Creepy Season

Common garden spider and its lunch,
Ameliasburgh, Ontario, September 20, 2022.

Garter snake, Macaulay Mountain Conservation Area,
September 21, 2022.

Al Purdy's ghostly feet (and the photographer's),
Grove Cemetery, Purdy Street,
Ameliasburgh, Ontario, September 20, 2022.

Apologies to all arachnophobes and ophidiophobes. I needed illustrations to accompany my observation that Hallowe'en is morphing into "creepy season", I assume in a systemic effort to make everyone feel welcome to festoon their homes in synthetic webs and fabric witches.

This week's canvassing for Dianne Saxe was complicated by houses that had covered up their numbers with creepy season decorations. Another complicating factor was we were back in Rosedale, Toronto's toniest neighbourhood, where houses sit on acre lots and you have to wait and wait and wait at the door to give anyone home the time they need to answer your knock. The time and distances involved neutralize the impact of a large canvassing team. In two hours, six of us barely managed 100 homes. A third as many could have done twice as much in any other neighbourhood.

The houses are huge, and grandly appointed, but, in a lot of respects, are like everywhere else. Some are immaculately kept. Others are a mess. Some have been subdivided into flats. Two grand homes on Glen Road are obviously vacation rentals (obvious, that is, if you knock on the door and offer information about a local election). At the west end of Roxborough Drive, most of the properties are decrepit.

Sometimes it feels as if I'm in the same campaign as just a few months ago, when I also folded flyers into the door handles of non-responsive addresses, and asked strangers nosey questions about who they'd be supporting in the election.   

There's really only one big difference between the municipal election and the provincial election. Dianne may actually win this time.

Thanks for reading!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Karen 

Ever seen a frog poop?
A grey tree frog, on the
back deck of our PEC Vrbo.
Terrified by two giant
beings bathing it in light and 
alcohol fumes, it let loose
its little bowels.