Seeing the Forest for the Trees

As usual, we were pretty solidly booked again today. First things first, we had our early morning soccer lesson on Frid, which is always great fun. If you don't crack a smile while watching a group of 3 year-olds play soccer, you aren't paying enough attention.

Prior to leaving the house, I'd loaded the car with boots, shovels and work gloves. Earth Day Hamilton, in conjunction with a number of other groups was hosting a big tree planting at the new Ecopark lands near the Desjardins canal in Dundas.  As you know, I love to get my hands dirty so I was really looking forward to pitching in.

We got there just in time to hear the addresses from Ted McMeekin, our MPP, and Mayor Bratina. It was very nice to see them there and I was especially impressed that Ted was wearing jeans and work boots!

With the pleasantries out of the way, it was time to get to work... after a visit to the horned owl show from the Mountsberg Raptor Centre. Can you believe this poor bird is stunted? It was still REALLY big!

Hooter

Turn out was great and it was really nice to see so many grad students from Mac participate.

Insert meadow here

This plot of land is where the former Veldhuis greenhouses used to be. It's now going to be a gateway park for the new Cootes to Escarpment Ecopark, which is going to be awesome. The ground was contaminated and the decision was made to cap it rather than remediate it.

I turns out that the material they used to cap it was from the spot on the Mac campus where the Phoenix used to be and the new building is going behind the hospital. Wow, that was some serious clay and it was crammed with all sort of rocks, brick and general junk - we even pulled out an old car inner tube. Sheesh!

Holes weren't so much dug as they were chipped out of the clay. In the end, we got about 15 trees planted but we probably could have done nearly twice that had the dirt not been like concrete.

The family that digs together stays together!

A "family portrait" of our trees

We went home, had a quick lunch and I got down to cooking while the boy went down for his nap.

Spanakopita goes into the oven.

Spanakopita comes out of the oven.

And with that, we were off to the Ancaster Fair!

So much anticipation!

The Ancaster Fairgrounds are really special to me. Aside from all the great times I've had there at the Fair, it's the venue for the huge bike race I run on Good Friday. The staff there are so great and the facility itself is beyond compare.

As always, our first stop was the School Fair building. I love it in there and this year, the LEGO competition was totally out of control!

School Fair

We went into Marritt Hall full of anticipation. Did our home canning entries make the cut? Sadly, neither Kim's jam nor my spaghetti sauce placed. It was a slight disappointment but I'm more motivated than ever to try again next year. As Samuel Beckett said, "Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better."

Dinner rush

At dinner, I had a most unexpected encounter. I was eating a bowl of chili (I tend to pig out at the Fair...) while I was waiting in line for fish & chips. "That looks good - where did you get it?" I looked up to find myself facing ex-mayor and current mayoral candidate Fred Eisenberger. I said hi, shook his hand and expressed my sympathies regarding the death of his mother earlier this week.

Before leaving, we made quick trips through both the demolition derby pits and the midway.

Demo pits

First midway ride ever!

Though I wasn't actually hungry anymore, I was expressly told not to leave without getting a particular Portuguese sausage on a bun. Ya, it was worth it!

Oh man this was good!