Kaitiaki Hamon’s Look At Weather And The World

[NOW PLAYING] 😈 Kia Boy – Prof 😈
/all grin, all gas, no brakes: Prof in his natural habitat/

A kid in Attawapiskat once asked for a safe and comfy school and refused to drop it. Today, ask what the kids in your life actually need, and then be the adult who doesn't drop it either. ❤️

🌤️ Intro

Hey crew, Kaitiaki Hamon here 🌳🚜, it's Wednesday, the sun is out, the frost is lying about how tough it is, and Edmonton is handing us a 14 degree gift in the middle of October 🎁☀️. Around here it's registry week for the name change paperwork 📋, the TANIWHA canvas is giving MANAIA a rest after 61 plus hours of dots 🎨, and Friday's rain is already clearing its throat on the horizon 🌧️. Secret Path Week is winding down, the elms are legally prunable for the first time since March 🌳, and the dry window is open for exactly as long as it lasts ⏰. Inside today's blog you'll find the 5 Things Most Pro Landscapers Won't Tell You, Today's Message, Today's Weather, the Star Wars galaxy forecast, the Daily Landscaping LOL, the Deep Dive, and Ron Hairemy's Songs That Guarantee LAWNgevity 🎶. Let's ride. 🚀

🛠️ 5 Things Most Pro Landscapers Won't Tell You

1. 🌿🛠️ Edmonton's elm pruning window is OPEN: October 1 to March 31 only
2. 🌿🛠️ Never mix sand into clay to fix it: you are making bricks, not soil
3. 🌿🛠️ Re-hang and adjust fence gates NOW, before frost heave locks them crooked
4. 🌿🛠️ Shoot a leaf-off shade map this week, before you plan a single spring planting
5. 🌿🛠️ Price fall cleanups by canopy and leaf load, not by lawn size

👇 Continue reading to learn more, the full breakdown on all five is waiting for you after the joke.

🌟 Today's Message: The Girl Who Demanded a School: Shannen Koostachin

Shannen Koostachin was a Cree girl from Attawapiskat First Nation, up on the James Bay coast of Ontario 🇨🇦🌊. She went to J.R. Nakogee Elementary, except there was no real school to go to: the building had been condemned, and her whole education happened in a row of run-down portable trailers parked beside a toxic waste site 🏚️. She had never in her life set foot in a proper school, and neither had the kids coming up behind her 😔. By the time she was in grade 8, she was watching talented grade 5 kids just give up and drop out, because the conditions told them every single day exactly how much the system valued them 💔.

Here's the part that makes it a fight and not just a sad story 🥊. The federal government had promised Attawapiskat a new school not once, not twice, but three times, and by 2007 it had backed away from the third promise too 📉. So a 13 year old decided to do the government's job of caring, out loud: Shannen and her fellow students launched the Attawapiskat School Campaign, taking Students Helping Students to YouTube and Facebook before that was a normal thing for kids to do 📱🔥. In 2008 she travelled to Ottawa and sat across from the Minister of Indian Affairs himself, who told her there wasn't enough money. She told him she would never give up, because "school is a time for dreams and every kid deserves this" ✨. That line, from a teenager in portables, got her nominated for the International Children's Peace Prize 🏅.

The campaign kept growing after she went home, students across the country writing letters, making videos, refusing to let a bunch of trailers on a dump be the end of the story ✊📚. Then, in 2010, Shannen was killed in a car accident on Highway 11 near Temagami. She was 15 years old 🕯️. She died still waiting for the school she'd been promised her entire childhood. Her family and friends made a decision in their grief that most adults never make in comfort: they picked the fight back up, and in November 2010 they relaunched it under her name, Shannen's Dream 💙. In February 2012, First Nations youth carried her story all the way to the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child in Geneva 🌍, and on February 27, 2012, the House of Commons passed the Shannen's Dream motion unanimously, every single party, calling for First Nations schools to be funded on equal footing 🇨🇦.

