With the economy the way it is, we—like many other folks out there—have been paying closer attention to where our money is going. And we’ve made a few changes, one of which is that the boys and I are now driving Jim to work and back. And here’s one reason why: parking rates in Calgary are the most expensive in Canada, and second only to NYC in North America (and not by much! $460US/month in Calgary; $500 US in NYC). Here’s an article Jim sent me on the very subject. Now, I get the argument that says more...

It’s been a very warm and sunny weekend—until today. (Which is why I haven’t been blogging; all my spare time has been being spent in the garden). With the cold wet weather today, several migrating birds are hunkering down where they can—we saw the usual suspects in the yard this morning (chickadees, house finches, robins et al) as well as white-crowned sparrow, least flycatcher and the absolute highlight, western tanagers! These birds spend most of the year in the tropics, making the long journey north for the breeding season. And they are not common backyard birds at all, but we’ve...

…this afternoon—Earth Day—I was struck by the irony of the images outside my window. From last night’s 20C / 70F weather for soccer, to this. Here’s how the day unfolded. 12:30 pm, snow begins 2:00 pm 3:30 pm 5:00 pm So what’s normal here? Well, according to Environment Canada, our normal high for today is 13C / 55F. Not much different than Toronto and Vancouver’s average highs of 14C, or Winnipeg’s of 12C. What is different is the extremes in the weather here:...

We took the boys to the bird sanctuary Sunday afternoon for some free displays and activities in honour of Earth Day later this week. We attended a presentation on composting (in which Daegan was the only child and the most vocal and engaged participant!), met a Great Horned Owl, listened to a storytime about animals and the earth, chatted with folks from the Calgary Gardening club, etc. This last was quite amusing, as while we were talking Daegan asked if he could have a nibble on some of the fresh herbs in the display pot. “Can’t get him to eat...

Just a lovely warm spring day today, so the boys headed out to the backyard in shorts and T-shirts. Gareth called to us through the window a few minutes later: “I’m hot! Can we set up the sprinkler to run through?” This gave Jim and I a good chuckle because—as you’ll see in the pictures—we’ve still got a few snowbanks in the yard! We told Gareth to take his shirt off instead if he was hot. Here’s some highlights of their play (hover over the pictures for details): ...

We’ve been enjoying warm weather this week (actually, its been only a couple degrees above what we should be this time of year, but it’s been such a long, cold, snowy winter it feels tropical!), so I took a walk through the backyard today to see what I could see. There’s greening grass, bulbs shoots pushing through the soil in several places, and new green growth at the base of the hollyhocks and grape hyacinths. Each morning this week we’ve been treated to a pair of chickadees making themselves at home in the bird house we’ve put up in our...

Daegan and Jim took a nature class yesterday, rather ironically entitled “Signs of Spring” (we’re suffering through the longest winter I recall in my 16 years in Calgary). It was held at the Inglewood Bird Sanctuary, for ages 6-12 with parent, and was well-attended. Daegan even met up with a boy, Alex, whom we had over to do homeschool activities from the Jr. Palaeontologist crate from Science Alberta last fall. The class began inside, with a discussion of spring, lifecycles (dragonfly, butterfly, frog…both Jim and I thought these topics more appropriate for a class of 3-6 year olds,...

We got our blue box today for Calgary’s new curbside recycling program (yeah, like the blue box program you’ve probably had in your city for the last 20 years). Up until now we had to collect and sort our recycling and take it to a depot. So this is definitely a step in the right direction, and unlike at the depot you can now recycle numbered plastics as well. Oh, and for those who couldn’t be bothered to take their beverage containers in for the refund, you can also drop those in the bin and the city will recycle them...

We woke up to two signs of spring in Calgary: robins and snow. I counted at least 7 robins (males only; the females follow about a month later) pecking at the remains of the crabapples in our tree—my first robins of the year. Here’s a robin in lower centre, another on right, and a black-capped chickadee up in the upper left:   We also woke to our other sign of spring: snow! March is the snowiest month here, but we get surprisingly little snow here: on average, Toronto gets 4 times as much snow, and last winter they...

Last week we finally saw our regular winter visitors, bohemian waxwings. They are a very striking bird—mainly grey, but with bright yellow and red colouring on the wing and tail tips (hence the name—it looks like bright blobs of wax on their wings), cinnamon undertail coverts, and a distinctive head crest. Their sound is the first thing I notice about them if I am outside—a thin lispy whistle with a rising zweeeeet! call—it has always sounded insect-like to me, which rather grabs your attention in the dead of winter. “A high-pitched buzzy trill” is how many birding books put it;...