Kaitiaki Hamon’s Look At Weather And The World

Kaitiaki Hamon's Look At Weather And The World

[NOW PLAYING] 😈 Ace of Spades - Motörhead 😈

Monday's Joey Moss story and Wednesday's Tommy Prince story just joined the blog tab on the site, crew. Go read them with your coffee, then come back here for Friday.

Hey crew, Kaitiaki Hamon here 🌳🚜. It is Friday, and no, it is not Friday the 13th, and it is definitely not Friday the 14th, but Blog #13 just landed on a Friday and the superstitious corner of my brain is paying full attention. It is also drop day, a chinook is rolling over the city like a warm rumour, the MANAIA dots are north of a hundred hours and still stacking, and we are heading into Remembrance weekend with Indigenous Veterans Day on Sunday and the eleventh hour coming Wednesday. Today you get 5 Things Most Pro Landscapers Won't Tell You up front and The Deep Dive waiting after the joke, Today's Message, Today's Weather for Edmonton and Aotearoa, the Friday the 13th forecast (the galaxy gets the week off, Blog #13 insisted), the Daily Landscaping LOL, and Ron Hairemy's Songs That Guarantee LAWNgevity to close the show. Let's ride. 🚀

5 Things Most Pro Landscapers Won't Tell You

1. 🌿🛠️ Watering at Noon Does NOT Burn Your Lawn
2. 🌿🛠️ Grass Clippings Do NOT Cause Thatch
3. 🌿🛠️ Planting by the Moon Is a Calendar, Not a Spell
4. 🌿🛠️ Beer, Pop, and Dish Soap Are NOT Lawn Food
5. 🌿🛠️ Coffee Grounds Will NOT Sour Your Soil

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

💌 Today's Message: The Day That Refused to Be Unlucky 🏍️

Some dates get a reputation they never earned. 🗓️ Friday the 13th has been scaring people for centuries, there is an actual clinical word for it, triskaidekaphobia, hotels quietly skip the thirteenth floor, and half the world would rather stay home than test the day. 😱 But in Port Dover, Ontario, a little fishing town of about 6,000 people on the north shore of Lake Erie, one man looked at the scariest square on the calendar and decided it did not deserve fear. It deserved a party. 🎉

On Friday, November 13, 1981, bike shop owner Chris Simons got about 25 of his friends together at the Commercial Hotel, the spot everybody called The Zoo, now Angelo's of Dover, just to celebrate being bikers on the day everybody else was hiding from. 🍻 They had such a good time that they made a pact on the spot: same town, same bar, every Friday the 13th from then on, no matter the season, no matter the weather. 🤝 No advertising. No posters. No committee, at first. Just word of mouth and a standing appointment with bad luck itself. 🏍️

Then the arithmetic lost its mind. 📈 When the crowds were still only 600 to 800 riders, Simons sat on the board of trade and told them he could see 100,000 people coming, and they laughed at him. By 2008, Norfolk County's own count had more than 100,000 people and over 12,000 motorcycles inside a town of about 6,000, and police estimates run as high as 140,000 on a warm one. 🚓 It became Canada's largest one-day motorcycle event, and the day even took a run at a Guinness record for the largest one-day rally on earth. 🌎 And the pact holds in February, too: when Friday the 13th lands in the dead of winter, the riders still come, through snow, because the appointment was never with the weather. It was with the day. ❄️

Next Friday, November 13, exactly one week from today, it fires again. 🔥 Forty-five years after 25 friends refused to be scared of a number, a whole town shuts its streets to cars and hands itself over to the people who showed up. That is the whole secret, crew: luck is just a story somebody tells about a date, and stories can be rewritten by anybody stubborn enough to make a standing appointment with the thing that scares them. 💪 Blog #13 landing on a Friday is not an omen, and neither is yours, whatever yours is this week, the bill, the diagnosis, the empty chair at the table. Meet it in the middle of town, with your people, on purpose. 🏴 Forward is always a choice, and that means YOU too!

