The rest of the day to myself
“Top ‘o’ the morning to ya”. It’s March 17th and a it’s big day for all of the Irish and the hyphenated Irish and pretenders to the nationality. St. Patrick’s Day was a big deal when I was a kid. With a surname like “Durning” it was hard to be anything but Irish. When I […]
Preservation, demolition or what?
Sorry, still not writing. Other than impulsively writing columns late at night, I’m very relaxed. I’m the kind of guy who likes to keep old things around. Some of us do. I’ll start with an analogy: I went to my closet, which is jampacked with shirts. I looked, but didn’t understand the me that required […]
The local economy
There are many generalizations I have heard about wine over the years: I hate a specific grape variety (be that chardonnay, merlot or malbec); French wines are terrible; Italian wines are all the same; Australian wines are too jammy. There is no one style of any grape. Each is distinctly different from the others. Mostly […]
Colour can be a good thing
I had a great conversation recently with a distraught homeowner complaining about their neighbour’s yard. They were desperately seeking some advice as to how to handle a next-door neighbour who has painted their home in bright and vibrant colours because they were certain that the home was hurting their property value. This is such a […]
Destination
My apologies. I am still not writing columns, so don’t bug me about that. But sometimes I wake at 2 am, because I am cursed, and things that bother me tend to show up in my dreams, and I am forced to get up and write. Be glad you’re not me. Destination: This word has […]
Nature or Nurture or Wild
March will be happening really soon. It’s a promising month, March is. Of course, there is always potential for a bit of wintry weather during the month which used to “come in like a lion and go out like a lamb”. However, there is the promise of the first day of the new season in […]
Where’s the snack bag?
I remember when I was in Grade Four thinking “When I’m fifty years old I’ll be really, really old.” Well that ship sailed a long time ago. I’m way, way past fifty now. Heck I’ve got a kid who has been around longer than fifty years. In my mind he’s still a baby giving me […]
Taking a break
I need to leave you for a while. I like to say I’m ‘on hiatus’, because that’s what great writers do when they run out of things to write. My problem is: I read over the last few columns I wrote. Funny thing about writers: We write stuff, and then everything disappears from the brain. […]
The Mycelium Web
This Christmas I was admittedly a little spoiled. My family went overboard with gifts for the gardener (and yes Mom, I loved them all!) One big surprise was a book called The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben. I was fascinated by the book’s premise that trees have feels and are able to communicate […]
Going green
We are finally awakening to going green. I’m a booster, as much as I can be. We recycle. I know this because there are blue bins on the sidewalks everywhere in the County. What we do is just a part of the bigger picture. We are well beyond the ‘climate change deniers’. They now look […]