How pretentious is it to name your house? Oh, very, so let’s up the ante and choose a latin name.
The Handyman hails from England where house naming is a thing. Think Primrose Cottage, Two Hoots, Crumbledown, Nudgens, Wits End, Tweedledum, or Creeping Snail.
We have neighbours with house names like Ironpost Guest House, Apple D’Or and Fox Ben but they are guest houses with a good reason for a name. Also nearby is Rancho Costa Plenty which has been sale for awhile. Maybe the naming isn’t working out so well for them.
We could have chosen another dead language name like Cave Canem (beware of the dog) but that would have dated us our two pals lived to ripe old ages and are now planted in the garden, or Nessum Dorma (none shall sleep) with the idea of discouraging visitors from overstaying.
A week after our gate and name went up a neighbour pulled his car over to chat and said, “You know, I drive by your gate every day on my way to work and think, seize the day, yup, good idea.”
As hokey as it sounds, it’s become a mantra for our house that is often welcoming visitors with wine, zip lining and evenings on the deck.
If we lived in England in say, Bognor Regis where we have wonderful relatives I would want a house here and would call it Disturbia.
Soon after moving to the Valley we had the privilege of watching this great horned owl being released on the Kettle Valley Railway near our house. He was cared for by the South Okanagan Rehabilitation Centre for Owls in Oliver (
Owl calls early in the morning and late in the evening are still magical to me.
Moving from the city to a place with so much wildlife will never become commonplace…not when I glance out my window that evening to see the visitor waking up and getting ready to hunt while inadvertently posing for this photo. He is in a tree in my front yard with the sun setting on the mountains across the lake from us.
Or waking up to find this bold northern pygmy owl defending his prey of another bird in my driveway. I thought he had hit the window and was injured. A set of legs and a part of an undercarriage lay nearby on the ground. I took dozens of photos, changed lenses twice and he still didn’t budge. Once he finally decided I was too close, he flew away and I realized the body parts were all that remained of his quail victim. My owl book says this is a little owl with a big attitude. “It’s bold nature allows people to approach it closely. It catches prey as big as quails and squirrels although it is only 16 to 18 centimetres high.”
A solution of sugar water in a plastic lid administered by dipping the little guy’s beak into it was the best we could come up with. Handyman husband donned gloves to help protect her.
Unresponsive at first, her black tongue started flicking at the solution, her eyes opened and within a minute she flew off to a nearby flowering shrub and recovered fully.
naramata-blend 