The birds and the bees

Reservation for .... 7?

Both Trish and I love to sit in the chairs in the backyard and watch the birds. Trish maintains 2 feeders and at this time of year (early August), the birds are very busy and she fills the feeders almost once a day! They are so much fun to watch.

We have lots and lots of house sparrows who usually eat in large groups, then head to the tree branches to clean themselves. The blue jays try desperately to fit their large bodies on the small rungs of the feeders and are often successful! They usually eat alone or with one partner. The cardinals are the shyest, especially the females. We often see them waiting in the evergreens for their turn at the feeder. In the past week, I think there are 2 new little cardinals - one male, one female. They are quite small and she is still a little fluffy. So sweet. The goldfinches love the heads of the coneflowers, so they seem to have just arrived as the flowers have opened. We also have lots of doves, a few starlings, and some chickadees. I'll have to do another post at a later date and feature some of the ones I didn't capture here!
Enjoy these pics - they were all taken in the first week or so of August.

He has such brilliant colour!

The shy female cardinal.

Goldfinch.

Who me??

Female sparrow.

Standing tall and proud :)

Trying desperately to reach the feeder!!

The male and female sparrows have different colouring, as you can see in these pics. The females are lighter brown and tan with a very pale chest. The males have darker colouring in general, with more of a reddish hue. They have a black mark under their beaks. I've read that the males' colour darkens during mating. We have noticed that with 'our' birds. Trish especially loves the close-ups where you can see the seeds in their mouths!

The bees have arrived in the last couple of weeks. It's wonderful to see them! There is such a variety of flowers in the garden at this time of year, so the bees seem very happy and busy buzzing from one to the other. We love to see them in our garden!

Renoir

Sadly, we lost our dear sweet Renoir earlier this summer. One morning in early July, after an outdoor overnight, Renoir did not come home. We waited and called and searched and hoped and did it all over again, but he did not arrive. We never saw him again.
There had been fox or coyote sightings (we're not really sure) in our neighbourhood in the days and weeks preceding - we had even seen one right in our backyard. Our suspicion is that he fell prey to one of these. We will never know for sure of course, but there has

been absolutely no sign of him. Losing Renoir and not knowing for certain what happened has been quite heartbreaking.

Vincent and Renoir have been outdoor cats most of the years we've been here on Coventry Drive. When they were younger, we tried to keep them indoors, but they were much more content cats when they were prowling and exploring in the outdoors. Although we knew the risks, it was pretty much impossible to keep them, and especially Renoir, indoors. Particularly at night, Renoir would pace around, howl at and scrape the door until you let him out. Once outside, he was gone - out to his happy place. 

Today is Vincent and Renoir's 12th birthday. A happy sad day for us. I've spent much of the day snuggling with Vinnie (he loves every minute of course!) and although our kittie grieving is mostly over now, today is different - I am really missing Renoir. I suppose that's why I'm finally writing this post.
Luke, Dan and I adopted our 2 adorable babies in the fall of 2003 when they were 9 weeks old and they have been a big part of our family ever since. Although Vincent is gray and Renoir black, they are both solid in colour with only tiny tufts of white on their chests and are very alike. August 9 was their birth day - it's exactly one month before our niece Alana's birthday, so it's always been easy to remember!
Vincent and Renoir have been cherished kitties right from the start - they've been loved by everyone in the family. They have always been very cuddly with us and with each other. I've never been able to resist this, as you can tell from the hundreds of adorable pics of them snuggled up together - both here and that I've posted over the years on Facebook, etc.
They have, however, also had a fairly competitive relationship - particularly regarding food and litter. I suppose that's not uncommon with brothers, but it was quite a challenge when they were younger. Renoir was, as many people who knew him would agree, a difficult cat. He peed everywhere, and on everything. There were a couple of years when I lived at Hohner, when I cleaned up cat urine and threw out damaged goods pretty much every day after work. Although I tried hard to understand and find patterns, it was tough. We even consulted a cat shrink! (and that's a great story, to be told only in person!) In the end, I think he probably outgrew it, but I still choose to believe that love won out :)
As he got older and was able to spend more time outdoors, he definitely became more contented. The cat pee issues had almost subsided. The last couple of years have been pretty good.
Things are certainly different in our one cat family. I have been quite nervous about Vinnie being outside, under the potential threat of wild animals close by. However, I'm getting better and we are all adapting. Vinnie craves attention, love and snuggles, so given the choice of prowling outdoors or lying on a lap, he pretty much chooses the lap every time. Thank goodness! During these lovely summer days, he goes outside, but he has become quite a homebody. He sits on or under the lawn chairs, on the deck railing, or on one of our laps, and either naps or watches the birds at the feeder contentedly. It's a lovely way to spend days. At night, he has enjoyed lying around with us watching Netflix and there has been no howling to go out. Hardly even a meow during the night. We are very grateful. I know he senses something was very wrong in the beginning and I believe he still misses Renoir but he's adjusting. As we all are. Today, Vinnie, we wish you a happy 12th birthday and hope for many more. xo