And the school? Construction on Kattawapiskak Elementary started on June 22, 2012, the exact day Shannen would have graduated 🎓, and it opened its doors on September 8, 2014, a real school, with real walls, for the kids of Attawapiskat 🏫🎉. She has since been named one of the 150 Great Canadians, there's a monument to her on the New Liskeard waterfront, and the National Film Board told her story in Hi-Ho Mistahey!, which means "I love you forever" in Cree 🎬. But here's the honest ending: Shannen's Dream still runs today through the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society, because the funding gap she named, thousands less per student than provincial schools, still hasn't fully closed ⚖️. Her call to action is embarrassingly simple and it is now ours: the kids closest to you are telling you what they need. Believe them the first time, and don't drop it 📣. Forward is always a choice, and that means YOU too!

Sources:
https://nwrct.ca/shannen-koostachin/
https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/first-nations-children-deserve-more-than-empty-promises--education-rights-must-be-fully-addressed---shannens-dream-509476701.html
https://ilrtoday.ca/nan-shannen-koostachin-honoured-as-one-of-150-great-canadians/
https://www.ndp.ca/news/eighth-anniversary-first-nation-kids-still-waiting?share=reddit
https://www.californiaindianeducation.org/famous_indians/shannen_koostachin/

🌤️ Today's Weather

Edmonton: Today: Clear and frosty to open, around -1°C at sunrise (8:12 AM) with humidity up at 80% and a light south wind at 5 km/h 🥶, then a straight sunny climb to a high of 14°C by mid afternoon ☀️. Feels like a couple of degrees less first thing, and the full 14 in the sun by 3 PM; rain chance 0% all day, humidity drying out into the low 30s, wind SSW at 5 km/h, and tonight turns mostly clear down to a low of -2°C 🌙. Sunset 6:23 PM. The vibe: October pretending it never heard of winter 😎. For work and yard, this is the last easy gift day before Friday's rain and freeze, so elm assessments, gate fixes and cleanup quotes all belong in today's sun 💪⏰. Scale of the Pantaloon: L6: "Don't Judge If You See Me in Some Tacky Khakis" (10 to 15°C) 👖

Aotearoa (Auckland): Today: Broken cloud over the harbour this morning around 13°C with humidity near 78% and SW winds at 15 km/h 🌥️, building to a high of 18°C and a low of 12°C tonight, rain chance near 0% and the sun not setting until 7:42 PM 🌇. Humidity eases into the mid 50s by afternoon and the SW breeze freshens a touch. The vibe: spring doing spring things, politely 🌸. For mindset, they're stacking daylight while we ration it, and both ends of the planet are just doing their season's honest work 🌏. Scale of the Pantaloon: L7: "Bust Out the Booty Shorts, Baby!" (15 to 25°C) 👖

📅 Next 5 Days: Edmonton – Aeoteroa

Thursday, Oct 22, Edmonton: Mostly sunny, high 14°C / low 2°C, rain 10% by day, then rain late at night at 80% with about 1.8 mm, wind NW at 8 km/h picking up from the north after dark 🌦️. The hinge day: everything outdoors wraps by sunset. Pantaloon: L6: "Don't Judge If You See Me in Some Tacky Khakis" | Aotearoa: Partly cloudy, high 18°C / low 13°C, rain 0%, humidity 65%, wind SW at 24 km/h 🌤️. Pantaloon: L7: "Bust Out the Booty Shorts, Baby!"

Friday, Oct 23, Edmonton: Rain, high 5°C / low -2°C, rain 90% with about 4.8 mm, wind NW at 26 km/h, humidity 86% 🌧️💨. The front arrives, soaks everything, and freezes behind itself overnight. Pantaloon: L5: "Time to Break Out the Sweatpants" (5 to 10°C) | Aotearoa: Morning cloud, afternoon sun, high 20°C / low 12°C, rain 0%, humidity 65%, wind SW at 15 km/h ☀️. Pantaloon: L7: "Bust Out the Booty Shorts, Baby!"

Saturday, Oct 24, Edmonton: Mostly cloudy, high 3°C / low -4°C, wintry chance 10%, wind NW at 17 km/h, humidity 69% 🥶. The new cold normal walks in and hangs up its coat. Pantaloon: L4: "Jeans… No Cap!" (-5 to 5°C) | Aotearoa: Partly cloudy, high 19°C / low 13°C, rain 10%, humidity 73%, wind W at 17 km/h 🌤️. Pantaloon: L7: "Bust Out the Booty Shorts, Baby!"

