Kaitiaki Hamon
Ron Hairemy
Kaitiaki Hamon’s Look At Weather And The World
The Seat She Refused To Leave
Blog #1 — Day One of the New Era — Wednesday, October 7, 2026
Screenshot your snow-pants readiness level and send it to someone who still thinks winter is "a few weeks away." ❄️😂
🌤️ Intro
Hey crew, Kaitiaki Hamon here 🌳🚜 — I've been deep in the 18x24in canvas version of my MANAIA piece, and the outlines are finally looking like something real 🎨🔥. Today I'm headed off to finish sodding the second half of a home where I already built the fence and did the final grade — twice 😤💪. It's day one of the new blog era too — new format, new home on the site ☕. Inside today: the 5 Things Most Pro Landscapers Won't Tell You and the Deep Dive are both here 🛠️. Plus Today's Message, Today's Weather, the Star Wars galaxy forecast, the Daily Landscaping LOL, and Ron Hairemy's Songs That Guarantee LAWNgevity — the whole crew 🎶. Let's ride. 🚀
🛠️ 5 Things Most Pro Landscapers Won't Tell You
- 🌿🛠️ Cut the wire basket off your B&B trees
- 🌿🛠️ Mulch volcanoes are tree killers
- 🌿🛠️ Gypsum doesn't fix clay — stop buying it
- 🌿🛠️ Core aerate this week — it's your last window
- 🌿🛠️ Leave the perennials standing
👇 Continue reading to learn more — the full breakdown on all five is waiting for you after the joke.
🌟 Today's Message: The Seat She Refused To Leave
On November 8, 1946, a Black businesswoman from Halifax walked into the Roseland Theatre in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia, while her car was being repaired — and changed Canadian history by accident 🇨🇦🎬. Viola Desmond hadn't set out to be an activist that night ✊. She was a successful beautician who'd built her own salon and beauty school after being shut out of training in Halifax because of her race 💪, and she'd simply bought a ticket for a movie 🎟️. But when she sat in the main-floor seats instead of the balcony where Black patrons were expected to sit, the theatre demanded she move — and she refused 🚫.
What happened next was swift and brutal 😤. She was dragged out by police 🚔, jailed overnight, and convicted — not of defying segregation, because no law on the books actually required it, but of dodging a one-cent amusement tax, the difference between the balcony seat she'd paid for and the floor seat she'd sat in 🪙⚖️. The system couldn't punish her for being Black in the wrong seat, so it punished her for a penny. She paid a $26 fine she didn't owe 💸, and the conviction followed her for the rest of her life. She died in 1965, never pardoned, never apologized to 🕊️.
But here's the part that matters: she didn't let it end there 🔥. Viola poured what was left of her life into fighting the injustice, and her case became one of the sparks of Canada's civil rights movement ✊🇨🇦. Decades later, the reckoning came — in 2010 Nova Scotia granted her the first posthumous free pardon in Canadian history and formally apologized 📜, and in 2018 she became the first Canadian woman to appear alone on a Canadian banknote, her face on the $10 bill 💵👑. From a one-cent tax charge to the ten-dollar bill — that's what refusing to move can build 🏆.
So the next time something feels too big, too fixed, too "that's just how it is" — remember a woman who sat down in a theatre seat and wouldn't get up 🪑💪. She didn't have a movement behind her. She didn't have a plan 📋❌. She had a seat, a spine, and a refusal to accept what was wrong 🌱🔥. Change doesn't always start with a crowd 👥. Sometimes it starts with one person, in one seat, on one ordinary night, deciding: not this time 🌟.
…forward is always a choice, and that means YOU too! 💛🚀
Sources: Government of Canada — Viola Desmond · Encyclopaedia Britannica · Wikipedia · AMAAS biography · Parks Canada — National Historic Person · Bank of Canada — $10 bank note unveiling · Government of Canada — 2022 commemoration · Montreal Times — $10 bill and human rights
❄️🚀☀️😎 Today's Weather
Edmonton, Alberta 🇨🇦
High around 16°C, low near 7°C, making it feel like 13°C. Humidity around 48%, mostly cloudy with showers rolling in tonight at a 70% chance.
