Category Archives: Outdoor Activities
Annie and the Honeydew Man
I posted this about five years ago and came across it again. I thought it was a sweet picture and couldn’t resist reposting it.
When my sisters and brother and I were little, we lived in a newly built, but unfinished house on the edge of town. The streets weren’t even put in place yet. Our road was just a track through a field of yellow grass. But it was perfect for us to play cowboys and gallop our pretend horses around the trails and up and down the hills of dirt that were not yet backfilled to the new house. We pretended to be characters from the western movies of the day — Annie Oakley, Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, and Dale Evans. But Annie was my favourite. My sister, maybe almost three years old, was really too little to keep up with us as we tore around on the hills of dirt, so she played Annie Oakley with a toy shotgun and guarded the house while the rest of us were out on the range.
I don’t know what is wrapped around her right hand, and I just noticed for the first time in decades that there is a doll peeking out from behind her left shoulder.
Fast forward to more modern times. When the Captain and I were on one of our trips to Baja California, we stopped to do some shopping in Ensenada. I found a puppet-style doll that I couldn’t live without. She was the Mexican version of Annie Oakley.
What made me even happier, was buying the doll that had to be her partner. He is pictured here.
The store proprietor told me that this doll represents the hen-pecked husband, the Honeydew man (Honey, do this and Honey, do that), but in Spanish they called this fellow a “mandilon,” because he is ordered about, and, in the original version of the word, probably wore an apron (a mandil). What woman would not want a mandilon to do things for her? I had to have this doll!
*****
In my novel Orion’s Gift, Sylvia is all alone in the world. It seems that her life has taken a sudden turn and everything has been going wrong for her. Her husband is all about himself, and would not understand the news she just received in a letter.
She is trying to outrun her problems by escaping what she once thought was a perfect life near San Diego. She leaves everything behind to “run away” to Baja California where she plans to live in her VW van.
Baja seems to be a place for runaways. She meets Kevin at one of the campsites, and although there is an immediate attraction, Kevin has problems of his own.
Sylvia really needs moral support, so I gave her a mascot to lend her strength. Below is a short excerpt from Orion’s Gift, telling about how Sylvia came to adopt Annie.
Excerpt:
In one shop, handmade puppets on strings hung from the ceiling. Each doll had a unique character and, like orphans hoping to be adopted, seemed to call, “Take me with you.” I fell in love with a Mexican Annie Oakley. She held a mini six-gun in each hand and radiated confidence and self-reliance. I paid for her and happily carried her home to my van. I rigged up a spot on the curtain rod behind the seat for Annie to watch over me at night. She’d be my mascot, a reminder that I was strong and could take care of myself.
You can read Sylvia’s story in my novel “Orion’s Gift.” She’s going to need Annie’s strength to face some of the challenges of being a woman travelling alone in Baja.
The e-book version is marked down to only 99 cents on amazon.com for the next few weeks. 
Moon on Silver Star
Photo at Silver Star (ski hill) courtesy of Pat G.
Brightly lit, the night is silent,
Snow has muffled sound,
Footsteps spoil the peaceful evening,
Crunching all around.
Moonlight guides me to my cabin,
Warmth and comfort cheer,
Beauty outside, cozy fire,
Best of two worlds here.
Night on the Ski Hill
The ski hill is beautiful, day or night.
More snow is on the way.
Surrealistic wonderland,
Lit up electrically,
A fairyland of paths and trees,
It lures us magically.
The moguls swirl like ocean waves,
Prepared to toss about
The skiers who would dare descend
Around them, in and out.
Thanks for the photos, Pat.
A Bright New Morning
No soul in sight
It’s getting light,
The air is crisp,
Beneath the wisp
Of clouds that let
The sunshine get
To shine on me
Before I ski.
Okay, so I made that up; I’m not going to ski, but I can imagine and dream a little.
But those who stand there on this hill,
Are feeling anything but chill.
Filling lungs with crisp, clean air,
Joyful and without a care.
Oxygen revives their brains,
As the plaque inside them drains.
O-k-a-y…
I must stop this silly rhyming,
As I’m losing all my timing.
*****
Have a happy 2025.
Thank you, Pat, for the photos.
V is for Vegetable and Varied Thrush
I look forward to springtime when I can try once again to have a good garden.
Vegetables never taste as good as when they are fresh from the garden.
Meanwhile, the varied thrush is singing “Merry Christmas” to you while you wait for spring.
V is for vegetable and varied thrush.
