20091109 Snow Geese, riviere Richelieu, Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu

During a 100km bike ride to Saint-Blaise-sur-Richelieu on this quite balmy fall day, I saw some Canada Geese on the Richelieu river at Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu. That's not unusual, but what is unusual is seeing Snow Geese here, and in quite good numbers, a few thousands at least. there were some here and more upriver nearer to the town. They gave me a good show of going up a bit, some overhead to rest in fields for the night, some only upriver a bit. Music: Philip Glass from 1000 Airplanes On The Roof.

20091108 The Odd Couple....

20091108. The odd couple. In the Parc Des Vélos in Brossard, the best place to get a very good view of the Champlain bridge over the St-Lawrence river seaway, these two, a Canada Goose and a Snow Goose, are living together agreeably here. Both having lost their respective flocks, they pick the grass and take handouts as best they can. The Canada goose looks like a young one. The Snow goose could be the same one I saw there last August 27th. Not much afraid of people, they do walk away if you approach closer than a couple of meters, and fly away on the water if you're too much of a pest to their liking.

20091107 Winter car port ready!

20091107. We finished putting up the winter car port. Thanks Jacques!

20091106 Tillandsia cyanea, $7.99 at Ikea

20091106. Tillandsia cyanea, $7.99 at Ikea in Boucherville. Didn't get one but we did get 3 libraries in the slightly damaged stuff area.

20091105 Cat in the back yard in Brossard

20091105. Cat in the back yard in Brossard.

20091104 Dog and Cat in Pierreville

20091104. ...like a dog and a cat at each other...
Today was a winterizing day again. Had the tires changed on my car, along with a lube job and the anti-rust treatment. All done in Pierreville at Les Entreprises Normand Verville, a specialist shop in vehicle electric systems who does some other odd stuff too. The shop is located next to his home. He has two nice dogs, a black one and this beige one. This one went along with be for a walk in the woods behind the shop. A very nice dog but later on it was at this cat's nerves. The cat could defend itself quite honorably! The shop owner lent me a courtesy car so I could go back home while he was working. At home in SFdL, I put up the isolating plastics in the second floor windows.

20091103 Beatles stuff at D-Tox

20091103 Beatles stuff at D-Tox, a young men and women's clothing store. Some is exclusive and interesting. They have a version of Monopoly with street names and places taken from Liverpool and London, England. A Trivial Pursuit with all Beatles questions. Some puzzles, etc. I took a Sgt Pepper's puzzle. This is in the Brossard store in the Mail Champlain mall.

20091102 Artwork on the highway sound barrier in Brossard

20091102. Artwork on the highway sound barrier in Brossard. Along the eastern side of highway 10 and Bergerac St. Shot taken while on a 51km bike ride on the first day of my doing all the streets of Brossard on bicycle. Done all the streets between Milan, Grande-Allée, Highway 10 and Chevrier.

20091101 Saint-François-du-Lac municipal elections

20091101. Municipal elections in Saint-François-du-Lac, as everywhere in Quebec today. In the voting booth, this is how it looked. My voting poll was #5. So I expected to get at most to vote for the mayor and for who represents my district (#5), just like it happened to Ginette in Brossard earlier in the day. But when it was my turn to vote, they handed me a pile of voting slips. I unrolled them all in the booth and understood that I had to vote for a representative in each and every district, along with the mayor! That's why it took so long for people to vote and that the line was not advancing very fast!
Now, if you look very carefully, there was 3 candidates for mayor. The incumbent on the left, and two ex-SFdL mayors. The funny thing is that, on the mayor voting slip there are 3 choices, but on the representatives' slips there are only 2. That's because the candidates Yvan L'Heureux has the same representatives as Jaques Gill! Only #5 & #6 are missing from his list. (In an ad from the local hebdo L'Annonceur of 20091021, Jacques Gill proposes both Nathalie Desmarais and Julie Bouchard for #6!) Why bother to split the vote if you want the same people with you? Don't these representatives have a say in who they back as mayor? I guess that's how loose and blurry things get in small towns.... I think Nathalie Demarais (district #6), who owns a beauty salon and who's roosters, hens and rabbits sometimes visit my back yard, will have some explaining for me!
Who won? Info below.
http://www.lecourriersud.com/article-i396270-Les-resultats-du-vote.html
Saint-François-du-Lac
Maire: Georgette Critchley (62,6% des votes)
Conseiller 1: Jean-Louis Lambert (74% des votes)
Conseiller 2: Jean Duhaime (60,3% des votes)
Conseiller 3: Yves Plante (59,8% des votes)
Conseiller 4: Daniel Labbé (70,5% des votes)
Conseiller 5: Réjean Gamelin (75,1% des votes)
Conseiller 6: Julie Bouchard (67,7% des votes)

20091031 Jean Letarte - Le Grand Reposoir (2005)

20091031. A painting in the hall of the Centre Multifonctionnel in Boucherville. It is called Le Grand Reposoir (the great resting place) by Jean Letarte (2005). There were many more paintings there. I chose to post this one because it looked a bit Halloweenish.

