And the Beautiful Rains Came..

Ian took this nice photo of the Tinpalace from the back when he and Julie were here a couple of weekends ago. My flowers on the bumper are overflowing now.

After several days of hot weather, which occasioned sitting in the garden, migrating with the shade, getting sunburnt, spraying myself with water, slinging a wet hand towel around my neck and wearing a shocking lack of clothing (my apologies to the neighbours!) it finally cooled yesterday. We woke at 6:00 am to the patter of rain on the roof. Is there a more lovely sound?

Yesterday two pairs of sparrows brought the youngsters out for dinner. The kids, five to a brood, were mobbing their respective parents, with gaping mouths and the "shaking wing" bit that says, "FEED ME!".

The parents brought the kids to the feeder, put seeds in the little open beaks a time or two to show them what was available, and then began pecking the bejabbers out of any baby that begged. Talk about your tough love!

One little male was insistent that his mama should feed him. She chased him all over the driveway, giving him such a thwacking. He soon decided to investigate the menu rather than risk tenderization at the hands of a very irritable mother. (Having raised a house and yard full of hungry kids I can tell you that some days you feel like doing just that.)

Within a couple of hours no one was begging, it was every chick for himself, and they are an industrious lot, though the babies are so small they are almost hidden by the inch-high grass under the feeder. At first glance they look almost the size of the parents, but they are primarily fluff and feathers at this point. The little bodies beneath are so delicate, nothing like their temperament I might add.

Years ago Zak discovered a newly hatched sparrow which had fallen from an inaccessible nest. It was a brutally hot day. Zak got some whipping cream from the fridge - he was working at a restaurant at the time - and fed the sparrow chick whipping cream with an eyedropper. It was fine when I came to pick him up. We bought birdy pablum and raised the darn thing, but it never learned to recognize us. It was a fundamentally pessimistic soul who was sure we were there to eat it every time one of us came through the door. I fed it at 20 minute intervals all day, and Zak fed it at 20 minute intervals once he was home from work.

In the three weeks it took to fledge it never learned to recognize us, or to open its mouth for food. We would load the flat stick we used to feed it, hover, wait for it to scream "Murder most FOWL!", then we'd shove in the food. It would swallow and give us a look that would have been right at home on the face of a T-Rex.

When it got old enough to eat seed and was flying around the room in wild panic every time anything moved we took it to the park and let it go. I hope it survived. Like the sparrow mother, I was at the end of my rope with this miserable, lunk-headed kid.

Today it's raining steadily. It's cool enough for a long sleeved shirt and jeans. Sal has slept for two days, after panting his way through the hot spell. I felt so badly for him. I couldn't do anything to cool him. I squirted him with water, but his coat is so thick his skin never gets damp. I did watch his face and ears repeatedly with a cool wet cloth, which he enjoyed. But he's all fluffy now, as a result of a sort of "washing" he got from being wet several times over with a cloth or the hose.

We don't need that air conditioner today, and probably won't this week, as the forecast is for cool weather, but when it does turn hot we won't be so ill-prepared.

EMMM-ETTTTT???

We toddled off to the hardware store this morning and ordered an air conditioner. It will be here in four days. Four hot days. We bought a "cobra" mister, which is a plastic attachment for the garden hose. It emits a fine spray, looks like smoke. It's very pleasant to sit near, and have that cool mist blow over your hot self.

Salvador and I spent the entire afternoon outside. I sat in the shade and read and he slept. He wasn't too sure about the mister but once he caught a drift of mist across his face, he figured out that it brought coolness with it. From then on he'd turn and wait for the breeze to bring it back his way again. He'd lift his head slightly, close his eyes and lean into the mist.

It is too hot to cook, so we're living on salads and cold food. And lots of fruit. I bought a kilo (2.2 lb) container of strawberries and we've almost finished already.

There's one particular pair of quail who hang around and visit the feeder several times a day. We call them Emmett and Maud (don't ask). They are both quite small, she has a limp which makes her walk with a little hop. I wonder if they haven't nested, or perhaps a predator got their eggs? They never seem to be gone long, where all the other quail are gone all day and only come around briefly to eat first thing at dawn and then in the evening.

Emmett is very protective of Maud. He stands guard while she eats, and when another male quail came too near her a few days ago Emmett flew into a rage and beat the snot out of the other guy. Quail fisticuffs!

Maud has made a little dust bath hole at the edge of our driveway, and Emmett stands by while she has her bath, throwing dust every which direction and rolling around like a puppy. If he bathes he does it elsewhere, but he struts up and down saying, "Chuck, chuck, chuck," while she is busy with her toilette.

A few days ago they got split up somehow. Maud paced back and forth in front of the trailer screaming her head off, in great distress. She eventually flew to the top branches of the cherry tree at the front of the trailer and called and called. She was so upset she let me walk right up to her. She looked me straight in the eye and screamed, "EMMMM-ETTTTT???" After five or six minutes I heard his answering, "Chuck, chuck,". She flew from the tree to greet him and they had an emotional and noisy reunion.

So, I'm gossiping about the neighbours, but we do enjoy them. They eat us out of house and home but they are far better entertainment than a movie.

A Summer Garden

Ahhhh, summer has arrived. It's hot outside! How lovely! Until about 11:30, then it's just hot. After one day of real heat (it was 33.9 C/93F) today, we have caved. We will be shopping for an air conditioner tomorrow. It was at one point this after 95.7 inside. We are quite comfy with 85, but 95 is a bit more summer than we are prepared to cope with.

It probably wouldn't have gotten so warm inside but James came to warn us that he was spraying the trees to try and stave off an aphid infestation. We closed the trailer, packed a squealing, fighting Salvador into the truck and headed for the park by the river. Salvador moaned and squalled the entire five minute trip, and was scarely better once we were spread a quilt on the grass and settled in the shade. He panted and complained the entire time, as if being tortured.

After an hour we came home, and opened everything up, but by the the trailer was a little oven. It was too hot to cook and too hot even to be hungry. Tony had a slice of bread. I had a glass of soy milk. If it continues maybe we'll lose weight!



We ate our dinner at the picnic table last night, while Salvador lay in the grass enjoying the kind of bliss you rarely see other than in animals and small children. He took a real shine to the last folks parked in the spot beside us. If they weren't outside he would go to their door, knock with his paw and demand entrance!

He enjoyed a nap in their closet, and when he was ready to come home they carried him back as if he were King. Which he is of course.

He was confused when his friends moved on after a month and a new camper pulled in. He wanted to go visit them too, but they weren't cat people. No invitations to sleep in their closet, or even on their bike rack.

