Too Tired to Even Eat

"I would like to be an owl," says Betty.
Lincoln wanted to be a golden eagle.

When I came to the house I was so tired I didn’t even want to eat supper. I took a warm shower, walked by the food again, and plated up some chicken and a big salad, some jasmine rice, and I sat outside on the porch. I felt like a million dollars again.

In the middle of supper, Alice turned to the child at her left and said, “What was the best part of your day?” The children all began to tell each other what happened. Then we began to ask each other what animal we would like to be. Then the topic turned to what kind of bird we would like to be.

I was glad I sat at the table with the children.

The Last Day of June

Richard, Bonnie and I are all stretched out on the ground at the bottom of the grass where the creek runs under the road beside my house.  We are laying on the ground, looking up at the branches of the Douglas Fir as they circle up the bole of the tree.

Richard has just arrived at the lake bringing a BBQ, the children's bikes and whatever else couldn't fit in the first load of summer equipment that came with Miranda and the children last week.

He took this selfie, put down the phone and was snoring within one minute.

It is 6 pm.  I have been outside weeding since 6:30 am.  I only have enough energy to look at the Fitbit and see how many steps I have taken in the day. Yes, I can stop for now.

Bonnie has helped me cut out the Russian Thistle, the burdock and many iterations of a small bush that carries a fungus that is deathly to the trees around it.  Michael ran by and told Bonnie that he had one other plant for her to cut out that was scratching him.  When he went to show her where it was, the Russian thistle was gone, which only goes to show how thorough she and I had been.

We made our way up to the house and ate supper with SJ, Lincoln, Shylow, and Eden Moore beside the rest of our family.  Mitch was sick in bed. Twelve for supper.  Six of the people 7 and under.

They were the big eaters.  They had run along the stream, played at the beach and been on their bikes all day.

Life as it should be.  Lived to the full by all.

Arta

My Kids Next Door

... Alice contemplating a crossing on the rocks ...

Michael could hardly contain his excitement. They were having their first guests next door. Now how good can that be. Pretty darned exciting if you are him.

Betty told me she was having a problem this morning,

“The crows were chasing me, grandmother.”

She must have been hearing a murder of them in the morning, screeching at each other. My guess is that she thought the cacophony of sound was directed at her since it would be coming from all directions and the quiet of the morning makes their sounds even louder. Her dad said that as well, she just heard in a book of fiction that a child was carried away by a crow. Fiction will get a 3 year old every time.

I found a song that I have been looking for – Alice Blue Gown.

I always think if there is a song that has your name, you should know that song. I practised the song tonight on the keyboard and started memorizing the words so that I can teach them to her.

... Alice at the creek...

I won’t tell her, but in 1919 a shade of light blue was dominant in the wardrobe of Alice Roosevelt, the daughter of the U.S. President, Theodore.

 So the woman in the song is wearing a dress, the shade of which is “Alice Blue”. Oh boy!

All of this fun for me and they will never know I am having it.

Arta

Reading on the Water

... reading on the water ...

In the late evening, sometimes I feel a disconnect between those last moments of the day and the ones that were early in the morning. 

I can figure out how I got from there to here.

The forecast was for 90% rain to I had indoor plans, but as the hours went by no rain fell and the outside called.

“Just a few moments using my pitchfork to get snake grass out of the sandbar in the creek,” I thought.

Michael followed me down there with a book.

... Alice with a hat that reminds me of Hebe's hats ..

I was so surprised at the place he choose to settle in with his book that I reached for my camera.

But it was no where to be had.

That is the trouble with gardening with my camera.

One forgetful moment when the camera is not zippered to my body and it is lost.

... water under both sides of his body ...
... and yes, his legs are getting long, but not that long ...

Either lost or just forgotten back at the house which was the case today.

The weather stayed beautiful all day.

A wind that portended a storm, but the storm didn’t come.

Later the clouds darkened for a while and then that rain went elsewhere.

... Alice hoping to catch minnows ...

Mid afternoon, a clap of thunder sent the kids inside, but no rain or lightening.

 No wonder I felt a disconnect between the morning and the night – it was a day when there was to be rain.

I kept looking for it, always ready to grab my tools and run for cover.

In the meantime I got a lot of snake grass out of the rocks that rim the stream.

Arta

Porcelain Dolls

When I see second-hand porcelain dolls at the thrift store, I wonder whose collection of dolls I am buying.