M is for Mice
Where is your mother, little mice?
You’d better get back into your nest.
Mama Mouse was found in an old apple box that, once she had jumped into it, was too high for her to jump out of.
Mama Mouse was exhausted from all the jumping efforts, and lay still after her rescue, soaking up the warmth until she recovered from her ordeal.
In a few moments, she perked up, and remembering her children, rushed to save them.
M is for Mighty Maisie the mama mouse and her three blind mice.
I know that some people are afraid of mice, but how do you think they feel about us?
Here is one of my favourite poems by Rose Fyleman:
Mice
I think mice
Are rather nice.
Their tails are long,
Their faces small.
They haven’t any chins at all.
Their ears are pink,
Their teeth are white.
They run about
The house at night.
They nibble things
They shouldn’t touch
And no one seems
To like them much.
But I think mice
Are nice.
Polly the Bore
This fungus is called phaeolus schweinitzii, or more commonly, Dyer’s polybore. It is also called velvet-top fungus, or pine dye polybore, or Polly, as I call it.
In my yard, it seems to come back every year in this same location, near the roots of a large fir tree that was felled several decades ago, and usually Polly has a “baby” nearby. It’s not a good fungus to have near your trees, as it will rot the roots and do a lot of damage to the tree.
The redeeming quality about Polly is that this fungus was used for making a dye to colour wool or other materials, hence the name Dyer’s polybore.
But definitely, do not try to eat it. Polly will make you very sick.
You can see the size of the fungus by comparing it to the fir cones nearby.
The photo above was taken a few days ago, but the ones below were taken last year in the same location. I thought it was interesting that it grew around blades of grass – or maybe the grass grew through the fungus. I’m not sure what the process was.
Last year, just like this year, a baby polybore was growing nearby.
Notice that the baby Polly in each case looks like its mother.
I wonder if Polly will show up again next fall.
Squish, Squash
Why would a vegetable that has such a hard skin be called a squash?
These are only a few of the squashes ripening in my garden. I have no idea what they are called, but I know they all taste good.
About four years ago, a friend gave me an assortment of squashes just like these because he had so many in his garden and gladly shared them. I happily made meals with them and enjoyed them so much, I decided to save some of the seeds to plant in my own garden the next year.
I got a few of them planted and was happy to see them sprout at last, but in the time it took for them to sprout, many squash plants sprang up in my freshly rototilled garden patch. How did that happen? I had spread the contents of my compost barrel over the ground before rototilling, and in the compost were many seeds from the squash I had cleaned and eaten that previous winter.
For the third year in a row now, I have had volunteer squash plants growing in my garden. I didn’t have the heart to pull them out, except to thin them a bit.
Now there are so many squashes of all the types my friend gave me, that the plants are “squashing” each other.
… Guess what I’ll be eating all winter …
Nothing squishy, nothing squashy,
Simply bring them in to washy,
Cut in half and scoop the seeds,
Feed the compost what it needs.
Place them on a baking sheet,
Spread with butter smooth and neat,
Salt and pepper if you like,
Gives the taste a little spike.
Easy peasy supper treat,
Hot and filling, can’t be beat,
If you want a next year’s crop,
Fill your compost to the top.
When the springtime songbirds sound,
Toss that compost on the ground,
Mix it in and water well,
And the squash will grow like heck.
Discretion and Valor
If you love fishing and camping in solitary places, you might want to scout out your surroundings, before you go too far afield.
This mama grizzly and her two cubs (probably last year’s) like fishing and hanging out in solitary places too.
The fact that she still has both cubs could possibly mean that the fishing has been good and that mother and cubs are healthy and doing fine. However, people and grizzlies in close proximity to each other are usually not a good combination. I hope, for the grizzlies’ sake, that there is no interaction that will cause them to be trapped and “dispatched.”
These bears are on Vancouver Island where grizzlies are making an appearance in the last few years. They swim over from the mainland, island hopping to shorten the distance they need to swim. It’s possible that in this case the mother is trying to keep her cubs safe from male grizzlies who would be a threat to them. In some species, the male would kill the young to gain access to the mother and “have some fun with her.” The big cats are another example of this.
This photo was taken by a friend of the Captain near a favourite fishing spot. Sometimes, discretion is the better part of valor, hence the blurry quality of the photo. If the photographer had gone closer, the picture might have been clearer, but he might not have been around long enough to send it.
I think the friend probably decided to take a raincheck on fishing that day.
wordsfromanneli 