Sources:
https://www.pd13.com
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_Dover,_Ontario
https://theclarion.ca/lifestyle/bikers-gather-port-dover/
https://www.motorcycle.com/2009/02/13/motorcycle-news/friday-the-13th-in-port-dover/

🌦️ Today's Weather

Edmonton - TODAY (Friday, November 6, 2026): The day starts at -1°C under partly cloudy skies, humidity 89%, south wind 5 km/h, and then the chinook machinery spools up: mostly cloudy, climbing to a high of 9°C by late afternoon with SSW winds at 13 km/h, and tonight refuses to cool off, low of just 6°C with SW winds at 31 km/h and gusts building past 40 overnight. Sunrise 8:43am, sunset 5:51pm, rain chance 10%. It feels like the city exhaling after the first cold week, a warm wind rehearsing for the weekend. For work it is a gift: a thaw window for exterior jobs, winterizing, and anything you postponed when the thermometer sulked. Scale of the Pantaloon: Level 5 (5 to 10°C), Time to Break Out the Sweatpants.

Aotearoa (Auckland) - TODAY (Friday, November 6, 2026): Thunderstorms run the table: high 22°C, low 17°C, rain chance 90% with 11 to 18 mm possible, north winds 21 km/h gusting 38 to 45, humidity 86 to 94%, and it is currently 19°C and cloudy with NNE winds at 23 gusting 42. Sunrise 6:11am, sunset 7:58pm. Spring over there is doing its full tropical tantrum, warm, wet, and loud. For the whānau it is an indoor day: thunder, surface flooding risk, and gutters earning their keep. Scale of the Pantaloon: Level 7 (15 to 25°C), Bust Out the Booty Shorts, Baby!

Next 5 Days - Edmonton to Aotearoa:

Saturday, November 7: Edmonton: sunny, high 9°C, low 4°C, west wind 29 km/h, the chinook full song. Level 5, Time to Break Out the Sweatpants. Auckland: thunderstorms all day, high 21°C, low 15°C, rain 100%, about 13.8 mm, north winds 23 km/h. Level 7, Bust Out the Booty Shorts, Baby!

Sunday, November 8: Edmonton: mostly cloudy, high 14°C, low 3°C, WSW winds 21 km/h. Indigenous Veterans Day, and the warmest day of the stretch, hold it with both hands. Level 6 (10 to 15°C), Don't Judge If You See Me in Some Tacky Khakis. Auckland: morning showers then clearing, high 22°C, low 16°C, rain 30%, UV up to 8. Level 7, Bust Out the Booty Shorts, Baby!

Monday, November 9: Edmonton: sunny, high 9°C, low -3°C, west wind 16 km/h, a crisp bright start to the week with one cold night in the middle. Level 5, Time to Break Out the Sweatpants. Auckland: rain returns, high 20°C, low 17°C, rain 80 to 90% with roughly 19 mm, NE winds 26 km/h. Level 7, Bust Out the Booty Shorts, Baby!

Tuesday, November 10: Edmonton: partly cloudy, high 8°C, low 1°C, light SSE winds 10 km/h, the quiet day before Remembrance Day. Level 5, Time to Break Out the Sweatpants. Auckland: rain again, high 20°C, low 16°C, rain 90%, around 20 mm, NNE winds 30 km/h. Level 7, Bust Out the Booty Shorts, Baby!

Wednesday, November 11: Edmonton: partly cloudy, high 13°C, low 5°C, south winds 13 km/h. Remembrance Day arrives mild, and the ceremonies get kind weather. Level 6, Don't Judge If You See Me in Some Tacky Khakis. Auckland: thundershowers, high 22°C, low 15°C, rain 60%, NNW winds 22 km/h. Level 7, Bust Out the Booty Shorts, Baby!

🔪 Friday the 13th Weather: Seven Days of Do Not Go In There

Friday opens at Camp Crystal Lake 🏕️, where the sign says closed for the season and the wind is already picking up speed off the water, gusts past 40 by midnight, because of course it is. Saturday a black cat crosses the whole province 🐈‍⬛: sunny, west winds at 29 km/h, and not one bad thing happens to anybody, which is the cat's whole defence. Sunday the elevator stops at the 13th floor 🏢, the one the hotels pretend does not exist: mostly cloudy, 14°C, the warmest day of the week, proof the missing floor has the best weather in the building. Monday you walk straight under the ladder 🪜 on purpose: bright sun, a cold night down to -3°C, and the only bad luck is forgetting the jacket the ladder was leaning next to. Tuesday is the broken mirror 🪞: calm, quiet, 8°C, seven years of absolutely nothing, just a still day on the eve of the eleventh. Wednesday the superstition steps aside entirely 🌺: it is Remembrance Day, mild at 13°C, and the only ritual that matters is two minutes of silence at eleven. And Thursday the fog rolls in off the lake 🌫️, 13°C and grey, because tomorrow is the real Friday the 13th, Port Dover fires the pact, and Crystal Lake officially opens for the season. Sleep tight.