Sunday, Oct 25, Edmonton: Partly cloudy, high 4°C / low -4°C, wintry chance 10%, wind SE at 12 km/h, humidity 68% ⛅. Quiet, grey at the edges, and the yard officially slows down. Pantaloon: L4: "Jeans… No Cap!" | Aotearoa: Mostly cloudy, high 19°C / low 13°C, rain 10%, humidity 69%, wind WSW at 21 km/h 🌥️. Pantaloon: L7: "Bust Out the Booty Shorts, Baby!"

Monday, Oct 26, Edmonton: Partly cloudy, high 5°C / low -4°C, precip chance 10%, wind SSE at 14 km/h, humidity 68% 🌤️. Cold but workable, with a full moon rising over frozen beds. Pantaloon: L5: "Time to Break Out the Sweatpants" | Aotearoa: Partly cloudy, high 20°C / low 14°C, rain 20%, humidity 66%, wind W at 22 km/h 🌤️. Pantaloon: L7: "Bust Out the Booty Shorts, Baby!"

⭐ Star Wars Galaxy Forecast: The Coming Week

The week opens over the endless oceans of Manaan 🌊, 14 degrees and glass calm above Ahto City, while the Selkath kolto harvesters work the deep vents below and stay, as ever, aggressively neutral about everybody's war 🐟. Thursday stays warm over the restoration zones of Telos IV 🌿, 14 degrees, the Ithorians coaxing green back onto a bombed world, until rain rolls in late off the plains and tests their careful new hillsides 🌧️. Friday the storm parks over the Peragus II mining colony ⛏️, 5 degrees, rain at 90% and wind worrying the fuel lines; nobody with sense goes outside, and nobody at Peragus has ever been accused of sense twice 💥. Saturday goes grey and silent over Nathema 🌑, 3 degrees on a world the Force itself seems to have moved out of, cold that doesn't just chill you, it ignores you 🥶. Sunday breaks part cloud over Voss 🔮, 4 degrees, where the Mystics read the sky like a prophecy and the sky, rude as always, declines to clarify. Monday steams over jungle Dxun 🌴, 5 degrees by day and -4 underneath, the beast riders' old moon dripping and loud at dawn. And Tuesday closes at 5 degrees over the farm moon of Raada 🌾, clouds gathering over the fields, ordinary people watching ordinary weather and hoping the galaxy stays far away. It won't. It never does 🚀.

😂 The Daily Landscaping LOL

A blonde calls her boyfriend in absolute tears 😭📞. "I'm trying to do this jigsaw puzzle and I can't even find two pieces that fit together! Not one edge piece! NOTHING!" 🧩💢 Her boyfriend, calm as a man can be, says, "Okay, deep breath. What's the puzzle supposed to be?" She sniffles, looks at the box, and wails, "A TIGER! It's supposed to be a big beautiful TIGER!" 🐯 He sighs, drives over, walks in, looks at the pieces spread all over the kitchen table… puts the kettle on, sits her down, and says:

"Love… relax, have a cup of tea ☕, and then you and I are going to put all these Frosties back in the box." 🥣🤣

🛠️🌿 The Deep Dive: 5 Things Most Pro Landscapers Won't Tell You 🌿🛠️

1. Edmonton's elm pruning window is OPEN: October 1 to March 31 only 🌳
Most clients have it backwards and ask for elm work in summer, which is the one thing the bylaw flatly bans. Edmonton prohibits elm pruning from April 1 to September 30 because elm bark beetles are active then and home in on fresh cuts, spreading the Dutch elm disease fungus. Alberta still holds one of the last great disease-free elm canopies on the continent, roughly 42,000 public elms in this city alone, and the winter window is a big reason why. Two rules pros follow without being asked: sterilize your tools between elm trees (70% alcohol or methyl hydrate), and dispose of elm wood immediately by burning it or taking it to the Edmonton Waste Management Centre. Never, ever stack elm firewood: that's a beetle hotel with the vacancy sign lit 🪲.