I wish I could just bargain for the whole set and have it done with.

But someone in charge there, brings they out slowly – about 5 at a time.

So every time I see a few they go in my basket.

One of the dolls fell to the floor during a fight between the two girls.

The floor is marble.

That doesn’t work for porcelain dolls.

... a doll we have loved and lost ...

One has been retired and the other has a leg which needs bandaging.

The clothing is not like the clothing on Barbie dolls that is meant to go on and off.

It comes off with a great amount of difficulty, but Betty can do it.

Arta

Toys at Churches

Today Miranda and I drove to the thrift store to bring home a ratan bar cart that I purchased there yesterday.  Wyona reminded me tonight that rattan always cracks and breaks, but for a while it will br fun.  The kids came along as well to do some shopping in the children's toys section of the thrift store.  I told them I would pay for whatever they could carry in their arms.

Michael came away with 4 items, all of which can be held in the palm of his hand.  Apparently that is all that a 7 year boy can find that interests him in those bins of toys.

Betty kept asking me to hold things for her.  I just didn't have it in me to facilitate her that way, but I did show her how to telescope one toy into another again and again.  I also showed her how to carefully make her way to the check out without spilling anything.  One of her top items was a bow and arrow set that she played with all afternoon.

Alice is gifted at buying second-hand.  She came out with a number of stuffed animals, and a dog that is really a purse, if we can judge by the zipper along its back and its carrying handles.  The zipper gets caught in the lining, so I am going to tack that back so that the purse will work for her.

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark

Then we whiled away the rainy afternoon with the toys and with a book Michael found in the bookshelves at home:  Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark: Collected from American Folklore by Alvin Schwartz.

Michael read the first story to us last night as we were eating supper.

I could see he was going to starve to death for the evening if someone else didn't do some reading while he ate, so I picked up the book and read for a while.

A grandmother knows she is reading the story right when she can feel three little bodies pressed close to hers and knows it is out of fear and not for comfort.

Today we learned one of the poems in the book, "The Slithery Dee".

The slithery-dee,
He came out of the sea;
He ate all the others,
But he didn't eat me.

The slithery-dee,
He came out of the sea,
He ate all the others,
But he didn't eat --
SL-U-R-P . . .

We worked a long time at getting just the right sound in the slurp.

Arta

What frightens Betty?

Betty in happier times, finishing of her Klondike ice cream bar

As we were hanging out at home today (the forecast was true -- 100% chance of rain), I noticed Betty was frightened a couple of times.

Once I saw Betty running at full speed for the protection of her mom.

The second time she was cowering back while Michael was trying to drag her forward to the bathroom sink.

In the first instance, she had come too close to the mouse trap and had triggered it.

Snap!

Before I heard the sound of the trap as it finished closing, I saw her fly past the dining room table chairs and into Miranda's arms who was at the end of the table doing a rainy day jigsaw puzzle.

Snap!  The sound of a mouse trap being triggered will do it every time.  And that is especially true when it is Betty's foot that triggers the trap.

In the second case, Michael was trying to get her to the bathroom to wash her hands and she wasn't going.  I went over to see what the problem was.  He explained, "She won't wash her hands because there is a spider in the sink."

I looked.

Yes, although technically the spider was half way in the sink and half way down the drain.  I encouraged it to either go down or come out, and when it came up instead of down, I helped it on its way to insect heaven.

Still Betty wasn't putting her hands in that sink without a lot of soap, some warm running water and someone by her side.

Mice traps and spiders in the sink. 

Thoughts of 1984 returning to me.

Arta

A Salmon Arm Holiday, Part II

Sometimes the best holiday is one at home. That is what happened with the holiday to Bonnie’s house. We ate breakfast in the living room which looks out onto what seems to be a large forest of tall trees. It is really a farmer’s field to the north of her and some day it will be sold and full of house. But for now, we could sit and look at a beautiful copse of trees.

Everybody look to the left.

Everybody look to the right.

Hard to choose a view.
Beauty in all directions.

Fly Hills.

In the evening we ate our food on her back balcony. From there we can see Mt. Ida, slowly being reforested after the fire of 2 years ago. And then a bit to the right is a long view of the low lying Fly Hills, beautiful in themselves. I wanted to take the colour green and play with it in oils or acrylics – just an artist’s urge to see if I could mix colours in the same hue that I could see from that vantage point looking south.