Scale of the Pantaloon: Level 7 — Bust Out the Booty Shorts, Baby! 🔥🩳
One last gasp of real warmth — the kind of day that tricks you into leaving the jacket at home. Enjoy it, because the vibe shift by Friday is violent, and Saturday has actual snowflakes in the forecast. Get the tender stuff handled today.
Aotearoa — Auckland, NZ 🇳🇿
Currently a fair 13°C, tonight partly cloudy with a low near 11°C, rain at 10%. Humidity around 87%.
Scale of the Pantaloon: Level 6 — Don't Judge If You See Me in Some Tacky Khakis ☀️😎
Spring doing its classic Auckland thing — mild, breezy, and noncommittal. Light-jacket weather with absolutely no excuses.
📅 Next 5 Days — Edmonton – Aeoteroa
Thursday, October 8
🇨🇦 Edmonton: High around 11°C, low near 6°C, making it feel like 7°C. Showers at 50–90% through the day, humidity around 80%. Pantaloon: Level 6 — Tacky Khakis ☀️😎. The comedown begins — damp, grey, deeply uninspiring. Good day for indoor estimates and sharpening blades.
🇳🇿 Aotearoa: High around 20°C, low near 11°C, partly cloudy, rain at 10%. Pantaloon: Level 7 — Booty Shorts 🔥🩳. A beaut spring day across the ditch from winter — twenty degrees and barely a cloud with intent.
Friday, October 9
🇨🇦 Edmonton: High around 8°C, low near 1°C, making it feel like 1°C. Rain at 90% with 12mm expected, humidity 92%. Pantaloon: Level 5 — Sweatpants 🌤️🙂. Cold rain all day with a north wind — a stay-inside-and-do-paperwork day. Anything left un-winterized gets a free ice bath tonight.
🇳🇿 Aotearoa: High around 20°C, low near 13°C, partly cloudy, rain at 10%. Pantaloon: Level 7 — Booty Shorts 🔥🩳. Steady as she goes — spring holding its line while Edmonton slides.
Saturday, October 10
🇨🇦 Edmonton: High around 2°C, low near -2°C, making it feel like -4°C. Snow showers at 60%, about half a cm. Pantaloon: Level 4 — Jeans… No Cap! 🌥️😏. Edmonton officially stops pretending. If your hoses aren't drained, this is the morning you learn why October matters.
🇳🇿 Aotearoa: High around 19°C, low near 13°C, morning clouds giving way to afternoon sun, showers late at 50%. Pantaloon: Level 7 — Booty Shorts 🔥🩳. One hemisphere's snow day is another's beach-adjacent Saturday.
Sunday, October 11
🇨🇦 Edmonton: High around 4°C, low near -3°C, making it feel like -3°C. Partly cloudy, wintry precipitation at 10%. Pantaloon: Level 4 — Jeans… No Cap! 🌥️😏. Cold but calm — a slow-coffee morning for staring at the yard and thinking about everything you meant to finish.
🇳🇿 Aotearoa: High around 20°C, low near 14°C, showers at 60%. Pantaloon: Level 7 — Booty Shorts 🔥🩳. A wet spring Sunday — the kind made for inside jobs and loud music.
Monday, October 12
🇨🇦 Edmonton: High around 9°C, low near 0°C, making it feel like -7°C in the wind. Mostly sunny, rain at 10%. Pantaloon: Level 5 — Sweatpants 🌤️🙂. Thanksgiving Monday bounces back — crisp, bright, very fake-spring. Perfect turkey-day walk weather. 🦃
🇳🇿 Aotearoa: High around 19°C, low near 13°C, showers at 50%. Pantaloon: Level 7 — Booty Shorts 🔥🩳. Still spring, still shorts — while Canada does its best impression of a freezer.
