Before Photos of the Bench

A couple of years ago I found this bench in the garbage (much to my youngest son, William's, dismay since he was with me at the time).  I've always wanted a bench like this and I love this one for its rustic charm and its free price tag.

This weekend hubby and I are going to tackle fixing it up - joining the two halves together and painting it.  I'm not sure what colour, but I'm thinking either blue, using leftover paint from the front door which you can see here, or white.  What do you think?

I'm looking forward to setting my tea down on it, putting a plant on it, sitting on it - the possibilities are endless.  Check back on Monday for the 'after' photos.

Houses in Winnipeg

As you know I was in Winnipeg this past weekend visiting relatives.  I wanted to show you some photos I took of houses in a lovely area of Winnipeg called Wolseley.   See they even have their own sign posted on a telephone pole above a bird house.

Wolseley is an area that is located near the centre of Winnipeg with the houses being built mostly between 1905 and 1930.  Many of the people who live in that area now are artistic and socially/politically active.  It really has a granola, hippie feel to it.  For example there are not many areas that you would see this going by - someone biking along towing a canoe - yep that's pretty granola all right.

Winnipeg is a prairie city of about 670,000 and one of the main trees in the area is elm.  Wolseley is particularily famous for its lovely elm-lined streets (they all have sticky strips around them to keep them healthy against bugs and Dutch Elm Disease).

This next house won an award for its preservation of historic details.  Isn't it gorgeous.

And now for the hippie element - how's this one.  I bet it looks very cheery in the middle of  winter.

What I especially love is the roof-top garden at the back.

And one example of the artistic side of Wolseley is this lovely wooden horse statue in someone's front yard.

Those beautiful historic houses are almost enough to make me want to move to Winnipeg - now if they could just do something about the weather.

How a Dog Got a Home

 

Our dog, Juno, has been with us for two years this May.  She has a sad, pathetic, tragic story so I thought I would share it with you.

Two years ago we were talking about getting a dog, and then we were asked to look after a 10-month old puppy for a weekend.  After that we all decided NO DOG.  Way too much work.  So a few months later hubby and I were at a party with our bridge group and I was telling the story of looking after this puppy who was into everything and how we had decided not to get a dog.  The woman beside me obviously thought we could still be persuaded because she asked me if I wanted a dog.  The previous evening a little Yorkie had shown up in her breezeway (and she lives out in the country) all wet and shivering and covered in burrs.  She couldn't keep it so she wondered if we wanted it.  

We went home and discussed it with the kids.  We didn't even know what a Yorkie looked like so we Googled pictures of them.  We saw pictures like this:

and this:

 and this:

Yikes!!!  Apologies if anyone reading this has a Yorkie that looks like these ones, but they just weren't to our taste.  Then we found some that looked like this:

and this:

and we were reassured that they actually were normal looking dogs.  So we decided that we should give this little lost Yorkie a home.  After we picked up our new dog, we called around to the Humane Society to see if she was lost, but the Humane Society told us that another Yorkie (a male) was found in the same general area and they had run ads in the newspaper and noone had responded.  The Humane Society thought that both Yorkies were from a puppy mill and had been dumped together out in the country.  We took our dog to the vet and found out that she was probably about 6-7 years old and had been the mother in the puppy mill.  She has very enlarged nipples, had a lax belly, and had dark marks on her belly that the vet said were likely the marks of an old uterine infection.  So she had probably had one litter after another and now that she was older they got rid of her.  Thankfully the blood tests and her examination showed that she was a very healthy dog apart from being a bit thin.  

We picked the name Juno because we wanted a name that was not too feminine (scared off  by those crazy bows-in-the hair photos), but was still a girl's name.  Juno seemed to reflect the following, in no particular order:

• Juno is the Roman goddess of marriage and childbirth (seemed appropriate given her past)
• William wanted a tough guard dog sort of name so he expanded her name to "Juno-the-war-dog"
• Juno beach given that our daughter, Kate, had just returned from Normandy, France three days before we got our dog
• Juno the movie because Kate likes the movie - a lot - okay that was a weak reason but somehow it still counted
• Juno was easy to say and sounded like a good name for a dog

We have all fallen truly, madly, deeply in love with our dog.   I was probably one of the least keen on getting her and I have ended up being alpha dog.

I have to say that having a dog, has given a whole new meaning to the phrase "working like a dog".  See what I mean, this is what Juno does 23 hours a day.
 

One last photo of our camo-dog at the cottage.
 

About Winnipeg and the Snakes

I'm posting this from Winnipeg, where I've come to visit some family for the weekend.  Winnipeg is also known as 'Winterpeg' (for good reason as it has an average winter temperature of -23 C (-9 F) ) , so it's definitely a good thing I'm visiting in the spring.

This was how I entertained myself while I was waiting for the plane.  Do you see the man in the lower left corner of the photo wearing a red hoodie and a green vest.  

Here's a close-up of what he was doing - playing with a yo-yo!  Too funny. 

When I got to Winnipeg there were relatives to visit, including a sweet little niece that gave me a dandelion.

Today we went to the Narcisse Snake dens to see the red-sided garter snakes that over-winter in limestone pits in the ground and every spring they emerge by the thousands to mate and then leave to go to their summer grounds.  They were only just starting to come out of hibernation but we did get to see some snakes and even some clusters of mating snakes.  

 

I'm not a real fan of snakes but I have to say it was very interesting.   I've read about these snake pits and always wanted to see them.   I did attach a couple of photos of the snakes but I didn't want to scare anyone.

There were hiking trails to follow between the four snake pits,

and snakes to hold,

and aspen trees with their leaves just emerging,

and an unusual basket-type bird nest to see.

A lovely day catching up with the relatives and the snakes.

Friday Photos - Old Faithful Inn

I might as well continue with the Yellowstone National Park theme that I have going (here and here) and show you something a bit architecture related - Old Faithful Inn.  We didn't stay there, but I went in the lobby and took some photos.

Isn't it the most remarkable structure?  The inn is like a log cabin on steroids.  The entire structure is wood, with the centre of the lobby extended up 4 floors with a huge stone fireplace going all the way up and the balcony railings having strange twisted branches.

The outside of the hotel is also decorated with the strange knobby, twisted wood pieces.

From a distance the Inn is also quite remarkable, with a huge sloping roof and many gabled windows.

Did you know that the Old Faithful Inn first opened in 1904.  It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1987 and is thought to be the largest log building in the world.  

And of course, there's Old Faithful herself - the reason for the Inn's existence - quite remarkable in its own right!