And then watching the clouds? Wyona's is always looking at them -- trying to figure out how to paint them.  Now I am seeing them with renewed interest, also wondering how she is going to paint them.

Cauliflower never tasted so good!

Bonnie requested Indian food for the weekend, and someone to eat it with. So we sat together at every meal, either eating ethnic food, or talking about which ingredients to buy so that we could eat Indian food at the next meal. We ended up with tandoori chicken, a basic dhal, a chick pea dhal, some Indian cauliflower (the chopped peanuts in the sauce were spectacular), and a cumin/green pea/rice dish, besides just regular rice (oh and a pot of cocoanut rice as well).

Plus, we got out a Creative Indian Cookbook and found written on the first page, a list of recipes we made for Steve in the past when he was needing to eat in a certain way, though now can’t even remember what it was that was being restricted.  Every recipe looked so good.  Our holiday isn't over.

Arta

A Salmon Arm Holiday

Sun-warmed, ripe strawberries still on the plant. Could anything taste better?

Bonnie invited me to come and stay with her for five days. I don’t know where the time went. David reminded me that I made strawberry jam while I was there.

I originally picked those strawberries to eat at my house for breakfast.  In fact for the first 3 days that I went to Moiya and Dave’s strawberry patch to pick the ripe berries while they were gone, I just ate the berries in the patch. I didn’t need a bucket to put them in.

The worst part of Moiya's strawberries?
Hulling them.
After I hulled the smallest one (see bottom left in picture)
there was hardly any berry left to put in the jam pot.

When I told this to Glen, I saw his eyes get big. I thought he was saying, “Wow, you are still an Albertan who can’t believe there will still be strawberries on those same plants tomorrow?”

 Having fully retired here, I took a bucket over the next time I went to the patch so I could pretend to be someone blasé about picking berries. And that is how I ended up with enough berries to make jam.

Last month I tasted some cherry jam. The best cherry jam I had ever tasted. While I was going on and on about how absolutely perfect the cherry jam was, a friend leaned over to me and said, “That is strawberry jam, Arta, with just a few berries in i?t as well as all of the syrup.” So that wasn't the best cherry jam I had ever tasted, after all.

Now that I know strawberry is still the best jam ever, I thought I would try to leave some uncrushed bits of strawberry in the jam. And that might be why we were loving it on ice cream.

Another view of Moiya and Dave's garden.
Will those cherries be ready to become the best-ever strawberry jam soon?

I read on the internet that strawberries have little pectin and so it is good to use a commercial product to firm it up. This jam wasn’t that firm. But then I only guessed at the 4 ½ cups of strawberries that it called for. 

Well, all in an hours work, and I forgot that I even made the jam until David blogged about it.


Arta

Bonnie’s Guitar Teacher

Homework? Fun work!

Bonnie has been working on the guitar so faithfully that I thought she should start taking lessons. She is every teacher’s dream pupil practising every day and often far longer than the minimum recommendation of 30 minutes a day.

She and I went back to Acorn Music. Their lessons have just finished and they won’t start up again until fall.

“In the fall you can begin and the lessons will be $25 for half an hour,” the store owner said.

I decided I can teach lessons. We went home and I taught Bonnie the first 6 notes on the guitar just by reading from the lesson book.

I am credentialed on the basis of a 12 week course I took twenty years ago.

I acted professionally, ending my lesson after 25 minutes, and telling her what to do for homework. 

My lessons are on a drop-in basis.

Price to be negotiable.

Arta

I Am Stuck

Can you spot any boulders?

I have been cleaning out the underbrush that is by the piles of sand, clay and good earth to the east of my house. 

Those are the three ingredients I mix together when I want to lay soil down somewhere.

Right now rain has soften all of the earth and it is easy for me to tidy up those piles.

Later in the evening I started clearing brush. I cut a tree to my left, just about down to the ground. Then I cut one to the right in the same fashion.

Then I stepped back to view my work, turned around, my foot hit a boulder behind me, and I fell backward into the v-shape between the two trunks.

 I could not get up. I tried my best to go forward, to wiggle backward, to throw one of my legs over one of the trunks, then the other, but I couldn’t find a way to roll over and get to my knees so I could get up.

I had to call Dave Wood on the telephone I always carry with me.  Well, I don't always carry it with me, but I happened to have it on me tonight.

"Hi Dave. It is Arta. I am stuck. Can you come and help me?”

“Where are you?”