😂 The Daily Landscaping LOL

A priest and a taxi driver both die on the same day and arrive at the pearly gates together. 😇 St. Peter checks his list, hands the taxi driver a golden staff and a silken robe, then hands the priest a wooden staff and a plain cotton robe. The priest is stunned. 😲 "I don't understand," he says. "I devoted my entire life to the church, preaching every Sunday for forty years. He drove a cab! Why does he get the gold?" St. Peter smiles and opens the big book. 📖 "Up here, we judge by results. Tell me, Father, when you preached, what did the people do?" "Well... they slept, I suppose." "Exactly," says St. Peter. "And when he drove, people prayed."

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

1. Watering at Noon Does NOT Burn Your Lawn 💧
The story goes that water droplets act like tiny magnifying glasses and scorch the grass, and it fails basic physics: a droplet sitting on a blade holds its focal point inside or behind itself, not on the tissue, and researchers who actually tested sunlit wet leaves found lawn grasses do not burn this way. The real cost of noon watering is evaporation and wind drift, which can waste a third of the water on a hot, windy day. Morning watering is about efficiency, not burn prevention. And if the lawn is wilting at 2pm, water it then: a thirsty lawn suffers more than a wet one ever will.

2. Grass Clippings Do NOT Cause Thatch 🍂
Thatch is a dense mat of stems, roots, and crowns, the slow-decaying structural parts of the plant. Clippings are none of that: they are roughly 80 percent water, they break down in a week or two, and they hand back up to a quarter of the nitrogen your lawn needs, free. Bagging every pass starves the turf and landfills fertility you already paid for. Real thatch builds when heavy fertilizing and shallow daily watering push roots up to the surface. Mulch-mow without guilt, and only reach for the core aerator when the thatch layer itself passes about a centimetre and a half.

3. Planting by the Moon Is a Calendar, Not a Spell 🌙
Farmers have planted by moon signs for centuries, and it is a beautiful tradition with one problem: controlled trials keep finding no reliable effect of lunar phase on germination or yield. The moon's gravitational pull on a seed is trivial next to the fence post beside it. What actually decides a planting is soil temperature, soil moisture, and your frost dates, all of which you can measure with a thermometer and a knuckle. Keep the almanac, honestly, it is a good read. Just use it for the frost charts, and let the soil cast the deciding vote.

4. Beer, Pop, and Dish Soap Are NOT Lawn Food 🍺
The famous pantry tonics promise a golf course out of the grocery bag, and the chemistry is not there: beer and pop are sugar water, a light snack for microbes and zero meaningful nitrogen, phosphorus, or potassium. Dish soap is worse than useless in quantity, stripping the waxy coating off blades, stressing the turf, and doing the soil biology no favours, and the old recipes that lean on ammonia are just a sloppy, risky way to buy nitrogen. A soil test and the right fertilizer will beat the entire pantry, cheaper, and without giving your lawn a hangover.

5. Coffee Grounds Will NOT Sour Your Soil ☕
Here is the part nobody tells you: the acid in coffee is water-soluble, which means it ends up in your cup, not in the grounds. Used grounds test close to neutral, around pH 6.5, so spread over Edmonton's alkaline clay they will not budge the pH, and they will not fix iron chlorosis either, because that yellowing is iron locked out by high pH, a job for chelated iron and sulfur, not breakfast. Grounds still earn their keep as a thin ingredient in the compost, where they belong. Laid on thick as a mulch they mat down, repel water, and can stall seedlings, so compost them, don't prescribe them.

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

Edmonton boys declare war on Toronto, Bo Burnham sells you the entire internet in four minutes, a '98 bhangra anthem gets rebuilt in drop-tuned steel, Al reports live from the couch, Maisey Rika sings to the god of the sea, and a kid from Woodstock swears he'll be fine. That's not a playlist, that's a whole personality.

