The Lodgepole Pine, Welcome back to Valerie’s Variety Podcast, with your host me, Valerie Moss todays show is short and sweet. I’m calling these Two
Minute Tuesdays or TMT’s. As I’ve been doing more and more research for my episodes and working full time, it doesn’t leave enough in the kitty to record and produced timely, so instead of releasing less often I’ve decided to do these short spurts in between the full episode segments. Let me know what you think. My focus as always will be Calgary, this great city, and all that’s captured within it. Enjoy the episode.
Two Minute Tuesdays Cover Art…Calgary’s Lodgepole Pine: Pinus Contorta
Calgary is known for the Lodgepole Pine Trees. Pinus contorta, with the common names lodgepole pine and shore pine, and also known as twisted pine, and contorta pine, is a common tree in western North America. It is common near the ocean shore and in dry montane forests Like all pines (member species of the genus Pinus), it is an evergreenconifer. Pinus contorta is a fire-dependent species, requiring wildfires to maintain healthy populations of diverse ages. They have serotinous cones. This means that the cones are closed and must be exposed to high temperatures, such as from forest fires, in order to open and release their seeds. There is also a species of bark beetle known likely to local Albertans as the Mountain Pine Beetle native to the forests of western North America from Mexico to central British Columbia. It has a hard black exoskeleton, and measures approximately 5 mm, about the size of a grain of rice. In western North America, the current outbreak of the mountain pine beetle and its microbial associates has destroyed wide areas of lodgepole pine forest, including more than 16 million of the 55 million hectares of forest in British Columbia.
Please visit Valerie Moss.ca for all show notes and research details.
Welcome to a fun podcast about Calgary Summer Camps for a 6 year old kid. Being a mom of a 7 year old, and a working professional it’s hard to juggle camps, interests and driving around the city figuring out the best spots to put your kids, convenience, safety and costs are all a factors I look at. For this episode I’m going to review all of the camps we signed up for this year and my daughters perspective and of course mine on these gems.
Facility review: this place is what you’d picture at a ski resort. It’s industrial, lites of windows, tables benches. The coaches that volunteer and work are shredded out with long hair and talk like surfing guys lol. It’s god a great vibe and everyone is pumped.
choosing the class: it gives you some benchmark of skills to choose from plus the option of co-ed class or just girls. I chose co-ed as lives more fun when you have good dynamics
Bike pre-requisites we’re front and back brakes plus padding for knees/elbows etc plus riding gloves. Why do we let our kids influence our purchasing decisions…
Day one: she was in a group with all boys…so they tried to find another group for her which ended up being all boys also. There maybe have been a ratio issue also but I’m not exactly sure. So she stood her ground and said she would have preferred to stay in this first group as she’s already getting to know the boys names then move to a new all boys group. Good point kid!
waivers
Why is everything today initiated with a waiver? You will have the best time but only if you sign this waiver first
nestled in at our Canada Olympic park site where we held the 1988 Olympic Games here in Calgary Alberta. I wasn’t living here at the timeof this global stamp on our amazing city but my husband was and he has very fond memories of City Pride and sense of community and euphoria rooting for our Canadian olympians.
Camp name: mountain biking camp
Signed her up for this thinking this would be good experience for her to learn control of her bike, hills, more aggressive biking and of course make friends and have a good time.
turns out she needed a better bike with many gears and front and back breaks- who knew? they lent her a bike for the week
She had a good time very challenged and satisfying. We ended up upgrading her bike to the next level. They biked 10 plus Kim’s each day.
Facility review. This place is so busy located off 52 street NE it’s always a buzz being a full service leisure centre with swimming-gym parenting rooms all kinds of fitness classes and more.
This is through the City of Calgary is a combination camp with crafts activities and swimming. This is her all time favourite camp. The volunteers want to be there. They love the kids and always a good time. London comes home exhausted and happy. Always a good option for camp
Great camp they use a combination of public speaking memorizing lines and acting. This is a fun camp for her she likes it and has taken away a few lines and scripts that have impacted her like Shakespear and Sally field to name a few. Fun group of staff and organized.
This was such a great camp, the kids learned hand signals for turning and learned proper road riding. They do a parade at the end showing off what they learnt. They know and announce all the kids by name.
These bike camps when you are car people can be a challenge. Hauling the bike to and from the locations. But it proves fruitful on what the kids learn.
Obviously this setting is amazing outdoors and surrounded by animals. Nature wakes. Red hats are given to each kid lol London was not a fan of these hats. She came home good and tired.
located at 19street and 6 avenue NW I need the Westhillhurst community centre. The community centre is a bit older you need to walk through the whole to get Tom the summit kids room there’s lots of parking tho and the take the kids as early as 8 am with before care costs and pickup by 5 without added costs so this is a bonus London says this camp this camp is babyish. They played at a fun park they was a couple minutes walk. There was an outdoor heated pool but it was too cold to go into. Plus you had to be 8 and older to go into. The camp volunteers were okay boys and girl were just boring according to my daughter. This camp isn’t structured mostly just arts and crafts.
Well that sums up our camp listings for this year, thank goodness for this summer full of camps and for school starting up again finally…sheesh, 9 weeks of camp and I need a summer vacation.
Welcome back to Valerie’s Variety Podcast, with your host me, Valerie Moss todays show is short and sweet. I’m calling these Two Minute Tuesdays or TMT’s thanks to Jeff for this suggestion. As I’ve been doing more and more research for my episodes and working full time, it doesn’t leave enough in the kitty to record and produced timely, so instead of releasing less often I’ve decided to do these short spurts in between the full episode segments. Let me know what you think. My focus will be Calgary, this great city, and all that’s captured within it. Let me know what you think!
Two Minute Tuesdays Cover Art…
Did you know the average or median age in Calgary is 36.4 and average or median age in Alberta is 36.5 with a total population of 1.37million, 3rd largest municipality and the 5th largest city in Canada. The total population in Alberta is 4.146 million. I’ve lived in Alberta for most of my life minus a few years I spent in Saskatchewan going to College. It’s a stunning wealthy province with mountains, rivers and lakes.