“Just come over by the east side of my house and I will call you when I see you.”

I don’t think I will ever forget the look on Dave’s face when he came around the corner and saw me.

He loves real life drama and I was giving him some.

We tried a number of strategies.

Finally Dave hugged me from behind and lifted me up.

And that is how I became unstuck.

It is also how a developed a new love for my telephone.

I am going to try to always bring it with me and never forget it.

Arta

The First Day of Summer

What is the use of grieving spring’s leaving when summer is in view. The daisies are everywhere. The ferns are shoulder high. The piles of pulled weeds are that high too.

The fruits of
spring cleaning.

Now a few days ago, Bonnie and I visited Acorn Music in Salmon Arm looking for a music stand. We had also gone to Churches of Salmon Arm Thrift Store hoping to find a used one there. Apparently there are never used music stands. Old music stands either get passed on to other musicians or become so broken that they are useful to no one. So the first day of summer was the day to go back to Acorn Music to buy both a stand and a music book: How to Play the Guitar, Book I.

Bonnie has been taking lessons by watching YouTube for a year. She has been using a borrowed guitar. After one year she made the financial leap. A guitar of her own purchased way down the valley in Kelowna. That is not to say there is anything wrong with buying the guitar there. Just when it comes to the free re-stringing, it is probably not cost efficient to get service in that way.

Our morning was going well until we were half way to the music store that is in Salmon Arm. Bonnie saw a garage sale sign. I was all for driving by but she slowed down to a crawl and then a stop. We studied what was available from our car: a free box of goods, blankets, ornaments, rugs to encircle the base of a toilet, a canner, a stock pot, wicker baskets, a wine jug on a wooden stand, a Chinese wicker foot stool. We either bought it all or had it generously placed in our car for free, even if we didn’t really want it.

Husband's brass
collection, for sale
now that he no
longer needs them.

We shouldn’t have bought the tall brass ornament shelf since there was no way for it to fit into our car. I thought it would be easily taken apart – maybe even it was modular. No. We turned around to go home and figure out how we were going to solve that problem. On our way to the car, the woman said, “I also have a two seater couch and a 3 seater sofa to sell. Neutral. Beige. It will fit anywhere. We followed her to the fourth floor of the building to take a look, she was also had a custom made chair that swivelled and an ottoman.

Why not take it all.  Then our shopping would be over.

Glen and Connor came to be our pick-up service. David Camps-Johnson came to help too.

Wyona's water colour prints of the
lake already planned for the walls.

By the time everything got into Bonnie’s empty basement we had a fully decorated space. All we are missing is a carpet. Bonnie asked about the one in the woman’s apartment but she had paid $5,000 years ago for that Persian carpet and it was the one thing that was going with her to her new place. The price had been right on the other stuff so not getting the carpet was a small loss.

Bonnie thought she was making a space for herself in the basement where it is nice and cool.

Apparently David discovered the new comfort – which neither Bonnie nor I would have predicted. He migrated down there after unloading the last cushion and he hasn't come upstairs, even for meals.

Arta

Strawberry Jam

Strawberry Jam

Arta came and stayed at our house for five days. She made some jam with fresh strawberries from Moiya and Dave's garden. We had 5 jars when she left Sunday night. It hasn't even been 24 hours and we have only 2 and one-half jars left.

The jam is delicious on toast.
It's even better on ice cream.

David

In Memorium: Betty Sabey 1928 - June 16, 2019

Photo Credit: Bill Sabey

Betty Sabey

Photo Credit: Bill Sabey

A celebration of the life of Betty Sabey was held in her garden, as she wished.

 All of her children and her grandchildren attended as well as many of her Vancouver friends.

Churches on Monday

 Wyona and I weeded our respective gardens this morning, one of us for over an hour. Our collective reward for doing this hard Monday morning work was to go to Salmon Arm and visit our favourite thrift store: Churches of Salmon Arm. We had a discussion as to whether the shop was open, since our friends told us it would be closed. But the internet, that carrier of all truth, said the store was open and it was.

Wyona found two small wicker baskets shaped like garden hanging chairs, but they were sized for a child’s doll.

 She bought both of them.

She is going to hang them from a tree in her yard.

She also found some lovely crystal: one piece to be used for spare earrings and the other just the right size for snacks left on the kitchen table.

... the large red checkered picnic table cloth thrown in for free ...
... plus one set of blue napkins and one set of white cloth napkins ...

