ions to give that feeling of well-being that only the forests can give you! This combination are Nature's natural way of healing not only the body but the soul as well. Come on up sometime and take a small hike through here. The Bruce Trail runs through it so why not you?

I dropped the picture on the right in here on 27th May, 2002 just to show you that this country is also darn good farming country as well. I stopped this morning on the way back from my usual morning meet with the "coffee gang" in Shelburne and took the picture right from the car. Too lazy to even get out to shoot it but it does give you an idea of what good cattle are raised here. These are Holstein cattle which are well known for the quality and volume of milk they produce.

Winter Scene - DunedinThe pictures here give you an idea of what our country looks like in the winter time as well. We are not too far from Georgian Bay, which is really a Bay of one of the Great Lakes of Canada/USA. We have a lot of very hilly land as we live on the Niagara Escarpment which runs all the way from Niagara Falls, winding its way all the way up the Bruce Peninsula which juts out into Lake Huron. This stretch of land is one side of Georgian Bay as you can see on your map. The Niagara Escarpment is now listed officially as a "World Biosphere Reserve." As there is a great variety of types of soil throughout, this land not only provides good skiing and snowmobiling but rather large fruit farms such as apples, plums, cherries, strawberries, rasberries, etc.. The whole area is also one of the main sources of potatoes as well. Parts of it being the hilly country it is and the fact that we get a lot of snow most winters, it is famous for its Ski Resorts such as Horshoe Valley, Blue Mountain, Mt. St. Louis, Snow Valley, Mansfield Skiways, there are too many of them for me to name them all here.

Now that I have the new Nikon 990 Digital Camera (brag ... brag:-) I can simply point and shoot and download it from the camera to my computer ... do whatever I want with it in Photo Shop and either print it or put it on the Net, which I'm doing right now. This is a picture I took this morning (13th August) when Joyce and I were coming back from having breakfast at "The Junction" restaurant in Dundalk. (See "Neat Local Places") It is my niece Terry and her husband Stan's new home at the edge of town here. He recently had his driveway paved and has been doing a lot of tree planting, etc. It is about 3 or 4 acres so he has a lot of lawn to do. He uses a rather big riding mower with an "articulate" mower attachment (self powered) hooked onto it. All in all it cuts a nine foot swath of grass!! Stan and Terry have looked after us for years now by blowing out our driveway, plus many other things and now since he got this new mower ... we haven't had to mow our lawn since!! Talk about "caring for the aged!" :-) Stan is the nephew I have made reference to, many places throughout this Site as a "character", which he is. However, he is a character that cares for his neighbours and has ever since he was a child. Joyce and I could not manage without their generous gestures all these years and we love them very much. (Don't ever tell Stan that or it will spoil my image :-) They have a son Daren and a daughter, Shannon who recently made them very proud grandparents of a baby boy, Ryan. Ryan is shown below right in one of his typical poses. Now talk about "relaxed!" *** By the way .... Stan will probably shoot me for putting his picture in here. Yuk Yuk . .

Harley/Ford

Well Stan hasn't "clobbered" me yet for putting his picture in here so I'm going to get bolder yet! Today .... 22nd August, Joyce and I drove him and Terry up to Collingwood to Hanna Motors where he took possession of his brand new "Limited Edition" truck. It is one of only 2,000 produced by Ford, celebrating the 100 year mark for them and Harley-Davidson. It is the Harley Davidson/Ford F150 Edition. They are VERY expensive but are going to wind up being much more expensive because it is such a one time only "Special Edition." The inside is very much like the interior of the new Lincoln Navigator. Leather seats, club cab with quite large seats in the rear, CD, Stereo and all the goodies that my last car, a Lincoln Town Car had and the Grand Marquis I drive today. All in all a very fine piece of equipment and I know they will enjoy it immensely. Here's to you Stan and Terry. "You can't take it with you so you might as well enjoy yourselves! We pass this way but once."

Pictured on the right here is my nephew Stan with his new mower and the "articulate" attached behind. He is cutting our grass, a twelve foot swath God Bless him and I can tell you that once you start showing those damn signs of age, you really appreciate things like this. He doesn't like getting his picture taken very much so, "practising" with my new digital camera I had an excuse to shoot on telephoto as our property is not small. Not as large as his is but damn big when you have to cut the grass!

I would be remiss if I didn't include another cherished member of the family pictured on the left above. His name is "Bud" and they got him when I could have held three of his size in my one hand. I'm not too sure what breed he is but whatever it is he is not "pure bred." He has to be one of the smartest dogs I have ever seen and I have seen quite a few in my day, being from the farm. As I love animals anyway, I undertook to try and train him a bit early in his life and must say that I swear he almost knows how to talk. Although he is Stan and Terry's son. Daren's dog (pictured holding him), he generally stays with Terry and Stan ... sometime sharing his time between their places. Although they pay his license fees and feed him, I have always considered him "MY" dog! He goes almost berserk even when he hears me on the telephone. One time I was calling from Las Vegas talking to Stan and Bud was yapping like crazy. Stan had to put the phone to his ear so I could talk to him and settle him down!

I have been trying to get a picture of him for years but, although he will do ANYTHING else for me, he shies away from the camera like it was the plague or something. Maybe someone flashed him in the eyes with one to make him so shy of cameras. However, when I got my new Nikon Digital camera I was able to get pictures of him, although Daren had to hold him on his knee. I hope to get better pictures of him once I can convince him the camera won't hurt him. Anyway, here is the little rascal we all spoil to pieces and love him to pieces as well. I've desparately been trying to get a picture of him for a long time now as he is over twelve years old now and we won't have him forever. It would be a shame if we didn't have at least one good picture of him to remember the little rascal.

Well the picture on the left was the best I was able to do at the start of my Nikon adventure (August, 2000) so far as getting a "Portrait" of Bud. If you look carefully, you will see that it was taken from the one above while he was sitting on Daren's knee. I simply cut his head from that picture .... carefully erased whatever part of Daren was showing, put a "cloudy" background behind him and what you see is what you get. However ... more than a year later (November, 2001) while Joyce and I were "baby-sitting" Bud for a week or so I sort of "sneaked up" on him a couple of times and got this shot on the right. He sure don't like the flash and will do almost anything to get away from one. However, like us he is getting older and a little more tolerant I guess and I was able to shoot a few pictures of him successfully. He's a smart little "whip" and when I tell him to "sit up" ... he does it without question. The picture on the right shows how well he responds to a command ..... most of the time!

I thank you for your indulgence and patience and really appreciate it as I know I "ramble" on. I do however, hope that at least some of what I put in is interesting and maybe will at least "give you a grin." If you think I'm doing okay or if it's interesting at all would you drop me an e-mail and let me know. If it's criticism .. hell I can handle that too:-)

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