After a quick week at home, I was back on the road late last week and had an eventful weekend attending my first Bassmaster Classic tournament in Birmingham, Ala. The Bassmaster Classic is the biggest bass tournament in the world, hands down. It is the year-end championship of the Bassmaster […]
Columnists
Last week’s winter storm certainly was not a welcome sight! What a mess—and then with all the drifting, I had stuff lost right in my yard. I also ended up getting the tractor stuck trying to make my way to feed the heifers (couldn’t see my trail and that was […]
A 100-year-old does yoga daily. An 85-year-old runs two miles a day. A 70-year-old writes weekly news notes for her local paper. A 93-year-old climbs Mount Fuji. An 85-year-old plays the piano at area nursing homes. A 65-year-old starts a new business. These are the new elderly. Forget the stereotypes […]
“It’s simply chemistry. No challenge,” explained one young wit in response to his mother’s inquiry as to why he never bothered to include anything from that genre in his gastronomic delights. “That may explain some of my failures,” concluded Diane during the discussion on delightful desserts. “I was banned from […]
We were sitting at the kitchen table shelling peanuts and enjoying the salty taste, sipping on a “London Porter,” and reviewing the day’s successes after a pleasant afternoon of ice-fishing when he said, “The next time we go ice-fishing, I think we should go for trout.” My heart leapt. I […]
By Melanie Mathieson The Gardening Guru Grapes can grow in Rainy River District if varieties adapted to our cold, dry winters and short growing season are chosen. When making the decision to plant grape vines, it is very important to be aware of our hardiness zone (Zone 4) and to […]
Writing is a somewhat haphazard and disorderly process for me, especially since the advent of the computer more than 20 years ago. It is far too easy to save ideas, quotes, half-finished columns, book titles, and snippets of information for later use. But, like a squirrel accidentally planting oak trees, […]
The garden seeds are in the stores. So, too, are the starter kits for flowers, tomatoes, and other plants that will be transplanted later this year. The days are growing longer and there still is light after six p.m. In the mornings, I almost can see daylight now as I […]
I spent the Family Day holiday expanding my family as calves are coming. Alas, winter still is very much here with this blowing snow that we really do not need. I know we shouldn’t complain. It has warmed up—but it doesn’t need to snow every time it does. I think […]
This past week was a very busy one in Ottawa, during which the Harper government presented another 400-plus page monster budget bill that does nothing to create jobs or make life affordable in Northwestern Ontario and that saw me take the issue of propane price gouging to the floor of […]
I’ve been flag-watching since the Sochi Olympics opened and though it is impossible to contain my bias, I love the clean, simple freshness of our Canadian flag and its uniqueness. The Maple Leaf conjures up any number of concepts for me: our vast natural wilderness, what I think of as […]
That new gigantic purse your spouse has just acquired looks like a real fashion statement. But is it really? The added capacity could be for anything from bringing along a supply of Depends for hubby to harvesting snacks at the buffet for tomorrow’s dinner or for the dog (or, in […]
