Kindness strikes again!

I'm up at the church for a few weeks with Brio, doing a little work and a lot of reading and writing. I was planning on only staying a week, but it turns out I'll be here the entire month. I keep the place fairly stocked up on canned goods, so I figured I'd survive a longer stay, if I didn't mind a full month without fresh vegetables.

Then Brio woke up with a sore back yesterday, walking all hunched over like a scared cat, his legs stiff as if his joints hurt. He wasn't whining, but I could see he was in distress and couldn't find a comfortable way to lie down. He has hurt his back in the past, due in general to age and over-exertion, but this time it looked pretty bad. I don't have a car when I'm here, but a friend came to the rescue and drove me into town to the vet, and also took me grocery shopping and to the hardware store while we were at it. We're home again, with pain killers and enough food to last us a while, so all will be well. So grateful for the kindness of neighbours!

You know, I've always fantasized about living on a remote homestead in splendid isolation, but the older I get, the more I see the value in community. Certainly needed to rely on it this week.

Thirty-Five Years in Canada

This week marks 35 years that I've been in Canada. I am more in love with the place than ever and don't regret for a moment coming here. I do miss my family and the mountains, but I feel in my bones this is the right place for me.

Since I'm no longer a U.S. citizen, I don't really have the right to an opinion when it comes to U.S. politics. I only want to say, I pray that -- no matter how things go in the elections this week -- people manage to find a way to be calm and civil. Kindness is everything.

I kind of forgot...

Years ago, I set up a print-on-demand storefront on Zazzle, uploaded some products, and promptly forgot all about it. I've updated some things and resurrected it, if anyone is interested in gifts for earth-lovers and handicrafters. (I don't control the pricing.)

Kristen's Zazzle Store

Trading

I grew a lot of sorghum this year, but it was the broomcorn kind that's too difficult to hull for human consumption. It was fun to grow (the tallest got to 11'8"), but likely not something I'll plant often. What to do with it all? I traded 5 litres of it to my new friend Erin for her chickens to eat, in exchange for fresh farm eggs.

I'm reading Jerome M. Segal's book Graceful Simplicity right now, and he talks a bit so far about trading -- time for money, money for stuff. He points out that in our inefficient society, "our very real and legitimate economic needs can be met only with high levels of income." He points out that simple living (a key interest of mine right now) isn't just about living with less. It's about enriching life in nonmaterial ways. But you can't get to that enriching part if you're so caught up in trying to meet your basic needs. 

I see this play out sometimes on those homesteading or Tiny House living shows and Youtube videos. You have to have a fair bit of money at the start to set yourself up for simple living, or at least gracious simple living. This differs from poverty, in that, with simple living, your needs are met (often with expensive solutions like solar panels), and with poverty, needs often aren't met. In the 18th and 19th centuries, only the wealthy or those with access to the patronage of the wealthy could play at being poor hermits. The only reason Thoreau could retreat to Walden Pond is because he was living on borrowed land and other people occasionally fed him, and he wasn't there for long.

I do like what Thoreau writes, though, about -- instead of trying to convince people to buy his baskets -- finding ways to make basket-selling unnecessary. I lost my job a couple of months ago, along with eight others on the same day, due to "restructuring." I'm taking my time thinking about what I want to do next and who I want to be for the last ---let's say third -- of my life. I don't want to jump back into the same desk job, the same hurly-burly and scampering and (it must be said) boredom I underwent for the last 35 years. I want to find a way to consume less, require less, so that I can do lower-paying but more fulfilling work. I do find it interesting that some of the most meaningful and soul-satisfying jobs in society pay the least. We value football players and bank CEOs more than we value those who serve the displaced and homeless or teach our children, if financial compensation is the measuring stick. 

So how do I live in such a way that I don't have to peddle my baskets? I don't know quite yet, but I have an inkling that Segal is onto something. I've written a book about simple living, which is coming out in January 2026, and losing my employment will force me to really put my own words into practice. We'll see how it goes! I don't know which way I'll leap, but it promises to be exciting.

