Going to Canada eh ?

When we got this “wagon” Lin had visions of wooden wheels, hoop and canvas top, pulled by something with a tail.  Lin was pleasantly surprised it was like her english estate car, only they don’t call it that here.

I was not happy with the brakes, so Pete and Dave (the millwright from Pete’s work place) replaced the front discs and rear brake drums and rear wheel bearings.  They also bled the brakes 2 or 3 times, and this gave a big improvement.  It was fortunate that they were able to use the workshop at Pete’s work out of hours as this enabled them to work in the warm and dry.

We are still trying to find a spare key, we had one cut but didn’t realise they need to have an embedded chip otherwise they won’t start the car.  The original spare key was posted to us from the dealer, but got lost in the post.  Yet another feature of Canada Post ?  How much of this can we believe ?  No matter what you think of Royal Mail in UK, it’s never as bad as Canada Post.

Easter weekend we thought we had seen the last of the snow. (Wrong) So we decided to do something about the vegetable patch at the bottom of the garden. There were two small raised beds separated by a shed that looked as though they may well have produced vegetables in previous years but when we arrived last year all they had was a promising crop of couch grass.

We started by making a tour of the garden centres to see what was available. We got seed potatoes and onion sets from Canadian Tire. ( This chain of stores does not have a uk equivalent as on one side of the shop they fix your car and on the other side they sell diy goods. I suppose the nearest would be if B&Q and Halfords merged under one roof).

Potting compost and mini greenhouse came from the Co-op but we couldn’t find conventional seed trays so we ended up with the sort that are sub divided into modules. Ok but twice as fiddley to fill with compost as the open plan type.

Pete set to digging one patch and successfully ruined his back for the rest of the day but managed to get two rows of potatoes planted. David attacked the other one with his spade and before we could stop him had buried the onion sets 6 inches deep  and then smothered the the whole plot with ant powder.

The next weekend we visited a nursery looking for bedding plants etc  and were advised by the owner not to put anything out until after the long weekend in May as up until then, frost was a real possibility.

We had thought of growing tomatoes in grow bags on the decking but hadn’t seen any in the shops. Pete asked friends at work and was met with comments like

A what ?

What do you do with it ?

Why not just put the plants in the soil ?

Yes you guessed it. A Google search confirmed the grow bag has not made the trans-atlantic leap.

Instead Pete has constructed a plant trough out of a discarded packing case from work. This impressed David as he did it without reading the instructions.

Without a frost free greenhouse or conservatory we can not do any more preparation, its a case of hurry up and do nothing until Victoria Day. Which incidentally will be 51 weeks since we landed here.

Travelling between Blackfalds and Red Deer is a bit like driving through someones very large model railway. There are lines all over the place running down both sides of the road crossing the road by one (not very) level crossing and then a few yards later by an over bridge.

There doesn’t appear to be an equivalent to OS maps here (probably because there is much more ground to cover) and so for a while we were stuggling to make sense of it all. In the end it was Dave who showed us how to do it. He found our home on Google Earth so with some panning and zooming Pete was able to follow the tracks.

We are at a cross roads so to speak where the Canadian Pacific Railway running North to South crosses the Canadian National Railway running East to West. There is a triangular junction on the CN with a line leading down from the embankment to some exchange sidings that allow traffic to pass from one railway to the other.

A pair of CN diesels are stabled by the level crossing and cause havoc when shunting as they pass back and forth over the crossing holding up traffic for 10 or more minutes. Incidentally they did not seem to have problems starting on cold mornings it was probably the right kind of snow (old British Rail joke)!

There is also an old caboose in one of the sidings. I think it is used by the staff as canteen. It never goes out on a train but moves up and down the siding  as a barometer depending on how many wagons are in the siding.

All the main lines are single track but we have yet to discover where the North and South bound trains pass each other. It cannot be far away as they run about 10 minutes apart and travel very slowly. The strangest formation we have seen so far was one freight train pulled by 7 locomotives.

Another ice age draws to an end. The glaciers are retreating and most of the snow has gone.  On the roads near the kerbs and down the center line are piles of stone chippings that were used to grit the road. They seem to be waiting for some enterprising soul to hoover them all up and sell them back to the council ready for next year. Some car parks still have mini icebergs in the corner where the scrapings have been piled up and not yet melted away.

Green shoots have yet to be seen and we are wondering what we can grow in our veg plot during what we think may be a compressed growing season.

The main thing is we survived what people are telling us was a particulary hard winter .We learnt a few things like don’t eat pink snow its where the transmission fluid from Pete’s car had leaked.

If you drive into someones snow covered drive way and cannot get enough traction get your husband to sit on the bonnet over the driving wheels.

Don’t use ordinary PVC extension leads to power your block heater . It gets so cold the insulation becomes brittle and snaps very easily.

For some time we have been trying to get our phone tv and internet connections all from the same company. They have even written to us asking  us to let them supply our telephone but everytime we called them they say “we don’t cover Blackfalds”. This week we found our neighbour had just had a Shaw telephone line installed so Pete rang again, got the same story as before but this time was able to say ” but my neighbour has one of your phones please check her number and then explain why she can have it but I cannot ?”  embarassed silence then “Oh yes we can do your phone let me take some details and someone will call you back”…I am still waiting and wondering if we have made the right choice. They cant all be as bad as Vodafone can they ?