The most Canadian photo

 

The most Canadian photo ever appeared in my Facebook feed today. It gave me joy, so I had to share.

Thanks to Green Feet, Ecosystem Services greenfeetes.com for the photo!

I have no idea how I will cope

In March, they are tearing down our local community centre to completely rebuild it. Two years without a library within walking distance. I will not survive.

$1 Properties

Is anyone else bugged by the real estate ads that say the property is listed for $1? I know this is a ploy to raise interest, and usually the property is up for auction with a sky-high reserve price (which price is never indicated in the ad). The $1 is just click bait, really. But could you challenge that in the courts as misleading or false advertising? Could you insist the asking price really is $1 and hold them to it?

If so, bring it on! There's a six-bedroom house on acreage in Caledon that's got my kids' names on it.

 

Haiku at Christmas

 

Haiku at Christmas

 

Sharp realization,

sudden punch to the stomach

takes me unprepared.

 

Knocked breathless by this –

Last year I had two daughters.

This year I have none.

 

Beyond my control,

my life now has unforeseen

holes the shape of them.

Revelation 3:11

I'm rereading the Book of Revelation right now, because, well, you know, look at the times we live in, and I came across a phrase in chapter 3 verse 11 that jumped out at me: "let no man take thy crown." 

Instantly I thought of all kinds of instances where the world tries to "take your crown," reduce you, negate you, deprive you, deceive you, tell you you're not important or "enough." Society tries to make you lose your focus and distract you from your vision with less important matters, mundane stuff. People try to make you forget you are worthy, valued, and destined for greater things. They try to rob you of your self worth. Sometimes it's done in subtle ways and sometimes blatantly. Sometimes it's done maliciously and sometimes it happens simply because those people have also lost their vision.

If there's one wish I have for my grandkids, it's that they keep in mind all their lives that God loves and cherishes them individually and has offered them a path to peace and fulfillment. That they let that knowledge guide them, so that they keep ahold of their crowns despite anything the world and its evils may throw at them. 

President Nelson once said to hold onto your hats, because it's going to be a bumpy ride. 

Remember your hat is a crown.

The Futility of Gathering Nuts

The city comes around twice in the fall with vacuum trucks to pick up autumn leaves. You can save yourself the cost of yard bags by raking all your leaves onto the boulevard for the city to collect. This results in large mounds of leaves left on the curb for a few weeks at a time.

The other day, my husband watched an industrious squirrel busily collecting peanuts from the neighbour's feeder...and burying them in the leaf pile on her curb. It was heartbreaking, thinking of how gleeful he must be -- all these nuts, a bumper crop to store for the winter, the perfect hiding place that didn't require hard digging, couldn't believe his luck. There was no way to warn him what was about to happen. No way to tell him this wasn't a good place to store his winter preps.

Of course, the truck came by and sucked up the pile along with all his peanuts. I flinch as I envision him coming to the curb and finding it all gone, all his hard work for nothing. 

And I wonder how often I've done the same thing, putting my faith in the wrong thing, the fleeting and impermanent thing, the illusion of security, simply because I didn't understand the greater picture.

In which Kristen goes down the rabbit hole

I just watched Survival Lilly's Youtube video about the European Union's moving to a digital ID and wallet for everyone. She makes some good points about how unnecessary it is, and showed how it works in China currently. I admit I found it chilling. I don't even own a cell phone. I and a lot of other segments of the population will be essentially eliminated.

It got me to thinking -- all of this will only work if we go along with it. The Grand Reset can only be defeated by a Grand Refusal. If we all boycotted it, they'd have to listen. If they won't pay us if we don't have a digital wallet, then I guess we don't go to work. If we can't get into grocery stores without a digital ID, then I guess we don't shop. How long would it take before everything ground to a halt? You see, the government needs us to be good little workers and consumers. And even government officials have to eat, and they rely on the same supply chain we do. If farmers stopped selling to conglomerates, if truckers stopped shipping, if packagers stopped packaging, if water treatment plants closed down, and if the media stopped pasting officials' faces across the globe...how long before the government started listening to the people? I bet it wouldn't take long at all. But you can't protest against a system you rely on. We have to get people to prepare and have at least a short-term supply so we're not shooting ourselves in the foot.

Some people say "If I don't go to work, they'll replace me with a robot." Maybe true, but first they'd have to scale up the production and programming and installation of robots, and that requires miners, engineers, electricians, truckers, and lots of other humans. If the workers don't produce the robots, the robots don't replace the workers. Besides, robots don't make good consumers. They need us humans for that role.

We have more power than we realize, but we have to be united in our refusal to participate. They've spent a lot of energy over the past few years getting us to splinter into polarized groups, to sow discord among populations, to make us see our fellow humans as competitors. We no longer say "We disagree," but we say "If you disagree with me, I hate you." It's interesting that they've destroyed unity just before they bring forth a system that can only be resisted if we're united.

Another dream...

Last night it was about replacing a leaky window. I think the renovations are starting to get to me. 

Dreams

I don't know. I thought nightly dreams were supposed to be mini escapes from reality, or ways of working out problems subconsciously, or bursts of creative formation of ideas. I've heard people tell of marvelous and thrilling dreams in full technicolour. Shouldn't dreams be about flying over the ocean like a bird, or discovering treasure, or dancing in starlight, or solving mysteries?

Maybe so. Maybe for other people. Not me. Last night I dreamt about dehydrating potatoes.

Remembrance Day Observation

It is November 11th, the day we pause to acknowledge the veterans and those affected by war, past and present. The busiest day of the year for us bagpipers. My husband played for the local Army-Navy Club here in Mississauga, which kindly gave the band a sum of money for participating. And the band is going to gift the money back, because the sad reality is that the Club is without heat because they're unable to afford the $70,000 it will take to fix their aging building's system. A Canadian winter approaching, and our veterans don't have heat.

