Silhouettes against a Rainbow

Still guilty of tinkering with the saturation and shadows.

Somewhere Over the Rainbow

Well, I'm guilty of tuning this photo to get this awesome effect - but way cool. My dad actually gave me a call to let me know that there was a super cool rainbow outside... so me and my umbrella and me camera went to work. It was really sunny and raining quite hard at the same time.

Glowingly Pregnant

I should probably let my brother post this one - but here is his super awesome wife showing off her belly for documentation purpose

Little Sweaters

Here is one of the sweater sets that E's mom knit.

Its showering babies!

Here is a dragon from my SIL's baby shower. The last couple of years have resulted in many of my friends having new additions to their families - including both of my brothers. Robbie (you'll need to scroll down a bit perhaps) was born in April and "Morgan" (who will be names something other than Morgan) is due to arrive in the next 3 weeks. To celebrate, my SIL's mom hosted a lovely baby shower attended by friends and family and this inquistive and cat frightening Ikean Dragon checking out some sweet hand-knitted sweaters. I reclaimed my role, now that Gabe is far away, as event photographer and photodocumented everything in detail. So, there may be some more posts to come.

Pink Showy Evening Primose

Here is the cousin of the plant below. I just love the details on this flower. Nicely done nature :D

Yellow Showy Evening Primrose

This must have been one of the ones I planted last summer - and is actually the reason I darted outside to get some pictures as its the first day I've noticed it. Its quite a big flower probably 5 or 6 cm across, even though it looks small in the picture

Unintended Results

I've been waiting impatiently as the daisies tease me - threatening to open for weeks now. This one is really nearly there. However, I snapped the shot quickly and didn't even realize that I'd caught the bug also impatient for the flower to open..

Arrival of the echinacaea

Okay.. I'm sure there will be lots of pictures of these this summer. To the best of my knowledge I have at least 4 different types planted. This one, I believe, is a magnus variety (nice big purple flowers). I also have a white one and a bright red one and several plants which bear the smaller purple flowers. I've been waiting and waiting - so welcome echinacaea to the garden!

The First Echinacaea Flower

Symphony of Colour

Here is the tangled wonderful mess of my perenials.

Rambling Roses

I don't know anything about roses except that the rose hips can be high in vitamin C and that they can also be fussy. I think these aren't far off being wild roses, however they didn't flower at all last year and seem to be intent on making up for it this year. The ones around the side are actually more impressive, but the lighting didn't favour a decent picture.

Bifercated Yellow Lupine

This is the last Lupine to flower - having yellow flowers and kind of a genetic anomaly of a double flower head. I didn't have one that is yellow yet, so its fun that the last one was a unique colour.

Tie-Die Pansy

How cool are these!

Columbine Contrast

Here is another picture from the same plant that I've planted.

Attiwapiskat: Schoolless in the Sub-Arctic

Picture above is from Fighting for a School for Attawapiskat


There are three links that are maintained by members of the community:
Attawapiskat Needs a New School
Attawapiskat's Forgotten Children
Fighting for a School for Attawapiskat

All of these sites have similar contents - thoughtful and well written including a set of photos (easier to view in the first than the second) and a short movie at the second site and the third has photos that can be used by the public, the address for sending letters and a list of schools and organizations that have taken up this cause - its a pretty impressive list.

My take:

Having taught on the James Bay coast this hits pretty close to home. The short version - an Indian Affairs maintained fuel oil main ruptured in 1979 (yes this happened 29 years ago) dumping about 30,000 galleons of fuel into the sandy-silty-clay soil. Oil is hard to clean up. The teacher residences were also effected, but Health Canada ordered those closed and replaced . Contaminant vapours found during studies include xylene, benzene, toluene, and ethyl benzene. Students continued using the school until 2000 when concerned parents pulled their children and the local council voted to close the school. They shared the high school for a while until "temporary" portable classrooms were built. Although, promises to build a new school have been many times by various Indian Affairs ministers - there is still no funding for a new school 8 years later. (summarized from the article in the link)

On top of this resulting in pretty poor learning conditions for students - the failure to deal with the issue has also put the connected high school at risk. Even if the government felt that it was okay for students to go to a school made out of portables which have not stood up well to the rigors of the James Bay climate - failing to deal with the situation has resulted in the old school falling in disrepair (with the library room collapsing in 2005) - resulting to significant damage to the high school when the sprinkler system burst and flooded the high school. Why they haven't taken steps to at least protect the money invested in existing educational infrastructure is beyond me?

In the meantime, there are children who completed their entire elementary education in temporary buildings. What people from down south may not appreciate is that in remote communities school buildings are important multi-purpose buildings in the community - we hosted all kinds of fundraisers in the St. Andrew's gym. There were dances, bingo's, graduations, evening sports, weddings and even the community court days were held there. Every classroom had an outside bulletin board to share their special projects or artwork with the school community. If the students needed to go to the bathroom, gym class, the library, the office or anywhere else - they didn't need to take up educational time to put on coats, hats, mittens and boots. This isn't Toronto - its ruddy cold up there in the winter - often less than -20 C before the windchill - and even my grade 8's needed a few minutes to get ready to go outside. All in all, in a region where students struggle to find reasons to go to school, focus and succeed - I'm sure it really doesn't help to have your school made up of deteriorating portables. Schools should be inviting places where its easy to build community and that are comfortable, warm and safe.