I found a wicker picnic basket – not fully equipped, but I didn’t learn that until I got it home.

Still it had a big red checkered table cloth, four blue napkins and a full set of white cutlery plus four plates.

Whatever pieces are missing, I am sure Grandmother will be able to supply for a never ending backup of glasses and bowls.

The whole intent is to use the basket to go into the woods for a picnic.

 Lucky for us, the woods are only 15 feet away.

I also found a copy of Edith Fowke’s Red Rover, Red Rover: Children’s Games Played in Canada. I shall be studying this book during my lunch hours.

For the curious I shall list the Contents:

1. Starting a Game
2. Chasing Games
3. Catching Games
4. Seeking Games
5. Hunting Games
6. Racing Games
7. Duelling Games
8. Exerting Games
9. Daring Games
10. Guessing Games
11. Acting Games
12. Pretending Games
13. Miscellaneous Games
14. Marble Games
15. Word Games

The cost of the book on the internet is $309.00 new and  $27.95 used.

This copy at the Churches of Salmon Arm Thrift Store was $2.00.

What if I can find a way to just do one new game a week with the Richard and Miranda's little childen?

 A lovely what if....

Arta

The South Facing Flower Bed

... the view from Arta's bedroom ...
A Spring Sunrise 

You have to be up at 4:13 am
to see something like this

I walk by Miranda’s and Richard's cabin at the Shuswap every day.

I am on my way to water Moiya’s newly planted raspberry canes while she is away.

As I am watering that space and a little more for I can see newly planted grass that needs some water, I look back at Miranda’s iris bed.

One tall iris between 3 and 4 feet high is in the bed.

The rest of the space is irises that aren’t doing that well – they maintain themselves as leaves but they do not flower.

The rest of the bed has the natural look -- meadow.

While I was holding the sprinkler, for I hand water, I decided to just dig that bed up for Miranda since I am walking by there every day.

The dig has not gone as planned.

I thought it would be easy to turn over the soil. And the top four inches were good.  But then there is a fist-sized rock or a boulder that stops the axe every time it hits the earth.

I can’t help thinking of the past when I unearth a buried treasure there. How about the rusty metal U-turn that goes with a plumbing unit?

I found the end of an electrical chord.  I couldn't pull the rest of it out from beneath the house no matter how hard I dug.

I dug out a horseshoe, now three feet deep. I wondered which kids were accused of taking it for their play and ruining the men’s game that was played in the area between the two houses. Now I know the horse shoe was just in the flower bed.

I found second spoon in my dig, while not in a condition to eat with, a perfectly good toy for the sand box. Another generation of children playing the same game of “Dig in the Sand” with the same tool.

I found a white bone, round, a diameter of maybe 1 ½ inches and 2 inches in length, the marrow now gone from the bone. I stopped to consider if this would look good as a necklace. Just a rope of the right kind through it and it would be pretty classy, I thought. I held it in the palm of my hand for a while and then decided, no – too heavy.

My Breakfast
strawberries from Moiya's garden

The hardest pat of the dig were two boulders and one stump. I had to call on David Pilling a few years ago to help me with a boulder I couldn’t bring out of a flower bed (the bed being, supposedly 2 feet deep, but sometimes I cheat with 18 inches or less). David pulled it, rolled it out and then said to me, “You could have done it if you had just believed.”

So I took David’s advice. I started to “believe” with my two boulders and kept working the first one with my axe. Nobody would have been more surprised than me when it first moved enough that I knew I was going to get it all the way out.

“A good case for believing,” I thought.

The stump was hard until I figured ut that I should cut all of the roots and then try to pry the stump out. This turned out to be a good idea.

And that is the end of my journey to the bottom of the flower bed. Tomorrow I shall refill it with the dirt I saved and I will add a little more black compost to it.

I will love that flower bed.

Arta

The Poplar Seed

There were small tufts of white poplar seeds float through the air in the evening, and tonight about 7 pm the wind picked up.

 It could have been snowing as that downward wind picked up the small white seeds.

I could see them floating downward from the top of the road where the poplar tree is, to the bottom of the valley.

Floating as the snow does in big tufts in the winter.

Both Glen and David Pilling say to me, "If  you miss Spring here, you miss the best part of the year".

Now I get why they say this.

Wild flowers make meadows where the grass is not mowed.

Today I could see that one of my peony bushes is beginning to fade.

