It finally looks like spring might be making some headways here in Manitoba.  It snowed during the last week of April but luckily we got very little compared to some places in Western Manitoba.  Apparently, Calgary and Edmonton got hit pretty hard.  I remember going camping at Kananaskis just after our move to Calgary.  The weather had been gorgeous when we left home that Saturday afternoon.  In fact, it was so nice we wore shorts.  Coming from Manitoba we had no idea how quickly the weather could change.  By the time we had supper at the campground it was raining and by the time we went to bed, it was snowing.  We were practically frozen solid by the time morning arrived.  The showers in the campground were packed with people waiting to warm up with hot water.  We were finally escorted out of the park and to the Trans Canada highway by the RCMP.  So snow in Calgary at the end of April does not surprise me.  Today it is a sunny 9 C and apparently later today it is supposed to reach 16C.  Almost swimming pool weather.

Earlier in April, I was plagued by severe pain in my back around the hip area.  Since I hate going to the doctor or even worse emergency I kept putting off the inevitable.  On April 20th I finally could no longer handle the added pain so off to the walk-in clinic.   A note on the clinic door advised us that they were full up so we had no other choice but the emergency at the local hospital.  We arrived at 12:30 PM.  It took till 7:00 PM to give me a bottle to pee in and a diagnosis of a kidney infection.  I must say that the doctor I finally saw was very thorough and pleasant to deal with.  The antibiotics were a nightmare.  The pills were an inch long and about 30 minutes after taking one I experienced severe nausea.  Gravol shots can be a blessing.

As I mentioned in a previous post I have revived my genealogy project, a project I started in the early 80s.  I have been researching my grandfather’s mother’s side of the family.  So far I have been able to trace the family back to 1700 and have added 900 names.  Right now I am busy translating letters from relatives in the Soviet Union to relatives in Canada.  The letters were written between 1920 and 1950 and what makes the translations more difficult is that the authors used High German, Platdeutsch and Russian in their letters.  The stories told in these letters are incredibly sad and it boggles my mind how these people retained their sanity under the conditions they had to live with.   Men were arrested at night and set to the Gulags never to be seen again, political prisoners, including women and children, were put on trains in cattle cars and shipped to Stalin and Hitler’s camps and children starved to death just to name a few atrocities.   When compared to what these people lived through my complaints are ridiculously minor.

I must get back to my project so will close for today.  Hope all my readers have a great weekend.

This video was taken earlier this month.  It shows two crows busy pulling strips of bark off a tree in our back yard.