Longing

Saturday morning. 

Longing for 

the smell of muffins already cooling on a tray;

Bread rising on the counter; 

Compost buckets bleaching in the sink;

Vinegar-scented hallway tiles almost dry;

The New Yorker, 

dog-eared, with new  marginalia.

Words to be looked up later, 

and then dropped into conversation

as if they were everyday words.

Beside the computer, a quote or a phrase, ready to be crafted into a blog post.

I'm behind on my blogging, she would say, having set a goal of 1.5 posts per day.

I close my eyes, 

breathe deeply, 

and recapture 

the feeling

of smelling

freshly baked muffins 

cooling on the tray.

Planting Hollyhocks (a love letter to Wyona and Miranda)

In my mind, hollyhocks are back alley flowers.  That was the place I would see them when I was growing up -- seemingly growing up out of the gravel, up against back fences.  I always figured they must be weeds. Tall and sturdy stock, bursting with flowers. Not the kind of flower you can secretly pick one of and bring home.  Much to big for hiding behind your back as you sprint the last few house lengths home to your backyard. 

Here on my side of the country, you never see hollyhocks.  We don't have back alleys and they are rarely a favourite flower planted in flower beds. People favour planintg their more delicate tall cousin, the delphinium.

But when I was back in Alberta for the past two years, living in Lethbridge, back alley hollyhocks were front and centre again and I realized how much I loved them. And now that I am older I know that if you steal the flower, you will enjoy it but it will soon die. On the other hand, if you steal some seed pods, maybe you can plant you own hollyhock haven.  And so often when was out walking my dog in the fall and winter, I would look for the dried up stalks of holly hocks and help myself to some seed pods.  Into my pocket they would go.

When I was in Calgary visiting Wyona, I saw that she had beautiful white hollyhocks in her front garden bed and I asked her if I could take some seeds.  She of course said yes.  So months later, when I was back visiting again and hollyhock flowering season had passed and all that was left were brown stalks and seed pods, I slipped some into my pocket.  Same thing for Miranda who has a bed of double flower pink hollyhocks in her backyard.  Seed pods into my pockets.

I brought all these seeds back to Gatineau with me this year.  And a few weeks ago pulled them out to plant them indoors to  give them a head start on the growind season.

I had no clue how fast the hollyhock seeds would grow.  They are up there with pea shoots. In less than a week tiny green shoots were poking through the dirt.

Only one of the seed varietals wanted to grow.  So in the boxes where the seeds didn't grow, I planted some new ones.  I can't wait to see what colours of hollyhocks survived and grew.  I am hoping for Wyona's White and Miranda's Double Pink to be growing tall and flowering in my front yard this season. I promise to keep you posted.

$1.49

 I saw a huge bag of tomatoes on the "quick sale" stand and couldn't pass it up. Thought, 
"I"ll just whip up a batch of roasted tomatoes soup."

Got home and counted 14 tomatoes.  It was too many to fit on one pan.

For some reason it seemed wrong to only have one tomato on a pan, so threw some garlic in oil on there too.

At the other end of 40 minutes at 400 degrees, here they are.

Blend tomatoes with garlic and some carmelized onions. Maybe add some salt, pepper, fresh basil and dried oregano.

In the end, "whip up" a batch of soup doesn't mean it is fast.  But it is delicious.

I really wished I were sitting down to eat this soup with Arta.

Did you know... that JAZZ IS BACK!!!!!!!

 Good day.  I don't even know where to start.....

Made crepes this morning.  No milk, which changes how the cook.  Real bad.  Well, not bad, but the wheat doesn't really get thin in the batter.  It kind of gets gluy.  Anyhoo.

Made them, put them to the side, half cooked a scrambled egg in the pan, layed the crepe down on the egg, finished it cooking through, rolled it up with some mozzarela and served to the famly.  I'm always worried.  New things never work.  Nobody really complained though.  So it went over well.