I went around day before yesterday and took flower pictures, which you may have noticed I am sharing with you. The poppies are about three feet tall and so brilliantly red that I think the pixels frizzled. The petunias are in my planters, the peonies are in a flower bed up front. There are lots more, but only so many per post.

Enjoy your walk through our flower garden!

The First 42 Years...

...have been an adventure. Forty-two years ago on a Thursday morning in Cook County Courthouse, Chicago Illinois, my dearly beloved and I were wed. We'd intended to be married the next Saturday, but the minister called to say that he would not be available. We went to the courthouse to get the license and decided we'd come back to the courthouse on Saturday to be married, but the clerk warned us that there would be a long wait on Saturday, and hinted that the judge was available right then.

So, with no to-do we exchanged our vows before a judge, and left the building to walk along the Chicago River to the car we'd borrowed to make the trip from the suburbs to the city. Tony asked if I felt married, and I said no.

We had to be at work at 2:30 and we didn't have any food in our new apartment, so we went grocery shopping. (We always say we spent our honeymoon at the Jewell Tea Grocery.) We rushed to the apartment, put the groceries away, and hurried to work. An inauspicious start to a long and happy partnership.

We have had a wonderful life together. We are wealthy in all that matters. We have wonderful children, and love each other with a depth we could not even begin to imagine the day we wed. Today we got the following message from our younger son Zak and his wife Mandy.

Hello My Dears,

The public domain has been much on my mind much as of late. My thoughts before drifting off to sleep are often on the debt owed to the future for the gifts bestowed by the past.

Today, it will have been 42 years that the two of you have been one - a gift to each other and to those who share your life with you.

The gifts that you have bestowed on us are many and, of them all, the gifts of being loved and of being able to love is by far the greatest.

Today, of all days, we hope that you are well and that you feel how much we love you both.

Zak & Mandy

p.s. Speaking of the public domain, here is a lovely illustration by Dulac from an English adaption of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. The poem that goes with the illustration is well-known:

Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough,
A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse - and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness -
And Wilderness is Paradise enow.

.. but another of Omar's quattrains serves just as well:

Yes, Loved One, when the Laughing Spring is blowing,
With Thee beside me and the Cup o’erflowing,
I pass the day upon this Waving Meadow,
And dream the while, no thought on Heaven bestowing.

On to the adventures of the next 42 years!

The Great Trek

Great Minds are asking, "Why aren't you writin' in yer blog, eh?"

Well two reasons, the first of which is that Blogger has been borked and Safari (MAC) users haven't been able to post for several days. The second reason - Did I say we were moving? I must have at some point. We were temporarily overwhelmed with moving. But we have now moved and resettled. We will forever call it The Great Trek.

The fact that we moved a total of about 60 feet doesn't diminish the fact that it was a move, and that we had to pack every loose item in the entire place, secure the cupboards and fridge, take down the TV, DVD player, CD player, router, modem, computers, and anything else that could become an unguided missile during movement.

The Internet connection had to be moved, which took three trips from the ISP. They were terrific, though we may not be as enthusiastic when we see their bill. The propane company had to come pick up the "pig" we rented through the winter. Sewer and electric lines had to be unhitched and stowed. Jacks, tow bars, chocks. The list seemed endless. But a week ago last Thursday Gary came to move us and by noon we were in our new spot and set up.

This spot is a bit of a pig in a poke. It's short, very awkwardly placed and difficult to get into. Gary could only pull us in so far with the truck. He then got a cable, went across to the other side of the hedge and winched us into position with the cable.

But, having said that, it's a lovely spot, with a large green lawn, four big cherry trees and a 10 foot tall hedgerow of cedar trees to the west. We have a lovely seating area, where we can take a book or the newspaper and read or simply enjoy the view. It's not nearly as exposed as our former site, and the grass is so much more pleasant than the gravel pad we'd sat on since last August.

I had already bought flower pots and once we were unpacked I went to the greenhouse about 600 feet down the highway and bought a bunch of flowering plants. Now we have a row of flower pots down the side of the Tinpalace. The fragrance is heavenly around sundown.

Tuesday we went to town and picked up our "Rubbermaid" garden shed. It's more of a glorified box than a shed, since it's only two feet deep and three feet high. But it will be a handy spot for my sewing machine and fabric, and odds and ends we want easy access to. It's tidy looking, which is what counts. Wednesday we emptied out the truck, moved the items we need to be able to get to easily into the shed, sorted out the stuff from the truck, threw away some and packed the rest into storage containers. Much tidier.

The bird feeder was moved, and the birds are slowing figuring out that the seed is here, and not there. But the majority are still scratching around in our old site, looking for a stray seed they may have missed. I guess they don't call them bird-brains for nothing.

Salvador is going wild. There's a cat next door. His name is Norman. Norman looks almost exactly like Salvador, except that he's half Sal's size. But the incomprehensible thing is that Norman is allowed to roam freely, which Salvador can't understand at all. He now thinks that he should be allowed to roam freely as well, which is not going to happen. Sal dashes from window to window, keeping an eye on Norman, bubbling with frustration. Sal is only allowed off-leash while we are in the yard with him, and if he puts a foot outside the boundary, back on the leash he goes. It's a cruel world for kitties who are held prisoner in their own homes!

The weather is perfect and we are living the life of Riley.

No Yellow Bird Day

I haven't seen the goldfinches in three or four days. They were at the feeder almost non-stop for two days then they disappeared. I suspect they were calorie-loading for the final leg of their journey north, where they will nest. I miss those bright yellow visitors, but I have pictures, and they will surely be back next spring.

What can one do? Write ad nauseam about the beauties of spring in the Okanagan until the tender reader wants to puke? Well, sure! Nothing like a good envy-induced barf to clear winter from the soul. (insert smiley face here)

It rained off an on yesterday, at times just pouring like you were standing under an open tap, other times it was a gentle mist. Cat was not impressed by the wet grass, but we did get a walk in while it was not pouring.

We had thunder and some impressive lightening but about an hour before sunset we had a break in the clouds, brilliant sun and a lovely rainbow.

It was a busy day. For two people purporting to be trying to live simply we seem to have to shop a lot. But a feller's gotta eat, and there are always a few things to pick up here and there. Enough to just wear you out by the time you get home.

Today is sunny and cloudy in turns but so far no rampant precipitation. Cat had a good long walk. He's a riot. Take one step toward the front of the trailer and he about breaks his neck getting to the door. Pats his leash, which hangs on a hook by the door, inserts claws into screen door and moans like he's dying. No mistaking what he wants. He's an excellent communicator.

