Chasing the Fall Colours

Last Tuesday turned out to be a glorious fall day, and when my physio was unexpectedly cancelled, we decided to head out for our annual drive down through the valley to see the fall colours.  It was a long drive and I took 140+ pictures, so even after narrowing them down this is going to be several posts - but there's nowhere better than the Beaver Valley for fall colour, so here we go.

Let me start you off right in our backyard with one of our changing Sugar Maples, just so you know what we're looking for.

We headed south out of town, about a 20 minute drive to get into the valley proper.  This is Frogs Hollow which we drive through on the way.

Soon we're far enough south to see the distant colour on the slopes of the Niagara Escarpment.

Our favourite road on this annual jaunt is Lanktree Drive, a road that goes up the slope north of the former Talisman Ski Resort to serve a small subdivision of ski chalets.  It's also a lot safer to stop and pull over to get pictures once you are off the main road.

I could have spent the entire afternoon getting pictures just on this short road.

Apart from the bullrushes in the foreground, this is still a very distant view, but all the Sugar Maples, which provide the orange and red colours, seem to have turned at once.  Most of the ash lose their leaves first and are now looking bare; the evergreens keep their needles, so there will be bands of green all winter.  

And we did get much closer to individual trees as we drove up the slope.  More of those soon.

I cannot resist this one last photo, for I think it is the only time I have caught an individual leaf falling in mid-air!

Protecting Your Computer, Bank Accounts and Personal Identity

Here is my personal list of suggestions to protect yourself online, based on my reading since getting hacked two weeks ago.

- Never respond to a website, email address or phone number that appears in a pop-up box on your computer!  This was my big mistake.  Call a computer technician.

- Consider carefully how much information you give out online.  I have chosen to write a blog, so you can find my picture and probably my name online easily, but that is my choice.  Because so many places ask for my birthdate in a medical context, I tends to assume that is public too.  At the other extreme I would never give out my social insurance number or Passport identification to just anyone, and I am pretty careful about my address too.

- Consider carefully whether to post pictures of relatives including grandchildren.  I no longer do.

- Have a second credit card with a low limit for online purchases.  If that one is not through a different financial institution, consider a third credit card through a different institution especially for international travel.  We had a card compromised while in Europe once and without a card from a different bank would have had a serious problem.  For the scammed card they were spending the money within two hours, using a replica card in Indonesia!

- Have strong passwords with a mix of capitals, lowercase letters, numbers and symbols - a minimum of ten digits long.  Make them phrases you can remember but no one else will guess, do not write them down, memorize them and do not share them with anyone!

- Do not use public Wifi such as in a library to access bank accounts.

- Watch for suspicious emails and do not fall for phishing, which might ask you to click on a link in an email.  Do not respond to an email from anyone you do not know, or click on any attachment on such emails.  

- Keep your computer up-to-date, and install antivirus software, antispyware software, and a firewall.  Get professional help if you need to, which I will do.

- For places that have it available, use two-step authentication, for example when you get a code sent by text to complete your sign-in.

- If shopping or paying for services online only give out credit card information to companies or agencies you trust.

- Monitor your accounts and, if you are really concerned, your credit score (you may need to pay for this).  There are two sides to monitoring your accounts.  I have had it recommended by bankers that I do get online banking (which I have), so I can check for unknown expenditures regularly.  Other people I know are uncomfortable with online banking because it exposes you through your own computer rather than only the bank.  Your choice.

Hope you find these suggestions helpful.  Coming up - some fall colour.

Happy Thanksgiving - A Day Late!

Yesterday was Thanksgiving Day here in Canada, and it is a time to be thankful.  In the United States it was Columbus Day or Indigenous Peoples Day, depending on which side of the colonization argument you fall and which state you live in   At this time of year I like to think about all the things I am thankful for, so here are a few, along with some more fall colour.

I am thankful:

- that I am still alive and able to enjoy life,

- for my amazing wife who cares for me, altogether too seriously,

- for my larger family whose love keeps me going,

- for my local caregivers who make my life at home possible.

- for that altogether all too brief season of fall colour which we are enjoying now,

- for summer and the chance to get outside around town,

- for winter and the projects that make months spent indoors tolerable,

- for this house and the view out back which makes my life interesting every day,

- for my wheelchair which is my escape vehicle from just lying in bed,

- for my physiotherapists who keep my paralyzed body functioning, 

- for the various librarians, bank tellers, coffee servers and others who are always so kind and helpful when I do get downtown.

Poor Mrs. F.G. has been suffering the after effects of the Shingrix vaccine we got on Friday, sore arm, dizziness and exhaustion.  Hopefully she will be over that soon.  My laptop battery died as I was typing  this yesterday, hence it is a day late!

