Truth and Reconciliation

September 30 is Truth and Reconciliation Day in Canada. Some years I've attended a pow-wow or watched a documentary about it. This year, I attended a concert on Saturday where an Anishinaabe elder drummed and taught us a song, and I will be doing some reading about the subject to commemorate. Sept 30 is a poignant day for me anyway, because it's the anniversary of our adopted son's death. Always a day for introspection and reflection.

Vegetable Garden Harvest

As this year's garden harvest is still ongoing, I thought I'd share photos from a year or two ago. There's something joyful about going out in the back yard and gathering everything you need for lunch. Blanching and freezing bags of green beans. Dehydrating carrots into hard little nuggets that---impossibly---rehydrate into plump, perfect rounds. Shelling dry beans and gathering seeds for next year. Taking bags of cucumbers to the local food bank. Gathering bouquets of kale. Lining up jars of tomatoes that glow like jewels on the shelf.

Sometimes there are challenges, and even though I've been gardening for almost 40 years, not every harvest is plentiful. Sometimes rabbits get the zucchini and squirrels behead the kale. Sometimes earwigs find the cabbage and heat takes out the spinach. There are some years things just refuse to germinate or thrive. There was the infamous year the bought-in sheep manure contained weed seeds and I basically had to garden with a machete.

By the time September rolls around, I'm tired of salad and ready for hearty soups and stews. This year I've grown my own black lentils, and I'm looking forward to trying them out. They'll probably make about a tablespoon-worth of soup, but at least I'll know I can do it. The time to practise growing food is before the famine hits.

Busy Hands

One of the things that gives me joy is doing things with my hands. Crocheting, knitting, needlework, weaving, woodwork, gardening, painting, baking -- I'm not great at any of them, but they all give me immense satisfaction, even if the project itself doesn't turn out very well. For me, it's joy in the journey more than the final destination.

Also, it's impossible for me to sit still. I can't just sit and watch a movie without also crocheting or doing a puzzle. Which means if it's a K-drama and I have to watch the subtitles, my hands (more often than not) keep busy with things that don't require looking at, such as popcorn or cookies...and unfortunately, I watch a lot of foreign films!

This is what my brain does at 6 a.m.

My Bachelor's Degree is in linguistics, and I've always been keen on language in general. I like to play with words (I once wrote an entire paper on the meaning of the word "for.")

Have you ever noticed that most of the words that start with the letter D have something in common?

Dig
Delve
Down
Deep
Ditch
Dungeon

They all have something to do with going downward. Going lower.

Devoted
Devout
Dedicated

Same connotation. Going deeper, digging in. Now consider:

Doom
Depress
Destroy
Darken
Depose

Same again. All have something to do with bringing down.

Divert
Depart
Dispose

These are a little trickier. They have to do with motion or direction, going to the side, but not necessarily downward.

Then I start coming up with D words that this doesn't seem to apply to, such as the Hebrew word Devorah, meaning honeybee (so maybe it doesn't translate across languages), but then I start thinking of honeybees and hives, and my mind comes up with the phrase "Dark Hive," and that's now going to be the name of the mystery novel I'm writing. Thus I come up with ideas and titles and plots...