Taking cleaning to a whole new level

I've always known my husband is better at housework than I am. I knew he takes the furniture out onto the lawn sometimes in order to sweep and mop a room. I knew he routinely pulls out the stove from the wall and empties the fridge when cleaning the kitchen. What I didn't know is that he also sometimes pulls off the kickplate board thingies from the bottom of the kitchen cupboards so that he can clean the floor beneath them when he mops. I didn't even know they were removeable!

I've married Superman.

Vegetable Garden Update

The garden may have gotten a little out of hand this year, with all the rain we've had. The sorghum is twice my height and beginning to ripen, though I find it's extremely hard to hull. I may just leave the hulls on and keep it for future chicken feed. I also had the idea of planting a grove of it by our church to provide shade, as it grows like a drought-tolerant bamboo. The canes can be pressed for syrup, but since I don't own a cane press, I'll just use them as poles.

The garden has been overrun with sunflowers, volunteers from seeds the birds scattered last year. Some are small and delicate and I don't recall ever planting them in the past, but here they are, full and healthy. The cherry tomatoes have done well, but the larger tomatoes are still green, and other gardeners I've talked to have found the same thing. The cucumbers were so-so, not as prolific as last year, the green beans didn't do much, and some of them just bloomed and bloomed but didn't produce beans, which is weird, because they don't tend to require pollinators. The cabbages are scrawny, the green onions are massive, the zucchini were a disappointment, the peas never even surfaced (squirrels?), but the dry beans have been prolific. The carrot seeds I planted were from a neighbour, who forgot to tell me they were for multi-coloured carrots, which turned out to be a happy surprise. The raspberries are flourishing this year. It's been a great year for collecting seeds of all types. And best of all, the garlic turned out the size of baseballs, absolutely the best I've grown in my life. So the garden has its compensations!

I was talking to my husband about the not-so-great-over-all yield this year, and I realized that food production is only about 75% of the purpose of my garden. The other 25% is for mental health, just the sheer joy of being outdoors, in nature, watching abundance emerge. 

4th in the World, Grade 3

Guelph Pipe Band just won 4th in the World Championship in their grade. They were in 1st place (out of 30 bands) in the qualifier, and 4th in the finals. Woohoo! So proud of them. They've worked hard for this. Their medley, which they played for the qualifier, is electrifying and gives me goosebumps every time I listen to it. Tyler Bridge's arrangements really intensify the musicality. An outstanding achievement!

Guelph Pipe Band World Pipe Band Championships 2024 Medley Qualifier (youtube.com)

Celebrating

My husband is currently in Scotland. His pipe band just won 2nd place in the European Championships (Grade 3). Saturday they go on to compete in the World Championship. Fingers crossed!

Oops

I was listening to a favourite band on Youtube, and off to the side of the screen, the various band members' pictures were featured, with words printed across them. And for a brief moment I thought the lead singer's name must be Vip Tickets.

Rain rain rain

The past week has been amazing for rain in our area. Torrential downpours, thunder and lightning that feels extremely close, and then mini pauses between storms to give us a chance to recuperate before the next onslaught. They're saying 125 mm have fallen just today. We keep having to drain water from our 20 x 40' pool because it's threatening to overflow. We've dug four long trenches from the house, across the lawn to the street, to channel pooling water away from the foundations. The yard looks like a war zone now, but it beats having the basement flood. We will have to hire someone to come with heavy equipment and grade the yard away from the house. It has sunk over the years around the foundations. Thankful to have Son #1 here to help with the digging!

His friend sent a video yesterday -- he was riding the bus in Oakville, and the water on the road was so deep, it was washing into the bus and across the floor. Another friend said lightning hit his apartment building, and his wife had to go pick up his kid from daycare early because their roof collapsed. Whew!