✨🚀 What That Means In A Galaxy Far Far Away
The week opens on Scarif 🏝️☀️ — warm, bright, deceptively peaceful, the kind of day where the Empire's grip feels far away and the work flows easy. But by Thursday the shuttle lands on Mon Cala 🌊🌧️, all grey swells and sideways rain, and the mood turns contemplative. Friday the storm breaks fully over Mygeeto ❄️💎 — cold, glittering, beautiful and completely inhospitable, the crystals humming with that "you should not be outside" energy. Saturday we descend to Ilum 🧊💙, deep in the ice caves where the wind howls through kyber formations and even the Jedi would double-layer. Sunday thaws on the forest moon of Endor 🌲🌤️ — cold but calm, smoke from a distant ewok cookfire, time to reflect. And the week closes on Chandrila 🌾☀️ and Christophsis 💠✨ — pastoral light, crystalline skies, the galaxy exhaling. From beach to blizzard to blue skies: that's not a forecast, that's a hero's journey. And like all good journeys, it rewards the ones who packed for every chapter 🧥🩳🚀.
🤣😅😄 The Daily Landscaping LOL
Mrs. Henderson called the landscaping company, absolutely furious 😤📞
"Your crew was here yesterday, and they DESTROYED my flower beds! My prize roses — cut down to stubs! I want the foreman on the phone RIGHT NOW!"
The foreman picked up, calm as Sunday morning. "Ma'am, I supervised that job myself. We mowed the lawn, edged the walkway, trimmed the hedges. We never touched your flower beds."
"Then explain THIS!" she shouted. "My roses are GONE!"
Long pause…
"Ma'am… did your husband happen to 'help out' in the yard this weekend?"
Longer pause…
"…I'll call you back." ☎️😂🔥
🛠️🌿 The Deep Dive: 5 Things Most Pro Landscapers Won't Tell You
1. Cut the wire basket off your B&B trees. That wire basket around a balled-and-burlapped tree is for shipping, not planting — but most crews bury the whole thing. In Edmonton clay, the basket doesn't rust away fast enough, and as the trunk thickens the wires strangle it from the outside in. Cut away the top half of the basket and peel the burlap back from the top third of the root ball before backfilling. Five minutes with bolt cutters now saves a slow ten-year death later.
2. Mulch volcanoes are tree killers. Piling mulch against the trunk looks tidy and kills trees — it rots the bark, hides the root flare, and gives voles a cozy winter condo with room service. Keep mulch in a wide flat donut: 2–3 inches deep, pulled back a full 3 inches from the trunk so you can see the flare. If you can't see where the trunk widens at the base, the mulch is too deep or too close. Fix it now before the snow locks it in.
3. Gypsum doesn't fix clay — stop buying it. The garden centre will happily sell you bags of gypsum for "breaking up clay," and it feels like doing something. It isn't. Gypsum only helps sodic (high-sodium) soils, which yours almost certainly isn't — for plain heavy clay, the calcium does nothing to the structure. What actually opens clay up is organic matter: compost, compost, compost. Skip the gypsum aisle and put that money toward a yard of compost instead.
4. Core aerate this week — it's your last window. Soil is still warm enough for recovery, and Saturday's snow is your deadline. Pull cores now, leave the plugs on the surface to break down, and broadcast seed directly into the holes — the seed-to-soil contact in an aeration hole beats any broadcast spreader on flat ground. Water it in before Friday's rain does the job for you. Skip this and you're waiting until next fall.
5. Leave the perennials standing. Put the pruners down — ornamental grasses, sedum, and coneflower heads earn their keep all winter. The standing foliage insulates the crown against freeze-thaw, feeds the birds, and looks incredible with frost on it. Only cut back the stuff that turns to mush: hostas, daylily foliage, anything already slimy. Tidiness is a spring job; right now, messy is protective.
🎶 Ron Hairemy's Songs That Guarantee LAWNgevity
We understand that landscapes are timeless, and deserve every bit of time and care — just like the classics that keep us motivated through the day. When long hours on the job, the right music makes all the difference. These are the tracks that keep us moving, focused, and locked in.
No Nickelback. No Slipknot. All Music. No filler. (Except for Comedy… Everybody needs a good laugh!)
So without further ado, here's some dope jams!