This is shameful, and I want to do something about it. Why is there no government funding to support and update our local Legions? Legions and places like the Army-Navy Club play important roles as community hubs. In some small towns, they are the only social venue operating other than, perhaps, churches. They are probably the main reason bagpiping has stayed alive and vibrant in Canada, too. 

So this is a call-out for awareness, for compassion, for action. I'll find out what the best way is to go about fund-raising (a GoFundMe campaign, perhaps? I'm not tech-y and will have to do some research). Let's do something to give back to this organization that has done so much for Mississauga, and the veterans who have done so much for Canada. 

Garden still going in November!

My garden has been really weird this year. Peas finally coming up in late summer, green peppers still going in late October, and right now, in mid November, I have tomatoes blossoming and I can still go out and pick green onions, bok choy, lettuce, and kale for my morning omelette. The plants don't know if it's summer or winter. One day we get a hard frost, and the next day I'm out in my t-shirt, raking the few leaves that have started to fall. But lots of leaves still on the trees. Ah well, roll with it. This is our new unpredictable reality.

Picture below of about two thirds of my carrot harvest this year. I've frozen some, pressure canned some, and dehydrated some. All bases covered!

Apples and Visits

My good friend whom I've known for 51 years came to visit last week, and we had fun just hanging out, doing puzzles, walking by the lake, watching movies, gathering hickory nuts, and yacking. She's the lovely type of low-maintenance guest who is always up for an adventure but content to sit around reading too. Whenever she comes to visit we do a project, anything from hauling rocks to weeding the yard, and she's an incredibly good sport about the construction sites I plop her into. This time the project was washing windows and polishing windowsills. She went home on Friday, and now...reality hits. I have one and a half bushels of apples to process, three buckets of hickory nuts to crack, carrots and onions to harvest and preserve from the garden, tools to clean and put away... and then the blessed calm of winter.

God's Parenting Mistake

The world is on fire, and everyone seems to be fighting over what part of this burning planet others are allowed to stand on. Nevermind that our hair is in flames, just stay on your side of the wall. I was horrified by Ukraine, by Armenia, by so many other conflicts. This week I'm flabbergasted by the conflict in Israel/Palestine. Each side is firm in their belief that God gave them a certain portion, and they take that to mean "No one else is allowed." Nowhere did he say "Use it to indulge your sense of superiority and oppress others." What if God gave them that land with the expectation that they would use it to shelter and feed others on it? To take stewardship and care of it and ALL its inhabitants? And if we truly believed God gave us this land, this earth, wouldn't you have thought we'd have taken better care of such a gift? 

Perhaps He gave certain inheritances to our ancestors, but that doesn't mean WE still deserve it. I suspect we don't. I suspect we've forfeited any right to this entire planet through our own cruelty, mindlessness, and self-centeredness. This tiny, burning earth deserves better. Right now, I wouldn't mind if God took us all out. Blew the whistle. Right! Everyone, out of the pool! If you can't share nicely, no one gets it!

I suppose, if we wanted to, we could blame God for starting all this conflict in the first place. After all, He made the fundamental parenting mistake of playing favourites (He's done that a lot throughout human history -- Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph to name a few), and anyone can tell you that only leads to sibling rivalry. Maybe instead of asserting our rights and summarily dispatching others from off our planet, we should address that fundamental problem, and get rid of the concept of favourites.

I know it isn't as simple as territorialism. There are a lot of other factors at play, and I have no idea how this will be sorted out. Meanwhile, I'm personally on the side of the children and animals and plants. I'm not too impressed with adult humans right now.

Mulchmaker, Mulchmaker, make me a mulch!

I am singing and dancing, because I got a new, cheap leaf shredder from Princess Auto, and it has revolutionized my gardening. The two catalpa trees at the end of my driveway usually take up bags and bags just for the leaves (I pollard them each fall). This year they were tidily turned into one bag of leaf litter in about fifteen minutes. Cool! I used it for mulch this time, but I also intend to chop up leaves to add to my compost. No more unsightly black garbage bags of rotting leaves needed! 

I have sadly neglected my garden soil for a long time, but I mean to change all that. And my new toy will be the key, I think. 

Couldn't help laughing. Did someone really think this was a good brand name?

I guess we got our Thanksgiving turkey from Florida this year...

A poem for Truth and Reconciliation Day

I have thought a lot lately about how western civilization has nothing civil about it, and how societies rise and inevitably fall. The industrial complex, capitalism, colonization -- it's not sustainable, much less deserving of being sustained. Then this morning I was intrigued by a sentence from Gary Snyder in the book The Practice of the Wild, and it prompted a poem.

The tide comes in,

runs heedless across the sand,

sweeping away our footprints, 

bringing sea wrack to trip us,

poisoning earth with salt.

Wait and watch, child --

it will devour itself, recede.

By nature, waves must collapse on themselves,

slip away, die off,

leaving us alone to return

our footprints to the sand.

It has always been thus, the world over.

Be patient, child --

The settled people can wait it out.

Saving Seeds

This is the time of year when the dehydrator gets a good workout. My dining table is covered with little bowls of various seeds being hulled/dried/packaged. Beans, flowers, herbs, tomatoes, pumpkins, squash, melons, kale, radishes, cucumbers, onions, leeks, carrots...It saves me money later, it guarantees a steady supply so I don't have to entirely rely on commercial seeds, and it gives me a deep satisfaction, knowing I'm providing for my family. Every year I do buy some seeds to try new things (this year it's sorghum), but for the most part, I can produce my own.

I also often leave things to self-sow. I don't have to worry about planting green onions, for example, because every year I get volunteers coming up all over the place. So long as you aren't picky about where things appear, it's a handy way to plant your garden. I always get a lot of volunteer tomatoes, too, which can be transplanted into neater plots.

I keep all my seeds in tidy drawers in an apothecary box. I have way more of some seeds than I need, so I might try selling them next spring. I could plant an acre of kale...