No profound thoughts to share today. Oh but I did make a lovely soup, and I will share the recipe. I've started feeding the cat a raw food diet, which involves mixing a special enzyme and nutritional supplement powder to raw ground chicken. I use 200 grams of chicken to mix up four days worth of food for him, and we eat the rest, usually another 150 - 200 grams. This is how I used our portion of the ground chicken last week.

I call it:
Thai Chicken Soup

1 tbs oil
1/2 of a medium onion, diced
1 chicken breast cut into small pieces, or 200 grams ground chicken
2 small potatoes peeled and diced
2 carrots peeled and diced
1 tbs coconut cream (Indian foods section, comes in small packets about the size of a box of matches but half as thick. You could use 1/2 cup coconut milk as a sub)
1/2 tsp green chili chutney paste
water
salt to taste

Saute onion in olive oil, add chicken, potato and carrot, saute until chicken is no longer pink. Add water to cover ingredients, bring to boil, add coconut cream and green chili paste. Simmer until vegies are tender. Salt to taste. Makes two large servings.

Yellow Bird Day

It's such a beautiful day. The clouds occasionally drop a half dozen fat drops of water here and there, in between it's brilliant sunshine and soft, humid breezes. The air is filled with the fragrance of lilacs and a hundred other blossoming plants. I looked and where there were apricot blossoms a couple of weeks ago there are now bean-sized fuzzy green fruits, some still wearing petal collars.

I was outside washing some goo off the trailer, and heard a bright little song behind me in the "feeder" tree. I looked and there, only a few feet away, sat Mr. Goldfinch. He wasn't a bit shy, though he was a bit perturbed, as I hadn't yet filled the feeder tray, so I expect his song was actually a series of bird curses, complaints about the service. "Gimme dat seed!"

I went in, got a scoop of seed and filled the tray, and within a minute he was back. He didn't care that I was standing four feet from the feeder, and that I had a camera in hand. He was interested only in sunflower seeds, which he shells very adeptly with his beak and tongue.

I'd had the presence of mind to grab the camera while I got the seed, and thus have a series of yellow bird pictures to share. Oh but he is a beauty! What a cheeky Charlie he is. He couldn't help but put a bright spot in anyone's day.

Twenty Four and Rising

Degrees that is. I can still see snow on a nearby mountain top, but looks like warmer weather has officially arrived. I say that, knowing that tomorrow's forecast is for 11 degrees and rain. Well, I could do without the 11 degrees but we could use a good rain.

Yesterday I grabbed the camera and took this poor shot of one of our male American goldfinches at the feeder. It's taken through two panes of glass, so it looks a bit hazy.

The next blossoms in succession are arriving, as these apple blossoms will attest. The little peach trees are all but done, and beginning to fade, but it has been so windy I've never been able to get a picture of them while they were at their prime.

And now the lilacs are beginning to bloom. These are the deep purple variety I love so much. I just remembered that there are some deep purple irises in the front beds. I have to go out there and get a picture of those before they are finished.

We're packing up to move. Our books, CDs and DVDs are in boxes. The shelves are empty except for a few incidentals which can be put on the bunks at the last minute. I'm not sure how much more we can do until Mike comes to move us, and as of yet, we don't know when that will be. If we disappear from sight for a few days, it's because our cable internet connection will go down when we move. It has to be set up again in our new spot. That may take a few days.

New Visitors

The excitement for the day was the presence of two male American Goldfinches in the apple tree this morning. They are in breeding plumage; brilliant, glowing yellow, and are spectacular additions to the year's bird list.

June Callwood, National Treasure

June Callwood, Journalist, Activist, Feminist and advocate for society's poorest and most reviled, referred to widely as Canada's Conscience, died this morning at the age of 82.

I came to know of June when I arrived in Canada in 1971. By then she was not only one of the most prolific and versatile writers in the country but a social activist.

Her career spanned over a half a century. She'd worked at the Globe and Mail before having her first child, but in 1947 she took flying lessons from Violet Milstead, Canada's first woman bush pilot. She wrote a story about Milstead and sold it to Liberty magazine, which began her freelance writing career.

In the late 60's while covering the hippie movement in Toronto she noticed that the middle-class hippie kids went home to the comfort of their families, but those without support, "whose teeth were all rotting out of their heads and were shooting speed," were shunned by society.

In 1964 June was a founding member of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, a non-profit, non-government law-reform group devoted to defending civil liberties and human rights.


In 1968, while covering the police bust of a hippie gathering Callwood reprimanded a policeman for abusing a young boy. She was arrested and shoved into a packed paddy wagon, and spent the night standing in a filthy jail cell, where she couldn't sit because everything was covered in excrement. She was devastated. "In my generation you didn't get arrested unless you were an awful person."

She said afterwards "I thought, if that's how they treat a middle-class, respectable, decent housewife in her 40's, how are they treating the poor and powerless? That politicized me; that did it," says Callwood.

June was a doer, not just a talker. In 1973 she helped found Nellie's, a non-profit women's organization which helped women and children in crisis. In 1972 she founded Jessie's Centre for Teenagers, a drop-in centre for teenage mothers. In 1988 she helped found the first hospice in Canada to provide support and palliative care for people with HIV/AIDS. And in 1983 she helped found PEN Canada, a group of writers defending freedom of expression under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

At the age of 53 she became host of a CBC Television program called In Touch, a show about "empathy." She was at ease with her age and her stage in life. Even under the glare of the harsh TV lights, she refused to wear makeup, or get a professional stage persona "makeover". She was just herself, explaining that it was a part of her philosophy of being truthful

She went on to host many TV programs. My favorite was a series called, June Callwood's National Treasures where she interviewed Canadians who had made a difference. No fawner over celebrityhood, she talked to guests about the big questions, their purpose in life, their feelings about pain, bereavement, tragedy, faith, passion, and death. It was compelling TV, and none have done it so well as June.

June's capacity to empathize may have stemmed from the personal tragedies in her life, including her own depression, her husband's alcoholism, one son's muscular dystrophy and her youngest son Casey's death at age 20 after he was struck by a drunk driver.

Before Casey's death, she said she had a constant happy hum in her head. "I haven't had that since he was killed." His ashes are buried under the apple tree outside Callwood's home. Casey House, a Toronto hospice for people with AIDS, is named after her youngest son.

June was a passionate, compassionate individual who died of cancer this morning. She was not afraid of death. She told a Rabbi friend who was sitting with her shortly before her death that she had just dreamed that he had opened the gates of the park to let the children in, and the old people out.