Fall Colour Begins

You will all be glad to know that we have resolved our recent hacking and apparently not actually lost any money.  All new bank accounts and new credit cards, so there is a lot of detail to sort out, but we are getting there.  We have now notified all those who we pay automatically and all our pension agencies of our new account numbers.  We just do not have our new credit cards activated yet.  Seems to be some confusion there.

For many years we have maintained a second credit card through another bank, for safety while travelling, so we have been able to use it in the meantime.  This is one safety mechanism you can consider for yourself.  I will have more ideas soon.  By the way, we always pay off the cards at the end of each month; allowing a balance to accumulate on a credit card is the absolute worst financial mistake in my opinion.

In the meantime, fall colour has arrived!  It is rapidly becoming a colourful landscape around here as we approach the peak of fall colour this week.  Here are a few first samples!

Shrubs change colouome sr just like trees.  This is a Burning Bush just around the corner.

There is one big Sugar Maple a little further around the corner that has lots of lower branches, some of which almost reach the street, so I can get close to it.  This is a tree that turns orange rather than red, but it sure is beautiful in my eyes.  Different trees of the same species (mostly Sugar Maple) seem to have their own preferred shade  of fall colour.  I love the dark branches against the sky as well as the leaves.

More soon!

I've Been Hacked!

Yes, I have been hacked!  Criminals accessed my computer somehow and then accessed our bank accounts and started moving money in and out in large amounts!

It started with a dreaded pop-up box that froze my computer with a big error message that said to call Microsoft Security and gave a phone number.  Foolishly I called them, thinking that Microsoft would be trustworthy.  It was entirely a false name and false number.

They told me that a fee of $799.00 had already been taken from our accounts, but they would refund it, and told me to go to our banking page and check - I did and presto, they were into all our accounts and it was all my fault!  The bankers told us that the online banking pages they showed us would have been fictitious as well.

Last Thursday we spent 3 hours in a meeting with two bankers, submitting a fraud report, getting assigned all new accounts, and applying for new credit cards.  Then I turned to changing the records for all automatic payments OUT of our accounts, and all the automatic deposits INTO our accounts.  Very little of this is easy, requiring me to master the basics of two-factor authentication and the Verified.Me app.  Technology evolves, but just gets more complex!  

At the moment I'm slowly working through changing all these records,   As I might have guessed payments OUT of our accounts are fairly easy to change.  But try to change payments INTO your account!  The wait time for the Canada Pension Plan is currently over an hour, just to get your phone answered.  It's frustrating!!!

All of this has to take priority over blog posts, but I will be back soon, with a list of things you can do to protect yourself.

The Seven Grandfather Teachings

Starting today is Truth and Reconciliation Week here in Canada, when we pause to reflect on the history of residential schools and the impact they had on indigenous communities.  The week culminates in Orange Shirt Day on Friday, where we specifically remember the children lost at residential schools.

But there's much more to truth and reconciliation than residential schools.  We can learn a lot from indigenous communities and the orange-painted crosswalk in downtown Meaford reflects this, for it refers to the seven grandfather teachings.  This photo shows the crosswalk when it was first painted orange.

When they added the white feathers for a day or two it showed our limited knowledge of indigenous culture, for they painted 11 feathers.  I happened to catch it a few days later still, when they returned and painted out four of the feathers, leaving seven.

   

They later returned and repainted things properly to show 7 feathers, representing the seven grandfather teachings.

The seven grandfather teachings are part of the Anishinaabe culture, that group of indigenous tribes who surrounded the Great Lakes, from Quebec to Minnesota and from Ohio almost to Hudson Bay.  Importantly, they seem to me to reflect the beliefs of any modern church in our culture.  The seven teachings are:

Love

Respect

Bravery

Truth 

Honesty 

Humility 

Wisdom

J would be happy to try and live by these principles myself, they seem usefully simpler than the theology that I have learned and continue to hear at church.  So as I said, though Orange Shirt Day and the lost children will be the focus for many this week, there is much more to gain from reconciliation as we learn more of indigenous culture.

Garden Close-ups

I must admit that I'm fascinated with taking close-ups of some flowers in the garden.  I don't always understand which are the stamens and pistils, but I just think it's a close look at an amazing world.  When I think that these feed the pollinators while getting pollinated in return, it's really an incredible two-way relationship that's evolved.

I'm not going to add comments, just leave these for you to enjoy.  These make me pleased with my new camera too!

And finally the Cleome that blows all the above flowers out of the water with its super extra long pistils and stamens!  Still one of my favourite flowers.

When I first wrote this we were enjoying a sunny warm day, possibly one of the last warm days of the fall, but it has plunged to much colder temperatures for the foreseeable future now.  Still no frost in the forecast.