Outstanding

The other day while I was walking Buster or should I say while Buster was walking me, we stopped to do our business at the side of the road. When I say we did our business, Buster squatted and squeezed out one or two capsules of food waste. I stood by trying not to watch him and readied the plastic bag. Man’s best friend indeed! A true friend wouldn’t make me pick up his shit and carry it around for a couple of miles.

 

So, while I was waiting for Buster to find the perfect spot to drop his load I couldn’t help but notice that the leaves were cascading down around me like large, yellow snowflakes. The same thing was happening the length of the street and it was beautiful. I’m sure that the owners of the properties that the leaves were falling on might have a different opinion but they are obviously wrong. We don’t get a large variation in leaf colour in western Canada, but I have come to appreciate the monochrome nature of our Nature.

 

I would love to have the variety of hues that eastern Canada gets every fall but I suspect I would have many thousands of multi-coloured tree pictures on my computer and in albums as well as boxes that would need to be tossed out when I die. We do get some colour variation, but mainly the reds come from bushes and the odd (how the hell did that get here?) deciduous tree. 

 

Louise and I took a drive south of the city today and took more than a few pictures of the fall colours. More for the kids to toss out when I die. The most stunning contrasts came when those yellow leafed trees were mixed with many thousands of coniferous trees. The bright yellow and deep green took my breath away. Could have been from Covid, but hopefully not.

 

It is also the time of year when the ranchers harvest the hay…straw and leave the bales out to dry. When I was growing up there was only one kind of hay bale  which was rectangular and about 3’ X 2’ X 2’ and they weighed about 50 pounds. The farmers or the farmers kids would stack them in a pyramid shape to dry and eventually put them into the barn or in some kind of shed so that the animals would have something to eat and sleep on during the winter. That was in Ontario. Out here in Wild Rose Country the bales tend to be about six feet around and weigh in at around 1200 pounds needing a tractor attachment to move them. They used to be tied with a twine, but today we noticed that they seemed to be wrapped with a light green plastic. I don’t know if that is to keep the rain off the hay or if it is just more efficient. There is a good chance that I will never know and I’m good with that. I don’t have to know everything. All I really need to know is that hundreds of those large, round bales of hay look stunning with the gold and green backdrop of trees.

 

I did notice some very large, rectangular bales that were 4’ X 4’ X 8’ and from a distance looked like the bales I remember from childhood. I have no idea why one farmer would use small bales, one would use large round bales and still others would use those humongous, rectangular ones. I could Google it, but to tell the truth I just don’t think Google would give me the same kind of answer I could get from a local rancher.

 

Now…where am I going to find a local rancher? One that is out standing in his field.