My garden is also revealing its low spots where water is pooling 8 inches deep. The raspberries are looking moldy. But nothing seems to be flattened or drowned. I really think we're going to reach a point where all vegetable growing has to be done under cover, in climate-controlled structures that can catch the water and distribute it at a reasonable pace. The weather is too unpredictable, and nothing can handle such a deluge on a regular basis. And I'm pretty sure this is just the first of many storms.

Funny dog

Brio is almost twelve now, still acting like a puppy other than a little hesitancy when it comes to jumping on the couch or going down stairs. He is my constant companion, not liking to let me out of his sight for a moment, so it wasn't unusual, as I was cooking today, that he was with me in the kitchen. He's always under foot, so I've learned to sort of ignore him.

I was grating cheese when I became aware that Brio was sitting at my feet staring up at me very pointedly. He has been taught to sit when asking for a treat, not jumping up or trying to climb my leg, and cheese is his favourite thing on the planet, so I knew what he was asking. I continued to work, so he scootched a couple of inches closer and sat again, quite emphatically. Thump. Just in case I missed the point the first time. So of course I had to reward him for asking so politely. 

He has a new habit now, too. I let him sleep on the foot of the bed at night, and usually he wakes me by tiptoeing up and staring at me, silently, laser-like, an inch from my face until I wake up from sheer telepathy. But lately he has been creeping up and pressing himself against my back, stretched out like a hot water bottle, and then every couple of minutes he'll bump me with his hip, like he's a hockey player checking an opponent into the wall. If I don't respond, he'll bump me again. He does this every few minutes until I give up and get out of bed. At which point he leaps from the bed, shaking to rattle the tags on his collar like a tambourine. She's up! Let's go!

Who says animals can't talk?

Breaking Together by Jem Bendell and lessons to take away

I have been reading Jem Bendell's book Breaking Together, and -- without going into it too deeply -- it's about the collapse going on of society and life as we know it. This is due to a few factors, including our consumer and progress-driven mentality and climate change. We're feeling the effects of panicking elites who don't want any challenge to their power or way of life. We've been pushed into polarization and competition, and it has caused us -- ever expanding, ever grasping -- to destroy our earth and much of the life on it, including human life.

As you can imagine, there are some difficult truths pointed out in the book. I took 3 1/2 pages (in tiny writing) of notes, because he gives suggestions too, not just scary facts. These aren't solutions or answers, they're just ways we can respond. We may not be able to change things, but we can change how we show up, how we treat others, how we reclaim our own power. One thing that stood out to me is how my desire for a farm (and a bunker. And food storage. But yeah, mostly the farm) is an ego-centric response. What I need to do is be more open-hearted and community-minded, seeking small, local ways to replace the crumbling systems we currently depend on.

Anyway, there is a lot in the book about people's emotional response to all of the stuff that's happening, and in particular how today's youth are feeling. As I was reading the final paragraph of the book, two of my sons came home from a jaunt together, and they came into the room where I was sitting, plopped down, and chatted for a bit. I told them a little bit about what I was reading and some of the lessons I was absorbing from it. And I told them what Bendell had said about today's youth and the emotional struggle all of this is causing them. I told my sons that I was here if they ever needed to talk to me about any of this, and to let me know if they experienced any depression... and they both burst out laughing and said they'd been depressed for years, all their generation is. What could I do about it? As one son said, "I'm depressed! Fist bump. Good talk!" So I said I meant acutely depressed, which he hammed up, being cutely depressed. We ended up having a great laugh about it, actually, which is, in fact, a healthy thing, and really the only possible response. As they say, sometimes you have to laugh in order not to cry. Then they went downstairs to paint Warhammer, and I can still hear them down there laughing and talking animatedly. And I'm left sitting here with my notes and a whole lot in my head...

They're right. I can't solve anything. We can't guarantee any outcomes, or even hope for certain things in the future. I can't give them solutions, or even comfort, really. The earth is in a tough predicament, and it's going to get tougher. All we can do is acknowledge reality and then do our best to do the right thing, not because it will fix things but because it's right. We need to live open-heartedly and try to be creative and compassionate, no matter what happens next.

