Kaitiaki Hamon
Ron Hairemy
Kaitiaki Hamon’s Look At Weather And The World
The Band That Bet on Itself
Blog #2 — The Band That Bet on Itself — Friday, October 9, 2026
Screenshot Saturday's snowfall and send it to the one friend who insists October is "basically still fall." ❄️😂
🌤️ Intro
Hey landscaping whānau, Kaitiaki Hamon here 🌳🚜 — today I bring you blog #2 of my blog's rebrand, and I'm getting this one to you ahead of the storm system circling the weekend 🗓️❄️. The MANAIA canvas is north of 35 hours now, outline, and all linework is el-complete-o, and today, I start bringing it to life with color, Monday's got family time with my Princess Leia that I've been counting down to 🦃❤️. 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
- 🌿🛠️ Deep-water your trees before the freeze
- 🌿🛠️ Blow out the irrigation lines before Saturday
- 🌿🛠️ Disconnect and drain the garden hoses tonight
- 🌿🛠️ Don't prune the spring bloomers in fall
- 🌿🛠️ Cut out black knot while the branches are bare
👇 Continue reading to learn more — the full breakdown on all five is waiting for you after the joke.
🌟 Today's Message: The Band That Bet on Itself
I've been thinking about three kids from Willowdale, Toronto 🇨🇦 — Alex Lifeson, Geddy Lee, and a drummer named John Rutsey — who started a band called Rush in 1968 and spent six years playing bars and high school dances for almost nobody 🎸😅. Then in 1974 the drum chair changed hands, and in walked Neil Peart from Hamilton — a bookish kid who'd gone to London to make it, failed, and come home with his tail between his legs 🥁📚. The band was blown away by his playing — and the man could WRITE, so he became their lyricist too ✍️🔥. Fly By Night went platinum, but then their third record stiffed so hard the label started sharpening the axe 📉😬. Mercury Records wanted radio singles. The band wanted something else entirely.
So they made the most stubborn decision in Canadian rock history 💪🇨🇦. Instead of playing it safe, Rush recorded 2112 — a 20-minute sci-fi epic about a future where music itself is outlawed and one man finds a guitar 🚫🎸. The label braced for a career-ending flop… and it went triple platinum 🏆🏆🏆. Then came Permanent Waves and Moving Pictures — The Spirit of Radio, Tom Sawyer, Limelight, YYZ 📻🔥. Three guys. No image consultants, no focus groups, no compromise — just the three of them getting better at being THEM, louder, for forty years 🥁🎸🎤. Tens of millions of records later, they'd become the most beloved cult band on the planet 🌍💛.
And then life hit that drummer harder than anyone should ever be hit 💔. In 1997, Neil's daughter Selena, just 19, was killed in a car crash. Less than a year later, his wife Jacqueline died of cancer 😔🕊️. Neil told Geddy and Alex he was DONE — retired, finished — and then he did the most Neil Peart thing imaginable: he climbed on a motorcycle and rode clear across North and Central America, alone with his grief, for thousands of miles 🏍️🌎. He wrote it all down in Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road 📖 — and mile by mile, the music came back. He remarried, rejoined the band in 2001, and Rush roared back for another decade and a half 🔥🥁.
What's left behind is staggering: Officers of the Order of Canada in 1996 🍁🎖️, the Canadian Music Hall of Fame in 1994, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2013 — and the same three men for 41 straight years, no replacements, no reunion circus, no drama 🤝. Neil left us on January 7, 2020, after a private three-year fight with brain cancer that he never made anybody else carry 🕊️🥁. And this year, Geddy and Alex announced the Fifty Something tour — with Neil's family's blessing — to take these songs back out on the road one more time 🥹🎸. So here's my Thanksgiving weekend homework for you: put on Tom Sawyer, call somebody you've been meaning to call, and tell them what they mean to you before the turkey hits the table 📞🦃.
And remember, forward is ALWAYS a choice, and that means YOU TOO! 💛🚀
Sources: KEXP — R.I.P. Neil Peart of Rush · AP via Hagadone News Network — Neil Peart obituary · SYFY Wire — Neil Peart, Rush drummer and lyrical visionary · Glioblastoma Foundation — Tribute to Rush Drummer Neil Peart
❄️🚀☀️😎 Today's Weather
Edmonton, Alberta 🇨🇦
High around 10°C (feels like 5°C), low near 0°C. Afternoon showers at 60% (about 3mm), wind northeast at 16 km/h, turning to rain-snow overnight with about 0.6cm of snow and wind north at 21 km/h. The Special Weather Statement runs through Sunday evening — this weekend is the real deal.