This year I tasted a Champagne Bubble (i.e. White Currant) cherry tomato for the first time (sweet, non-acidic), and I'm determined to get a cutting from the plant and over-winter it hydroponically. Then I can take more cuttings from it in the spring and plant them out in the garden. Looking forward to their delicious fruit next year!

A circular theme...

Just finished crocheting a basket to hold...the leftovers from making the basket.

Crabapple Jelly Season!

Today I took some trugs and a stool and went out to collect crabapples from the boulevard trees around my neighbourhood. I guess my neighbours don't know this fruit is edible, because they just let it fall to the sidewalk every year, making a mess and wasting a vitamin-rich food. Picked 14 litres, which all fit into my steam juicer at once, which was handy. I had it all done and cleaned away by noon---it's really not an onerous task---and I have enough jelly to grace my toast and pancakes for the next year. Yum! Granted, it's not healthy in that there's more sugar than juice, but I'll struggle through somehow...

I don't know why you can't get crabapple jelly commercially made. It's my absolute favourite, and so easy to make.

What do you know! It works!

I often hear or read about various herbal cures and wonder if they are valid. Well, I've tested plantain (the weed) three times now, and I'm pleased to report success each time. It's an astringent and helps with the healing of wounds and bug bites.

My grand-daughter had an itch on her hand she couldn't stop scratching. I chewed up a plantain leaf and put it on the spot, and she reported it stopped itching. Then my neighbour got stung by a hornet on the back of her knee. I crushed up some plantain leaves to put on it, and it stopped hurting quickly, to the point where she walked off and forgot the leaves and let them fall off. Then yesterday, I was stung by a small black wasp while I was in the garden. Once again, I chewed up a plantain leaf and slapped it on the spot. It stopped stinging instantly and you can hardly see the welt at all.

I'm sold. I'm going to stop pulling plantain out of the garden. I found a recipe for using dehydrated plantain in an olive-oil and beeswax salve, too, which I may try.

An interesting observation

I was walking the dog today, and some kids were playing with a tennis ball that got away from them and bounced right up to Brio. Now, you have to understand that Brio is extremely fond of balls and will play fetch for hours. If you go to the park without a ball, he will bring you twigs and leaves and old water bottles, placing them before you on the ground and then waiting tensely, eyes on the object, waiting for you to throw it for him. He'll hold that pose for minutes on end, hardly breathing, waiting to explode into action. So when the tennis ball rolled up to us today, I loosened the leash and figured he'd go fetch it.

Only he didn't. He didn't bat an eye, just walked past it as if it wasn't there.

It made me wonder if dogs have a sense of ownership. This was clearly someone else's ball, not his, so he left it alone. And I recalled that when my grandkids were living with me, Brio wouldn't ever touch their toys left on the floor. He'd only play with his own. No one ever told him to "leave it" or taught him not to touch. He just did it on his own. So...yeah. I think dogs understand the concept of ownership, of mine and not-mine. Interesting! I hadn't pondered that before. 

Harvest Season

It's my favourite time of year again -- curling up to watch a movie with bowls spread around me...No, not snacks. Shelling beans! I have grown about 16 different kinds of dry beans in the past, but my favourite are Beka Browns, and that's the only kind I planted this year. So prolific, and so delicious! I am always amazed at how rewarding dry beans are. Your rate of return is amazing, and they keep for ages. Each little crisp pod is a present, waiting to be opened to reveal its inner treasures.

Of course, there are also tomatoes, zucchini, peppers, cabbage, cucumbers, beet greens, and green beans in the garden right now. The zucchini and cukes look like they're slowing down, though, and while I was away the green beans set a lot of seed, so they are slowing production now too. This is the best bell pepper season I've ever had. There's nothing more satisfying than giving away bags of tomatoes to neighbours, and the crunch of a homegrown cabbage is soul-satisfying. Keeping a garden is the best instant-happiness-inducing therapy I know of.

It's a dangerous time of year for me, though. I start eyeing the real estate ads and fantasizing about acreage, with vast garden plots and a woodlot and a stream and room for chickens and maybe an alpaca or two... Don't worry, I'll come to my senses again once harvest season is over. Meanwhile, it's stir-fried cabbage for supper and maybe a puff-pastry tomato tart for tomorrow's lunch.

Wow! What happens when you turn your back on your garden for a few days...

Went out to get a few greens for my morning omelette. Came back with this. (Well, one bowl of tomatoes and one container of cherry tomatoes were already waiting for me on the counter. Still...)

There are also a bunch of green beans too big to eat, which will remain in the garden to provide next year's seed.

Just a quick note...

Flew in from Utah tonight after two lovely weeks with family. In case you were wondering where I'd disappeared to. Too late tonight to write further!

A Word of Warning to the Un-Wise

There was a Facebook post this morning that made me cringe. A girl found a tall flower growing in the yard of her fairly-new house, happily assumed it was garlic, and decided to eat the bulb. She posted a picture of herself and her dog with her pungent half-consumed garlic. It's giant allium, not garlic. Technically edible but so strong it can cause vomiting, and it's toxic to dogs. What person would willy-nilly decide to eat something she can't identify? And most of the people commenting on her post were just as clueless, cheering her on and congratulating her on her amazing garlic.

If you don't know what you're doing, folks, don't do it. I mean, yes, everything is edible...at least once. But it's better to educate yourself before risking your health/life. I'm all for foraging, but do some research...

It reminds me of a story a friend told me about her grandmother, who thought the sack of daffodil bulbs was a sack of shallots. She cooked them up and put herself and her husband in the hospital.