She was an inspiration to me, and I am so grateful to have been able to know her, even at a distance, through a screen and her words on the page. We should all be so wise, so kind, as June Callwood.

Bird Brain Two

This time it is I who is the birdish-brained one. I was making dinner last evening when suddenly in the apple tree sat a beautiful sharp-shinned hawk! Quick, get the camera. I got off two shots before the hawk flew the coop. In the first it ducked its head behind a branch, in the second, the poor thing lost its head. I am reduced to using some one else's photo of the sharpie.

But other new sightings at the feeder, or nearby, in the last few days include:

A red-winged blackbird - love their song!

Several Cassin's Finches - hard to tell from the purples, but a little less red and a little different tail. This link has good drawings of Purples and house finches as well as Cassin's.

A Say's Phoebe who has staked out a nearby cedar tree as home territory and tells the world every morning.

A hummer - against the setting sun so I couldn't tell what kind but we have only the Rufous and Calliope, so I'm betting one of those. I will buy a feeder when we go to town next time.

And a little house finch who is vivid tangarine where the purple finch is red. Boy, he is bright. At one point there were hoary redpolls, purple finches, yellow warblers and the tangerine house finch, all on the tree or feeder at once. Looked like Christmas lights.

Wish I was a better foh-taw-graw-fer. I have never gotten a picture of the wee birds, but they are just too far away, even though they are only eight feet from the window.

Doing the Impossible

Out today to take photos of the many beautiful flowering trees and flowers. What a gorgeous day. A couple from Alaska pulled in beside us last night. He said they'd been out six weeks, up the California and Washington coasts, across the western states, and this was the first place they'd been tempted to stop and spend more than a day. The beauty of the valley is growing by the day as the cherry trees begin to bloom, magnolias bloom, forsythias glow, and the maples bloom. I'd never seen a maple tree bloom before. I got a good picture of the flowers.

The rest of the photos are ones I took as I strolled around the park this afternoon, including one of our neighbour Dave, who was here helping James ready the swimming pool for the season.

I've joined a "Tiny Homes" Forum on the web, and one of the first messages I got was in response to someone who is purportedly selling all her excess stuff and moving into a "tiny home". The response was, "Wait til she sells all her stuff and then finds out it's not possible to live in a small space - at least not a satisfactory one. I'm beginning to feel like I don't live in a free country." So at last we've done the impossible! I always said that if you want to do the impossible you just have to work a little harder.

It's certainly not possible to live satisfactorily in a tiny house if you insist on stuffing 2800 sq ft's worth of accumulation into it. But, shed the extra stuff and it's possible indeed.

The way we hang onto stuff you'd think it somehow shielded us from life's trials and tribs. But it doesn't. Piling up stuff we don't use or need is like hanging a millstone around our necks. We have to have buy or build extra rooms to house it in, then work extra hours to pay the rent or mortgage for the extra rooms to house the extra stuff we don't really need. This is not "freedom" but enslavement.

We buy things that catch our eye, or to ease anxiety. Why does spending money ease anxiety? Even the super-wealthy spend themselves into poverty, trying to buy peace of mind. Then, not surprisingly, all the claptrap we've bought brings us anxiety because we look at it and wonder why we bought it, or we hide it away, like someone who drinks secretly, we buy secretly and hide the evidence. We need to learn that buying and possessing doesn't bring peace of mind, even though every media message tells us we must buy to fit in, to be accepted, to be one of the gang, to be our true selves, to be loved, to be above the rest. Ads say, "Follow the crowd" or "Lead the way", because everyone does one or the other, or wants to.

Then there are those of us who buy because we are just plain daft and disorganized. All my life I've bought duplicates of items because I had no idea where the one I already had was. The theory is, "To find something you've lost simply buy a replacement".

I remember once, we needed to trim the goat's hooves and couldn't find the hoof knife. We tore barn and house apart, trying to find the knife. We finally gave up and drove the 40 miles to town to buy a new hoof knife. $1.98 for the knife, $5.00 for gas, even then, and half a day's time wasted.

On the way home Ian (eight or nine at the time) poked his hand in the space between the seat and back cushions in the back seat of the van. And pulled out the old hoof knife. bah humbug! I'm always too embarrassed to go back to the shop and say, "I found mine, can I return this?"

I needed the tweezers a couple of days ago and had misplaced them. But within a few hours I ran onto them again. Things don't have as much room to go astray here. And there's less to go astray to start with.

Perfection is not achieved by adding to and adding to. Perfection is achieved by taking away and taking away until you are down to the purest, most simple and most efficient. The beauty of the small. Or so I tell myself.



The Wild Wild Wind

What a beautiful day. This is one of the things I love most about Tinpalace; there are 14 windows and two skylights. We can throw them all open, and when we do we are as much outside as in. It's warm and the wind is wild, rattling the blinds and flapping the dishtowels on their peg. If you can buy a more exquisite joy then grab your pocketbook and rush to do it.

Outside the spring flowers are erupting into small volcanoes of colour. I took Salvador outside, but the wind was too much for him. He demanded that we go right back in, where he could lie on the cool bathroom floor and not have ruffled feathers.

After he was back in I took pictures, and will post a few, but the wind is so strong I couldn't get a clear picture of the barely open cherry blossoms. The branches are whipping back and forth so quickly the camera couldn't catch a clear picture. In their place I start with a picture of the quail in the apricot tree, taken at dusk a couple of days ago.

The cherry blossoms are just starting to open, so I have plenty of time to get a good picture. I did get a nice picture of what I think are pear blossoms, narcissus, daffodils, and one tiny blue flower on a creeping plant. The blue hyacinth was dancing with the wind as well, so she's a little blurred. When you can get back a foot or more movement ceases to be a problem, but with the three or four inch distance you have from these tiny flowers, the least shiver destroys your focus. We have some new bird arrivals. I saw a cedar waxwing yesterday. I love the sleekness of their feathers. Hard to describe the almost metallic quality of their grey gown, with its yellow-apricot breast and head with its tuft of feathers is very distinctive. It's little black eye mask cannot disguise its identity.

The rock doves are back. I haven't seen them, but I have heard them cooing back and forth. And speaking of hearing but not seeing, between a snoring husband on one side and a snoring cat on the other, about 2:00 am a couple of nights ago I heard a boreal owl very close at hand. He was probably in the apricot tree just outside. And from only a slightly longer distance the booming hoot of a great grey owl. Just one series of three or four hoots, each hoot lower than the last.

