Spring is officially here

This morning I picked kale and green onions from the garden, so I am going to pronounce it spring. Even if it was threatening snow last week, and tomorrow's high will only be nine degrees.

I have started my indoor starts. This year I'm trimming down the number of varieties I'll be growing, but I have four types of tomatoes, sorghum, basil, cabbage, and bok choy started, along with three small trays of marigolds. Mid-May, I will start some pots of Mongolian sunflowers, which are supposed to grow into 14-foot giants, but last year the rabbits beheaded many of my sunflowers, so I'm not letting myself get too hopeful. But maybe if I can make them fairly tall before planting out, they'll have a better chance. Everything else will be direct-sown at the end of May.

And then the stress begins of juggling work, grandkids, housework, garden, and projects up at the church. It's most stressful trying to be in two places at once, knowing my garden needs me here but knowing the woodworking projects are waiting for me up there... I am alleviating some of the busyness by eliminating green beans and peas (sob) from the garden this year. Those require daily and sometimes twice-daily attention, but most of the other plants I'm growing only need a look-see once or twice a week. I'll have to get my beans and peas from the farmers' market this year. Which would be fine, but I find most people pick their green beans when they're too big and Styrofoam-y. I like mine slim and tender. I suppose I could plant a little, and accept that many will go to seed for lack of daily picking. Then I wouldn't miss out completely.

It's still joyful stress, though, I'll have to say. It's great to have the opportunity to garden and to do woodworking, to have my grandkids come to play, to have a job that supports us and a house to clean. So I won't complain, and instead of trying to decide if I prefer to be up at the church or here in the city, I'll try to focus on just being content wherever I am.

(Picture from a few years ago, but it looks the same except I've removed the small hedge on the right.)

Something I've never thought of before

I was watching a Youtube video by Neil McCoy-Ward this morning, and he said something in a way that hadn't occurred to me before. He said when you spend money, it works its way up to the "1%" (the wealthy elite). And duh, how come it hasn't been that clear to me before? It's true. The only way to avoid that is to solely buy/trade directly with the producers and creators, the ones with their boots on the ground. They in turn would have to find ways to get the resources they need in the same way, horizontally instead of vertically. If we all did that, conducting commerce at the grassroots level, then the top 1% would certainly feel it eventually. They need us, the everyday average person, to stay in their current state. They only exist at that level because we enable it. 

I'll have to think more about this and how to achieve it.

Absolutely Astonished

I ran to the grocery store today to grab a couple of things, and as I waited to check out, I witnessed a shameful thing. The customers in front of me were two older women, I think one likely the mother of the other. They wanted to purchase five bags of oranges for less than the posted price. The cashier explained the lower price was for clementines, not the oranges, but they insisted quite loudly that the lower price was for the oranges. 

The cashier sent a clerk to check the price not just once but twice, and also the manager came over to confirm the price, but the women still didn't agree. They were quite rude and bullying, and the cashier, a sweet girl who looked about sixteen, started to get tears in her eyes. She kept apologizing to the rest of us waiting in line, and we all assured her we weren't in a hurry and it was okay. At one point she laughed at herself a bit for getting emotional, as one does laugh when embarrassed, and one of the rude women barked at her, saying "You think this is funny?" 

Anyway, the daughter finally backed down and just wanted to leave, but the mother was still upset. When she couldn't get the price she wanted, she reached into her cart, picked up the bags of oranges, and threw them with a loud thump on the conveyor belt, one after the other, hard enough to make them bounce. It was like watching a child have a hissy fit, and I was so close to snapping at her for acting like a baby about it. You're seventy years old woman! Act like an adult! And pay for the fruit you just damaged! But I decided that wouldn't be very adult of me. 

The manager finally coaxed the two women over to the customer service counter to deal with them, and the cashier tearfully apologized again to all of us in line. She said, "I've never been treated like that before!" and I assured her she shouldn't have been treated that way and I was sorry she had been. I gave her what comfort I could, and the others in line were equally appalled and offered their support.

As I left the store and passed the customer service counter, it was all I could do not to hiss at the older woman. You just made a perfectly nice girl cry at work because of a couple of dollars. You're getting ready for a big religious holiday dinner, but God is not going to hear your prayers until you go apologize for bullying that innocent child. She's just trying to do her job. I just don't get people like that. Nothing is important enough to bully someone else about it.

