Wednesday, March 21, 2007

 

The Last Day of Winter






Yesterday was the last day of winter. So what did I do? I got some P.R.B.I. students to come over and shovel snow off the roof of our house. The guy in the first frame is Caleb. I knew him before we came to Sexsmith. He is a farm boy from the Thorhild area. He brought along two friends who are from Oregon. One is a roofer by trade so they had no problem up there even though they don't see much show in their home area.

After two hours of hard work they had the roof cleaned and the driveway (where most of the snow landed) cleared off.

Afterwards this is what our front yard looked like.

I plan on renting a snow blower on Saturday. With it I hope to remove this and a lot more snow from all around the house so when it melts it will be able to run away instead of into our basement!
This is the second time this winter that I've had snow cleaned of our roof (and only the fourth time in my life). Wehave had a record snowfall of about five feet this year.
Today, being the first official day of spring, the weather is warming up. The long range forcast is for warmer and warmer weather, and no snow! That's a blessing, seeing we have not seen the ground under our feet since the 27th of October.
Wishing all readers a wonderful spring.

Saturday, March 10, 2007

 

What Time Is It?

It's 11:00 O'Clock. Or it it actually Midnight? No, Daylight Saving Time doesn't officially start till 2:00 a.m. I guess they don't want to make the bars close an hour early because of the time change.

But is it ever 2:00 a.m.? Because then it will be 3:00 a.m. And why call it daylight saving time when we actually loose seep time?

And whom do we have to thank for this abberition? In early March no less? My American friends! Friends who post blogs about bright sunny days and "it it winter or spring." Well, in my corner of this time change its very much like winter. Well, the last few days were quite nice, but now its back to snow, snow, snow!

Apparently the first proponant of DST was an American (go figure). Benjamin Franklin calculated that we could save a lot of energy by make better use of the summer sun. Well, guess what? That's why we are experiencing the abberition so early this year.

I'm a little surprized because when I was a teen-ager, and we first experienced DST in our area, the argument was so the city folk could enjoy a longer evening playing golf or barbequing or whatever they did while us hard working farmers were slaving away doing chorse and working the fields from sun-up to sun-down no matter what the clock said (well, almost).

Dad, like most farmers, did'n like DST at all. He figured if the city man wanted to get home from work earlier, he could just get up earlier (with Dad), instead of messing with the clocks.

The cows don't like DST. Dad claimed that it took two weeks for their milk production to return to normal when he started milking them an hour early. And chickens? When Colleen worked on the chicken farm, they would adjust the artificial lighting and automatic feeding gradually over a two week period. But one year the new manager (a city boy) decided to make the change all at once. Well, it threw the chickens routine into such a tailspin that Colleen was two hours late getting home from picking eggs. And humans? On the first Monday morning of DST, there are more traffic accidents! (And less on the Monday we swith back!)

Here in the north the amount of daylight we get changes so much that changing the clock is almost redundant. We'll soon have more daylight than we'll know what to do with!

So what can I do? Stubbornly stay on standard time? Dad wanted to do that in his grumpier moments. Well, I could move back to Saskatchewan where they stay on Central Standard Time the year around. Why? The time zone division goes down the middle of the province, so this it the compromise they made. Works for them! And just west of here, in B.C.'s Peace country, they stay on Mountain Standard Time the year around. So during the winter they are the same as us Albertans with whom they do the most of their business, and during the summer they are the same as the rest of their province.

Meanwhile, I'll crawl into bed soon and complain about the early hour in the morning. Probably the worst thing about DST is that in happens on Sunday morning, and all across North America people will arrive at church an hour late!

Good night, see you in the daylight! Hope you're not late for church!

Thursday, March 01, 2007

 

Sunday Dinner


Three weeks ago Ted (my twin, can't ya tell!) and Jeanne and their daugher Sherlyn came up from Montana to see Grandma in the hospital. Grandma wanted to go to church so Ted took her. After church they went out for dinner together with my sister Mary and my brother Bill and his wife Lynda. It was a most memorable time.

Since then Grandma has opted to stay at the hospital and not go to church. She still looks very much as she does here but I believe she has a harder time getting around (i.e. getting in and out of vehicles). She still does well with her walker.








































































































































This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?