🎸 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: The Toronto Song by Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie (clean). My own people, an Edmonton comedy troupe formed in 1987 by Wes Borg, Joe Bird, and Neil Grahn, declaring cheerful war on the centre of the universe. It comes from Con Troupo Comedius, also on the Skit Happens collection, and it has been misattributed to the Arrogant Worms for three decades, which the Trolls have always found hilarious. It even anchored the 2007 mockumentary Let's All Hate Toronto, where Borg toured the country collecting grievances. No malice in it, just playful insults, civic pride, and a hook. Play it any time you need to remember that Edmonton humour hits harder because it has to shovel its way out first. His link: https://youtu.be/iRjurRdep_Q

🤪 Today's Musical Funny-Bone: Welcome to the Internet by Bo Burnham [E]. From Inside (2021), the special Burnham wrote, shot, lit, and edited alone in one room during lockdown, and the album Inside (The Songs), released June 10, 2021. This track is a carnival barker villain number where the internet itself offers you everything, all of the time, with a smile that should terrify you. It runs past 90 million views on YouTube, and the profanity and adult references run wall to wall, so mind the audience. Play it the next time you catch yourself doomscrolling at midnight and need the spiral named out loud, in rhyming couplets, by a man in a spotlight.

🤘 Hair Whippin', Head Bangin', Finger Blazin' Therapy: Tunak Tunak Tun by Bloodywood (clean). New Delhi folk metal, and the single greatest genre swerve on today's shelf. Bloodywood started in 2016 with Karan Katiyar and Jayant Bhadula making metal covers of pop songs, and this is their 2018 metal rebuild of Daler Mehndi's 1998 bhangra anthem, released as Tunak Tunak Metal with guest vocals from Bonde do Metaleiro: dhol drums, tumbi twang, and drop-tuned guitars under the most indestructible dance hook India ever produced. The original was the first Indian music video shot on green screen and went on to become a planetary meme, and Bloodywood went the other direction entirely, becoming the first Indian metal band to chart on Billboard with their own album Rakshak. Play it when the crew's morale needs airdropping: nobody stays slumped through a bhangra breakdown. Nobody.

🎤 Tongue Trippin', Bar Spittin, Beat Killin Bars: Couch Potato by "Weird Al" Yankovic (clean). From Poodle Hat (2003), a full-throttle parody of Eminem's Lose Yourself with the flow rebuilt around channel surfing, reality TV, and a man dissolving into his own recliner. Al was on repeat through my whole childhood, Alapalooza was the first CD I ever bought with my own money, and when I saw him live at Capital Ex he opened the show with Canadian Idiot, which felt personal. Eminem allowed the parody but refused a music video, so the song lives exactly where it belongs: in the car, at full volume. Play it on the drive between jobs when the day needs its edges sanded down by a genius in a Hawaiian shirt.

🌿 Māori Track: Tangaroa Whakamautai by Maisey Rika (clean). From Whitiora (2012), Rika's landmark album recorded entirely in te reo Māori, which reached number 9 on the New Zealand singles chart in a mainstream market that rarely makes room for that, and this title track took home Best Māori Song and Best Music Video at the 2013 Waiata Māori Music Awards. Rika is of Ngāti Awa, Tūhoe, Te Arawa, and Te Whānau-a-Apanui descent, an Arts Foundation Laureate, and here she sings to Tangaroa, god of the sea, with taonga pūoro and strings under her voice. The words speak of the kaitiaki of the ocean, and I will let you work out why this one sits close to my chest. Play it at golden hour with water in sight, or when you need to remember what your name means.

🔦 Ron Hairemy Spotlight: I'll Be Fine by DIZZYISDEAD [E]. A single from January 10, 2025, on Regime Music Group, from Blake Lounsbury, a Canadian alternative artist out of Woodstock, Ontario, who has stacked more than 40 million streams writing sad-pop confessionals for the kids who feel everything at full volume. The hook is a promise somebody is trying to believe: yeah, I'm fucked up, but I'll be fine. Full disclosure from my own notebook, this song is sitting in the to-learn pile of my guitar songbook, which tells you exactly how deep the hook is set. This one does not get a when-to-listen cue, because it is not that kind of song: it is a say-it-until-it-is-true song, and a kid from Woodstock built 40 million streams out of saying it on his worst nights first. That is not a playlist closer. That is the whole point of the shelf.

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

🌅 The Wrap-Up

Twenty-five riders looked at the calendar's scariest square and made it a standing appointment, which is the whole trick: the omen loses the second you show up for it on purpose. Take the weekend the same way: pin the poppy on, show up Sunday for the Indigenous veterans who were asked to forget their own service, and retire one lawn myth at the first neighbour who repeats it. The clippings one is my gift to you, thatch never stood a chance against the facts. Next Friday the 13th fires for real in Port Dover, and Blog #13 on a Friday was just the warm-up lap. 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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