Scale of the Pantaloon: Level 6 — Don't Judge If You See Me in Some Tacky Khakis ☀️😎
Last mild day before the floor drops out. Everything that needs doing outside — hoses, lines, stakes, tarps — today is the day, because tomorrow you're doing it in a snowstorm.
Aotearoa — Auckland, NZ 🇳🇿
High around 20°C, low near 13°C, partly cloudy and dry. Currently 19°C and cloudy, humidity 63%, wind NNE at 16 km/h gusting to 32.
Scale of the Pantaloon: Level 7 — Bust Out the Booty Shorts, Baby! 🔥🩳
Spring in full stride while Edmonton buckles. Twenty and dry — not a single note. Enjoy it for the both of us.
📅 Next 5 Days — Edmonton – Aeoteroa
Saturday, October 10
🇨🇦 Edmonton: Snow, high around 1°C (feels like -5°C), 90% chance of about 4.7cm, wind north at 23 km/h. Night: snow showers early, low near -2°C. Pantaloon: Level 4 — Jeans… No Cap! 🌥️😏. The day the whole week's been pointing at. If it isn't winterized by Friday night, it's getting winterized the hard way.
🇳🇿 Aotearoa: High around 19°C, low near 14°C, morning showers at 50%. Pantaloon: Level 7 — Booty Shorts 🔥🩳. A damp spring Saturday — inside jobs and loud music.
Sunday, October 11
🇨🇦 Edmonton: Cloudy, high around 3°C, low near -3°C. Pantaloon: Level 4 — Jeans… No Cap! 🌥️😏. Cold and grey, but the Special Weather Statement lifts in the evening. A shovel-and-survey day.
🇳🇿 Aotearoa: High around 20°C, low near 14°C, showers at 50%. Pantaloon: Level 7 — Booty Shorts 🔥🩳. Wet spring Sunday — no complaints at twenty degrees.
Monday, October 12
🇨🇦 Edmonton: Mostly sunny, high around 9°C, low near -2°C. Pantaloon: Level 5 — Sweatpants 🌤️🙂. Thanksgiving Monday comes back bright and crisp — proper turkey-walk weather. 🦃
🇳🇿 Aotearoa: High around 20°C, low near 13°C, morning showers at 40% clearing later. Pantaloon: Level 7 — Booty Shorts 🔥🩳. Spring holding its line while Canada thaws the turkey.
Tuesday, October 13
🇨🇦 Edmonton: Partly cloudy, high around 13°C, low near 2°C. Pantaloon: Level 6 — Tacky Khakis ☀️😎. Thirteen degrees in mid-October is a gift and I'll take it without asking questions.
🇳🇿 Aotearoa: High around 19°C, low near 13°C, partly cloudy, 20% rain. Pantaloon: Level 7 — Booty Shorts 🔥🩳. Steady as she goes — shorts weather, no second thought.
Wednesday, October 14
🇨🇦 Edmonton: Partly cloudy, high around 9°C, low near -1°C. Pantaloon: Level 5 — Sweatpants 🌤️🙂. Midweek calm before whatever October cooks up next.
🇳🇿 Aotearoa: High around 20°C, low near 14°C, partly cloudy with showers late. Pantaloon: Level 7 — Booty Shorts 🔥🩳. Another day in paradise while Edmonton layers up.
✨🚀 What That Means In A Galaxy Far Far Away
The week opens on Jedha 🌬️🏜️ — the cold, windswept holy moon, where rain turns to something sharper and the wind cuts through the robes of everyone foolish enough to be outside. Saturday we drop onto Crait 🧂❄️ — white salt plains stretching to the horizon, a world that looks like fresh snowfall until you scrape it and find the red dust underneath; beautiful, brutal, and no place to be caught without a coat. Sunday the gloom settles over Malachor 🌑💀 — a shattered, shadow-haunted world where the cold feels older than the planet itself, a day for staying in and keeping the lights on. Monday breaks gloriously clear over Florrum ☀️🏴☠️ — dry, sunny, pirate-country skies where the only rule is don't trust a cloudless horizon. Tuesday the route hums past Corellia 🏭🌤️ — shipyard towers, mild air, and working worlds that build the things empires fly; honest weather for honest work. Wednesday we sift through Bracca 🔧🌧️ — the scrapper yards, damp and clanking, where everything gets taken apart and nothing goes to waste. And the week closes at Nevarro 🌋🌾 — frontier marshes and cooling lava fields at the edge of the map, a world still warm from its own fires while Edmonton cools down for real. Rain, snow, gloom, sunshine — pack everything, trust nothing 🧥🩳🚀.
