Monuments of peace?

They say trees are monuments of peace, but I guess that precludes peace of mind if you find yourself laying awake at night during a windstorm, wondering whether this will be the one that fells the beast. The beast being the tall white pine that hangs above our bedroom like a Damocles, leaning in at a crazy angle that appears to worsen every year.
The summer in this part of Ontario was a particularly bad one for storms, and apparently worse for the trees, of which our lonesome pine was a collateral victim. One night the big one blew through from the 'wrong side', which is apparently what caused the damage to many fine specimens in our town. I was told this by the tree guy who came over to inspect our pine after it displayed a new and interesting list to starboard.
"When wind blows in the opposite direction to the prevailing winds," he said, leaning over backwards and staring skywards to gauge the height-to-dollar ratio of the pine, "trees are taken by surprise and have no natural defense mechanism to bend with the flow - they can't deal with too much pressure from the wrong quarter and will either break or fall over, like yours is about to do."
I guess we're the same as trees in that a surprise never ceases to surprise.
"How tall is it?" I ask him.
"How tall do you think it is?" he fires back smugly.
I gaze up, scratch my nose, and coyly suggest seventy feet, expecting to be shot down immediately.
That's pretty close for a layman he says rubbing his chin.
How much to get rid of it I ask.
He feigns a degree in calculus and then casually imparts a fee of $1400.
The analytical part of my brain comes up with twenty bucks a foot. Damn! I should have said fifty feet, but surely then he would have corrected me.

read my mind: Moving to work

read my mind: Moving to work: "'A fixer-upper, and it's just round the corner! Let's move!'

Believe it or not, those few innocent words spoken with much glee and gay ab..."

read my mind: Authorly flowery in Amsterdam

read my mind: Authorly flowery in Amsterdam: "As this is my first blog posting, I have chosen to give a little background to recent events which led up to the profile picture I utilize ..."

Moving to work

"A fixer-upper, and it's just round the corner! Let's move!"

Believe it or not, those few innocent words spoken with much glee and gay abandon by my lovely wife, have haunted me for the past few months.

It's not that I don't like a good fixer-upper, especially one that'll work out the kinks in my lazy muscles and oust the creative cobwebs from my seized cerebral cortex, but this was a big deal.

Why big? Because the house was all potential. It had nothing more to lose and everything to gain. It might as well have been labelled dilapidated.

Remembering the line our Realtor used when we asked him to get us an appointment to view the house, still gives us a chuckle. It went something like; "The land's nice, I expect you'll want to flatten the house and start afresh..."

Not likely. Now I sit here, the house newly renovated and still in pain from hammering through too many pounds of four inch framing nails.

It turns out that I have stressed a ligament in my wrist and elbow and guess what, writing is not much fun at the moment, especially when tapping on these keys. Even the mouse is fighting back and winning easily.

I impart these tidbits, not just for a little sympathy, but also for an understanding as to why my blog updating has lapsed.

"Take it easy" said the doc, "and you'll be back to normal within a few months."

Easy words for a man who can afford the price of professional trades these days.

Oh well, no pain no gain.

Authorly flowery in Amsterdam

As this is my first blog posting, I have chosen to give a little background to recent events which led up to the profile picture I utilize on this blog. Hopefully this may be of interest.

On a recent trip to Amsterdam, my wife and I decided to squeeze in a trip to a tulip farm, as it was the season, and tulips are the one quintessential Dutch attraction that we'd never experienced.

One morning after a reconnaissance trip down to the lobby of our hotel, (spent bugging the locals and hotel staff in pidgin English for the best tulip excursion suggestions), I came back to the room armed with a name: "Kuikenhof" which, apparently, was only a 30 minute bus ride away.

My wife, being more familiar with Afrikaans than I, and because it was so similar to Dutch, translated the word to mean "Chicken Hall" or "Chicken Headquarters", or something equally as poultry. She smiled sympathetically at me before sending me downstairs again, this time on a verification mission, as she had no desire to visit a smelly chicken farm - she could accomplish that with ease back home in Canada, she said, with odious intonation.

Well, suffice to say, I came back with the same recommendation, so we decided to throw all caution to the wind and take a risk, be adventurous, not be chicken. Off to Kuikenhof.

The picture above, taken at Kuikenhof, proves that I can sometimes be trusted in matters foreign, even when doubted by an expert.