Dog On A Root

Dogs The first critters you are likely to Resting while patiently waiting for dinner to be served. meet in Cuba are the dogs. Dogs are everywhere beginning right at the airport as a friendly little spaniel scurries about sniffing for contraband as all new arrivals pass through security. But they are also in the streets and often in the resorts. At Marea del Portillo there were several very well behaved dogs that quickly learned which guests were most likely to share their dinner with them and which guests would shun them. Sometimes they didn't even want food, just a friendly petting on the head or scratching of their bellies. Not once did we step in, or even see dog poop so they were either trained to do their business elsewhere or the gardeners were very efficient at cleaning up after them. Waiting for the Water Ballet to begin.  Of course there are many dogs off the resort as well. Some are pets belonging to local Cubans while many other run wild searching for...

- jim Young 2019405 “The only real things in life are the unexpected things. Everything else is just an illusion.” - Watkin Tudor Jones Security cameras are one of the most effective ways to prevent your home from being burglarized. Although the likelihood of being burglarized in a small town in Northern Ontario is somewhat lower than when we lived in Barrie, I suppose you can never be too careful. But the simple truth is we did not install our home security system for home security purposes. The sense of security and added protection it provides is really just a bonus, while the real intent of our security system was to keep an eye on the critters that come around at night, for no other reason than we enjoy watching them. What we didn’t know when we installed these cameras was just what kind of critters we would be watching. Our expectation was to capture footage of raccoons, skunks, deer, foxes maybe even an occasional bear or moose and whatever else might be lurking o...

- jim Young 201709/20190401 “Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana. - Groucho Marx I’ve been retired for just over a couple of years now so I thought it might be a good time to sit back, take inventory and see where I’m heading. Actually, I know where I’m heading - to the graveyard just like everyone else. After that - I have no idea.  The most recent Life Expectancy Calculator test I have taken suggests I will live to the age of 83. (This is a life expectancy test provided by a life insurance company with Canadians in mind.) They suggest I improve my dietary habits to increase my life expectancy by one more year but that’s not likely to happen. I’ll settle for 83. Ironically - improving my exercise habits will do nothing to increase my life expectancy now, so there’s not much incentive there. At 66, my life is 80% over. In terms of a single 24 hour day I have used up 19.2 hours of my day. This is the stage of my life where fractions of tim...

Servings: 2 My vegetable intake when I was  young was very limited. I liked potatoes, but mostly as chips in a foil bag. Green onions and radishes were a treat I only shared with my Dad in his garden. Freshly plucked from the earth we would use our shirt sleeves or pants to wipe the dirt off them, add salt from the shaker we borrowed from the kitchen and crunch away. And of course, corn on the cob was always a favourite, preferably around a campfire.  Oh! And marshmallows, not roasted, but burnt over an open fire. They count as vegetables don’t they? The two main ingredients in marshmallows are sugar and corn syrup. Sugar comes from the sugar cane plant and corn syrup from… corn stalks, of course. So how can marshmallows NOT be a vegetable? I was well into my adult years before I gradually learned to enjoy more vegetables. I don’t know if the tastes of the vegetables changed over the years or if my tastes changed but something happened and I now enjoy many more vegetables. E...