Like Attawapiskat, Kashechewan is now also without a grade school. St. Andrew's (pictured above) was found to have toxic mould following a flood about 3 years ago. Since then, the students have been sharing the high school (St. Andrew's had over 400 pupils when I taught there and I think the high school had about 250). As a result, the school runs two days in one - the elementary students get the early part of the day and the high school students start in the afternoon and go to school much later than the average high school student. This has not had a positive effect on the number of graduates in the community. Next year they are hoping to at least have a set of portables, but who knows how long they will have to wait before a new elementary school is built (the vacant St. Andrew's was destroyed in a fire in the last few years). This means that there is one gym for a community of 1500-1900 people. One building to share for all the community events that might take place - and one can only speculate on how that would affect the community as a whole.

Oh - there are no easy answers to the problems facing communities in the north and many of them can only be found in the communities themselves, but for goodness sakes, one of the best things we can offer, as outsiders, is good school facilities and top rate educators, so that students will have every opportunity to reach their full potential and have the skills to succeed both inside and outside of the community. People complain about the number of folks in these communities that are living on welfare - a good school should be seen as a small investment with big payoffs especially in Attawapiskat where there is actually a good chance for people to get good jobs at the diamond mine should they have an important piece of paper - namely a high school diploma.

Anywho.. there is my rant. The folks in Attawapiskat have both an online petition and a letter writing campaign (directed at the federal Indian Affairs minister - Chuck Stahl (or "Stall" in this case) asking for funding to build a new school for their students.

Cheers,

Jennith

Perfect flowers

Haven't posted a columbine photo in a few days. At this point, this guy is winding down and its the yellow columbine that is putting on a show. However, only 1 out of the 6 I grew from last year have flowered (the pink and yellow one) and it turns out that I planted mixed coloured seed, so I'm waiting to find out what colour the other 5 are, assuming they flower this year.

Another shot of bilberry ice (spiderwort)

I was flipping through the rest of my pictures and even though this is very similar to the others - they are just wicked flowers. The purple one is just dripping in flowers every morning.

Peony Potential

So, quick morning update:

1. The digging in the garden is likely mostly due to robins hunting for worms. It has become a little better, but it is still annoying.
2. The slightest pinkish tint is showing in the very slowly unfurling echinecaea - so I think it is the magnus rather than the alba.
3. I need to get 2 peony rings for the plant pictured above and its cousin - because they are flopping over.
4. We've had lots of rain - which is good because I haven't needed to water in over a week - however, I'm starting to worry that I'm going to lose some plants to rot and there is little I can do to dry things out, save hoping it doesn't rain today - although at last check there was a 60% of showers this afternoon and this evening.
5. The daisies are getting very close - but they are still in the mostly closed state - look for pictures in the next week though.
6. The yellow asian lilies are still flowering - so they deserve marks for the longest lasting flowers of that bunch. I have 2 cream and sugar lilies that grew from bulbs planted this spring that have flowers formed but not yet opened and 3 asian lilies I planted last year in the central perenial bed that have grown back and then some - several of them have flower buds formed, nothing open, but they are ahead of the cream and sugar ones.
7. One of the thyme have started to flower and the pink rock rose is thinking about it.
8. The lawn still has a few bare patches, but its a million times better than last year, the garden actually looks nice except that there is still some tidy up to do and some trees to trim up.
9. The dianthus that survived from last year is flowering and enjoying the cool damp weather
10. I thinkthat my foxglove did actually reseed and there are some plants in last years pots and a few nearby. No sign of flowers yet, but I'm crossing my fingers. I also planted a dwarf foxglove in the back of the woodland garden and it does have flower buds.
11. One more of last year's geraniums (pelergoniums) has started to flower - its seems the light pink with dark pink marking ones have recovered from overwintering fastest (although one of them had the advantage of the best window in the house). 2 or 3 more plants have flower buds, so I'm waiting to see which colours survived so I can replace my favourites. I'm not sure that any will survive this winter without me to rescue them, but maybe a kindly soul will take one or two in. They are pretty low maintenance - give them a bit of light and water them when they start looking sad.
12. I reallyl need to get a photo of the roses - they've outdone themselves this year after there was not a single rose last year. They look very nice against the brick. I've improvised some support (since the trellises are probably about 15 years old and not in good shape) - Definately a nice touch of beauty.
13. I won't probably be getting much work done on the garden in the near future beyond watering and deadheading, but hopefully I'll have some new pictures soon as everything fills in.

Cheers,

Jennith

Jonah Amitnaaq Secondary School

I thought it was time for a non-gardening post. I've been throwing them up because they are fast and don't keep me from my thesis for more than a few moments. I'm giving myself about 5 minutes to get this one done - so I take no responsibility for my spelling or writing skills - this is a rapid fire news dump, not an essay.