A Homemade Day

This morning I made myself a quiche with a whole bunch of stuff from the garden: onion, lamb’s quarters, kale, bok choy, sunflower leaves, nasturtium leaves, and basil. The peppers and tomatoes in the garden aren’t ripe yet, so those were store-bought, but theoretically in a few weeks I should be able to make it all from the garden except the mushrooms and, of course, the eggs. If I could just have chickens, I could do the whole thing from scratch, really. I threw in some store-bought cheese too, but if I took the time, that could have been homemade also. I had a slice of homemade bread with the quiche, with homemade grape jelly.

This afternoon I’ll be cleaning the cured garlic, readying it for storage. Last night I cleaned the dried lavender and froze a bag of it, enough for hundreds of cookies to come.

Yogurt is now percolating gently in the slow cooker. There’s the prospect of lettuce/spinach/kale salad with strawberries for lunch. My husband is in the kitchen pre-making dinner with home-bottled tomatoes and zucchini fresh from the yard (the good Italian grey kind, not the dark-green baseball bat kind). And I have a glass to hand of homemade grape juice, bottled last year.

Life doesn’t get better than this.

A crazy week, with more to come

We've been up at the church we're renovating, finishing drywall so that the painters can come back to finish the remaining bits. I've never enjoyed drywalling, but it saves money to do it ourselves. I'm also scared of heights. Airplanes and cliffs, no problem, but chairs and stepladders make me feel woozy. So picture me standing on top on a scaffold, dust mask and protective glasses suffocating and blinding me, while I mud and sand the ceiling overhead. Dust raining down on my head, coating me completely. No air conditioning, of course, and it was about 28 celsius in the room I was working in. Completely mud-soaked by the time I finished. I still have one more sanding to do next week. I turned on the Bee Gees to distract myself, though, and at one point found myself dancing on the scaffold, so it was okay and --maybe-- a little fun.  

Meanwhile my long-suffering husband was downstairs drywalling and framing out bulkheads and doing all kinds of complicated math, and running back to Mississauga for band events before coming back up. Then we took a day to steam-clean the carpet the tradespeople had messed up downstairs, so we don't have to replace it right away. Bodies aching now.

Came home tonight, mowed the lawn and did three batches of laundry. Tomorrow I will visit with my niece, who is in town for a conference, which will be lovely. Then the next day it's back up to the church to finish the drywalling and start moving furniture downstairs to allow the painters to complete the upstairs in August.

I look at people sitting on their porches in the cool of the evening, and I wonder how on earth they find the time to sit down.

Visible progress at last!

A different interpretation of Isaiah 2:4

I have always thought that Isaiah 2:4 was referring to a peaceful time when people will no longer choose to make war on each other because they are subject to God's law. It says:

"And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more."

My husband and I were discussing this verse the other day, though, and he proposed a different interpretation. The reason people will beat their swords into plowshares could be because there is such a bad famine that they must put aside their differences and focus all their attention on growing food just to stay alive. Maybe they have to stop warring with each other and work together to survive.

Looking at the food shortages and predictions about coming famine, he could possibly be right. At some point on the continuum, people fight each other for territory or resources. But when it gets really bad and there are no resources, they turn their attention inward. It becomes the survival of the individual, not the nation. There is no energy for collective warfare.

And on that note, I'm going to go out and see how my garden is doing... 

I miss the card catalogue

These days, we are fed a stream of things on the internet based on our past searches and activity. I look up greenhouse kits once, and blam! I'm inundated with ads for greenhouse kits, and the Youtube videos that come up for me suddenly include things about greenhouse use and care. I bought a Nissan, and suddenly I'm getting ads for Nissans (as if I'm going to buy another when I've just bought one!). I watch one video on Croatian cookery, and I get spam emails for cooking pans and travel companies. Before long, all my internet "feeds" are limited to about four topics. I may think I'm accessing lots of information on the internet, but actually I'm being restricted to those limited "feeds." Sometimes I type in a really wild search, completely off topic, just to refresh my feeds a bit.

Remember the good old days when you walked into the library and were faced with banks of tiny drawers filled with index cards? They pointed you to sources of information on any topic you could imagine. (And they really satisfied my compulsion to organize things into little boxes.) Yes, Google searches can theoretically look up any information on any topic -- but the results that come up are based on popularity. What comes up one day may be different from what comes up tomorrow. On the internet you are restricted to what it wants to show you, and it keeps track of what you search. At a library, you have access to every book, all books, on whatever topic, any genre, on every shelf. It's all there for your perusal. And no one knows what you looked up unless you check the book out.

We need to protect our libraries, support them financially, support hardcopy books, and take a deep look at the idea of book banning. Libraries are the last safe haven of information. And when the EMP goes off and takes out your internet, libraries may be the only source of information.

The perfect friend

I was thinking over some fond memories, and I've come up with the definition of the perfect friend: You haven't seen each other in a year or two, but when you finally get together, you head for the beach with folding chairs and snacks, get yourselves all set up, and then sit side by side for hours...reading.

Sober Thoughts on the Death of a Neighbour

A woman I know died very suddenly and unexpectedly last week. It is the second time I've had a friend die without warning. The last time I saw her, I was out walking the dog and she rode past me on her bicycle and called out a hello. She was always on the go, busy with her children, involved in life. I didn't know her well enough, but everything I did know about her was likeable. She was young and vibrant, and she wasn't finished yet.

The conflicts and worries and stresses of this life really aren't that significant, you know, when you stop to think about it. It can all be gone in a moment, the unfinished projects, the half-read books, the unsaid apologies, the secretly-nursed hurts, the triumphs and acquisitions, the carefully-built bank account, the reputation, the granite countertops. The things we get caught up in -- paint colours, career choices, waist sizes -- don't matter in the end. For all of us, what matters will be who we have become as people, what we have learned, and how we have loved and served others -- those are the only things we take with us.

I watch leaders of the world get caught up in ego and posturing and flexing of muscles, and I just roll my eyes. We are hurtling through space on this teeny tiny speck in the universe. None of us are driving it. None of us can control it. None of us will be here for long. And yet we still argue and shove each other around on this speck and forget we're just plummeting through space for a very limited time. Surely there are better ways to spend what time we have.