Washed the inside of the fridge, it was pretty gross.  We did some hard work with the kids on lists of work to do, and fun things to sprinkle in to reward ourselves if we're getting stuck in hard work.... who knows if that will land as a teaching moment.

Laundry got started.  There was a wet load from three days ago.  Still, it was mine and I put it on the wire to dry.  Hopefully the damp wet rotty smell of old wet laundry will blow away in the wind.

After that Miranda and I made a list of grocieries that we might need.  mostly the items were centered around soups.  I am wanting to use up some of the chicken stock (turkey stock) in the freezers.  So four stock based soups were identified.  I took Michael and Alice with me to get those grocieries.

On the way to the superstore, I stopped in at the local barber on northmount drive.  They only want 20$ cash and you get what you pay for.  But we met Mo, the current local persian who is either learning to cut, or just not classically trained.  We made a friend, michale got a haircut, and both kids siad they'd come back.  So sometimes going to the box store company doesn't offer little personal touches.

I had checked the internet to see if Byblos bakery was open but it said closed on Saturday Sunday. I was so sad. But Miranda and I had gone before on a Saturday, so I called. No answer. Sad.  Still, after superstore I passed by because I love the namoura so much. They were open!!!

Alice asked for a meat pie and Michael asked for a chicken pie. So I got pita, namoura, snacks for kids, and a falafel for Miranda. The falafels are best in city as far as I am concerned. 

Sitting there as the kids snacked for a bit, I realized that this was a generational routine.  That's totally why I was doing this. I was taken there and given a falafel as a teen. We are all just trying to give our best forward I suppose. I wonder if that was her bribing me now that I think about it in my today context. Read forward about bribery that I performed today ......

After getting home, I told Miranda that I'd gotten an invite from Marcia to go to a jazz concert.  I told alice and michael that I'd gotten the invite and they both said that they'd want to go.  So I said, sure we'll go Marce!

When I got home, we unloaded groceries, I told miranda the plan, and kept doing laundry.  A time later, Miranda said that she would rather that I asked before making plans like that.  After a bit of talking it turns out that instead she meant... I already had plans to go out with friends by myself, and this made her cancel her plans.  A bit of work on the situation later, and Miranda re-connected with her friends, went out to her party.

Now, the solution here was that Betty would be baby-sat by uncle Kelvin.  SWEEEETTTT!!!  Next door on demand babysitter.  

To melt together the situation I went with Betty to the store, told her to pick everything that she wanted for her Betty / Uncle Kelvin party, and we'd stash it at Kelvins so that the other kids didn't know.  So betty had her secret personalized treats, and I'd let Alice and Michael get a secret Jazz Concert treat at superstore that Betty wasn't allowed to know about.

It turns out that I use bribery HARD when I want or need people to get on board with a plan.  Betty was happy for her planned event, The other kids were happy for their planned event, and Miranda went out to her friends party without cancelling to take care of Betty.

The Jazz Concert was at Aberheart.  How perfect is that.  So we 'dressed up', walked over, and met a pile of Trelevan / Bates at the concert.  

The VIBE was amazing.  Sitting in a vibe, I was feeling so grateful.  How wonderful is life.

We waited in this cute little area for ten minutes before the Trelevans came in, and I was really out of this world happy to let my little elementary school kids sit in a highschool event.  Not necessarily a common thing.

I took as many photos as possible, trying to catch what I could for Marce and Art.  We of course, all being there for Zak, might as well catch something.  In fact, I wish I had taken pictures on the way in, on the way out, of the ice cream and coffee station that they'd set up.  Darn it all!

This vocals group did summer of love at the end.  Sigh... of course I was crying during it.  Sigh....

The last photo, and those like it were my favorites.  I was trying to catch Marce... photo'ing Zac.  I love a photo of someone taking a photo.

The last photo is of the group of us at the table.  Sans the photographer.

No... the last photo is going to be the one where I took a photo of Audra.  jazz is exhausting....

Actually, no, the last photo is of everyone hanging out at the Betty Kelvin party at the end of the night.  Love you all.

