Away & Return

We've been in Calgary for a week-ish attending an important and memorable wedding, connecting with family and friends, collecting things from storage and doing some shopping. This morning I woke up and actually missed waking up in our house in Saskatchewan.  This week I have felt like I have a foot in both places, somehow moving towards both places. We are in Calgary, but are headed back to Saskatchewan, but are also making plans to return here in September. Lots of mental jumping back and forth.





We are on our way! And I am looking forward to returning to that pretty green and yellow land. Time now feels a bit shorter and I am hoping to do some more art before its Calgary time again.  I did manage to squeeze in one bit of Plein Air painting before we left. My easel and I went exploring the country roads and in the heat of the day (an especially hot day - unwise, I know) and spent a couple hours tackling the canola fields in paint.  The rest of my panels are all prepped & ready and I am ready for  more painting. Plus every nice painting I do means a nice thing on our otherwise rather bare walls.



Somewhere in the rest between our guests leaving and our hurried prepping for Calgary, Jeff and I gave in to our curiosity about all the feathery creatures that frequent our trees and buildings and wires, picked up a book and some binoculars and have the beginnings of becoming birdwatchers.  It's a nice compliment to our anti-gopher and squirrel stance, and makes me at least, feel less like I am against every animal around. And there are so many birds! They probably even outnumber the squirrels and gophers (which, by the way, we return from Calgary eager and better equipped to counter). We had already recognized the few birds we were familiar with; robins, chickadees and woodpeckers, but we discovered that we probably have three kinds of woodpeckers (downy woodpecker, sapsucker, and a mystery one). We also spotted hummingbirds (the green ones), yellow shafted northern flickers, barn swallows and a couple mysterious fluffy brown birds. We may also have tree swallows.  Clearly more binocularing is required, and maybe I'll try to gather some photos for you instead of just feathers.



We did manage to pick up some much needed items in Calgary: gopher traps, more garden implements (to replace and supplement the borrowed), a trimmer, extra sweaters, more plants, more tea (okay - much wanted), some new housewares, and all the things we forgot the first go round (we hope).  We stumbled upon a yard sale in the wedding middle-time and even found a wheel barrow wheel at a price we were happy with, which we definitely needed.  We feel well equipped, strengthened by good company and generally eager to get back to the acreage work.