Thought

There are days I look up from churning butter or threading my loom and get the weirdest feeling I was born in the wrong century.

Sparrow Saga - or - Bring out the Flame Throwers

Have you ever seen the movie where Rowan Atkinson house-sits for someone and encounters a bee? And goes to great lengths to destroy it, and ends up destroying the house by the end?

We have some sparrows nesting in our eavestrough. We wouldn't mind so much, except they are right outside our bedroom and are very noisy very early in the morning. The obvious solution would be to remove the gutter guard and expose the whole length of the gutter to the elements, but we can't get onto the steep roof, and we can't afford a handyman willing to attempt it. So we've tried other approaches.

We tried blocking the gutter with chicken wire, and they pulled it out and went back to nesting inside. We offered a birdhouse as alternative housing. We tried fake owls and sonic devices. The birds sat on the owl's head and sneered at us. We sprayed the entrance with chili and vinegar. We applied WD-40 to the lip of the roof to make it slippery. We wedged chicken wire into every possible crevice. We sprayed wasp poison into the cracks. We poured bleach into the gutter. Against all conceivable odds, the happy couple got back in. This morning Mr. Sparrow sat on our window sill outside our bedroom with nest-making grasses in his beak and very clearly said, "Looky what I'm doing! Nyaa nyaa nyaa!" before flying back into the eavestrough.

Maybe we tip our hats in acknowledgement of their tenacity and admit defeat. Maybe we bring out the flame throwers. Not sure how it will go yet.

Mother's Day - random memories of Mom, in no particular order

Sewing my school clothes, Easter dresses, dance outfits, swim suits...and teaching me how to sew. Brushing my hair with that wire-haired brush and No More Tangles, despite my whining. Coming home from church to the wonderful smell of Sunday roast. The best blueberry cheesecake ever. Somehow making all the flowers in the garden blossom blue at once for my sister's backyard wedding reception. The amazing homemade bread (we ate an entire loaf before Dad came in from mowing the lawn). Thick paperbacks everywhere in the house, including the bathroom. Stuffed calico birds and delicate crocheted snowflakes on the Christmas tree. Playing hymns on the organ (I was envious that she got to remove her shoes in church). Teaching me to sing alto. Reading stories to us on long drives in the car. Letting me bring a sick rabbit into the house for close care. Making me take the field mouse back when I brought it home in a Dixie cup. Playing ragtime duets with my brother on the piano. Presenting hourly surprises on long trips, too, like paint-with-water books and soy-oatie squares. Making us matching pajamas for Christmas. Making us fantastic cloth Holly Hobbie dolls and Winnie-the-Pooh bears and pig-shaped gingham pillows and---my favourite---corduroy frogs stuffed with wheat (I still have mine). Multiple kinds of homemade jam in the fridge, all open and available at once. Bags of licorice while watching Cary Grant movies. Shuttling all us kids to all of our music and dance lessons and sports events. Teaching us how to dehydrate or bottle food from the garden. Teaching me to knit and crochet. Never forgetting kids' and grandkids' birthdays. Taking care of the home front while Dad worked on his book. Mailing boxes of homemade goodies at Easter and Halloween and Valentine's Day. Putting faces, hats and earrings on the squash. Teaching us service by taking a wonderful chicken dinner to the neighbours and then giving us bread and milk for supper. Studying German and Hungarian. The magical closet full of games and puzzles. Caring for an ill neighbour's children. Painting beautiful landscapes and Victorian decorations. Rolling up her pant legs and wading in the gutter with us kids after a heavy rain. Dropping everything to go help a sick family member. Cheering when a grandkid did something notable. Cheering when a grandkid didn't do anything notable.

All this and so much more. Love you, Mom.

Handles! Who knew?

Today there was a steady rain, but I had a cubic yard of garden soil scheduled to be delivered, and the weather waits for no one. The truck dumped the dirt on a tarp on the boulevard, and it was up to me to move it into the raised beds in the back garden. My hubby is recovering from a recent hernia surgery, and my son, who has been sick in bed with bronchitis all week, had to drag himself to work. So...me.

We have a wheelbarrow, but it's unwieldy trying to get it through the gate, around the corner, over the step, down the path, and between the raised beds, and then you have to shovel it out, essentially having to handle the dirt twice. The raised beds are too tall to let you simply tip the wheelbarrow to empty it. My preferred method is to use a bucket instead, which lets you easily dump it precisely where you want it, and you only have to shovel each shovelful once. 

Except all my buckets somehow ended up at the old church we're renovating. 

I had a big black flower pot that I sometimes use as a catch-all when I'm weeding, so I decided to use that. Since it had no handles, I used the hug-and-lug method, which would have been fine, but with the rain, it was a muddy mess, and as the soil got wetter, of course, it got heavier. Carrying a big pot of dirt means having to arch your back and makes seeing your feet difficult. Add to that a leaky boot, dripping hair in my eyes, and loose gravel under foot, and it was a bit hazardous.

After a while, my husband went to Canadian Tire and got me a big metal bucket with a handle, and it made a world of difference. Suddenly I could balance and walk without having to sway my back, which helped enormously. Bless whoever invented handles! I am convinced more and more that it pays to have the right tool for the job. Three hours later, I was completely soaked and muddy, but the dirt was all in place, the shovel, bucket, and tarp were hosed off, I was showered, and every bit of fabric was in the washing machine.

I will no doubt feel wrecked tomorrow, but I finally feel like spring has really arrived. The annual ritual of moving (heaven and) earth is complete. Now if it would just warm up enough to plant things!