Fifteen unpicked blossoms.

I ran out of vases before I ran out of flowers to put in them.

And then as a rounded the corner tonight I came face to face with another peony bush in full blossom.

One blossom would more than fill the palm of my hand – maybe 2 hands.

Small red roses are blooming at the corner of my porch and the rose bush that we call LaRue had two white buds ready to bloom.

Yes, to miss Spring here is to miss one of nature's miracles.

Arta

In Mexico - Moiya and David

David heard thunder this morning. When I looked outside the ground was all wet but the sky was blue.

David and Moiya Wood on The Malecon

We are going to take the bus to Alltown Puerto Vallarta this morning.

I want to get a silver necklace.

Not only that, we have not been into the old town yet and we can get there on the bus for 10 pesos. That is about $.75 Canadian.

It is really fun to be on the buses with the locals.

They have all been so kind.

We have only three more days here in Puerto Vallarta.

Then off to Calgary on Saturday and ride up to Spruce Grove where David will help Adam finish his deck.

Love Moiya

Sent from my iPhone Sent from my iPhone

What’s the Rush

Photo: Rob Dirk

I am still connected to the habits of my pre-retirement life.

I time every event around here: cooking, cleaning, typing, gardening.

I think I need to make sure I get places when I am supposed to be there.

I think that if I make a meal I have to have it ready when the clock strikes 6 pm.

But really? For me? What is the rush?

So I have my lunch at 3 pm? That just seems to work for me. That feels good to just let my gardening life play itself out and gather up the tools and quit when I wish to.

This was not totally true yesterday when I had the battle of the blackberry bushes. Walking down the nineteen steps from the house to the road has become dangerous. The blackberry vines curve out on the stairs. Some secure themselves to ground close to the stairs and become a new bush full of thorns. Alice and Betty were sometimes afraid to walk up the stairs last year.

In an effort to protect the little girls this year, I put on some green gloves that are meant for working with prickly bushes. I suited up with a fleece hoodie and then put on a heavy-duty jean jacket on over it. I pulled my hat down low on my brow. I laid down a tarp to receive the cuttings. I cut back those bushes as far as I could, gingerly moving them one by one with just the tips of my fingers. I laid them all parallel to one another, just as Glen has taught me to do. This makes transporting any pile of branches easier.

The best thing about dragging the blackberry branches to the burn pile is that when I turned the tarp over and leaned into it to secure the load to the pile, I could feel the vines collapse into one another. I thought of how painful that would be, to lay on a bed of blackberry vines. When I pulled the tarp away, there was no slippage. The vines clung to each other – a bonus since I didn’t have to reach down and throw runaway ones back onto the pile.

I did hear myself say ouch a number of times during the cutting. Those little thorns could reach out and get me when I was least expecting to feel them.  Yes, they got their revenge.  Yes, I made the path safe.

Arta

Rocket Man at a Theatre near You

David Camps Johnson was having an “electronics / sleep over” party last ni weekend, the emphasis on the party being the former and not the latter.

Bonnie came out to Annis Bay to spend the evening with me.

We began the night with home-made pizza, and in a moment of spontaneous madness, we drove to Salmon Arm for the opening of the Salmon Arm Art Gallery show.

That event ending and being a lot of fun, we drove by the theatre to see if there was anything playing that would interest us. Neither of us were ready to end the night.

“Nope,” I said on looking at the marquee. “Nothing.”

“Hey, Rocketman  is about Elton John and I want to see that,” Bonnie said.

Image from IMDB

With one half hour to the start time and not being ones to waste any minutes together, we knew we could get a small Frosty for $.99 (the new summer price) and still be in time for the movie.

I stayed awake, mostly.  It is hard not to compare Bohemian Rhapsody, A Star is Born and Rocketman, trying to figure out which one I liked best.  Th.e problem is that there are 3 genres here: a biopic, a fiction and a musical fantasy.  Better to view each with its own set of conventions and see if the movie works with those.

Image from IMDB

Bonnie said that Elton John was the first popular culture singer she was aware of as a child – she learned about him in Grade II and she used to practise his lyrics while walking to and from Tracy Appleton’s house.

Apparently she was successful for I could often hear her voice softly chiming in on some of the tunes during the movie. Usually patrons would shush someone who does that, but she wasn’t the only one singing. I could hear the other movie goers seemed singing as well -- the event was a quiet sing-a-long.

