Watching the sunlight sparkle on Indian Creek

I've been trying to spend less time with my face in the laptop.

That's why I found myself on the stoop, breathing deep of our forest air, focusing on every precious breath, and all the usual mindfulness verities.

Every year, with the spring melt, the creek will rise enough that we can see it from the stoop. 

Indian Creek originates at Mary Lake. From there, it trickles into Gowan Lake, and then into a marsh just upstream from me, and from there to the marsh at the north end of Bass Lake, from where it emerges as the Indian River, which meets Georgian Bay across the road from the Indian River liquor store.

That joint is one of my great real estate regrets. It sat there boarded up and for sale for two years. Every day when I drove home I'd say to myself, that'd be a great spot for a LCBO outlet, especially after they moved the only LCBO in Owen Sound from the downtown to the east side.

While I was thinking about it, a lovely Korean couple bought the joint and opened a LCBO outlet. I can't help but think the place is a gold mine. There's an awful lot of folks up Balmy Beach Road and out at Cobble who have ample booze budgets and would much prefer to stop on their way home than to drive across town.

Anyway, it was a beautiful sunny day here, although a little on the cool side. But what was really cool was, with the creek high, you can see the sun sparkle on the water, right from the stoop!

How to waste tax-payer money

A couple of weeks ago we got notice from the township that they'd be fixing up our culvert that sends the waters of the Indian Creek under Concession 20 and on into Bass Lake and the Indian River. Not that we'd ever noticed anything wrong with that culvert. We've been here eight or nine years and that culvert seems to work just fine. In fact, I walk the hounds across that bridge/culvert twice a day, and it's always seemed OK to me.

But, I'm not an engineer, so what the fuck, you gotta give the experts the benefit of the doubt.

So today the job started. We've got rental traffic lights at each end of the work zone. That in itself is hilarious, because you can clearly see across the fifty foot work zone from either end. All they needed was a "yield to oncoming traffic" sign at either end of the work zone. Instead, they rented traffic lights for either end... on a road that might have a hundred vehicles pass by on a busy day.

It get's better. At 7:30 this evening we heard a generator kick in. It was the generator for the construction lights. Yup, the night crew needs their lights! A good hour and a half before sun-set.

Near as we can tell, the day crew knocked off at five o'clock, and there is no night crew. As I write these words it's after ten o'clock, the lights are a-blaze on our wee bridge, and there is no fucking night crew in sight...

WTF?

Now I'm not blaming the lads on the county bridge crew. Those are just regular folks doing their jobs. But I could, were I consulted, point out a lot of places in this county where their endeavours are more earnestly required than here at Falling Downs.

At this time of night we have about one or two cars per hour coming down the road. We don't need two portable traffic signals and a generator-run bevy of construction lights to manage all this non-activity.

Get the fuck outta here!