A Seat at the Table

It's 3 a.m. and I just woke up from an awful dream. I was attending some sort of fancy function to honour a poet I'd never heard of. We all sat in a large auditorium and listened to a nice program. I was sitting next to a nice older gentleman in an amber-coloured coat, and we hit it off, chatting like old friends. After the speeches, we were all to go downstairs to the hotel restaurant for dinner. The gentleman I'd been sitting by went and joined a table of his friends, and I -- the shy introvert -- didn't feel I could presume to join their table. I didn't really know the man, after all, and had never met his friends. But there didn't appear to be places at any of the other tables. A handful of us lingered in a huddle near the door, unable to find a chair. 

Dinner was rolled out, an army of servers brought beautiful, Michelin-star type of food to everyone else, but we at the edges could only watch them eat. We weren't even given chairs or a glass of water. We tried flagging down waiters to let them know we hadn't been served, and they all said they would be right back, but they never did return. A few of the unseated wandered off and left. Dinner was cleared away and dessert brought out. Then that was cleared away, everyone left the room, and two of us were left, another woman and I, who had been ignored the entire time. 

Finally, feeling stupid and forgotten, I left. In the lobby, I met the gentleman again whom I'd been sitting by at the function. He asked how I'd enjoyed the evening, and I told him my experience. How, for an introvert like me, it had not been a happy experience. He felt terrible that I hadn't been served and offered to take me to dinner. But I wasn't going to sit and eat while he, who had just been fed, watched, so I declined. He offered to walk me to my car. I told him I'd come on the bus. I told him he shouldn't feel responsible for me since we'd only just met, and it wasn't his fault I got shoddy service at a restaurant. I mean, in the grand scheme of things, I wasn't scarred for life. (Though I might not come to a function like this again.) So he went away, and I went and found a food court, had a fast-food burrito and a bottle of water, and then bussed home.

So...At first I lay there in the dark wondering what the dream meant. Was I feeling forgotten or lonely somehow? I'm staying up at the old church we use as a cottage, alone, for several weeks. But no...the dream had shaken me, nearly to tears, and I felt it deserved a deeper interpretation than that. 

Those of us who are privileged, who have a chair, who are represented, need to look around the room and see who is missing. To seek them out and invite them to have a seat at the table.

Not making the writing goals... A Bible verse for the occasion

 

“Oh that my words were now written! oh that they were printed in a book!” Job 19:23

Haiku for the season

Rain beats the windows

in 2/4 time. The wind sings

off-key just like me.

Long-Distance Gardening

It's that time of year when I need to get my garden starts going, but I also need to be up at the church renovating. I've left Son #3 in charge of watering the seedlings and manning the fort in my absence, and Son #2 and his partner have agreed to mind the garden while I am travelling this summer. I've told them if they'll keep an eye on things, they can have whatever ripens in the garden while I'm gone. Cooperatively, we might be able to pull this off. The garden feels more important than ever right now, with food costs and shortages being what they are.

Meanwhile, a neighbour has offered to show me where to find wild ramps, so we'll go out foraging sometime this spring. What treasure!

It has to be said...

I usually try not to get into political discussions on this blog. But I'm watching the news, and my jaw is hitting the floor. The nukes are lining up in Eastern Europe, climate change is now climate chaos, bird flu is wiping out the poultry industry, banks are collapsing, people can't afford groceries, trains are derailing, North Korea and China are flexing muscles, Israel is in turmoil, Paris is erupting, thousands of jobs are being lost, famine is looming, children are being shot up in their school rooms, thousands of migrants and refugees are on the move, and politicians in the U.S. are ... passing laws about what third-person pronouns we're allowed to use. Really? So much to choose from, and this is what they focus on?

I feel like I'm stuck in some absurdist theatre.

Revving up for the season

We're getting buds, and I expect they'll flower in the next couple of weeks. I'm so eager to get out into the garden! I admit it, I've pre-ordered my garden soil about 7 weeks in advance. I'll be topping up one older bed to plant some new asparagus crowns. I've direct-sown some lettuce, kale, onions, beets, spinach, carrots, and rapini. I have to go out of town for a couple of weeks, so I'll be getting a late start with the seedlings, but I have everything ready to go when I get back. I've raked up pine needles to add to the potato bed, and I've taken the mulch off of some of the other beds. I think for a couple of the beds, maybe for the squash and tomatoes, I'll keep the leaf mulch on and plant through it, and see how the "no till" method works.

Thinking about putting in some grapes up at the church we use as a cottage. Might plant haskap berries up there too. They can manage on their own, since I'm not there very much, and can be establishing themselves so they're ready when we move up there full time. I'm also toying with the idea of borrowing some of the neighbour's space to grow pie pumpkins, which won't fit in my own garden.

I've been watching Homestead Rescue. I've been reading Caleb Warnock's book on self-sufficiency. I've been pondering the seed catalogues and combing through my old gardening notes. I've updated my garden log. I've sorted through my seeds and categorized them by when to plant. I've bought a new pitchfork. Now if it would just warm up!

Signs of spring, and getting the garden ready

The daffodils and hyacinth are starting to nose out of the ground. The onions I didn't harvest last year are about four inches tall already. There's still snow in shady patches, but the temperatures are rising. Birdsong has returned to the early morning, and I think the song of robins is the happiest sound of spring.

I think I've been watching too many Youtube videos on gardening, because this year I seem to have this weird fear that I don't know what I'm doing. I've been growing vegetables for 35 years or more, and I've always done pretty well. My harvest varies from year to year, but there's always plenty. So why am I suddenly second-guessing and over-thinking? Is it because, with rising food prices and coming shortages, I am putting too much importance on the results and forgetting to enjoy the process? 

Maybe. All I know is I'm plagued by doubts and questions. Is it too early to remove the mulch from the garlic? Am I amending the soil properly? Do I start the seedlings now and trust that the last frost date will be the same this year? Lately it has been unpredictable. One year I can plant in the third week of May, and the next year it's too cold until June. And at the other end of the season, some years we get frosts in September and sometimes not until December or even January. So how can a person possibly predict and plan?

