Another year has nearly passed. Measuring time and suddenly it's 2020! Have a Happy and Prosperous New Year Everyone!

Here I am wondering what to do with this blog. Whether to maintain it 'as a nothing more than a few posts' or turn it into something else, something more active. Yes I have my poetry blog (JoeC's blog spot here on Google blogs) but sometimes I think there are other things I'd like to rave about here on the world net. More than once thinking I'd like to post about herbs and herbal medicine, something I've had an interest in for decades. Occasionally I'd just like to do a bit of creative writing, tack it up here in blog land, perhaps some other person actually reading the words, look at the photos (I only use my own pics, yes photography is a big part of my little world), hopefully enjoying their experience. On my Yahoo 360 blog (which is obviously no longer viable, since July 2010 when yahoo discontinued that beloved stream) I would post regularly from my menagerie of original photos, adding varied bits and pieces from my eclectic  realm of short story, poem and lunatic rants on love and relationship, depending of course on my mood at the time. So I think I should just go for it again, using this electronic page to put out those silly (some not so silly I guess) quirky quips that tend to tumble and flow from my peasant mind. 
  August now, dog days are done, summer is waning. Sweetening fruit is ripening on limber stems, groovy potatoes resting in garden soil, waiting to be dug, likely pondering being brushed, scraped, pealed and cooked, relishing being eaten, trusting they will be enjoyed. Recent full moon nights have been summer warm, starry clear and cosmic bright. Red fish, kokanee salmon, schooling, surfacing, swimming, wave after wave of the tasty fishes, their streamlined bodies cyclically turning blood red, life giving entities preparing to run the Lardeau River, finally spawn, then ceremoniously die. Winter and summer squash, cantaloupe melons too, are plumping up, ripening on sturdy vines, amended with all the wonderful sunshine energy and warmth we've enjoyed here in this valley over the summer. Whitetail deer quietly wander through the old orchard, every morning, each evening (no doubt through-out the night) foraging, munching fallen apples, nibbling green things, sleek handsome deer rearing up on strong back legs, scarfing green pears from lower branches of the giving tree. Raven families fly together these days, pecking out meager livings from this mountain landscape, scavenging whatever food they might sniff out, discover, then feast upon. Kootenay Lake waters have finally receded from that high water mark the big lake maintained for so many weeks this past June and July. Days are still wonderfully warm. Even today, with a bit of welcome rain (the tall forest is thirsty),  my porch thermometer rose above 20 degrees Celcius. Nights, still pleasant, milky way bright, starry amazing, still absent of autumn cool, summer still helping my garden to grow. Out in the garden I've managed to live trap (relocating the invaders, yes that's one in the photograph above) ten furry little bank voles, voracious critters, so far ruining much of my summer vegetable crop, dang! If all goes well there won't be a killing frost until after Halloween, come November and winter days. If all goes well, nights will remain moderate, fairly warm, so that things can ripen up, not too much moisture and excessive wet that bring on fungal infections and rot, If all goes well it won't pour rain or monsoon over the next three months. Finally, if all goes well, no snow will fly until December's dark. 
  Gee I've almost wrapped up the rest of the year! However, in reality, there are weeks of summer left, autumn is merely a dream yet to come. With all the photos I've taken this summer I should have something of interest to put up here for an audience to see, hopefully I'll have some worthwhile words to post as well. 
  Until next time, let's think positive thoughts, have fun in daily life, be creative in all we do, keep the faith (whatever that faith may be, it's a blessing to believe in something), keep our vision clear and our eyes on the sky (one never knows what one may be lucky enough to witness), so get out there, breath in the fresh air and look at those magnificent stars. Remember every day is a new day, each and every one of us are located on this blue planet at this time for a reason. Cheers!

Oh those magnificent Canadian Rockies!

Oh rainy, wet June! Down by the marsh.

June. Down by the marsh Painted Turtle is laying her precious eggs.

