The News from Kenabeek

The weather has continued up and down around freezing, and the snow has melted, snowed again, melted again. The cloud has also continued, although there have been a few more sunny breaks than earlier in the fall. Today the temperature has been dropping again, and we’re supposed to get another two to four inches of snow overnight. Maybe this lot will stay! In the 15 years we’ve been here, we have always had at least some snow by Christmas, although one year it was only a few days before. Usually we have at least a few inches, staying long-term.

Although November with little or snow can be bleak, it has certainly provided opportunity to enjoy the huge variety of subtle colour in the dried grasses, everything from deep, dark brown, to red-brown and yellow, through various tans, to just off-white … there is a particular colour, in the dead cornstalks and some grasses, which I can only describe as a pale, silvery brown. They are all particularly attractive in the sunlight, of course!

I don’t think it’s been so wet in all the time we’ve been here – there is water standing in the fields, and in several of them it looks like there’s a new crop coming up, probably winter wheat planted in October. I know it’s not just weeds, because of the uniformity of the seedlings, and the fact they are in rows, like a very fine wale corduroy. This must be very bad news indeed for the farmers, who will have to re-seed their fields, or have nothing come up in the spring. And the pig farmer up the road appears to have given up harvesting his corn – probably the corn is too wet to store. If we freeze up with this temperature drop, there will be ice under the snow all winter!

The destruction of the woodlot across the road continues and is, I hope, almost over. The only positive note is that they are apparently taking only the poplar and birch, and leaving the spruce. Right now the cleared land is heaped with the cut-off branches (known as “slash”). I hope they leave them, so at least some of the biomass is returned to the soil … but there’s a huge heap which looks like they’re planning on burning it. It is just so frustrating. This is not farmable land; the owner just decided that, because some trees had fallen down, it was time to cut them, so they wouldn’t be “wasted”. This is a common northern attitude, seeing forest as a crop to be harvested. This particular “crop” won’t be the same in my lifetime, and the soil, lying relatively thin over the rock, will be impoverished by every tree taken out. I guess it’s not really wanton destruction, but it’s close to it. It is appalling how much cutting has been done in this area recently – despite the mill closures, blamed on the US tariffs on Canadian softwood lumber (levied in violation of the so-called free trade agreement). And I’m sure it has a negative effect on the wildlife. Despite the claims that cutting provides moose habitat, I see far fewer moose now than I did when we first came here; in fact it’s been several years since I’ve seen one!

On a brighter note, we have hung the big feeder. In addition to the chickadees, blue jays, whiskeyjacks (anglicization of the Ojibway name for gray jays), I’ve seen a pair of white-breasted nuthatches, an evening grosbeak, and a few redpolls. And the female hairy woodpecker has been visiting the feeder. The bird books don’t tell you, but insect eaters like woodpeckers and nuthatches eat seeds when they can’t find bugs! Unfortunately, a raccoon visited the feeder one night shortly after we put it up, and managed to spill lots of it on the porch, so now we are bringing it inside at night. This should not last all winter, I hope – usually coons are a problem only for a period in the early spring. When we first moved here, there weren’t any, but with global warming and milder winters, their range appears to have expanded.

My Christmas cactus has already finished blooming and it’s weeks yet before Christmas. I will have to have a chat with it. On the other hand, although I’ve cleared out almost all the tomato and pepper plants in the sunroom, one pepper plant remains, with three green peppers still growing on it!