But a sad farewell to our beautiful Renoir. xoxoxoxoxoxoxo

Love.

So adorable.

Outdoors - even in winter!

'Playing' with Alana!

Kittie Love :)

A little getaway

After 2 busy weeks of summer 'work', not to mention the stress and sadness of losing Renoir, Trish and I decided that a little getaway was in order. We often like to escape to the beaches of Lake Huron, but this year, we found a spectacular B and B in Niagara on the Lake and decided to make that our destination. We spent a glorious afternoon around their pool, an evening at the 'Shaw' (compliments of House Seats, YAY), a late night hottub back at the B and B, then the next day, a delicious home cooked breakfast out on their deck, a wine tour at Inniskillen, some wandering and a foodie tour in town, and a leisurely back-roads trip home to finish it off. Wonderful!
Here are some pics from July 23/24.

Their glorious pool where we spent the afternoon!

Such a beautifully landscaped yard.

This was also part of their property, out back!

Their fruit trees were laden and the fruit was used to make their own preserves, which were served for breakfast!

Looking across the Niagara River to the US side.

Yes, you could see T.O.!

This is the fort on the U.S. side.

All the gardens in Niagara on the Lake were full and lush. So beautiful.

ETFO Summer Academy

This was the 3rd summer that Trish and I were facilitators for ETFO's Summer Academy. These are 3 day learning opportunities for teachers, offered throughout the province in July and August. Presenters are chosen by application and are usually sent to locations away from home. Adventure! The first year, we went to Dryden - a wonderful location for northern Ontario lovers like us. Last year, we did 2 - one in Stratford and one in Toronto. And this year, we went to beautiful Barrie from July 14 - 16.

Yes, my birthday fell right in the middle, and although I haven't very often worked on my birthday (I think this was the 2nd time in 35 years!), this year was a working birthday - interspersed with wonderful surprises and treats!! For starters, we stayed at the Carriage Ridge Resort and had a beautiful one bedroom apartment, with full kitchen, marble bar, etc. etc. Trish cooked me this amazing breakfast right at 'home' and spoiled me with an assortment of lovely gifts, including my own hashtag!!
Once we got to class, our group had arranged for the most scrumptious cupcakes for break time in the morning. Mmmm, they were soooo yummy!
We had 40 participants in our iPad session and we had so much fun over the 3 days - they were a great group! We explored all kinds of activities on the iPads - if you're curious, check out our site at iPads4Learning.
On the 3rd day, we had a reporter from the Barrie Examiner come and speak to us and take a few pics. It resulted in THIS ARTICLE, posted the next day!