20091030 Winter car port structure

20091030. Time put up the car's winter sheltering port with a little help from a friend. First, the skeleton. Next week the canvas.

20091029 Red Fox on Notre-Dame island, Montreal

20091029. Saw a red fox again on Notre-Dame island. It was roaming here and there along the bike path and over the canal's bridges near to the old Expo 67 Jamaica pavillion, close to the Quebec and France pavillions (those are today the Montreal Casino). Totally unafraid of people. Looking for handouts, it actually approached me and a couple there taking a walk. The man threw it some cookies that the fox ate like a dog would. So it was relatively easy to take some good shots of it. This is the best one, zoomed in at max zoom, slightly cropped and resized by Facebook. If I had something to attract it, I would have done even better. There are plenty of pics of foxes with a nature background out there on the web already. By better, I imagine a pic with background showing context, such as the bike path, my bicycle, or something of what's left of Expo 67.

20091028 Cross at La Commune in Baie-du-Febvre.

20091028. A simple cross in a field at La Commune in the town of Baie-du-Febvre.

20051028 Trashed Kodak carousels

20051028. Flashback to four years ago. Kodak slide caroulels in the recycle bin in Longueuil. Sign of the digital times. Things change.

20091021 Three stenciled squirrels along the Chambly channel.

20091021. Three stenciled squirrels on a pillar of the rt 112 over the Chambly channel.

20091025 Crepidium mieczyslawii as Crepdidium miczyslawi

20091025. Went to an orchid show called the Ochidfête. It's organised by the Eastern Canada Orchid Society, a south shore of Montreal based group. They only have about 100 members and that shows by the size of the ...exhibit, contained in only 2 small rooms. A much smaller exhibit than the yearly orchid show I saw at the De Maisonneuve college last spring, the Montreal Orchidexpo.
Here's a sample of what I saw. It was on the table of the exhibitor called J & L Orchids. We've all seen the flamboyant orchids of wedding bouquets, but what I'm looking out for are the tiny ones. This one caught my attention. It looked like something related to Liparis. It's called here Crepdidium miczyslawi. But I wonder about that. Nether the genus name nor the specie name show up on Google. I get zero hits. Nada. None at all... Nothing... and that usually means that the the genus and/or specie names are spelled wrong. Usually Google suggests spelling corrections but in this case nothing. So it must be spelled terribly wrong! Well, not that wrong after all. I've checked in my favorite reference book on genus names, the Dalla Torr & Harms, and I found a similar name, the Crepidium, placed under Microstylis, a genus related to Liparis just as I thought. Looking up images of Crepidium on Google brings up pics of a plant very similar to the one here. So that must be it! Now, the specie name got me zero hits on Google, but they did suggest me an alternate spelling, but one that was useless to me. So looking up on IPNI, I found a similar name: Crepidium mieczyslawii. So that's it also! Two for two! This specie name gets me only five hits on Google! No wonder I had trouble finding it's proper name! Funny thing about Google: it does not show the IPNI page about this plant, not even in Google Scholar.
See the rest of the pics of the Orchidfête that I kept HERE and HERE.