Only Death Gives Back

I was recently listening to a talk my biologist sister gave on environmental stewardship and how to overcome communication barriers around climate change. One thing she said really jumped out at me. She was speaking about how we can't live on earth without doing some damage. We can try to mitigate or lessen it, but we can't avoid it completely. Whether we choose to use cloth or disposable diapers, for example, both do different kinds of harm. The plants and animals on our plates were sacrificed so we could live. It's a painful reality. 

It got me to thinking, and it's true -- life requires taking other life. It's only death that gives back.

Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern are alive and well in Toronto!

Last night I had the amazing opportunity to see Tom Stoppard's play at the CAA Theatre with my husband and Son #3. Of course after a mild winter with no snow, nature decided to pummel us with everything she had last night, and I was praying we could get there at all, but my husband managed to fight our way to the subway, and it was smooth from there (the subway truly is the only way to travel in bad weather).

I love the magic feeling of waiting for a play to begin. I've done a tiny bit of community theatre, and that smell of --what is it? Chalk dust? Old fabric? Electricity? -- draws me in every time. The stars of the show, Billy Boyd and Dominic Monaghan, captured us instantly, from the first line, and the tangible rapport between them made the rapid-fire dialogue spark. Imagine memorizing three hours of dialogue! (The show doesn't feel that long. I could have kept going.) But I was impressed with the rest of the cast, too, especially Michael Blake in the role of the Player. Walter Borden (Polonius) had a resonant voice like James Earl Jones that filled the theatre. Imagine being on stage with Boyd and Monaghan! Wouldn't that be such a thrill? The set was simple and spare and completely sufficient, constantly in motion, supporting but not detracting from the action.

At one point the Player says "I have lines to learn." And Monaghan broke off-script, looked at Boyd, and murmured, "So does he." The actors froze for a second, you could see Boyd struggling not to laugh, and Monaghan looked at the audience and grinned, bringing us in on the joke. Then the action resumed, but as the characters moved up stage, I saw Monaghan pat Boyd fondly on the back. You could tell they were just having the greatest fun up there together. And now I want to dig out my copy of the play to see if Boyd had flubbed a line, to prompt Monaghan to make the comment. 

The whole evening was a delight, and it was fun to revisit a favourite play. Such profound observations on life and death, but so funny too. Now and then I'd glance at my son and find him dissolved in laughter. All the way home, we tossed bits of the dialogue at each other, and we've agreed our headstones should include the inscription: "Heads."

I saw an interview with the principal actors on Youtube the other day, and the interviewer asked them what it felt like to play characters who knew they were going to die. Boyd got a funny look on his face and said, "But we all know we're going to die." And we are. In the meantime, we get to laugh and learn. I'm grateful to these men for sharing their talents and bringing me that opportunity last night. 

The Odyssey - or - How I Spent My Vacation

I apologize, this is going to be a long post. I just returned from two weeks in Hawaii with my husband. The place itself is beautiful -- whales and dolphins visible from our balcony, giant sea turtles surfing the shore, mist-covered mountains and rainbows, sunshine, and one fun night watching sheet lightening over the dark sea. The boom and hiss and foam of the waves on the sand. Azaleas the size of trees in lipstick colours. Papaya, bananas, and mangoes growing everywhere. Pretty spectacular. I met some interesting people, including a couple who were refugees from Russia back in 1987. The local pipe major and her husband had us over for a wonderful lunch at their gorgeously-restored 100-year-old home. I read ten books in two weeks. In short, a wonderful break.

I have to say, though, that it wasn't all sunshine and roses. Humans have besmirched the stunning landscape. The area of Oahu where we stay is pretty third-world, with a really visible dichotomy between the rich and the poor. There was a homeless encampment at one end of the beach, there was the constant sound of sirens, and one poor fellow with insomnia spent every night zooming up and down on his motorbike, thus ensuring the rest of us had insomnia too. No one seems to be aware of their neighbour or worry about annoying them. They let their dogs bark incessantly, even at night, which surely must keep them awake too, but there's no attempt to hush them. There are roosters kept in little cages everywhere you look, and they don't confine their screeching to dawn like in the cartoons. Trash is piled everywhere, sometimes on fire, and no one seems to care. And one day a hiker fell from the next-door cliff and had to be airlifted out on a stretcher by a helicopter. I learned later that one person was charged $81,000 for such a rescue, driving home to me how grateful I am to live where I do.