Yesterday a trio of crows mobbed the neighborhood goshawk, who was out looking for an afternoon snack no doubt. This time it was the female, probably the mate of the hawk I saw at such close range last fall.

We took the skirt off the trailer yesterday and discovered that something had drug a quail under the trailer and eaten everything but piles of feathers and just enough skin to make a terrible stink. Could have been anything but was probably the cat that roamed the park through the winter. Fat and well-cared for, wearing a collar, but still not averse to a nice meal of quail if presented with the opportunity. That's reason enough to keep a cat indoors.

We talked to Zak and Mandy last night. They have acquired a new pet, courtesy of their cat Roxanne. It is a teeny house mouse. Now you come down off that chair this instant! Zak caught the mouse, which he is thinking of naming "Dog", because when he was a year old he went through a phase of calling all animals "mouse". We got an enormous puppy, a Mastiff cross, which Zak took one look at and cooed, "Oh, MOUSE!" And "Mouse" he became, all 150 lbs of him. Now, a mouse who weighs less than a penny is in danger of being called "Dog".

But said Mouse is providing a good deal of entertainment as it demonstrates the cleverness of its kind. I love my kids. Who else would catch a mouse by the tail and make a pet of it? (Besides their mother?)

Thievery, Plain and Simple

I admit to having stolen the photo featured in this post. It was taken by Lin Martinson and is featured on a new website about Oliver. Oliver is down there somewhere, in the middle of all those rocks. I think it's the white area. But the photo is spectacular and reminds me of Monument Valley, where I spent several of my childhood years. The landscape here isn't really like Monument Valley, it's much more like the high desert country of northern New Mexico and Arizona, where I also spent a good deal of time as a child.

It was 24.4 degrees C today (75.9 degrees F). Our first really warm day of the season. It would have been blissfully perfect had it not been for Mr. Organics next door, who spent a second day spreading fish meal joy throughout the neighborhood. At least the wind was not carrying it right into our faces most of the day, though by dinner time I had a stinker of a headache from the stench. Hopefully he will have finished with his soil enrichment program, or the tractor will blow a gasket before I do.

Put Yer Shoes Back On!

Phew! The farmer next door was busy fertilizing his fields today. Rumbing across the field on his tractor, towing a spreader filled with dried fish emulsion. Okay, just in case that penny didn't drop - fish emulsion - rotted fish heads, guts, fins, etc. processed into a slurry, dried and then shipped to farmers who wait for a day when the wind is blowing away from their house.

The clouds of stink began to drift across us at about 1:00 pm and by 2:00 we had found several reasons why we had to go to town. Gag gag.

By the time we got home at 4:00 he'd finished spreading, so there were no clouds of rotted fish blowing through the windows, but the "smelody" certainly lingers on. Enough to make your eyes burn and your stomach turn.

Of course the cat insisted on a long walk as soon as we got home. He doesn't mind the smell.

I think I'm gonna be sick now.

Bird Brains

The quail kept coming around the end of the Tinpalace with what looked like popcorn in their beaks, which they then proceeded to eat, after playing a bit of "keep-away" between them. I couldn't figure out where they were getting the popcorn. We'd fed them some in the winter, and they loved it, but we've not even popped corn in weeks.

Then I looked out the window above Tony's bunk. The apricot tree, now with half the buds open and in resplendent bloom, was also full of quail. Quail, busy pulling off and eating buds and blossoms. There goes the apricot crop. :(

The quail are beginning to pair up. Let a single bird come too close to a paired couple and there's hell to pay. Every quail views his neighbour with suspicion. They still move in coveys, but are more scattered, a pair here, a pair ten feet away. Only late in the day do they settle down and run in the usual herd.

The male finches are almost neon red in color this last week or two. Spring has ramped the power up in their marketing campaign. Out the front, where the feeder hangs, a pair of rosy finches are well and truly in love. She feeds him, then he feeds her. They rub beaks and cuddle. He gets another sunflower seed from the feeder, shells it and feeds it to her. She does the same. Ahhhhh, young love, or at least young hormones.....

The Flicker has found a mate and is proclaiming both his love and his territorial imperative by drumming on the metal transformer box high on the power pole. He's quite the drummer. Somewhere in a garage some pimply teenaged boy would give his D grade in English to be able to drum like that.

A pair of English sparrows were courting in the apricot tree mid-day yesterday. He was doing his, "I'm much cute than those losers over there," dance. Male English sparrows impress the girls by lifting their wings up at the shoulder, canting the tips down slightly, and shaking all over like the King of Rock 'n Roll - while singing up a storm. His female admirer seemed pretty taken with him, for when another female landed on a nearby branch the first female went after her like a housewife with a broom goes after a rat in the cellar.

Competition for girlfriends is obviously pretty fierce. Gangs of male sparrows square off and have it it like barroom brawlers, smacking each other with their wings, kicking, pecking, swearing in sparrow and generally causing a ruckus. Four or five will get into a fight in a tree and fall right out onto the ground and roll around in a ball of screaming flapping feathers, just whaling the daylights out of each other.

Somebody forgot to tell them that we have romanticized their reproductive drive and we expect them to behave in a civilized and polite way. In other words we want to see lovebirds in the spring, not Termifeather III.

Every Blossom Has its Bee

With the temperatures in the high 60s (F) 18-19 C the last two days, and a spattering of rain overnight, the gnarled old apricot tree behind the Tinpalace is exploding into bloom. The fat rose-tinged buds have been ever so slowing swelling. Just before dark last night we looked and counted maybe a half dozen open blossoms. This morning at least a quarter of the buds have opened.

The bees have taken notice. There are as many bees as blooms. They hover in a whirring buzzing cloud, happily dipping into the embrace of the blossoms. They took no notice whatsoever of me as I maneuvered among the branches looking for a good angle for my photographs.

It's migration time. Here that means exodus as snowbirds head home. Our neighbours Bill and Ruth were Ontario-bound this morning shortly after six. Ron and Yvonne weren't on the way until after lunch, but have been hugged and waved off. Des and Carol, Mary Jean and Marcel will be on the way in the next 24 hours. Others will be leaving over the next couple of weeks. We seem to be the only ones who plan to stay in Oliver over the summer.

But we will be moving too, more on that later. For now I've started packing our winter clothes. Over the next week we'll get the skirting off the trailer, and pack up all the winter-related gear.

Right now I am just enjoying watching the blossoms unfold. I feel sorry that our friends have left before the spring show. Evidently most years the trees have bloomed by now, but spring is late this year.

Salvador is restless, begging to go out, so I will post this and go be a good cat's Mama.

