Ahoy!

Well, I saw something this morning that I had not seen for a few months....Killer Whales! I just happened to look through the telescope and spied the 6ft dorsal fin of a male slicing through the water then disappearing beneath the surface. He was headed West, toward the open sea, but most likely circling Vancouver Island. A few minutes later I spotted two females heading in the same direction so I am guessing it was one of the resident pods on a food excursion. There were a few fisherman out on the water at the time and I know when the whales go through the fish just scatter and hide, much to the dismay of the fisherman.

In the afternoon we went into town to do some errands and visited a few garden centers, looking for small plants to plant in the rocks of our retaining wall. Even though it is nice and sunny out there were not too many choices, yet, at the garden centers. I guess we are a bit too anxious. But we did chat with a cute guy at Garden Works on Old Island Highway so all was not lost. :o)

Stingray migration!

All I can say is this must have been an amazing sight to behold. I just received this via e-mail and have to share. You may have seen it before as I found posts going back to June 2008 about this, but it was new to me and very cool. I hope you enjoy it too.

Looking like giant leaves floating in the sea, thousands of Golden Rays are seen here gathering off the coast of Mexico. The spectacular scene was captured as the magnificent creatures made one of their biannual mass migrations to more agreeable waters.


Gliding silently beneath the waves, they turned vast areas of blue water to gold off the northern tip of the Yucatan Peninsula. Sandra Critelli, an amateur photographer, stumbled across the phenomenon while looking for whale sharks.

She said: 'It was an unreal image, very difficult to describe. The surface of the water was covered by warm and different shades of gold and looked like a bed of autumn leaves gently moved by the wind. It's hard to say exactly how many there were, but in the range of a few thousand'

'We were surrounded by them without seeing the edge of the school and we could see many under the water surface too. I feel very fortunate I was there in the right place at the right time to experience nature at its best'

Measuring up to 7ft (2.1 meters) from wing-tip to wing-tip, Golden rays are also more prosaically known as cow nose rays.

They have long, pointed pectoral fins that separate into two lobes in front of their high-domed heads and give them a cow-like appearance. Despite having poisonous stingers, they are known to be shy and non-threatening when in large schools.

The population in the Gulf of Mexico migrates, in schools of as many as 10,000, clockwise from western Florida to the Yucatan.

Jokes for fun.

'OLD' IS WHEN...
Your sweetie says, 'Let's go upstairs
and make love,' and you answer,
'Pick one; I can't do both!'


'OLD' IS WHEN...
Your friends compliment you
on your new alligator shoes
and you're barefoot.

'OLD' IS WHEN...
A sexy babe catches your fancy
and your pacemaker opens the garage door,

'OLD' IS WHEN..
Going braless
pulls all the wrinkles out of your face.

'OLD' IS WHEN...
You don't care where your spouse goes,
just as long as you don't have to go along.

'OLD' IS WHEN...
You are cautioned to slow down by the doctor

instead of by the police

'OLD' IS WHEN...
'Getting a little action'
means you don't need to take any fiber today.

'OLD' IS WHEN...
'Getting lucky' means you find your car
in the parking lot.

'OLD' IS WHEN...
An 'all nighter' means not getting up
to use the bathroom.

AND

'OLD' IS WHEN..
You are not sure these are jokes?

Fun stuff.

I found this site befunky.com through another blog and thought I'd have some fun with a picture from my childhood. Yes, that is me, at about 4 years of age. Cute, eh? Or maybe I should say creepy?? You upload a photo and apply some graphics and Voila! These took me less than 10 minutes. Have fun.

Gettin' down and dirty!

We are slowly getting the greenhouse ready for serious usage. Today we explored the electric line from the house to the greenhouse. We wanted to see how deep it might be buried and if it was encased in plastic piping. Well, we were hoping for the plastic encasement, seeing that most of the other work the previous owners did was of a pretty high calibre. It didn't quite turn out that way. The cable was MAYBE 2 inches below the lawn, its' only protection being the plastic coating it came with. So, my job was to dig a deeper trench and re-bury it. Yeah, easier said than done. I think every time I put the shovel to terra firma I was greeted by the pang of metal hitting rock. Seeing that we are on a hill with HUGE boulders being part of the natural landscape I was having visions of some multi-tonnage beast of a rock lurking just below the surface. Turns out it was just a bunch of little rocks mixed in with some pretty decent soil - nice and dark and having that warm Spring earthy smell. Oh baby!




Here is a photo of my trench before we filled it in. I wanted proof that I was actually doing some physical work!

Gettin' down and dirty!

Potty break.

OK, this idea comes from Oreneta Aground blog. She is from Toronto, well her family too, and they are now living in Spain, which sounds fantastic to me. Anywho, her idea, which came from somewhere else again, is to post a picture of your bathroom vanity and/or drawer, for all to see. I'm going out on a limb, but not too far as this is MY bathroom vanity, not the Master Bath nor the other half's vanity (we have 3 bathrooms). So here ya go.

On a lighter note...

Me thinks Spring is just around the corner. Here is tonight's sunset. Fabulous!

Terrorism and me.

It's all over the news, and all over the planet, but I never thought an act of terrorism would affect me. I live a nice quiet life, minding my own business, no longer live in a large metropolitan area so I figured, somewhat subconsciously I suppose, that terrorism would not really impact me. That is until today.

I was at work going through some mail that had arrived over the last few days. It got a bit behind because I was busy the last few days running reports, which puts my day to day processes on hold temporarily. Being in the magazine business it is a given that with a large subscriber base from time to time I receive notices, or phone calls, that a subscriber has passed away and can I please remove them from our mailing. I offer my condolences, if it comes in via the phone, and a few clicks of the keyboard and it is done. Well, today I received a notice in the mail that a subscriber had passed away in November and can I please discontinue the mailings. There was a form letter that was sent by the executor of the estate along with a provincial death certificate copy from Quebec. As I'm reviewing the certificate I see that the gentleman died late November and the place of death was Mumbai, India. Things start clicking in my mind, I mention it to a co-worker, and after a quick Google search we discover that the gentleman was one of two Canadians killed in the bombings that took place November 26th in Mumbai, the other being his partner who was there with him. I am surmising that he subscribed to our magazine shortly before they left for India. We all just kind of paused, looked at each other and reflected a bit.

Since moving to the Victoria area so many people here seem to be connected to each other and I have heard on many occasion that it is a small world. With this latest happening I am inclined to believe that it IS indeed a small world. You just never know what is going to cross your path so keep an open mind to the possibilities and don't rule anything out.

Thanks for tuning in and please click the link on the left to Help the Animals.