The main task over the last ten days has been pruning and burning. Pruning means cutting off the tall leaders that extend beyond our longest apple ladder, any dead or damaged branches and making sure we can mow between the rows. Almost, one hundred trees generate quite a pile of applewood. Given the fire ban notice, the season started March 15th. we were able to mix the apple with juniper and spruce prunings to create a manageable conflagration, before that date.
The other component was multiflora rose. In the hedgerows, along the field boundaries, multiflora rose can overtop the willow and alder. This invasive species has colonized a number of abandoned fields in this part of the Valley.
In the middle of all this activity, Heather had the opportunity to attend a Winter Pruning workshop offered by the Nova Scotia Nature Trust in Dartmouth. This resulted in super-sharp pruning equipment.
After much deliberation, we have decided to stay home and enjoy the Nova Scotia Spring. The risk of flying from Halifax-Ottawa-Iqaluit was not worth it. These remote communities have limited finite medical resources.
Meanwhile, a new book arrived at the Inside Story. Bokashi Composting by Adam Footer.
This gives us the opportunity to address soil building on our property.
Online, I noticed today that Emergence Magazine’s latest issue is Vulnerability, Community and Connection.
In preparation for our annual trip North, I had signed up for a personal fitness program with Cathy at Healthy Bodies. It won’t go to waste. I can see a lifetime of outdoor tasks around the combined one hundred acres, between Andrew’s property and our own. Yesterday, we walked the property line down from Inglisville Road. There are a number of downed trees from the Winter storms that need to be cleared with the chainsaw.
Acknowledgements
Heather for sharing the Spring cleaning tasks around the property. Edward for his remote input from the South (returning sooner than originally planned).
References
Adam Footer. 2014. Bokashi Composting. Scraps to Soil in Weeks. New Society Publishers.
Emergence Magazine. March 15,2020. Vulnerability, Community and Connection.
Edward and Anne both have a passion for Plein Air Art. This takes place in Nova Scotia from Spring to Fall and Florida in the Winter.
He uses Google products as these are more readily accessible to him and to the art community. The map currently has 5,000+ map views. Google also has loose connections between its many Google Drive products (eg Sheets, Forms, Calendars, Maps) that lend themselves to exciting R&D opportunities for an Innovation Hub. He feels that, with greater community college collaboration, students would gain by technical exposure to and training with Google Maps and related tools. The community would gain through local, shared incubator-projects in an Innovation Hub. The Hub would gain by scaling locally-developed solutions and building intellectual property.
Mapping Art can also be seen as the Art of Cartography. There is an excellent local example in the Valley. 
“The writers from whom Dark Mountain has taken inspiration are grounded in a sense of place and time. In the deep time of geology and myth, in the rooted relations to the place of a tree or the navigational feel for place of a migrant bird.”
Sandra Barry forwarded to me an event notice, featuring Rita Wilson and Emma FitzGerald ‘
I had the opportunity to attend the Geoff Butler celebration at the Kings Theatre. It was a full house. The first half included a short film by Tim Wilson ‘
The book includes forty-six lullabies, from ‘At the Tiller’ to Wherever the wind blows’. Each lullaby has a painting and a musical score.
Afterwards, there was an interview with a psychiatrist about narcissistic behaviour fostered by Facebook and other social media tools.
From England, an old school friend, excellent cricketer and sitar player, Viram Jasani, mentioned that he is writing an autobiographical novel. This week, I finished reading Jane Smiley’s 
In response to my 
This weekend, we stopped in Truro on our way to New Glasgow. At the 
Heather had a full day Buddhist retreat in Annapolis Royal. With early morning temperatures of -20C, she walked from our house on Hwy#201 in Paradise to the CRIA gas station in Lawrencetown. She caught the 3W bus to Bridgetown. In Bridgetown, she changed to the 4W bus, and continued on to Annapolis Royal. This evening, she will catch the 4E bus at the Annapolis Royal Fire Department at 5:31 pm, I will pick her up at CRIA around 6:11 pm.
In my conversations with Edward Wedler, this relates back to the time when we decided to walk from Yarmouth to Georgetown, PEI, as part of our 
Today, I received a second book from my brother Peter. It is called ‘Maureen’ and is a collection of historic photographs, commemorating the life of my younger sister; thus, indirectly, our lives too.
It shows thirteen pairs of images from 
I reciprocated with photographs of two maps from my study. Polar Knowledge Canada and The Earth from Space, signed by Tom van Sant, from California days, 12/12/90.
With the storms, I have been catching up with my reading, especially the work of David Adams Richards. In Harry Thurston’s book 
The difference at COGS is that we have a specialized suite of technologies: Geomatics or Geographic Sciences, and we live in a more rural environment. (This rural environment provides a likely explanation for the residency component).
I found the following quotation from 
Ernest Blair Experiment 