I'm paralyzed by over-information, I think. It's the same feeling I get when I over-plan my writing and spend all my energy outlining and plotting and never get to the actual writing. I've watched the advice of too many experts. I need to turn off Youtube and use common sense and experience and just do stuff, you know?

In the end the seeds can be trusted to know what to do.

The end of the Life is Good challenge

For the past ten days, I've posted on Facebook photos of things that bring me joy. The point of the exercise was to lighten and brighten social media, but it also lightened and brightened my life. I found myself searching for things to be grateful for, which is, all in all, a good way to approach life. It's easy to get caught up in the gloom of geopolitical events and forget that we still have much to be happy about.

So here are a few more happy things:

Writing Notebooks

For years now, I've always carried a small notebook with me, where I jot down plot ideas, phrases and titles I like, good quotes, interesting historical notes, and other things that can inform my writing. I've referred to them frequently for inspiration and information.

Three years ago, when we went into lockdown, I no longer really went anywhere, so I kept the notebook on the side table by the couch rather than my backpack, but I still jotted down things that caught my interest or sparked ideas. However, the contents seem to have changed since the pandemic. Thumbing through it this morning, I realize I've written down a scattered mishmash of things (and I've also realized how much Youtube I must be watching). Here's a sample:

• How to dehydrate and powder squash into flour
• How to build your own radiant heater with carbon fibre, copper pipes, and fire brick
• "Desire impoverishes us."
• A 17th-century recipe for Egg-Pear Pie
• How to use the sump pump to supply self-watering raised vegetable beds
• Small Town Businesses that Won't Fail
• How to buy land anonymously
• Balcony railings have to be 42" high if over 5'11" from the ground
• Haskap berry bushes don't have thorns
• Loons are solitary and mate for life, and they live in pairs in the same general area, but they are rarely seen together.
• Hope Haven Therapeutic Riding Centre in Markdale is expanding.
• Things to eat to reverse insulin resistance
• Which herbaceous plants are nitrogen-fixers
• Olive oil can apparently boost immunity, fight viruses and bacteria, and reduce respiratory infections
• Nomad Microhomes have a DIY flatpack house
• A recipe for Crockpot Butter Chicken
• A Barbara Kingsolver quote about how attending to tasks can make them "part of a good day, rather than just a rock in the road to someplace else."
• How to sew dog poop bag holders
• Clever ways to store Christmas tree ornaments
• How to deter locusts

How I'm supposed to get writing inspiration from that, I'm not entirely sure... But it tells you how varied and crazy my brain space has become!

The Life is Good Challenge

A friend told me about the Life is Good Challenge, where you post a photo a day for ten days of things that bring you joy. The idea is to bring a little light and love to social media, but it's also brought a little more light and love into my daily life. Why? Because a) now I'm looking for things that bring me joy instead of focusing on the gloom and doom, and b) because I have taken the time to see how truly blessed I am and what a great life I have had. I'm combing through photos of family, friends, pets, great food, my garden, books, lovely views of nature...and it is difficult to narrow the selection down to ten. Which is a wonderful problem to have!

Today's pick:

Being realistic about my hobbies

Some time ago, I downsized from three weaving looms to one. Then I gave away two spinning wheels. Finally, after some debate, I've recently sold my wool carders and drop spindle. It's not that these things aren't enjoyable. It's just that I could see I was on the slippery slope to raising alpaca, and I needed to draw the line somewhere.

I have a lot of interests, from doing stained glass to gardening to writing to crocheting to needlepoint to baking to... well. I've been trying lately to decide how I can most beneficially spend my time. And I've tried to determine whether I really enjoy everything I do or if I'm hanging onto it "just in case." Like, as in "What if the Apocalypse happens and we can't get yarn? Should I hold onto my equipment in case I need to spin my dog's hair and knit myself socks with it?" 

There is something to be said for preparing for the future, but it's also possible to live so much in anticipation of the future that you miss the present. Then again, looking at the spinning wheels and drop spindles...maybe I'm really living in the past!

My brilliant dog Brio

I was cutting up vegetables on a cutting board on the counter, with Brio sitting by my feet. At one point I mis-cut something and murmured, "Oops!" 

Brio immediately looked at the floor, expecting me to have dropped something yummy. So apparently he knows what the word "oops" means.

Which tells you how much I must say it. 

My Favourite Winter Sport

It has been snowing for the past two days, and I know somewhere out there, there are people happily skiing, skating, dogsledding, snowshoeing, tobogganing, and playing hockey. All of those are thrilling, but my personal favourite winter sport is the forward-flip-full-body-tuck-and-roll-when-your-snowshovel-hits-a-crack-in-the-sidewalk event. If they would make it an Olympic sport, I could easily win the gold for my country.

Planning the garden

Last fall, I sat down and wrote out what I was going to plant and where, keeping in mind crop rotation and companion planting and practicality and all of that. I inventoried what my family easts the most and what staples will help curb the grocery bill. And then the seed catalogues started coming in, and my plans have been tossed out the window.

I want to try Amsterdam celery, a type of leaf celery, in my hydroponics system. I want to plant Konika parsley even though it takes two seasons to mature. I want swathes of chia and sweetgrass and sorghum. There are about five types of cabbage I want to experiment with. There are clever herb ladders I want to build from old pallets. Melons bred to mature in northern climes. Tomatoes every colour under the sun. All of this while the little voice niggling in my head says, "You are going to be away a lot of this summer. How can you possibly do this?"

We have a couple of 2-week trips to take this summer. We have a church to renovate and its yard to maintain, 2 1/2 hours from our house. There's a stack of stained glass windows I need to restore. I will likely have grandchildren to care for. Somewhere in there, I have to squeeze in writing the novel that is way overdue. Oh, and oh yeah, I work full time.