Red River Cereal

 It's true.  The internet told me so. Red River Cereal is no longer being produced.

(big breath in...  big sigh out...)

But we're gonna be OK.  

Check out this blog for more info and to find out what you can buy as a replacement.

NEW RED RIVER

When to Plant your Sweet Peas

Sweat peas always make me think of Arta. If I remember correctly, they made her think of her own mother.  I know I can always count on seeing sweet peas growing at Moiya's place at the lake as well.

I was at the hardware store the other day looking for some pots to re-plant some indoor plants that are getting too crowded in their current containers.  The seed wrack had been set up for he season, so I stopped to browse.  This is what I bought.

The sweet peas went into my basket first, then I saw the peas, which reminded me of the huge garden Glen had created on lots 4 and 5 way back when.  I loved eating peas right off the vine, using my thumb nail to split the pods open and taking out the precious little green peas and popping them into my mouth. So two of those into the basket as well.  And to round it off, nasturtium, which is something I have grown before -- you can eat the flowers.  They are nice and peppery.

I'm pretty sure I recall Arta saying she always planted her sweet peas the first of April. Which confuses me becaue I think sometimes in April, there is still snow on the ground in Calgary.

Sweet peas also make me think of Miles who gave me the tip that if you pick all the sweat peas off the vine, expect the colour you love most (like maybe the deep purple/black), then the ones you  love most will turn into pods which you can later pick and harvest the seeds from to save to plan next year.  I love that idea. Because I do love to save and collect seeds.

Wish me luck with my gardening!

The secret box, what could be inside.....

April 16th, 2022.

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Making pancakes this morning. We didn't have eggs at home, so we went over to steal eggs from kelvin. Forgot that someone had defaced the eggs   

April 14th, 2022.

_______________________

For fun, when we finally started to get the box to open, we wondered what would be in the box.   What was REALLY in the box, I will not reveal that.  

We talked at the dinner table about what would be funny if we wanted to report to the aunts about what was in the box.  Funny things could be.... bigger than the box.... newer than if Arta had put them in the box... funny things that she usually treasured (dental floss, etc), and we all wrote down our three favorite ideas each, and then we decided how to present our "treasures" that we found in the box.

Michael's decision was that he would find shu-swaggie eggs in the box.  So we got regular eggs out of the fridge and colored them with markers to make them look surprising.  This crafting was so fun that everyone needed to do an egg.  Only Michaels egg photo was mailed though.  Michael chose to send his silly joke to Bonnie.

Alice's decision was that she would find beautiful pearls in the box.  I couldn't get her to make a silly joke.  She wanted to find valuable jewlery in the box.  Alice chose to send her silly photo to Rebecca.

Betty's decision was that she would find a silly clown in the box.  I don't know where that came from.  I did enjoy the staged photo of her with the clown though.  I couldn't think of how to stage this idea but Miranda said that Miranda had a small clown doll from her childhood that she could get grandma joan to bring up from across the city.  Betty chose to send her silly photo to Mary.

We were also writting about our silly joke on Dorals post cards.  One style for each child.  I thought that since there were four styles of post card, that I should do a photo as well and send one to the last sister Catherine to round out all of the women getting a surprise.  Four styles of postcard, four sisters, four little jokes.  Then maybe when the sisters talked they would be confused that each person had a totally different silly joke that they'd received.

Thats the end of the fancy chinese box that nobody could open.  I"ll never tell what was really inside...

__________________________

April 8th, 2022.

So many good things inside this box!  I've taken a picture of each person pulling out one of the treasures that were hidden in this box.  Once I've uploaded the photos I'll share them with you.  Alice, Michael, Betty, and me all found special things inside!

__________________________

April 5th, 2022.

I did open that box once, maybe 20 years ago...  I do know how it feels to open this lock.  So I tried, and we got it to open...

Now, what is inside?  Lets look....

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April 1st, 2022.

So far we havent been able to open this box. It's supposed to be locked and put under your pillow at night to protect the most precious things that you possess. 

What could arta have put inside....