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf,
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
~ Robert Frost

The Plate Runneth Over

We had a lovely dinner with the other snowbirds last evening. The group was smaller than the Christmas group, which included quite a few family members and friends. Last night it was just the "birds". I haven't counted, but 25 -30 people? Mostly couple with a few singletons in the group.

The food was divine, as it usually is at any of our potlucks. We had a couple of roasted turkeys and the requisite stuffing and gravy. Joy brought two kinds of cabbage rolls, one of my favorite dishes, and someone brought rutabagas which for my money are one of nature's perfect foods. Sometimes it's the simplest foods, done to perfection, which are the most sublime. Our neighbour Yvonne simply cut up potatoes, dressed them with oil and herbs and roasted them. They were scrumptious. By request I made the southern sweet potato dish I made a Christmas. It was pretty, coming out of the oven with the marshmallows browned over the top. Jim said it was too pretty to eat, but that didn't seem to slow anyone down once we hit the table.

We had a really nice time, lingering after the meal to visit and enjoy each other's company. This is a good group, congenial and cheerful, always ready to laugh at the teasing which goes on between us.

The season is drawing to a close as the grass begins to green on the hills above us. Several couples will be pulling out in the next few days, and more will leave at the end of the month. By the end of April most everyone will have gone home, or at least moved on to their summer spots. Tourist season will have begun in the Okanagan, though as someone in town asked recently, "Why do we call it tourist season if we can't shoot at them?"

Today the sun is shining, and I'm looking forward to going out and trying to capture some of the budding newness of spring. Hopefully I'll have something to share later on.

Royal Flush

Toilets in an RV are different than yer house toilet. For one thing they only use a tiny amount of water. I haven't yet figured out why RV-style toilet mechanisms haven't been adopted by the "greenies" as the ultimate low-water use toidy.

Be that as it may, the 35-year-old avocado green toilet in the Tinpalace's bathroom finally kicked up daisies after a long and successful run. (no pun intended) About ten days ago the trap mechanism failed, leaving the trap open by about 1/2" all the time. Surprisingly this didn't smell the way we thought it would, or else we have become entirely insensate to odours after spending a winter with a 23 pound cat, his litter box and two fully functioning humans in a 7'6" x 21' space.

We called Gary, the much-relied on RV repairman for this end of the valley. He took a look and made a phone call which apparently amused an RV parts supplier to no end. Surprisingly there were no replacement parts available for 35-year-old avocado green toilets, though he found it funny that we should ask.

This toilet has caused us some degree of distraction over the months. Tony has a bleeding problem, so we tend to keep an eye on such things as the colour of his wee-wee, and that is absolutely impossible in a green toilet.

I remember years ago, when our family doctor and his wife were very good friends. We were at their house for dinner and afterwards toured their large garden. We left laden with edible greenery. I cooked some of them for dinner the next night. When Tony got up at 6:00 the next morning he produced shocking bloody urine. He called our friend the doctor, who asked through a mouthful of toast if we'd enjoyed the beets he gave us.

Tony was a bit taken aback, "bleeding" as he was, to be asked about his enjoyment of a root vegetable, but he stammered that, yes, we'd eaten them the evening before and, thank you, they were delicious. "Good," the doctor said, slurping away at his orange juice, "you're peeing beet pigment, go drink some water and let me get to the office."

Today Gary brought a lovely white toilet and installed it in our teeny bathroom. I never thought I'd miss the green one. Believe me, I don't.

Let's See Some Action With That Broom!

Housecleaning Time! And I don't mean the Tinpalace. The TP has gotten a good interior clean in the last couple of days, as I washed down the cabinetry and appliances, washed down the bathroom, and vacuumed or cleaned all the horizontal surfaces.

What needed an application of aggressive housekeeping was the Baby Mac. It's been sweating and groaning for some time now, but when the fan kicked on today after I'd just been sending mail I knew something was amiss.

I rolled it around in my wee brain while we shopped and ran errands. I had this vague sense that I knew what was likely to be wrong, but just couldn't quite recall it. It finally came to me tonight, ten minutes after I turned out the light and slid into my sleeping bag.

It's not unusual for me to get from 50 - 75 e-mails a day, legitimate e-mails, not counting the ones which promise me a larger you-know-what, super miracle drugs, millions of Kenyan dollars and lottery winnings. And I rarely delete a legitimate e-mail because I frequently find myself needing to refer back to one... now when was that order shipped, what did he say about his blood pressure, who was my third great-grandfather's elder brother's youngest son's wife and who sent me that name, etc. etc.

The upshot was that I had over 5000 e-mails, many with attachments, in my in box. Shame shame. And I can't remember when I last cleared my cache, and the cookie file is a couple of months old. I also still have old e-mail accounts I haven't used since we left Calgary. They sit and spin endlessly trying to pick up mail that isn't there. I'm a baaaaaadddd girl. I even need to go through and clear out the bookmarks I no longer use. In for a penny, in for a pound.

Baby Mac needed a digital broom! I backed up the mail to a CD, deleted the old accounts, cleared the cache and cookies and trimmed the bookmarks and we'll see if the poor Bebe' is less stressed.

Now the cat is complaining loudly that I'm keeping him from being able to see out the window. The view is better when it's dark inside. Best close this down and make him happy.

Curry Up!

Well, finally!

I've been trying to post a picture of the curry we had for dinner on Wednesday since Wednesday! Blogger has evidently been having indigestion. Every time I fed it my curry picture it burped and said, "No, thank you."

Anyway, this was delish. I changed the recipe slightly from the one posted a few days ago. I substituted firm "silken" tofu for the chicken and added whole almonds for protein, calcium, crunch and a bit of contrast in colour. (Four c's in a row. I ought to do better.)

A la David Suzuki's Nature Challenge we are trying to reduce the animal protein in our diet and eat vegie dishes more often. We were vegetarians for years, don't know why we fell off that wagon, except that we were living in a remote community where it was very difficult to get fresh food. We got out of the habit and here we are many pounds later with our arteries probably clogged with beef fat and egg yolks.

It's a grey, cool day but I got a kick out of watching a male sparrow near the brush pile. He had grabbed a fine root which was protruding from the ground about five or six inches. The sparrow was holding the end of the root in his little black beak and running around the attachment point in an orbit, like a dog tied to a pole runs a circle at the end of its leash. He had several female observers so maybe it was a male ego thing. Maybe the root looked like prime nesting material, or maybe he was just playful. But it sure looked silly.

Prime Real Estate...