How to tame the gardening impulse and balance out everything else I am supposed to be doing? Why have I arranged my life in such a way that I have to spend time doing all these other things, when what I really want to be doing is fitting cut-off pool noodles around the stems of my sunflowers and snapping green beans? What can I cut out so that I can devote more time to my passion of feeding people? Isn't that passion really the most important thing these days, as so many face hunger?

One idea I have is to avoid planting things like green beans and peas this year, because they require daily babysitting, whereas long-maturing things like pumpkins and sweet potatoes don't necessarily need as much attention. I've also considered planting the whole garden at home to something like oats or dry beans that take little care, and then borrowing a piece of land up by the church, so I can garden while I'm staying up there working on the renovations. No running back and forth worrying about the property I'm not at. Or I could find an apartment-dweller who is a frustrated farmer at heart who could use my garden at home in exchange for a share of the produce. I'll have to give it some serious thought when I'm in a better mood. Because if you asked me today, I feel like selling house and church, quitting my job, giving up writing, and disappearing into a remote acreage with a shovel and hoe and a pressure canner.

The new FEDCO seed catalog has arrived, and that's it for the rest of my day

Nothing else is going to be accomplished. The new seed catalog for 2023 arrived in the mail today, I've dropped all plans, and I'm on the couch with a pen and a dream. Stuff I've never heard of. Plants I didn't think would grow in my area but apparently will. Old favourites and fond memories. Interesting stories of the first person to develop and grow a particular variety or strain. Things I can grow to feed foraging chickens or improve my soil. (I may have to get chickens just so I can grow this stuff. It sounds lovely.)

Is anyone else like this with seed catalogs? Are you suddenly tempted to get a hog just so you can grow Jerusalem Artichokes and mangles for it to dig up and eat? Do you find yourself dog-earring EVERY page in the catalog? Do you start planning what crop rotation to use in the garden or consider leaving one raised bed fallow or plant alfalfa in it as if you were running a 100-acre farm instead of a suburban back yard veggie patch? Don't you long to buy seed by the pound instead of the packet? Are you tickled at the thought of planting a miniature tall-grass prairie in a flower bed and having a tiny controlled prairie burn? Doesn't the very idea of maple sugaring equipment make you want to move to a woodlot in Quebec?

It's -48 celsius outside, snow on the ground, spring planting at least 4 months away, and I'm making lists.

My husband says the way I approach seed catalogs highlights the difference between us. He looks at the current existing yard and asks himself what he wants and what the yard needs to be at its best. Then he'll go to the catalog and look up those things. I, on the other hand, look at the catalog cover to cover, reading it like a novel, and I feel the tug to go buy 50 acres so I can plant some of everything in the book. Sorghum! Hulless oats! Chia! Daikon radish! Fat Hen! Timothy! Ground cherries! Chinese cabbage! Callaloo! Upland rice! Turmeric! Stevia! I mean, how can you possibly not grow your own stevia if given the chance?

My husband said I am free to go do just that -- buy fifty acres and grow everything my heart desires -- but I will be doing it as a single woman.

Sigh. So I'll rein myself in and try to be reasonable about what will grow where I am and on the scale I'm constrained by. I'll tuck aside the catalogs and soothe my passion by choosing one new thing to grow every year and try to control expectations and longings.

Maybe this year I'll try sorghum...

It's the little things

We once lived for about four months in a log cabin, and I came away from the experience filled with gratitude for simple things like flat walls to hang artwork on, kitchen cupboards, windows that open, a smooth floor babies can crawl on, and a furnace that works without having to get up and stoke it in the middle of the night.

This week I am staying up at the church we're renovating, and the experience has made me appreciative of all the little comforts I have back at home. Things like a functioning kitchen with a working sink, heat in every room, a front door that opens without a struggle, a fenced yard so I can just let the dog out to run without having to trudge out there with him every time. There's much good to be found here -- quiet, calm, space, light, air -- but much to be desired when it comes to warmth and comfort.

I think it's important once in a while to live uncomfortably, so that we're more fully aware of how good we generally have it every day. We tend to forget the warm world we swim in until we're yanked out into the chilly air.

Spoke too soon!

Woke up this morning to a thin coating of very wet snow. It will all melt off with the dawn, I'm sure, but still nice to look out the window and see the whiteness. Very clean and comforting.

It's amazing how much friendlier I feel toward snow now that I don't have to commute in it.

Still no snow

It is mid January and we still haven't gotten any more than a dusting of snow this winter. I bought new boots and haven't needed them yet. Have the snow shovel poised by the back door and haven't used it yet. Haven't even dug my winter gloves and coat out yet. Just making due with a jacket and some of those dollar-store handwarmers. The lawn is almost green and looks like it could maybe use a mow. The robins haven't left yet. How weird is this? And yet an hour away, Buffalo got hammered with incredible amounts of snow.

I feel like we're in a golden bubble. Or we've won the Climate Change lottery. I just hope my garlic doesn't start growing too early.

Nessun Papa - er - Speaker

I'm glued to the TV, watching the bizarro struggle going on in the U.S. House of Representatives over the last few days. I almost find myself watching for white smoke to come out the window, announcing a consensus has been reached.

When we kids were small, Mom's edict was that if you couldn't share something nicely, nobody got it. I wonder what would happen if someone -- who? -- stood up and said the same thing in the House. If you can't come together and work it out, we're shutting you down. Vote of no confidence. Set in motion a new election for all of you. None of you might get back in here again. Including the twenty entrenched people who are apparently trying to hold the country hostage. Or -- what if they instituted a two-person, bi-partisan leadership? Or brought in an arbitrator like they do with union negotiations?

Is it a matter of McCarthy truly thinking he's the best and only choice for the good of the country? Is it just hubris or does he have a case? If he eventually wins, wouldn't it feel like returning to the office after winning a wrongful dismissal suit? Personally, I wouldn't want to go to work every day knowing that half of my colleagues didn't want me there.

I have no idea how this will end up.