I gained a little insight into myself while I was there, too. One day the police cleared out the homeless encampment, and I found myself siding with the displaced people. They'd found a pretty spot where they could be sheltered from the weather by the surrounding cliffs and could fish for their breakfast. It was government-owned land, but still, no one else was using it. The police pulled down their tents and tarps and left them with nothing. Not an hour later, though, the people were back, emerging from the woods, bringing suitcases and more tents, and setting the camp back up. And suddenly I found myself irritated that they were back to sleeping on our beach, leaving behind towels and dirty clothes on our sand, when I'd spent so much money to get here and... How quickly we slip into our roles and mindsets without even realizing it! I immediately felt acutely aware of my privilege, and I was ashamed of myself. I went for a walk through town, admiring the architecture, and asked myself what style the houses were...and then answered my own question. Colonial. If the homeowner isn't a native to Hawaii, the style is Colonial. There's no getting around it.

Anyway, I wouldn't call it the usual carefree sort of vacation, but it was still a nice break. And I feel I learned something about myself, which is always a good outcome of travel to foreign places.

The journey home was an adventure in itself. The flight to Calgary was fine, we had a two-hour layover, but then just as we were about to board the flight to Toronto, it was cancelled. We were bumped to a flight nine hours later...to Edmonton. (I now see the usefulness of cell phones. My husband had one, and we were able to keep in the loop about what was going on and what flight we were being put on. They also emailed us food vouchers to tide us over, which was handy.) So we waited all day, eating turkey wraps from Jugo Juice and trying to focus exhausted eyes on Sudoku... At one point, we were chatting with a friendly lady beside us, and there was a large family nearby. They were Ukrainian, three generations of them, all headed to Saskatoon. They looked like a lovely, close-knit family. But the lady we were talking with noticed them and suddenly turned nasty, spewing vitriol about refugees and how they were coming to take over our homes, and why should they get houses when we can't even afford them ourselves? Why did they get preferential treatment? My husband firmly reminded her that no one was bombing her home, and the refugees were being housed, not given houses. A big difference. I was proud of him. Surely in a land the size of Canada, we can share. 

That evening we finally got on the flight to Edmonton, only to sit on the tarmac for a further 40 minutes while a repairman in an orange vest knelt on the cockpit floor, trying to fix a communication signal light. I kid you not, it looked to me like he was just turning the computer on and off, the way the IT Department always tells you to just reboot when something goes haywire. I half expected him to just slap its side. Anyway, it finally worked and we were on our way. All of this for...get this...a 33-minute flight to Edmonton. Where we had another 4-hour layover, where I found a sagging couch probably full of ten sorts of diseases and tried to doze, without success, due to constant intercom announcements. It was a nice airport, though, I have to say, with interesting Metis displays, comfortable furniture, and a green wall. We finally caught the midnight flight to Toronto. We were supposed to have arrived home Saturday afternoon. Instead we got home at 8:00 Sunday morning, having gone without sleep for over 50 hours.

Luckily, through all of this nightmare, we hadn't checked our luggage, so we had access to everything we needed, from toothpaste to clean socks. We didn't have any small children or caged dogs with us, like some of the other weary passengers. All in all, it was manageable. There are headlines online about how to recover from losing the hour of sleep due to the changing of the clocks, and I just laugh.

Now I have the grandkids for March Break week, and they have raging colds. So much for wearing an N95 mask for two days straight on the plane...Ah well! I'm home, I'm reunited with Brio, and all is well.

A poem for the day

 

I have been reading a lot of Leslie Norris poetry lately, and it put me in the mood to try some myself. My humble offering for your reading pleasure:

Brio

I tap at my keyboard, notebook and mug at hand.

The dog drapes himself over my feet under the table,

deep in boneless sleep until I shift, or sniff, or click the laptop off.

Instantly, he’s on his feet, alert, attentive,

ready as any sheep dog responding to a whistle.

You understand sleep was a ruse.

 

His work is self-defined, an unbroken vigilance,

a militant agreement I don’t recall making.

He is dedicated to his job as much as I.

When I say he needn’t rise, he rolls his eyes, ignores me.

Of course I’m coming with you.

His work is to disdain coat or boots and accompany me

to the mailbox in the cold, to the park

to corral the ball I repeatedly let escape,

to the kitchen to clean up the food scraps I drop.

Careless woman! Without me, you’d lose everything.

 

Ferocious defender against buzzing flies, doorbells, mail carriers,

distant sirens, squirrels passing the window.

He presses between me and the threatening hickory nuts

I’m obviously holding at bay with a hammer.

I won’t let them get you.

When he senses I’m lonely, it’s his job to bring a toy,

put his warm, comforting head on my knee.

