April in Ottawa

Ottawa, our nation’s capital, is usually a beautiful city. Our tax dollars are used to ensure the city looks it’s best for visitors and guests. However like some great beauties she is not the best after just waking up from a sleep. It has been a hard cold winter, and in April the city is not quite ready to receive visitors.

The Ottawa River

We have experienced winter in Ottawa, and the civic workers who maintain the city have their hands full during the winter months just keeping the snow off the streets, so the daily debris from Ottawa’s busy inhabitants simply gets pushed around with the snow rather than picked up, and as the snowbanks disappear in April, months of neglect start to appear. Not only the public areas, but the little private patches of gardens and green in front of the houses are littered with winter’s debris.

Yesterday was a warm sunny April day, and fresh air and exercise was just what my stubborn cold needed, so I set off on a leisurely stroll around Ottawa, down through Centertown, Chinatown and down to the Ottawa river where I walked along the pedway below parliament to the Rideau which I followed to Summerset and finally cutting through

Tire Garden needing weeding

Elgin & Bank to get back to Ryan’s house. My walk showed me that Ottawa really is not at it’s best in April.

The Ottawa River was carrying the last of the melting river ice from upstream, but the ducks and Canada geese were dodging not only ice, but chunks of Styrofoam, logs, campfire remains and all other unsorted debris. The Rideau Canal looked no better, drained to a minimum water lever (for Spring cleaning?) with melting ice chunks still remaining, the skate changing houses sitting at awkward angles at the edges, and showing the castoff from a busy winter season of skating on the longest outdoor rink in Canada.

The River's Load

The normally pristine public walkways look the worse. Stairways corners are filled with leaves and garbage, and the grass alongside paths show the scars of snow plows and other Winter damage. I was surprised to see the amount of animal damage along the river. Many trees and shrubs were stripped of bark by hungry animals and one large tree was gnawed through and toppled by what I suspect was the good old Canadian symbol, the beaver.  The Rideau Canal walkways showed it’s use by winter skaters and the number of wet, lonely and muddy single woolen socks, mittens and hats was amazing.

A Garden?

Don’t worry, it’s only April, and on my walk I saw many little private gardens raked and cleaned with Springs flowers already poking through, and sawdust and piles of branches are evidence that the work crews have started the annual Spring cleanup. I’m sure that by the time the Canadian Tulip Festival in May rolls around, the city will be looking her usual best.

Spring Wine (Or Spring Break)

Lovely Scenery - Terrible Roads!

 

For those who are not RVers, the trailers and Rvs I am writing about are basically houses built on a steel truck frame. Some of the real classic trailers like the Airstream are built with an aluminium, frame, and some like the Boler we had are a nice fibreglass shell mounted on a steel frame. The Boler was an amazing trailer, light, strong and well designed, but it looked like two fibreglass bathtubs pop riveted together with some windows and a door cut into the sides. Modern RVer, insist on oak cupboards, flat screen TVs, arm chairs, and microwaves. In other words they want a “Home away from Home”, and they want it to look and feel like home. The result is a big square wooden structure like a house attached to a truck frame. But of course to tow it behind even a big truck it has to be light, the result is a compromise, and it results in shifting, bending, and breaking. Nothing ever broke on the Boler in years of service, but so far , we've bent a wheel, the back venetian blind has fallen down twice, one light fixture fell off, and two cupboard door handles have fallen off. Oh, yea, two of the springs that keep all this “homeyness” rolling down the road have broken.

Looking back, I suspect that the loud bang we heard as Regis was coming down the twisty narrow mountain roads in Yosemite National Park was one of the springs finally giving up and snapping, but I didn't notice it then. The trailer was making a lot of noise, but it does on bumpy roads anyway, so we didn't worry about it. However in the morning as I was checking everything over prior to leaving San Francisco to drive up the coast, I noticed that one spring was broken in half, with just one end holding the axle in place. We were not going far with that. We had a spare, but dad must have cleaned that out when getting ready for the trip. We went to the local RV shop, but although he could get the part, he could not do the work today. I elected to pick up the part and do it myself.

I got everything apart, and in the process discovered that a spring on the other side was also broken but not so bad. Fortunately I had bought two springs just in case. When I went to put the nice shiny new spring into place, it would not fit. A measurement revealed I was sold 26” springs and needed 23” ones. A phone call informed me that 23” ones were not in stock and would have to be ordered – a two day wait. We reregistered at the campground, put things back together (as good as the stripped threads, and bent brackets would allow), and went back to the site.

So with two more days in San Francisco, we have decided to take the rest of the day to just relax here. I worked on a walking stick, Regis tried to keep up on her reading for all her book clubs back home, dad took a nap, and Sharon found some temporary “Grandkids” Next door to make a fuss over (Sorry Jasmine, Nicki, Alex and Drew). Tomorrow we will leave the trailer here and go up the coast in the truck and visit some of the California Napa valley wineries. Life is tough!

Spring Has Arrived In Suzhou

I'm afraid that this blog entry is just to annoy my friends and family back in Canada. I know they are still suffering with winter weather, and I believe my teacher friends actually had a storm day last week with a snow storm.

Not so here in Suzhou. I was just out for a bike ride and a walk, and spring has definitely arrived here in China. I wore my spring jacket, and it was actually too warm. As I write this, I see that it is 19C in Suzhou and 3C in Halifax Nova Scotia. Can you see my smile? We get a lot of misty wet days, but the air is warm, and the sunny days like today are lovely.

I missed the famous Blossoms in Japan when I visited my daughter last year, but I am getting them in full force this year in China. Of course here it is even better, because so many of the parks and gardens are planned and carefully planted with flowering bushes and trees. Everywhere you look trees are bursting into bloom. Along most roads are short green hedges and I see that there are bright red flowers all through them. As you walk along the canals, the willows planted there are all leafing out in their long light green leaves, and so many of the trees have beautiful pink or white blossoms coming out. After a couple of rainy days, the past two sunny days have put spring into high gear and every day more and more colour appears.

Today as I walked around Suzhou, it was so pleasant to see all the people out walking and enjoying the lovely day. This weekend is a holiday, called Tomb Sweeping day. It is supposed to be a day when family graves were cleaned up after the winter, and loved ones were honoured by burning special pretend money, or in a greener world, they are I hear putting flowers on graves to avoid he polluting from burning paper. People have an additional day off work, and all the parks are full of people enjoying the weather. The open areas were full of families trying to fly kites, and the pathways along the water were crowded with people just out walking.

Don't worry, spring will be there soon in Canada . . . . . . . For now you will have to enjoy my pictures of spring in Suzhou.