I slept in the movie when I needed to. I think I was awake for about 9/10 of it.

On the way back to the lake, we dropped by her house so Bonnie could check on the party there, even though Joaquim was overseeing the event. The snacks, four pizza’s and three 2 quart-bottles of Mountain Dew were gone but the party was still going strong.

Not like parties of people my age where as soon as the food is gone, we go home for our self-set 9 pm curfew.

Arta

New Lettuce in Salads

... three lady slippers seen on a walk by the stream ...

Glen invited Greg Bates, David Pilling and me to supper on Sunday night.

“The four bachelors”, he called us. Janet is in Kelowna starting a new job, Shauna is in South Dakota visiting friends and family, and Wyona is somewhere between Texas and Calgary.

We had chicken thighs off of the BBQ and a salad made from new lettuce. Moiya lets one of her bunches of lettuce go to seed and then replants it the next year and that is what we were eating – but from Glen’s garden.

Moiya and Dave's lettuce ready for picking.

I like to start a meal by saying something I am grateful for. Usually that thing is water. Glen said if we are going that route, he is going to say oxygen. The conversation soon turned to AI and if people have long conversations about artificial intelligence, then I am going to assume some at the table were grateful for that.

I spend my days working in the yard.

I am good with using the roller when seeding new patches of grass – the grass seed needs earth that is compacted so they will have something stable to get their roots into.

After I had trouble getting the roller to work, Glen came over and showed me how to really compact the soil.

At one point he got down on the ground, eyes level with the new soil and checked with for high spots so that I could rake them out before planting the seeds.

As well, Glen taught me how to sharpen my clippers. I bought an 8 inch axe sharpener to do the job. Glen showed me how to put the clippers in the vice and how to get a good edge on the blade with that file. I like having a garage full of equipment that I can learn to use.

Arta

Lilium Columbiaum in the Meadow

... one of the twin tiger lily flowers ...

I was so thrilled to see a tiny orange tiger lily in the meadow.  The next time I looked there were 2 flowers there.

And then the next day 7 and one of them had a double flower on it.

I had to ask Glen if the tiger lilies were a rare specious and needed protection since I can’t imagine that the flowers will survive when the children run through that spot.

Then I remembered that the kids have been running through there for years.

What is different is that I have seen the flowers for the first time, and in June.

By July they will be gone and a new species will be blooming.

June is such a wonderful month – so many flowers that are spring flowers.

Burdock

I don’t think I have the right name for this plant.

But I do know how to control it.

I saw one healthy specimen of it on Wyona’s hill growing with the purple lupines that are in flower. I was with Glen when I saw the plant.

“See that plant. Wyona is not going to like having it there. Too invasive.” If Wyona has one plant, I have 3 – a case study in which more is not better.

I have a strong memory of being with Doral and he had a shovel in his hand. “There is no way to get rid of this except by cutting it off at the root,” and then he took his shovel and with one step cut the root of the plant from the stem. I tried to do the same thing. I had to go around the plant about five times to get deep enough to cut that root off. The largest plant was just by the skunk cabbage that grows by the culvert that takes the water from the Wedding Reach of the stream to the Missionary Reach. When I final had it in my hands, I had to measure it’s height: floor to shoulder counting the root. I could feel the prickles through my gardening gloves and I wondered how long I could stand that irritation. The answer is, long enough to carry it to the burn pile. I loved that feeling of pulling out of my memory the answer to what would Doral do?

This bush is going to be so heavy with flowers
that I will want to cut some and put them in the house.

Now off to find a vase big enough!

I almost heard him laughing, all the way from heaven as I was preparing a stretch of land to be grassed in – the space at the end of my raspberry row. 

For years I have cultivated it.

Glen often says to me – you aren’t going to get much growth here for the flowering dogwood trees is in competition with the raspberry roots and the tree is always going to win.

So I took 5 wheel barrow loads of clay mixed with sand up to that spot and I packed it in with my feet and then I rolled it with the a tool I borrowed from him that packs earth in. A cylinder that you fill with water and then roll on the earth. Why is it that I don’t have names for these tools? At any rate, I rolled two other pieces of ground I have been tending and that worked out. But when I rolled the clay? All it did was pack cow pie sized lumps of clay on the roller. I would scrap it off and try again, but the second rolling was worse than the first. That is when I am sure I could hear Doral laughing, as I said, all the way from heaven.

Arta