🤣😅😄 The Daily Landscaping LOL
A little frog goes into a bank and hops up to the loan desk 🐸💼
"Hi," says the frog. "My name's Kermit Jagger, and I'd like a loan to buy a lily pad yacht."
The teller, a woman named Patricia Whack, blinks. "Sir, we're going to need some collateral."
The frog reaches into his little frog pocket and pulls out a tiny porcelain elephant 🐘✨ "This. This is all I have."
Ms. Whack takes the elephant to her manager. "There's a frog downstairs who wants a loan, and all he has for collateral is this… thing. What even IS this?"
The manager takes one look, grins, and says:
"It's a knick-knack, Patty Whack. Give the frog a loan. His old man's a Rolling Stone." 🎸🐸😂
🛠️🌿 The Deep Dive: 5 Things Most Pro Landscapers Won't Tell You
1. Deep-water your trees before the freeze. Here's the one nobody believes until they've replaced a dead spruce: most winter tree death in Edmonton isn't cold — it's drought. Trees head into winter dry, the frozen ground locks up what little moisture is left, and the wind strips the rest out of the needles and branches all season. Before the ground freezes solid, give every tree a long, slow, deep drink — several hours on a soaker hose at the drip line, not a five-minute sprinkle. A hydrated tree is a tree that wakes up in April.
2. Blow out the irrigation lines before Saturday. A charged irrigation line meeting a hard freeze is a pipe bomb with a timer on it. Water expands, PVC and backflow preventers crack, and you don't find out until spring startup — when the bill shows up. Today, while it's still above zero, run the compressor through every zone and drain the backflow. Saturday's snow doesn't care about your schedule, so beat it to the punch.
3. Disconnect and drain the garden hoses tonight. This one costs people real money every single year. A hose left attached and full of water freezes backward through the spigot and bursts the pipe inside the wall — and that burst doesn't announce itself until the spring thaw floods the basement. Tonight: shut the water, disconnect every hose, drain it, coil it, hang it up. Two minutes a hose. Cheapest insurance in the whole blog.
4. Don't prune the spring bloomers in fall. Put the pruners away from the lilacs, the forsythia, the mock-orange. Spring-flowering shrubs set their flower buds in late summer on the wood that's already there — prune them now and you've just cut off next spring's entire show. The rule is simple: spring bloomers get pruned right after they bloom, never before. Shape them in June, thank yourself in May.
5. Cut out black knot while the branches are bare. Black knot — those ugly black tar-like swellings on Edmonton cherry and plum trees — spreads its spores in the spring rain. Dormant season, when the tree is bare and you can actually see every infected branch, is when you hunt it. Cut well below the knot — 15 to 20 cm into clean wood — disinfect your blade between cuts, and burn or bin what comes off. Never compost it. An hour of dormant detective work now saves the whole tree later.
🎶 Ron Hairemy's Songs That Guarantee LAWNgevity
🇨🇦 Canadian Track'O'The Day: Fantasy — Nocturnal Angel 🎤🌌
Explicit? No.
Plot twist on the Canadian track today: this one isn't a legend, but always will be in my books — it's family. Nocturnal Angel is a brand-new band out of Vancouver, and that's my brother Tim you hear singing and playing guitar 🎸🎤. Their single Fantasy dropped TODAY — October 9, 2026 — only their second single ever, hot off the press right alongside this blog. Three minutes and change of a band announcing itself to the world; they're two singles deep, with a demo called Gethsemane in the catalogue too. Everybody's gotta start somewhere, and I wasn't about to wait until my brother's famous to put my own blood on the blog — family goes first, always ❤️. Best listened to loud, today, and then texted straight to Tim with "heard you on the blog, brother." 🎶🔥
🤣 Today's Musical Funny-Bone: You're Pretty When I'm Drunk — Bloodhound Gang 🍻🤪
Explicit? Yes — profanity and crude comedy throughout. This is not a family-dinner song.
