If It Suits Snowies and Pelicans Can It Be All That Bad?

The orthopedist says Jan's shoulder fractures are healing exactly as desired but she is grumpy nonetheless, still just a one-armed wonder, restrained by the damned immobilizing sling. The injuries furnish a lining slightly silver: I continue to flourish in the fill-in chief cook role. Other things may irk the old girl but know this: she has no basis for significant complaint about what arrives on her plate at dinner time.

We miss hiking the Sooke Hills and riding the bikes out along the Saanich Peninsula. We grow fat in the absence of those cherished and slimming activities. Saturday provided a little consolation: we took our first post-shoulder-smashup walk on uneven ground, in Francis/King Park. Mary and Mike kept us company as we rambled among the woody giants of the park, red-cedars, doug-firs, hemlocks. It was only 4 km or so, but enough to spark hope that we may still have a future as hill hikers.

Level-ground walking opportunities abound. Birding is particularly good these days in our James Bay neighbourhood. A fortnight ago snowy owls invaded in numbers, then brown pelicans. One day we saw five snowies, this morning 14 pelicans.

In both cases what's good for birders is doubtless bad for the birds. The owls are driven south from their usual Arctic havens by deep hunger. Climate change sweeps Canada's Arctic, perhaps altering the owls' natural food supply. In desperation they fly thousands of miles south for replacement fare. Many, perhaps most, will die. As for the pelicans, they are lured north by more frequent ocean warmings; you may have heard of them, El Ninos. There is fish aplenty for them here in Victoria but there will be trouble too once the temperature dips below zero and water turns icy.

Indoors, Jan adapts to being one-armed. Ingenuity and occasional help enable her to carry on with her quilting endeavours. A big new project slowly takes shape on her design wall. Across the hall, I beaver away at my WWI archival projects, finding a nugget here and there. It pays to have a network of fellow diggers around the world. A tip from one of them led me to solid gold, two 1915 photographs of one of my Boularderie soldier relatives killed in the war to end all wars. The find was better than the sort that used to thrill me under the xmas tree when I was 10.

Which reminds me that the calendar says December has snuck up on me. I have done nothing at all to satisfy the conventions and obligations imposed by the month's twenty-fifth day. Sticking my head in the sand is an attractive option, but is it likely to win me widespread approval in the long term? Hmm, I'd better get going.