 This quiet shoreline, these still waters! Whence perfect nature spawned productive life and certain formalities drew native culture into the scheme of things yet to come. This deep water course where grizzly bear and soaring eagles found sustenance amongst schools of coursing salmon, as freshets of glacial water carved rivers through geologic strata over milennia and ice age. Where long-nosed bark canoes paddled by native Kutenai tribes plied these same waters in search of food and worldly visions as their skin drums beat, as sacred songs mused intention and unforgotten history while dreamtime realms converged. Somewhere in time native hearts came and went in moccasin-clad feet searching for the unsearchable. Where archaic hammer-smiths sat congregated beside smoking campfires tooling spearheads and arrow points from raw stone discovered and gathered at the foot of what is now called the Selkirk Range. Remembering those ancient ones leaving nothing but a few tell-tale petroglyphs and oral history for us new-comers to discover and interpret. Here then is the balance of what is left. Here is the last of that pristine nature so coveted and revered by man and nature together. Here then is the remainder of long-ago harmony and productive spectacular nature. Here then is  Majestic Kootenay Lake!

Sometimes we get lost and have a hard time finding our way back to where ever we've been. That seems to be the case with this blog spot. When I started this account back in 2010 I really did think that I was going to be blogging here on a regular basis. That was after Yahoo 360 (my old regular blog that is now defunct due to Yahoo shutting down that site for all it's many users) disappeared into the realms of ancient history. Then came a few tries at other blog sites and social networks such as MySpace, Multiply and Yahoo Pulse, but none of those seemed to be what 360 had been for me so I really didn't blog much. Then with the daily challenges life was throwing at me and the blog world taking a back seat to that dreaded foe 'Facebook', where when I began, a mere paragraph or two took up all the space allowed. Nothing I tried was able to replace or equal what I had developed and published on my Yahoo 360 page where by the time July 10th, 2010 arrived (the day Yahoo 360 slammed shut the doors, however we did have three months warning that the end was coming) my meager little four year old page with my poems, articles, original photos and whatever else I came up with to post had been viewed 36,000 times.
Over the past few years I've been inventing a story and composing a novel. Reality has dictated that endeavour take up most of my writing time. Now I'm nearing the end of that fiction so I'm thinking it would be nice to blog again and to me this is the obvious place to make those attempts. I don't know how often I may appear here, maybe once a day, perhaps once a month, time will tell. With spring coming on now I will be using my camera more and likely any good photos I come up with will encourage and inspire me to write something here on this blog. For instance today as I was driving out to the Meadow Creek store I happened to see a moose standing knee deep in one of the sloughs that dot the flats at this northern end of the big lake. Unfortunately I didn't have a long lens with me so no photos of that large majestic creature will appear here. However such an even with a photo would indeed inspire me to write something.
With 'Facebook' taking a backseat in my life now (the important person that had me going there on a daily basis for the past few years is no longer on that network) and with so few views on that network (I only ever had a handful of friends) as compared to a blog audience such as this site offers I do hope to publish more of my work here in days to come.
Writing is a pleasure and it's nice to have other people read the words that I come up with. If there ever was a place in the world for people such as me this is likely one of those spots. I'm not completely anonymous here, but I'm not standing in the spot light either, which suits me best. Not like standing on a brightly lit stage fumbling for the right notes on a keyboard, hoping no one will notice if the sound produced is awkwardly flat or resonantly sharp. Alas, life is a gamble and one never knows when things may or may not work out. It's good to have some idea whether one's efforts will be appreciated but at least if one flunks out here the only evidence of that failure would be that no persons will be paying much attention. So it's okay to blush in a place like this and in the event that something of some substance is produced perhaps others will read, enjoy and even make applicable comments. Three cheers for blogs, three cheers for the 'word', three hurrah's for forums where novice and amateur can ply the waters and kudos to those that are willing to take a chance and create new things.