Baby Moose, Storms, Pools

Matt, being ever practical, thought the moose family in one's back yard, could, in fact, be quite dangerous. Presumably if you went near the babies, Mama would take exception, and that is one very big lump of animal. Once is cute, if they start paying regular visits, not so funny. I only ever saw a moose once, we were driving through Algonquin Park up north and saw cars parked all over the road, we stopped to see what people were looking at, and saw a female moose in the woods. Never seen a male although we used to hear a moose crashing past us when we were on a campsite up north years ago. Same campsite where Matt was fishing early one morning and an otter was teaching her family how to fish. She kept popping up with a fish in her mouth and looking at Matt seemingly to say "see that's how its done". He didn't catch anything. We had one heck of a storm last night, we watched the black clouds approaching over the trees from the other side of town, they really were incredibly black, in fact I would say frighteningly black, you could see the rain in the distance but for a while we were clear. Then lightening and thunder started, enough to knock your hearing out completely, great resonating cracks of massive thunder, then the rain started and it was lashing across so heavily it was like thick fog and I couldn't see into the park outside. One lightening strike caused the alarms to go off in the building, but surprisingly it didn't have any effect on the power. It didn't stay overhead that long but we could hear the thunder and see the lightening in the distance for an hour or so afterwards. I don't know if it did any damage anywhere, I haven't heard anything. The alarm was ringing for ages, its a very noisy sound too, well it has to be. This morning I hear Hurricane Dolly is right off the shores of Texas and expected to make landfall any time. I hope people have moved from its path. At the moment it is a Category 1 which isn't very strong as hurricanes go, but it is still over warm water so it can strengthen, in fact they anticipate it to strengthen to Category 2. Hurricanes are something we have plenty of experience of, it is best to move out of their way. Although sometimes they can follow you inland. On Good Morning America today, they had a segment on swimming pool drains and the extreme danger to young children. Apparently hundreds of children have been drowned because of the extreme pressure exerted (40 lbs) by the drains and there is a campaign to do something about it. A pool contractor has been arrested because of unsafe drain covers see here and they said this danger can be averted by buying a particular $40 drain cover to put in place. One piece of advice, if a child does get caught, don't use a direct pull but roll the child from side to side in an effort to break the suction. I have just joined iHype as a way of earning a few bucks now my Google ads have been taken away from me. Anyone who writes a blog can join this group and depending upon your range of interest, you can earn a little or a lot of money. This is a somewhat gloomy blog today isn't it? Sorry about that. The air outside our window is fresh and clean after the storm and Matt is out golfing which is what he loves to do. The following recipe is a Diabetic recipe, but not, of course, limited to people with diabetes. BAVARIAN POT ROAST Source: A-Z Recipes Servings: 8 Ingredients: 4 pounds beef arm pot roast 1 teaspoon vegetable oil 1 teaspoon salt 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger 1/8 teaspoon ground black pepper 3 whole cloves 4 medium apples, cored and quartered 1 small onion, sliced 1/2 cup apple juice 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour 3 tablespoons water Instructions: Wipe roast well and trim off excess fat. Lightly rub top of meat with oil. Dust with salt, ginger and pepper. Insert cloves in roast. Place onions and apples in crockpot and top with roast (cut roast in half, if necessary, to fit easily). Pour in apple juice. Cover and cook on LOW for 10 to 12 hours or on HIGH for 5 to 6 hours. Remove roast and apples to warm platter. Turn crockpot to HIGH. Make a smooth paste with flour and water; stir into crockpot. Cover and cook until thickened. Pour over roast. Have a great day.