A Versatile Blogger?!

Thanks to Ottawa Gardener  at The Veggie Patch Re-imagined for nominating me for The Versatile Blogger Award! The rules are that I must tell seven things about myself and pass the award along to several other bloggers that I have just discovered.

So - seven things you may not know about me:

1. I am a first-generation Dutch Canadian, yet I neither look Dutch (haven't been blonde since I was 3) or speak Dutch, and I have never been to Holland. I do enjoy salted licorice, though.
2. I am a very fast reader.
3. I have really flat feet that leave correspondingly strange footprints. I've always been self-conscious about my footprints.
4. I have moved thirteen times in twenty years of marriage.
5. I have worked as a navigation officer on an icebreaker in the Canadian Arctic, an airport firefighter, and an air traffic controller. And none of those jobs is as exciting as it sounds.
6. Someday, I'd like to keep bees.
7. The last time I cried at a movie was the South Central Farm scene in Escape from Suburbia.

And I would like to pass the award along to these great blogs:

1. Frog Blog is chronicling events at Chorus Frog Farm on Salt Spring Island in its first year (and beyond!)
2. I'm Unschooled. Yes, I Can Write has the best tagline: The life and times of an unschooling vegetarian animistic green anarchist hippie child. 
3. One Straw: Be The Change is an absolute treasure trove of practical information on permaculture in a suburban setting. Warning: set aside a lot of time to read through everything. 
4. Living the Frugal Life is a really interesting blog about food, thrift and permaculture with lots of  lists and records and tons of inspiration.

Rules:

1. Thank the person who gave you this award
2. Nominate more people 
3. Tell seven things about yourself

Eastern Smooth Green Snake climbing a Prickly Ash (ouch!)

I'm sure this smooth green snake could tempt me to eat forbidden fruit if he wanted. I've always been a sucker for a Kermit the Frog face. He climbed the prickly ash after we intruded on the sunny trail where he had been warming himself. We don't often see snakes in trees in this part of the world (Eastern Ontario) - perhaps we're just not looking for them. I have seen a garter snake on the side of a large maple trunk before, but this guy was practically defying gravity on the skinny branches. He is considerably bigger than the only other smooth green snake I've ever seen. I'm pretty sure he is at least 60 cm long.