2. Never mix sand into clay to fix it: you are making bricks, not soil 🧱
It sounds like physics: clay is too fine, sand is coarse, mix them and meet in the middle. What you actually get at garden scale is adobe. Clay plus a modest amount of sand plus water is literally the recipe for bricks and cob, and a bed amended that way sets harder than the clay you started with. To genuinely change clay's texture with sand you would need sand to make up more than half the total volume, tilled evenly a foot deep, which is tonnes of material and a destroyed soil structure for your trouble. The fix that actually works is organic matter: compost worked in and top-dressed, year over year, because soil biology glues clay particles into crumbs that drain and breathe. Sand is for drainage layers and paver joints, not for seasoning clay 🚫.

3. Re-hang and adjust fence gates NOW, before frost heave locks them crooked 🚪
A gate that's sagging, dragging, or missing its latch in October is a five minute adjustment while the posts still sit in workable soil: shim or reseat the hinges, square the frame, tighten the diagonal brace, set the latch where the gate actually closes. Wait until the ground freezes and frost heave gets a vote, the post moves on its own schedule, locks in crooked, and the gate either won't close or won't open until spring. Forcing a frozen gate is how rails split and frames rack out of square permanently. Bonus move while you're there: check the swing arc and clear anything the gate will want to drag through the first snowdrift ❄️.

4. Shoot a leaf-off shade map this week, before you plan a single spring planting 📸
Right now, with the canopy down, is the only honest look you'll get at a yard's light until next fall. Walk the property at morning, midday, and late afternoon and photograph every bed: leaf-off sun reaches places the July canopy keeps dark for months, and south beds can run weeks ahead of the yard's average come spring. That map tells you where snow melts first, where meltwater refreezes into ice sheets every night, and which "full sun" bed is actually a part-shade bed with good PR. Plan spring divisions, bulb top-ups, and Zone-pushing experiments off the leaf-off map, not off a summer memory that flatters the yard ☀️.

5. Price fall cleanups by canopy and leaf load, not by lawn size 💰
Two lots can measure identical on paper and differ three times over in cleanup labour. The open lot with one young tree is a blow-and-go; the same footprint under a mature elm and spruce canopy, on a corner where the wind stacks everybody else's leaves against the fence, is a full day with tarps. So quote the canopy, not the grass: count the mature trees, note the species (spruce sheds needles into beds all fall, oaks hold leaves late and drop them in stages), and check the fence corners and window wells where drift leaves pile deepest. Price by estimated leaf volume, or go hourly with a stated cap, and say which one you're doing before the first blower starts. The argument you avoid in November is the one about the bill 🍂.

🎶 Ron Hairemy's Songs That Guarantee LAWNgevity 🎵🌱🔥

Pop-punk confessions, a dumb-and-tough country warning, melodeath royalty, a Game record stacked with features, SIX60 keeping the roots watered, and Slim Shady kicking the door in to close. Zero chill, all signal.

🎸 Momentum
😂 Morale
🧠 Focus
⚔️ Endurance
🎤 Reflection
🌌 Creativity

All music. No filler.
(Except comedy… because everybody needs a laugh.)
No Nickelback.
No Slipknot.
No T-Swizzle.
As it should be.

Canadian Track'O'The Day: "I'm Just a Kid" by Simple Plan (clean ✅). Montreal's Simple Plan, formed in 1999 out of the city's punk scene, and this was their debut single in February 2002, off the multi-platinum No Pads, No Helmets...Just Balls 🇨🇦🎸. The band has sold over 10 million albums, played the 2010 Winter Olympics, and watched this exact song come back from the dead decades later through the viral #ImJustAKid challenge, which is what happens when you write a chorus honest enough to survive its own era. For me it's the anthem of every frosty morning where the whole day looks stacked against you before the coffee's even done ☕. Play it at 7 AM, volume rude, and remember the kid in the song grew up and kept the band together for 25 years 💪.

Today's Musical Funny-Bone: "If You're Gonna Be Dumb, You Gotta Be Tough" by Roger Alan Wade (clean ✅). Roger Alan Wade is a Chattanooga songwriter who quietly wrote songs for Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, George Jones, and Hank Williams Jr. before his cousin, a fella named Johnny Knoxville, started putting his music on a little show called Jackass 🤠📺. This song has appeared in every Jackass movie ever made, in somebody's version, and Wade's original is the one with the grin in it: a whole safety philosophy in one sentence, delivered like a shrug. For me, this is crew doctrine 😄. Every landscaper alive has done the dumb thing, on a ladder, in the rain, holding something sharp. Play it before the job, as a vaccination 💉.