Once when I lay coughing on the couch,

he crawled onto my chest, staring intently into my eyes,

willing me to stillness.

 

His job also to chaperone me in the bathroom,

lying outside the shower with worried eyes,

in case danger lurks, ready to spring.

Why would you pull a curtain between us?

Don’t you know I must keep my eyes on you at all times?

At night he sleeps curled against the back of my knees,

fending off evil dreams.

 

-          Kristen McKendry

Thoughts of spring and garden staples

I was out raking (in a sweatshirt, no less) and found a yellow dandelion in my backyard this week. The leaves are definitely coming out on the maple trees. This is freaky. Meanwhile, the Maritimes are getting over a metre of snow in one fell swoop.

I'm determined to stick to the plan and assume winter is yet to come and refrain from starting my seedlings indoors. There is a temptation to hope for a really long growing season this year, but I don't trust it. Though it is a good time to inventory my seeds and make a plan. I need lots of room for seedlings this year, because I'm going to start the sorghum indoors to try to give it a head start, since last year it barely ripened before frost. So I'll need about 100 tiny pots for that under the grow lights, not leaving much room for tomatoes, etc. I want to turn my entire dining room into a growing area...but that won't jive with, you know, dining, so I'll have to get creative.

I'm focusing on garden basics this year, feeding the soil, trying not to disturb the worms. I'm omitting the frippery such as mache and perpetual spinach and focusing on the bulky survival staples -- cabbage, sorghum, beans, onions, kale, tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, butternut squash, carrots, and sweet potatoes. I love rapini but it does better indoors, so that will go under the lights again once the seedlings go out. I'm also going to try a suggestion I saw on Youtube and plant late summer/early fall broccoli instead of spring, so that it comes to maturity when the weather is cooler. Maybe that will help it not to bolt. The trick these days is to figure out when first-frost and last-frost dates are...

I try a new thing each year, and this year it is Champagne Bubble cherry tomatoes, which are sweet and not acidic at all -- perfect for snacking.

If you're gardening this summer (and you absolutely should!), leave a comment about what you'll be planting!

Cardinals, Geese, and a Too-Early Spring

The maple trees are budding already. The hyacinths are starting to come up. Apparently they have seen goslings at Lake Ontario already, and lately I've been hearing cardinals whooping their mating calls. They're all about two months early, but it has been positively warm the last few days. In fact, other than a few days at -25, it's been unseasonably warm all winter so far. The plants and birds think spring has come. I'm worried that a real cold snap will come in February and kill the young, and it's heartbreaking knowing I can't tell them all, "Hold off! Wait! Winter is coming! It isn't over!" 

Or maybe it is over, in which case we got hardly any snow at all and farmers will be in some trouble this summer. I haven't taken my winter coat out of the closet yet, and I've only shoveled snow one day. Too weird. A bit frightening. Surely cold and snow will come eventually!

Deliverance

It's the 18th of January, and if you've seen the movie Deliverance, you'll know why I feel like playing my banjo today...

I started playing banjo when I was about thirteen, and in fact my first real job was as a banjo teacher at a music store when I was fifteen. I played in the Earl Scruggs style, five-string. I had one student who was so young, he couldn't reach the strings on his instrument. We had to tape a matchbox to the banjo to elevate his hand into position. It was a great job while it lasted, until the shop burned down one night, and they decided not to rebuild. Years later, I developed a Teach Yourself Banjo course so people could learn remotely at their own pace. Not that many people took advantage of it, but it was still a fun venture.

Banjo has cropped up often throughout my life. My niece married a fellow who plays clawhammer banjo, a style I don't know but would love to learn. One evening I got to perform at a jam session with the Utah Old Time Fiddlers and Country Music Association. I ran into two banjo players at a summer girls' camp who taught me a new version of Cripple Creek. My childhood neighbour up the street played too, and even lent me his banjo for a while until I could afford my own. Once I even met a girl walking through an airport carrying a banjo case, and when I told her I played too, it's like we became instant friends. It isn't a common instrument here in Canada, though it can often be found in Irish folk music. Still, it does seem to appear when I'm least expecting it.

Banjo has been the brunt of a few jokes in its history, and people don't always seem to take it seriously. It's actually a pretty complicated and beautiful instrument, and it's not just for Muppet frogs to play while sitting on a log in a swamp. Though it isn't something you'll hear often in a concert hall or accompanying an orchestra, you can play Paganini on it. You can use violin mutes on it to get a soft, chiming sound from it. Or, yeah, you can hammer out some bluegrass on it, set people's feet to stomping. I've always loved bluegrass, and I can't hear it without jumping up and clogging.