Exhibitors and species shown are: Paphanatics Unlimited|||||| Cloud Orchids||| Aerangis rhodostica v. luteo-alba|||||| Habenaria myriotricha||||||||| Exotic Orchids Plus||| Oncidium ornithorynchum 'Orchidexpert X Donald'|||||| Schoenorchis fragrans||| Le Paradis des Orchidées||||||||| Phalaenopsis chingrey's goldstaff 'Orchis'||| Phalaenopsis Sogo Manager X Taisuco glory||||||||| Oncidium Twinkle 'Red Fantasy'||| Tropical Gardens Orchids||| Phalaenopsis tetraspis||| Asconopsis Jai Ho's Orange||| Neofinetia falcata 'Kinloukaku'||| Neofinetia falcata 'Seiryujishi'||| Neofinetia falcata 'Isetyabo'||| Tolumnia Spicy Pink||| Doritis pulcherrima 'Bedford Blue Ribbon'||||||||| Panarica prismatocarpa|||||| Les Orchidées MFC||| DiCiommo Orchids||| Encyclia cochleata||| Oncidium Jiuhbao Gold 'Taiwan'||||||||| Ecuagenera||| An-Li & Roger Sheng||| Orchid Inn||| Paphiopedilum hybride primaire Juxius|||||||||||| Paphiopedilum hybride primaire Johanna Burkhardt||| ||||||||| Ottawa Orchid Society||| Hamilton Greenhouse||| Green Poppies||| Les Orchidophiles de Québec||| Jardin Botanique de Montréal||| Dendrochilum filiforme|||||||||||| Trichoceros antennifer|||||| Ceratostylis retisquama|||||| Catasetum incurvum|||Mormodes rolfeanum||| |||||||||||| X Cycnodes Wine Delight 'J.E.M.' |||||||||||||||||| Bulbophyllum gracillimum|||||| Laelia splendida|||||||||||||||||| x Ascocenda Suksamran Sunlight 'Orange Crush'|||||| Lycaste cruenta|||||| Encyclia diota ssp. atrorubens||||||||||||||||||||||||||| Eastern Canada Orchid Society||| Radio Shack Optimus screen protector||||||||| Restrepia cuprea||| Ascocenda Suks anran 'Sunlight'|||||| Bedford Orchids||| Robert Flynn Designer||| J & L Orchids||| Angraecum didieri||| Masdevallia andreettana||| Pleurothallis mystax||||||||| Masdevallia exquisita||| Crepidium mieczyslawi as Crepdidium miczyslawi|||||||||||| Isochilus major 'Fox Den'|||||| Dracuvallia Blue Boy 'Cow Hollow'|||||| Fleurifik||| Plant Exotica|||||| Catasetum fimbriatum 'Golden Horizon'||||||||| ||| Catasetum socco||| Cycnoches barthiorum 'Jumbo Orchid'|||||| Brassocattleya Chief Pink 'Diana'|||||| Grammatocymbidium Lovely Melody|||||||||||| Anne Herbatuk Ikenobo||| Marsh Hollow Orchids||| Habenaria rhodochila|||||| Stelis eublepharis 'Conni's Star'|||||| Scaphosepalum gibberosum 'Marsh Hollow'||||||||||||||||||||| Dendrobium cuthbertsonii||| Wilsonara Firecracker 'Redstar'||||||||| Paphinia herrarae 'Marsh Hollow'|||||||||||||||||| Les Orchidophiles de Montréal||||||||| Stenoglottis fimbriata 'Drayton'||||||||| Dendrobium Pompadour|||||| Colmanara Wildcat||| Calanthe Grouville|||||| Aerangis hyaloïdes||||||||| Paphiopedilum Toni Semple|||||||||||| Dendrobium rigidum||||||||| Dendrobium cobbianum|||||| Dendrobium magnum||||||||| Dendrobium tenuibulbon||||||||| Dendrobium cootesii||||||||||||||| Bulbophyllum purpureorachis||||||||||||||||||||| Peristeria pendula|||||| Robiquetia merillii||| Orchids in Our Tropics||| Dendrobium lawesii||||||||| Stelis argentata|||||| Darwinia Charm 'Blue Star'|||||| Southern Ontario Orchid Society||||||||||||||| Laeliocattleya C.G. Roebling 'Royal Purple'|||||| Lepanthes telipogoniflora|||||||||||||||||| Platystele umbellata||||||||||||||| Lockhartia oerstedii||||||||| Adaglossum Summit 'Frenchtown'

20071024 Mailbox/bicycle in Nicolet

20071024. Two years ago today. Here's an original concept: a mailbox on a bicycle. After the mailman passes, use it to carry stuff! Pic taken in Nicolet along the Rang Saint-Alexis.

20091023 Sun, clouds, airplane and wires over Notre-Dame island

20091023. Sun, clouds, airplane and wires over Notre-Dame island.

20091022 First snowfall in Brossard

20091022. First snowfall in Brossard.

20091021 Montérégiade II fermée 1001 au 0531

20091021. Along a 100km bike ride to Mont-Saint-Grégoire, I saw this bike path sign that says "FERMÉE DU 1er OCT. AU 31 MAI", i.e. "closed from October 1st to May 31st", on the segment from Richelieu to Mt-St-Grégoire. That is totally ridiculous. We can cycle well into late October and even right into early December in some good years in fall and from March in spring without getting your tires in the snow. That early in spring there would still be snow along the bike path, but not on the road pavement, but there still is some meltwater there. I did once cycle during a warm spell on a February day about 10-15 years ago in St-Placide, but that's unusual.