Meanwhile, upstairs...

This is going on above me. Floor being sanded three times and sealed three times to bring it back to its original natural colour. Will look amazing!

Writing Madly

I got word that my next manuscript has been accepted and is coming out in January 2026. This one is a non-fiction about making your life reflect your values. I've got some re-organizing and rewriting to do, so I've come up to the church we're renovating (we call it the cottage, which brings to mind a charming lakeside retreat with a woodstove, but don't let the term fool you. It's a full-on construction zone with boxelder bugs hatching out) to focus for a couple of weeks. Days spent at work, evenings spent musing and writing and muttering to myself and pacing and anxiety-eating and going for walks to visit the goats up the street and watching Hallmark movies and baking and more writing. It's my process.

You know you didn't get enough sleep when...

 You know you didn't get enough sleep when you turn on the dishwasher before going to bed, and the dishes are still hot when you go to have breakfast the next morning. Lukewarm Raisin Bran. Yum.

The Garden is In...and Drowning

This week I finished planting the last of the seeds and seedlings. I've taken a new approach, using dry cooking beans (plants) as a sort of mulch. I'm leaving some of the lesser weeds to cover bare spots of soil. I've diversified, planting several different varieties of things, and I've interspersed them instead of "mono-cropping" each raised bed. I've also added a lot more flowers than I usually do. We'll see what happens, and I'll add photos as the season advances.

Yesterday we got torrential rain, and I was worried everything would be flattened. It's still drizzling this morning, but I'll tiptoe out when the sun is up and survey the damage. Hopefully everything survived. Won't have to water for a while, at any rate!

An Observation on the Renaming of Holidays

All week prior to May 20, I kept getting greetings and wishes from people to "have a happy long weekend." Not one person said "Happy Victoria Day." Even online, all I found was references to the long weekend, not to the purpose of the occasion. And come to think of it, the same thing happens in August, when people tell me to have a great long weekend instead of saying "Happy Simcoe Day." Even the printed calendar says "Civic Holiday" instead of "Simcoe Day."

Is this a new trend? Like when my workplace wishes us a "great winter break" instead of acknowledging they are closing for a week for Christmas? I understand that not all staff at work celebrate Christmas, so that makes a bit of sense, trying to be sensitive, but still it can't be denied that the week we're all getting to stay home coincides with Christmas. I'd be equally as happy to get a week off work for Chanukkah. I'd also be happy to get time off work for National Bee Day, National Solitaire Day (there is such a thing. It was yesterday) or the garlic harvest. Just sayin'.

Now in the instance of Simcoe Day or Victoria Day, there could be an argument for not referring to the names because of shades of colonialism, and I get that. But it does seem a bit disingenuous to say we refuse to recognize the occasion but we still want the time off work. Don't talk to us about Queen Victoria, but give us her birthday off. It seems to me either you have to scrap the holiday all together, or you need to acknowledge what it is. Does anyone else have any particularly strong feelings about it?

Incidentally, it is said that one must not plant the garden until Victoria Day, and it's also a rule that one shouldn't plant until the peonies bloom. I am pleased to report that the peonies bloomed exactly on Victoria Day. A happy coinciding of events.

An Expensive Lesson Learned

Apparently my son has been ordering UberEats so often that the local wildlife has come to anticipate it. Last night a skunk lay in wait, and as soon as the delivery guy set the bag on the step and moved away, the skunk snagged it. He'd eaten part of my son's chicken sandwich before he even got the door open. My son flashed the car lights and honked the horn (remotely, using the key fob) to scare it away (thus waking me up so I got to witness some of this), but it was too late to rescue the sandwich. An expensive lesson learned. We might install one of those old-fashioned boxes like the milkman used to leave deliveries in, to keep animals out of future meals. 

I am somehow tickled that the skunk apparently has a taste for piri-piri.

Hilarious spam email -- or was it?

I just got an email from Air Canada that said "Ending soon! Save on destinations worldwide before it's too late!"

Why, is the world ending that soon?!

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.