Yes, I clog. Or at least, I did until arthritis took over my knees.

What's your superpower?

Yarn Stash Score

I was talking with my weaving instructor, and she said she had some fibres to share with me. A fellow weaver had retired from weaving and gave away her stash, and it wasn't stuff she was going to use. Would I like it? For sure! Buying weaving supplies is pricey. So I went over to pick it up, expecting a small bag of thread.

I came home with five BIG boxes of all kinds of thread and yarn -- stuff for knitting, crocheting, embroidery, and needlepoint as well as weaving. Bulky yarns that will work in peg loom rugs. Two shopping bags of scrubby yarns and craft cotton for making kitchen cloths. Two BIG cones of light yarn the size of basketballs (my instructor says she ended up with 17 of these!). Such generosity! It felt like Christmas. I went through it and selected some fuzzy yarns and baby yarns that I likely won't use, which I can pass on to a fellow knitter who makes stuff for charity. There's a cone of purple yarn my granddaughter will love. I also collected a bag of cotton-silk blend that I'll give to a friend who makes more exotic stuff than I do. I may find more that I can share as I dig through the hoard.

There are some especially beautiful weaving cottons in heathery colours that I look forward to using. Some look good for making tapestries, and I can already see seascapes and Scottish hills in my mind. So many ideas rattling in my head now! I fear other responsibilities are going to languish in neglect for a while...

I feel bad that someone obviously bought all this with the intention of certain projects and never got to them, but hopefully I can honour it and put it to good use. I think the first thing I do is make scarves and hats for the homeless, as winter has finally come to Ontario.

Another manuscript

It was a gray and rainy day and no chance to walk to the lake. Laundry is done. Varnish is still drying on the bannisters so I can't sand them yet. I'm out of weaving cotton. Left my guitar and banjo at home. Nothing good on Netflix. So as a last resort, I finally buckled down and spent the evening polishing off a manuscript and sending it off to my editor. This one is my first attempt at full-length non-fiction, so not sure how it will go, but that's all I'm going to say about it for now! Superstition still runs high at times like this, and I don't want to jinx anything...I'm a jangle of nerves.

I still have two fiction manuscripts (well, more than two, but two main ones) that I'm going to work on next. 

But not tonight. The big question for now is...to make peanut butter cookies and snarf them all in a frenzy of stress-eating, or to drink a sedate herbal tea and go to bed early? What would J.K. Rowling do?

I don't make New Year's resolutions

I am not a big fan of goal-setting. It seems to me if there's something you want to improve, you just start doing it. If you fall short, you start again, right now. If there's a trait you want to develop, you just "be" that. No setting goals about what you want to be in the future -- just be, now. And no one is keeping track of how many times you fail or start again. 

Having said that, I do choose a theme each year and let it influence or guide my thoughts, focus, and activities during the year. For example, one year was focused on "health," one year was "family history," and last year was "emergency preparedness."

We've just come out of a long and rather grueling (and financially draining) church renovation, which isn't quite done yet, but we're at a pausing point. The family has undergone some changes and challenges. We're feeling a bit battered. So this year's theme is Recovery. Or maybe Quiet. Or maybe Ice Cream -- I'm still deciding.

To start this year's theme off, at any rate, I am spending two weeks at the church, the first with my husband and the second week alone, practising "Quiet." When the furnace isn't running, it's a silent place. It's surrounded by empty farm fields. Cars going past are rare, and the thick walls protect me from the sound, muffling anything outside. I can hear my own thoughts here. I can write and read and sleep and not go anywhere or see anyone if I choose not to. Once in a while I take a walk to the local lake, rarely encountering another person. The ideal setting for being quiet.

I'm also participating in a pre-recorded online yoga and meditation class, which helps lead me toward stillness. I've gotten out of the habit of sitting still, and this next period of time will be centering for me. Maybe I'll get some more writing done. Maybe I'll crochet, which is something I find meditative and soothing. Maybe I'll just watch Korean dramas on Netflix. There's no self-judgment this week, that's the agreement I've made with myself.

We foresee someday opening up the church to others who are also seeking retreat and silence. Running meditation sessions and other workshops, to share a little of the peace and stillness and healing that I hope this place will come to embody.

Meanwhile, I'll have to make sure hubby has stocked the freezer with ice cream before he goes, just in case that ends up being the theme... Just to keep all bases covered, you know.