Haloranch

Hans and I have been busy sprucing up the outdoors and especially the garden. There are lots of photos, so click on the link in the post below this one and you can see the progress. Later, I'll post Alethea and Drew's wedding photos here. That way it will be easier for you to see them and not have to receive huge email files.

Facebook | Your Photos - later garden Click on the blue title above, "Facebook / Your Photos - later garden" That will take you to the album with gardening photos from this year.

Truly, everythinig Vanessa ever said about Phoenix and Mesa is true. Today I'm sitting in her friends' backyard listening to the water cascade over the rocks and tumble clear and cool into their pool. Bruce and Vanessa are golfing with Hans and some other friends on the golf course right beside me. I see the carts roll by as I alternate between the sun adn shade and occasionally dip into the water for relief. The wind is surprisingly cool but it's glorious in the sun with my 45 sunblock. This northern white skin isn't ready for sustained sun yet. The sky is hot blue and the only colour comes from the occasional high altitute jet leaving a sharp white contrail in its wake. I'm sitting by the 8th hole, and in about an hour I'll be playing Beer Wench as my group comes by on their carts. Isn't life grand.

We're back in Red Deer after unexpectedly, sort of, spending Saturday night (March 7)in Calgary. Hans was scheduled to give his Camino presentation at 7:00 p.m. and we were slowly getting ready to leave around 1:00 p.m. But at 10:00 a.m. the wind started howling out here, driving the snow in horizontal sheets in front of my shocked eyes. Earlier that morning when the weather was still nice, Hans went outside with the snowblower to clear a path through the drifts from the previous blow a couple of days ago. We'd been trying to reach our kind neighbour to ask him to come by with his big tractor, but after 2 days of no luck (we found out he's holidaying in Mexico) Hans tackled it himself. But the snowblower conked out before he was finished and he ended up shovellng some of the drive. Our driveway is 400' long. With the weather looking bad we decided we had better leave a little earlier. First we phoned our friend M, who's in Red Deer this weekend, to accept hi...

Now that a new year has begun, this will be the last blog post on the Walk to Beat Polio and the Via de la Plata. However, information and photos will still be availabled on the website at http://www.haloranch.ca. As a final note, the Walk yielded a total of $54,156.84 most of which has already been sent to The Rotary Foundation Canada. A very sincere Thank You to everyone who contributed and supported the Walk to Beat Polio.

If you'd like to see the photos Hans took while walking the Via de la Plata in October and November 2008, email us at haloranch@xplornet.com and we'll send you an invitation to view them. The photos can be viewed as a slide show or clicked individually, and each one is captioned so you'll know what you're watching on the screen.

Wow. The Rotarians in one of the Rotary Clubs in District 5360 will be sending a cheque on December 5 to The Rotary Foundation in support of The Walk to Beat Polio. The amount? A whopping $17,629 ! That exceeds our goal of $50,000 and brings the total raised for PolioPlus to $51,118. Thank you, Rotarians, for this fabulous donation. Many children will live freed from the scourge of polio.