On the evening of July 15, Trish and I drove into Midland and took a 2 hour boat tour in and around some of the islands in Georgian Bay. We brought dinner on board and it was lovely! xo

Girl Geeks at LEAP

For the past 6 years, Trish and I have offered programs at WLU's LEAP camp in July. LEAP is Laurier's Enriched Academic Program - a pretty pretentious name for a summer camp eh? The Dean of the Faculty of Ed at WLU has a background in enrichment and was committed to providing a camp experience with unique programs offering higher level thinking challenges for bright and gifted learners. Because this was along the line of our McQuarrie enrichment program, several of us at the centre became involved in designing camps which might fit the bill. I didn't actually run a camp in the first summer, but have done so every year since. My camps have always had a technology focus - Computer Capers, Computers and Beyond, Technology Rocks, Rockin' in the Google World, Cloud Nine Computing, Techno-Zombie Fest, and for the last 2 years - Girl Geeks at LEAP.
This year, Trish and I each led our camps during the week of July 6 - 10. Trish did Computer Capers for Gr. 1 - 3 in the morning and Computers and Beyond for Gr. 4 - 6 in the afternoon, I did Girl Geeks at LEAP for Gr. 6 - 9 all day.
A special highlight this year was that our niece Clio was in Trish's afternoon camp and Alana was with me for the week! It was wonderful to spend time with them in this different environment, away from family parties :) and immersed in a world of creative projects using tech. Alana made an amazing website where she showcased her writing and photo-editing talents - you can check it out here. These pics show Alana in action creating Stop Motion and green-screen video - 2 of the girls' favorite projects! Here is a link to her group's Stop Motion Video. It's a bit of a 'mash-up' of styles, however, they had so much fun experimenting with different ways to create Stop Motion using the iPad app Lego Movie Maker. And the girls needed very little instruction from me for any of the projects they did - they just dug right in and figured everything out themselves - one of the joys of working at LEAP, and with gifted kids!

On the Wednesday evening of camp week, Alana and Clio came for dinner and a sleepover. We had a little belated birthday party for Clio, had some fun at the park, enjoyed a campfire with treats and had tons of fun!

This was my best year at LEAP for sure. I had 20 amazing young girls AND Alana. It can't get better than that! However, I expect that this was my last year. In my first couple of years, I had just started my job in IT and LEAP gave me a place to try out all kinds of new tech ideas when I didn't have my own class. Now that I'm retired, I'm not sure I have the same incentive, nor do I feel the same motivation. I love it, but I think my time has expired. What a phrase. It's time for me to move on - that's better! Thanks LEAP! You offer a unique experience in summer camps for the right kids and I've enjoyed being part of it!

#YoCWR

Several months ago, I had the good fortune to participate in a tour of Communitech with some other local educators. It was a powerful afternoon on many levels, but certainly one of the highlights was meeting and connecting with Stephanie Rozek. She is the director of a local start-up called Hackademy, which offers workshops on coding and other tech literacies to kids of all ages. Her short presentation at Communitech the day I was there introduced us to her newest venture, Year of Code Waterloo Region. This initiative aims to raise the general tech literacy of every citizen in the Waterloo Region over the period of a year, beginning July 1, 2015!
The excerpt below, from the Capacity Canada website explains it well:

"Led by Stephanie Rozek, Year of Code Waterloo Region (YoCWR) will hold events between July 2015 and July 2016, with four main objectives:

• Tech education to increase digital literacy for all;

• Community engagement through tech and tech literacy;

• Diversity by raising the representation in the tech sector of women, minorities and people with social and mental health challenges in the tech sector;

• Advance Waterloo Region’s global position as a leading technology centre."

During her presentation that day, Stephanie indicated that they were in the process of putting together their team and were looking for someone to be the liaison between #YoCWR and schools. Well, that sounded like a good fit to me, so I approached Stephanie immediately after the tour, sat with her and heard more over a glass of wine, and volunteered!

I attended a couple of meetings and social events through the spring and had my first official volunteer shifts at the Columbia Lake Canada Day Family Event where they had a tent, and at their official launch at Kitchener City Hall on July 4. Both were outstanding events with many people visiting, trying out the activities and sharing their excitement about this venture!

I'm looking forward to getting more involved as schools return in the fall. We have lots of ideas for how to bring teachers and students into the 'Year of Code' loop! Stay tuned for more in the next few weeks! In the meantime, for a listing of summer workshops and events, visit their website > Year of Code WR.