Pictured above is my new workplace in Baker Lake - Jonah Amitnaaq Secondary School. Obviously, I haven't been up there, but I was graciously given permission by Curtis of the Northern Sights Blog to borrow his until I could take some of my own. There is even a floor plan online. I think the hardest thing is that I have so much to do, but I'm dying just to get ready and go. Anyone who has suggestions for good teaching resources for northern teachers - I'm all ears.

Not that there hasn't been a lot of tasks to do all ready. I've been tracking down all the paperwork I need to get sent in order to apply for my Nunavut teaching license. I've been trying to compile some lists of things to move. Moving up north is a pretty big deal - and you really have one shot to get it right - since once you are there it is extremely costly to replace the things you forgot - if you can even get your hands on them. I somehow survived in Kashechewan with 7 hangers. The biggest thing I forgot when I moved there was a telephone (I did manage to remember my answering machine). Fortunately, another teacher lent me one until my mom could mail me one. I do have to procure quite a few items, to replace the stuff I sold when I moved back from New Brunswick - so that will be fun or crazy or something. I think the next big job is to set up a staging area for moving and then starting the pile and the list. I think I have 3 weeks. But to add to the complication, I need to leave out the survival essentials to take with me on the plane because my belongings could get delayed for a few weeks after my arrival.

My other big job for June was to complete my sealift order. I know a bit about them from other folk - but I didn't get a chance to put an order in when I was in Kashewean because I didn't start until a few weeks into the school year. Thus, food was expensive and kind of limited in variety. But I did mail myself a lot of the basics. Unfortunately, sending stuff to myself via Canada Post is quite a bit more expensive than my boxes would have costed to ship to Kashechewan - so I'm glad that I've had a chance to make a sealift order. I'm sure I've made mistakes - that I'll wish that I didn't order 12 900g bags of brown rice or a case of nutella I'll also probably kick myself for forgetting stuff too. Luckily, I was able to do my order with the person I'll be sharing my appartment with - so that in a lot of cases we could split cases of stuff which will improve the variety for everyone. I'm set to put the order in by Wednesday, which gives us a few days to think about what we've put in and change our minds a few times. I did a fair bit of research into the process and finally went with the northern store. I'm not sure they are the cheapest (but I think they are pretty good) and I don't think they have the best variety and there was no way to get around having to buy stuff in whole sale quantities - however, they had their catalouge on the internet and were able to give me an exact price for both the item and the shipping (which is good since we are going in on the order together and have to sort out that sort of thing) and the shipping price gets my food from their shelf to Baker Lake without me having to make any arrangements. I figure the northern coop has been doing this a long time - and as an inexperienced sealift orderer - I figured that it was the safest bet. So... I'll maybe post up how good my grocery shopping went next summer - and let you know what my errors were.

So - now all I have to do is finish up writing my thesis and then finish editting it and then defend it while doing moving prep and a bit of unit planning and then maybe I can sleep on the plane.

So, last but not least because I have a bunch of little things.. here are a mass of updates.

1. David Usher has a new single out "Kill the Lights" - his album "Wake up and Say Goodbye" is due out on Sept. 9th, 2008 :D
2. In gardening news: the Lupins are getting their second wind, the petals are starting to unfurl on the daisies, and one echinacaea flower has started to grow. I have a few different types - its seems to be the largest - so it could be the magnus or it could be the alba - as the petals appear white so far. The first daylily (a yellow one) has also flowered.
3. In knitting news, there are only 7 inches left to knit on my shawl - which means I've knit an inch in the last 1.5 months - and most of that at my Gramma's last night. Once I'm up north I'm going to start my Philospher's Wool Sweater and probably a pair of trillium socks that match my new shawl. Until then I hope to finish up the shawl - and start my second crayon jaquard sock. I knit the first one entirely during my breaks working at the greenhouse. I miss the greenhouse - I can't even see a window from my desk.
4. Gas is at $1.34/L - so its a good thing that I've driven my car less than 2 km in the last week. I'm hoping to make a morning bike ride part of my routine - somehow.
5. My hair is finally long enough to tie back!
6. I have a strap and camera case for my new Camera and some generous donations to my camera fund (thanks folks for the awesome birthday gifts everyone), I'm not allowed to get the camera, until after my thesis is written and everything else I need is done - but hopefully by the time I get on that plane I'll have my equipment in order to take some awesome pictures to post here. Of course, I'll probably have to cut down the size and resoluation for the sake of my internet connection, but I'm pretty excited. Amusingly, I'm exactly double the age I was when I got my first real camera. My family tricked me by giving me a stuffed squirrel for my birthday (which I do still have and like muchly) and then surprised me with the camera at my grandparents. I still have the camera, but a spring in the shutter assembly gave out while I was at camp - so it has been retired. I'm sure I'll let you know when I get my first pictures with it.

Anywho, I've exceeded my 5 minutes - and I have a lot to do if I want to sleep in the next 2 weeks.... so this is it for posts with more than pictures of my garden - probably for at least that long - all though some times I get the itch to write when I cut my sleep back.....

Jenn