Hair Whippin', Head Bangin', Finger Blazin' Therapy: "We Will Rise" by Arch Enemy (clean ✅). Swedish melodic death metal from Halmstad, built by guitarist Michael Amott, and this is the anthem off 2003's Anthems of Rebellion, with Angela Gossow on vocals in her prime 🇸🇪🔥. Arch Enemy stayed in the slot by your request after yesterday's swap, and honestly the rotation agrees with you: where the Vikings were all saga, this is all defiance, a chorus built like a crew standing up at the same time. For me it's Friday-storm-prep music two days early, formation tight, no panic 💪. Play it while the elm saw gets its chain checked, and let the neighbours wonder 🌳.

Tongue Trippin', Bar Spittin', Beat Killin' Bars: "Ali Bomaye" by The Game ft. 2 Chainz & Rick Ross (explicit 🔞, heavyweight explicit, noted plainly). Compton's The Game, track two off 2012's Jesus Piece, built on the most famous chant in sports history: "Ali boma ye", "Ali, kill him" in Lingala, roared at Muhammad Ali during the 1974 Rumble in the Jungle against George Foreman 🥊🌍. It samples Florence + The Machine's "Seven Devils", never even got released as a single, landed in the Grand Theft Auto V soundtrack anyway, and is still one of Game's most streamed songs ever, which tells you everything about the difference between marketing and impact. For me it's a reminder that the hook everybody remembers is usually the one a whole crowd invented first 📣. Play it when the cleanup quote needs heavyweight energy.

Māori Track / Aotearoa Pick: "Don't Forget Your Roots" by SIX60 (clean ✅). SIX60 are the Dunedin band named after their student flat at 660 Castle Street, and this was the second single off their debut album in July 2011, peaking at number 2 in Aotearoa 🇳🇿🎶. Written by Ji Fraser and frontman Matiu Walters, whose grandfather played for the Māori All Blacks, the song does exactly what its title orders, and in 2019 the band re-recorded it fully in te reo as "Kia Mau Ki Tō Ūkaipō" for the Waiata / Anthems project, with scholar Tīmoti Kāretu reinterpreting the lyrics 🌿. For me, in a year where I'm legally changing my name back toward my own whakapapa, this one isn't a pick, it's a mirror. Play it with both feet on home soil, wherever your home soil is 🌱.

Ron Hairemy Spotlight: "Without Me" by Eminem (explicit 🔞, classic Slim Shady explicit). Detroit via Missouri's Marshall Mathers, and this was the lead single off The Eminem Show in April 2002, the "guess who's back" heard around the world 🎤💥. It hit number 2 on the Billboard Hot 100, got nominated for Record of the Year, and its video won the Grammy for Best Short Form Music Video, because apparently you can put a whole era in a cape and tights if the pen is sharp enough. This one's straight out of my own "All time faves in the spotlight!" shelf, and for me it's the sound of an artist returning like he owns the building, which, that summer, he did 🏆. Play it on the drive home, windows up, dignity optional, flow mandatory 🚗.

That's the goal. That's LAWNgevity. 🌱🔥

🌅 Conclusion

A 15 year old asked her country for a school, got told there wasn't money, and the country ended up building it anyway, which is maybe the cleanest proof going that "no" is sometimes just a draft 📚. The yard version of that lesson is smaller but it rhymes: the elm window is open for a few short months, the gates only adjust while the ground still listens, and the shade map only tells the truth while the leaves are down 🌳⏰. Shoutout to every student still fighting for a safe and comfy school, to the Caring Society keeping Shannen's name in the room, and to every crew making hay in today's sun ☀️. Ask for what the work actually needs, then don't drop it. If you liked today's blog, be sure to star, speak out, and stay a while for updates. Until next time, this has been Kaitiaki Hamon. Keep your stick on the ice. And may the Force be with you. Always! Ka kite, landscaping whānau!

Sincerely,
Kaitiaki Hamon (Ron Hairemy)

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