🇨🇦 Canadian Track'O'The Day: Ordinary Day – Great Big Sea 🔥🎸🇨🇦💥😎
Explicit? No. Clean as a whistle.
Straight out of St. John's, Newfoundland, Great Big Sea spent two decades turning East Coast folk into arena-sized singalongs, and Ordinary Day is their signature — the song about finding the extraordinary hiding inside the routine. It's the sound of rolling up your sleeves and deciding today counts. Best listened to at 7am with the truck warming up and the whole day still unwritten ☀️🚜.
😂 Today's Musical Funny-Bone: Canadian Idiot – "Weird Al" Yankovic 🤘🤣🔥💀🎤
Explicit? No. Just deeply, lovingly offensive to no one in particular.
The undisputed king of the parody takes Green Day's American Idiot and aims it north of the border — beer, hockey, donuts, "aboot," and a preemptive strike against the politest nation on Earth, all in two and a half minutes. For me, this one's personal: Weird Al was on repeat all through growing up, Alapalooza was the first CD I ever bought, and when I caught Al live at Capital Ex (Klondike Days), the man opened the show with this very song 🎪🎸. Best listened to when the crew needs a laugh and the day needs deflating 😂🇨🇦.
🧠🔥 Hair Whipping, Head Banging, Finger Blazing Therapy: Painkiller – Judas Priest 🌫️🎸🖤🌪️⚔️
Explicit? No. Just loud.
The 1990 title track that redefined what heavy metal could be — double-kick drums like artillery, twin guitars at full sprint, and Rob Halford hitting notes that shouldn't be physically possible. Painkiller is thirty-plus years old and still the ultimate "one more hour" song. Best listened to when the job is fighting back and you need to fight harder 💪🔥.
🎤 Tongue Trippin', Bar Spittin, Beat Killin Bars: Kin (I'm Outside) – Prof (with Pete & Bas and JonRay) 🧠💥🎶🔥✍️
Explicit? Yes — profanity throughout.
Minneapolis rapper Prof teams up with UK duo Pete & Bas and JonRay for a full-throttle heater — rapid-fire bars, relentless bounce, zero brakes. And this one's personal: it's the track I start my landscaping day with every single morning — boots on, truck warming up, volume up 🚜🔥. The official "let's go earn it" anthem.
🌿 Māori Track: What's the Time Mr. Wolf – New Zealand Singers 🪶🔥🌿🇳🇿
Explicit? No. It's a playground song, whānau.
The old Kiwi classic — the call-and-response game every New Zealand kid grew up playing, given full singalong treatment on 2012's Songs of New Zealand. Simple, joyful, and woven into the culture deep enough that every Kiwi knows every word. Best listened to when you need reminding that the best things are the simple ones done together 🎶🤙.
🌾 Ron Hairemy Spotlight: Don't Stop Me Now – Queen 🎹👑🔥🌟💫
Explicit? No. Pure joy, no filter needed.
Pulled from your "All time faves in the spotlight!" playlist — Freddie Mercury's 1978 rocket ship off the Jazz album, and quite possibly the most unstoppable three minutes ever recorded. Piano, thunder, and a man having the time of his life daring you to keep up. It's the spiritual sequel to everything the spotlight stands for: full speed, no brakes, no apologies. Best listened to at full volume on the way to a job you're about to crush 🚀🎶.
That's the goal. That's LAWNgevity. 🌱🔥
🌟 In Conclusion
Viola Desmond sat down in one seat and stood up for a country — proof that the smallest refusal can echo for generations 🇨🇦👑. Same energy applies to your yard: cut the wire basket, kill the mulch volcano, skip the gypsum, and aerate before Saturday's snow does it for you 🌱🛠️. No special occasion today besides a Wednesday doing its best impression of three seasons at once — so take the 16 degrees while they're here, because the Pantaloon has spoken and sweatpants are coming. So until tomorrow, this is Ron Hairemy signing off saying: Keep your stick on the ice... and may the Force be with you. Always!
Sincerely,
Kaitiaki Hamon (Ron Hairemy)
❄️🌟💪🚀❤️✨🌌