James has now finished trimming the 90 fruit trees in the park. He could be seen up a ladder with a saw until black dark every night for weeks. It was cold, windy and often wet. Have to admire his cheerfulness. I'd have been snapping the heads off baby bunnies, but he was his usual cheeky, jovial self, even when he was so tired he could hardly put one foot in front of the other.

What he ended up with was several huge piles of branches, from twigs to hulking big branches. Two of these piles are in the empty spot adjacent to the Tinpalace and we have been having a ball watching the birdlife that has sprung up in and around them. The one pictured is 12 -14 feet long and four feet high.

Hawks and owls are the major predators of small birds here, and these threats come from overhead. So any cover is obviously coveted real-estate with the "snack-sized" bird crowd. These brush-piles are the equivalent of a Malibu penthouse with a view of Niagara Falls to the local featherites.

The quail dash beneath the pile and peer out like anxious old ladies. The sparrows and finches perch on top, or inside. They flow to the other side of the pile as you walk past, but don't take flight unless you get too close. (I now understand where the term "flighty" comes from.)

The piles are close enough to us for the birds to make a quick raid on the feeder, grab a seed or peanut, and retreat to enjoy their meal in peace. They are also a great spot to fight, court and (ahem) make a little bird whoopee. Male sparrows are always contentious, right now they are downright belligerent! Spring is obviously just around the corner.

But what's most fun to watch is the sparrows taking baths in the sandy soil next to the pile. At first they left little brush marks on the sand, but day by day bathing "holes" have grown, eroded by the vigorous flapping and rolling that sand bathing entails.

The holes are now so deep that the sparrow jumps in and totally disappears. You see wing tips blurring at the top of the hole. Sand flies. The sparrow jumps out, fresh and sandy clean, and the next guy in line jumps in. (Yes, they actually line up to have a turn!)

It's supposed to rain later today so I ran out and took a couple of photos of the bath holes. Yesterday they looked like the top section of a snow angel, today the wings are less apparent, and the holes are more oval in shape.

This is way better than the movies.

Spinach Paneer

Popeye would have thought he'd died and gone to heaven!

Ingredients:
500 gms Fresh Spinach
100 gms Paneer (1 recipe, see previous post on how to make paneer)
1 tbs oil
2 Onions, diced
1 package Indian Chicken Curry Paste

Method:
Clean and wash spinach.
Cook the spinach in a small amount of water and allow to cool.
Put spinach through food processor and reduce to puree
Heat the oil in a large non-stick skillet
Add the onions and cook till golden brown.
Add curry spices and cook for a minute.
Add the spinach and a little water if needed and cook for 4-5 minutes.
Cut paneer into pieces, add to the spinach and cook until done.

Serve hot.

Way to Gain Weight

I've been cooking Indian foods the last couple of weeks, and SMM asked for recipes and pictures. Well, we ate it, so the pictures will have to wait until later in the week, but I can post pictures of a couple of ingredients, including the box of creamed coconut. The cell isn't part of the ingredients, just there for scale.

Indian Chicken Curry

Ingredients:

1 packet Indian chicken curry spice paste
1 tbs vegetable oil
1 large onion chopped
2 potatoes, cubed
1 chicken breast, cut in pieces
50 gram coconut cream paste, mixed into 2 cups water
1/2 cup green peas

4 cups cooked basamati rice

Method:
Heat oil in large non-stick skillet, add spice paste and cook for 30 seconds. Add onion, potatoes and chicken, stir fry for three minutes. Lower heat and add coconut milk. Bring to a boil. Cover and simmer for 25 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add peas for the last five minutes.

Serve over rice.

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Paneer is a soft cheese which is used in many Indian dishes. You can't buy it in the market here, so you have to make it yourself. It's easy.

Paneer

2 litres of 2% milk
3 Tbsp white vinegar

Bring milk to a simmer in a glass or stainless steel pan. When the milk begins to boil turn off heat and stir in the vinegar with a wooden spoon or rubber spatula. Allow to sit for 30 minutes. Lift curds from the pan with a slotted spoon and place in a mold lined with several layers of clean cheesecloth. The "mold" can be any container which will allow liquid to drain from the paneer. I use a small plastic basket. You can catch the liquid (called whey) and use it as a soup base, or sweeten it slightly and drink it.

When the curds are all ladled into the mold cover flip the cheesecloth over the top of the paneer and weight it down. I used two square plastic food containers filled with water, with the lids on for weights. Let the paneer sit for 30 minutes, then peel cheesecloth away and wrap the paneer in plastic wrap. It will keep about a week in a closed container in the fridge.

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I'll add some paneer recipes later

Happy! Happy! Joy! Joy!

Dare I say it? The sun is shining!! Okay, forgive me for being a bit excitable over such a simple thing, but this old girl grew up in the sunny southwest, where clouds were a novelty.

Much to rejoice about at the moment. I am not in pain, well, not much pain. I seem to always have some nagging muscles, cranky bones, etc. but the migraine that pounded away at my head for the last week was gone when I got up yesterday morning, and I got to do something really fun.

A very nice woman came in with a cartload of supplies to show "us girls" how to make our own greeting cards. Since I am a sort of unfocused but enthusiastic crafter I had been looking forward to this day since we planned it.

And it was fun. She had a huge stock of all kinds of papers, new and recycled, scissors that cut fancy edges and corners, all kinds of lettering, from foam ones that stuck on to stamps with different messages. Glitter pens, coloured chalks, ribbons, flowers, buttons, photos, shapes and fabric trims. She had a stack of stuff and we had a ball making our cards.

My neighbour Helen made cards for her little granddaughters who have the unusual names of Fenya and Glorianna and can never find the "My Name" doo-dads and sparkly things little girls love. Helen was so much fun to watch as she made her cards. I enjoyed her delight as much as my own. She made some really pretty cards too.

We started at 10:00 and went until 2:00 so we had a pot-luck lunch. I'll tell you, these gals do know how to cook! My next-door neighbour Ruth brought a scrumptious apple crumble. It would have been ill-mannered to run off with it, hide under a table and eat the whole thing by myself, so I restrained myself, but only with difficulty.

Well, the sun is inviting me outside, so I will wake the sleeping cat and take him for a walk.

The Speed of Green

Yesterday we received the first copy of a year's subscription to ReadyMade Magazine, a gift from Zak and Mandy. They obviously know us well. :)

James or Cathy kindly deliver mail too large to fit into our post box. When James brought ReadyMade to the door yesterday he admitted lingering on the way to make a quick assessment of its articles and was as excited as we were by its contents. Guess we'll have to share our copy with them once we've scoured every word several times.

