On the Bluebird Trail

 Here is one of the lovely weathered bluebird boxes on the Bluebird Trail. 

Meet  Mr and Mrs Bluebird who were somewhat alarmed as they watched us open their front door

 And here is why.  Hopefully these wee eggs will hatch and the fledglings will make it.  Keep your fingers crossed for them.
The Bluebird trail in the southern interior of BC is all maintained by conscientious volunteers who look after the bird houses, monitor the state of the eggs, and compile the statistics.  Good on them I say! 

 Mind you, not all the houses contained eggs on the lovely Sunday morning we tramped Cora's section of the trail  and not all contained nests constructed by Bluebirds. But the Bluebird population is increasing again and this is a good thing.  We found some sparrow nests, and some swallow nests started in some of the houses and we found some completely empty houses - wrong neighbourhood I'm guessing. Even Bluebirds have a wish list when it comes to property ownership apparently.
 Following all that, a picnic, a cup of tea complete with a gorgeous country view were next.  And then it was back to town and reality.
Good luck Mr and Mrs Bluebird!  May you and your children have a happy, song-filled life full of good bugs to eat.

I have been restoring  old black and white family photos with the help of my wonderful Adobe Lightroom program.  This is my Grandfather as a young, newly married man, who, sadly, I never knew.  I shot a copy with my Canon rebel XT of the original which was 11" x 14" and cropped and cleaned it up with the clone tool. 

I used to run a black and white darkroom in my journalist days and I remember lots and lots of spotting black and white photos for dust specs, etc.  Believe me when I say this, the clone tool in Lightroom beats the taste of the spotting ink by a mile!  This is my Grandmother.  Isn't she pretty?  It's good to know where your eyebrows come from I think.  I did know her.  She had a delightful laugh - like bells.  Her daughters had the same laugh.  It was an infectious sound.

And this is my wonderful dad at 21.  He was goofing around, probably on a Sunday, for his sister who was on the working end of the Camera.  He was working on a Threshing crew at the time so this would have been taken in September 1926, southern Alberta on a hot sunny day. 
All these black and white treasures are little stories, little bits of "being", memories on celluloid and paper.

This one is a treasure for sure.  The original is a tintype, handcoloured, of my great Grandmother, my Dad's grandmother.  Lots of spotting went into restoring this beauty.  There is no date on it, but judging from her dress it was the middle to late 1800's when it was taken.  Her name was Mary.  There is quite a store there.  She caught the eye of my Great Grandfather when he was shipwrecked and her family helped rescue the crew off the coast of Cape Breton Island.  Apparently he caught her eye too. 

One last shot - I'm on the left.  My friend Marilyn and I were holding two geese, part of the bounty my dad brought home.  As I recall, Marilyn took her goose home to her mum for their dinner.