Peas for Brains

 We are camped in the middle of a farmers corn field.  #1 son's acreage is surrounded by a farmers fields.  Every year their scenery changes as the crops are rotated.

I somehow got Terri into my reading list, which I assume is like inbox at Multiply.  At least I could find it and read her last two blogs about sayings and school lunches.  Yahoo.  I could also find my blog to read comments and see all the mistakes in it that I will not bother to fix.  The spacing between words went funny after I added an extra picture.  I feel like I still have peas for brains.  I found my way back here but don't have time this morning to journal about Manitoba. 

Instead I will tell about these chickens here at my son's house.# 1 son and his wife heard about an egg factory that was giving away hens or planning to slaughter them as they had laid for a a year and were slowing down.  So they quicky built a coop of old pieces of lumber, and a free run to keep out the raccoons and foxes around here and went to get 6 of them.  The grand-girls named them Bobbie, Billie, Sandra......   The hens didn't know how to forage which is just plain cruel.  They wouldn't come out of the coop, wouldn't fly up to the roosts or nesting area and slept in a pile on the floor.  They laid eggs on the floor and their combs were pale pink and droopy.  I just looked out and noticed that three were actually at the end of the run doing the peck-peck thing.   They are eating seeds off of the weeds too.                                                                            This was a picture from last week when they were pushed out of the coop and the door shut for a half hour to make them stay outside for awhile.  They had never seen grass or the sun.  Pretty sad-looking, scrawny chickens they were.  Now the door is only closed at night and they come and go freely and their combs are looking brighter red but still limp.  They still sleep in a pile on the floor but maybe that is better than a single-celled cage of wire.   Just the way they move now is a delight to watch.  I sometimes am in despair about our big farming methods to feed the masses.  I will take an after picture before we head back west.                  

Travelling east across Canada

All the provinces have their own special beauty.  The prairie provinces are so vast.  You can travel on the secondary roads for hours before someone catches up to you and passes.  It is startling when they do.  In three hours on #13 we only met 6 pickups coming towards us and you can see their dust for miles before you meet them.  We silly old folk (some say farts) laugh and yell "Congestion" when we see other vehicles.

 Saskatchewan is very flat and we took a poor choice of a route as much of it is loose gravel.  After a day of that kind of travel we settled in and to my dismay I found I had to get out the dust-buster (hand-held vacuum) to vacuum my cosmetics drawer, the utensils drawer and even had to vacuum Old Man's underwear and socks.  Then to my dismay the layers of sandy dust in the bins below were even worse.  I had to wash the BBQ three times before we could cook on it.  I cleaned all the drawers and cupboards inside the unit but decided to leave cleaning the storage bins along the sides under the unit outside, until we got to Ontario.  #1 son will have a shop vac.  Some drawers and bins were still pristine.  I do not know where the dust comes in.   It is a good thing the scenery was enchanting.  :)Even when we got back on paved roads I did not like passing the slow-moving combines.  It was spitting rain at this spot also.

We stopped for lunch and Old Man's nap at a small village called Oxbow.  These small villages/towns that are about an hour apart all seem to have their own water towers with their town name largely painted on them,                                                                          curling/skating rinks,
and cenotaphs to the local heroes,(this one was in Ogema),
playgrounds and swimming pools,

and retirement housing. 

While Old Man napped I went for my walk-about and also noticed that again these folk work hard to make their towns look good for summer visitors.  Oxbow has a programme where the purple hanging baskets are each in memory of a local person whose name is on the plaque above them.  Oxbow was full of purple flower beds and hanging baskets.



The most interesting find was a tent revival meeting being held on the school grounds.  I heard the grating tone of the preacher long before I got to the school, and knew it sounded like some fundamentalist ranting.  Sure enough....the sign proclaimed what they were about and other times for meetings. 
I thought tent revivals had gone the way of the dodo birds.  The tent was full too.  I am missing emoticons right now.  I need the round yellow head that looks stunned. Tomorrow I hope to cover Manitoba. 

I'm here but feeling lost.

I almost switched to this little angel for my avatar.  She is just as sweet as I am.  Adding pictures seems a bit easier here than at Multiply.  I will try adding some of the place we took the grand-girls to last week for a camping trip on the St. Lawrence River. 

The Long Sault Parkway is a string of eleven Islands that have Provincial camping spots on them.  We will try more of them during our visit.

 I need to just work on here for a few weeks to find my way around.  It is frustrating not having the edit key at the bottom.  Maybe I will use that angel child up above for my photo until I get to have a current one done that doesn't make me look like a dork.  I really want to put in my own background.  I will not blog anymore on Multiply.  Tomorrow I will cover our travels east through the south of Manitoba.  My son is inside his house and was late home from work as he is turning over some responsibilities to others this week.  He has dark circles under his eyes so I decided to let him watch a movie and relax tonight.  He does computer programming and troubleshooting all day so doesn't need more after dark.  I am happy to be here now. 

But how do I get a contact list of all of you, and where will it be, and how do I send my site?