Jimmy Pop and the Bloodhound Gang out of Pennsylvania, from their 1995 debut Use Your Fingers — a deep cut from before "The Bad Touch" made them famous, and it's their whole deal in one track: beer goggles, bad decisions, and jokes that would get you kicked out of most weddings. It's dumb, it's loud, it knows exactly what it is. Best listened to Friday after the tools are down, with the crew, laughing at every terrible decision you almost made this week. 🍺😂
🤘 Hair Whippin', Head Bangin', Finger Blazin' Therapy: Raven God — Amon Amarth ⚔️🐦⬛
Explicit? No profanity — just Viking battle cries and ravens.
Fresh off the forge: this is track seven from The Allfather Awakens, the brand-new Amon Amarth album that dropped October 2, 2026 on Metal Blade. Stockholm's Viking metal institution, three decades deep, with Johan Hegg growling Odin tales over riffs built like longships. The whole album circles sacrifice, warfare, and wisdom bought at a price — classic Amon Amarth, sharpened. Best listened to Saturday morning with a shovel in your hand, imagining you're defending the homestead instead of a driveway. 🛡️❄️
🎤 Tongue Trippin', Bar Spittin, Beat Killin Bars: Ill Mind of Hopsin 6: Old Friend — Hopsin 🧠💔
Explicit? Yes — language, and the subject is addiction with no punches pulled.
Marcus Hopson, out of Los Angeles, from the Ill Mind saga — the series that made him a name. This chapter isn't a flex or a diss track; it's a letter to his childhood friend, the one meth took a piece at a time. It's furious, it's grieving, and it lands like a conversation you should've had years ago. I won't pretend this one doesn't sit close to home for me — that's exactly why it's here. Best listened to when somebody you love needs the hard talk, or when you need reminding what the hard talk is for. 🕯️
🇳🇿 Aotearoa Pick'O'The Day: Melting Pot — When The Cat's Away 🌏🎶
Explicit? No.
Auckland's own supergroup of voices — Annie Crummer, Margaret Urlich, Debbie Harwood, Kim Willoughby, and Dianne Swann — five of the best singers in Aotearoa sharing one microphone. Their 1988 cover of Blue Mink's 1969 Cook & Greenaway song went to number one in New Zealand that December, stayed charting for 15 weeks, went gold, and eventually carried them into the NZ Music Hall of Fame in 2021. It's a harmony-stacked plea for everybody landing in one pot and coming out family. Best listened to on the weekend, kitchen dance floor, someone you love in arm's reach. 🏠❤️
🚨 Ron Hairemy Spotlight: Best Type Of Rapper, Pt. 1 — Infamous ING, Poltergeist OD, ILLIAM, TWIG, SYONIS, Jaw Anthony, touch 182, and dj dice 🎤🔥
Explicit? It's a posse cut loaded with Edmonton hip hop heavy hitters. It is not playing it safe.
Eight names deep on one track, and this one isn't a stranger pick — these are my homes. INGY, Poltergeist OD, SYONIS, ILLIAM, TWIG, Jaw Anthony — that's my circle, my people, the scene I come from. Me and INGY have a song of our own coming next year mō te rā whānau o taku tama, and until that lands, this is the sound of the whole family on one record: everybody eats, everybody gets a verse, nobody's carrying anybody. Best listened to when the crew's all in one place and the volume knob's got nowhere left to go but up. 🎧🏆 And looking forward, I'm already slotted to be on part 3 of the Best Type Of Rapper cypher.
And that's the goal… that's LAWNgevity. 🌱🔥
🌟 In Conclusion
Three kids from Willowdale bet on themselves in 1976 and spent forty years proving you never have to sand down who you are to be loved for it 🥁🇨🇦. Out in the yard, the same rule applies: do the unglamorous prep work now — deep-water those trees, drain those hoses — and winter can't touch your spring 🌿💪. Snow's coming Friday night, so let's get it handled before the turkey hits the table 🦃❄️. I'm counting down to Monday myself — family time and a certain little lady I get to squeeze 🧡. Whatever your weekend looks like, I hope it's loud, warm, and full of your favourite people. 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)
❄️🌟💪🚀❤️✨🌌