The entire premise of this neat little magazine is reuse, recycle, and green it up. With the continuing media coverage (at last!) over climate change, and some kind of "green project" being discussed everywhere you turn I got to thinking about the evolution of the green movement itself.

I was in high school when I read Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. Carson could be called the Mother of the green movement, because she was the first to recognize and publicize the harmful effects of DDT, which was used everywhere without the slightest caution by the 1940s. Tony's family lived in North Africa when he was a small boy. His mother said she (and all her European friends) regularly dusted DDT into their bedding, clothing, drawers, kitchen drawers, along every baseboard. About the only place they didn't deliberately add it was to their food.

When I read Silent Spring I felt despair, deep deep despair. I spent a goodly part of my childhood as free as a colt, poking along stream beds, lying flat on my belly peering into pools, wading through meadows chest deep in grass, curled up in or under a tree, laying against sun-warmed rocks. I felt a part of all I explored, as much as a creature of nature as the leaves, fish and animals. I couldn't bear the idea that we were doing them harm.

Reading The Silent Spring made me green, but I didn't realize it at the time. I was never a hippie. While the hippies danced on the streets of San Francisco, shared their joints (and their bacteria) I married, worked, and had a little baby boy who was (and remains) one of the lights of my life. I remember a particular moment. Ian was perhaps six or seven months old. He was damp and sweet from the bath and when I toweled him off and picked him up he threw his little arm around my neck and laid his head on my shoulder and just relaxed totally into my arms. I thought that if I lived 100 years I'd never ever experience again the intensity of happiness I felt at that moment. I have of course, overall I have had a very happy life, but such moments of pure unallied joy don't come often.

My generation has largely sold out. Many feel they can acquire their way to happiness and contentment and have gone about trying to do so. I can tell them that it isn't true, and unbridled acquisition carries a huge price tag. When someone says, "I gave the earth for XXXX", it's often more true than they realize.

It's taken 40+ years for the message of The Silent Spring to finally filter into the consciousness of perhaps half the population. But the green consciousness finally has powerful allies. The greening of the First World has begun despite the resistance of politicians like George W. Bush and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, both under the thumb of oil and gas interests. Both say we can't meet Kyoto targets, while the City government of Toronto, Canada's largest city, has already met and far exceeded the Kyoto target by reducing their greenhouse emissions well below the 1990 levels.

Within a generation Green will be the only acceptable way to be. Perhaps we will rethink our mass consumerism and materialistic standards and realize that we do not own the earth, we are only a part of the symbiotic relationship all creatures have worked out together over millions of years. Moments of pure joy, for all creatures, can continue.

Dripping and Ripping

You know how it is. You iz too tired to even wiggle (which I am) and disaster overtakes everything. Let me back up.

Ian and Julie arrived Sunday evening. We were really looking forward to spending time together, and we did have fun. We ate like piggies, we shopped, we laughed ourselves breathless. We took some pictures....

We'd asked Ian to buy us a dehumidifier in Calgary, since we couldn't find one here, and we were sorely in need of a good dry-out. So they brought a dehumidifier which has turned out to be a godsend in more ways than one.

We set it up and turned it on about 10:30 Monday night and it pulled about 15 pints of water from the air by Tuesday evening. The perpetual film of water on the inside of our windows has disappeared, and I no longer have to towel out the window tracks two or three times a day to keep the water in them from overflowing, or worse, leaking into the wall beneath.

We'd had a couple of busy days before Ian and Julie arrived, shopping, and running a list of errands one day and doing half a dozen loads of laundry the next. The two days they were here were busy as well, so by the time they left Tuesday morning I was very much in need of a rest.

Unfortunately I got up yesterday morning to a flood in the kitchen. Tony went into our wee bathroom to have his shower and left the water running in the kitchen sink. I think I mentioned before that our fourth pressure regulator had failed within a couple of days of installation. That meant until we replaced it we had to leave a faucet dripping to keep the pressure from building up in the pipes.

So, that's what happened this time. Tony left a drip in the kitchen sink so he could turn off the water in the bathroom between applying soap and rinsing, and the stream appears to have deflected along a spoon in a bowl and instead of going into the sink, went onto the counter, onto the carpet, into the cupboards...

We had to unload the cupboards, throw away some very soaked paper products, mop up the water, dry the counter, and soak up as much of the water from the carpet as a monster bath towel would hold. Thank heavens for the dehumidifier! It's busy pulling water from the carpet, as well as the air. I shudder to think how long it would have taken to dry otherwise. Maybe by Mid-Molduary.

After all that I had to go to town for a doctor's appt., grocery shop (why do we eat so much?) and do some other errands. I came back thoroughly pooped.

Ian and Julie had their own kind of disaster in the form of a prolonged trip home. Roger's Pass was closed due to avalanches, so they had to turn around and go back to Revelstoke to spend the night. The road was still treacherous the next morning, and about 30 miles short of Calgary a traffic accident closed the highway so they had to backtrack and take the old two-lane highway into the city. What should have taken 10 hours turned into a 36 hour ordeal.

The Tinpalace is officially a shambles. Tony spilled bird seed on the floor while filling the container yesterday, I haven't washed dishes since yesterday's breakfast, and computer bits are strung everywhere. Ian also brought Tony's big old desk Mac. Since Tony nearly killed my laptop I have beaten him with a hot poker every time he even looked like he wanted to use the Baby Mac. We left his old Mac behind because it takes up so much room, but I decided it was no sacrifice not to be able to use the table if it makes him happy and keeps his hands off my laptop. Baby Mac is no longer new, and was the smallest, cheapest model they made when I bought it, but I keep my research on it and the thought of losing even a day of that gives me the willies.

Though I can hardly wiggle I looked at the drooping paper on the back ceiling this morning and something snapped. I got up on the bunks and ripped all that paper down. I'll paint the ceiling this summer. I don't know where I got the energy, and for the rest of the day I will probably only get up from my bunk to eat and well.... go to the one room in the Tinpalace that has a door. But that's okay. I accomplished something, even if it wasn't what needed doing worst.

Still (Watching) Dancing After All These Years

It is 12.9 C (55 F) degrees and sunny outside!!! Wooooohoooo!!!

Yesterday in about three degrees and with heavily overcast skies I went big grocery shopping, to the pharm, and the PO, so today I weakly. I will overcome and take the cat outside for a good walk! Just gimme a minute.

I've been sitting here watching the local Oliver channel (18), which was running their broadcast of the weekly Oliver Senior's Centre Dance. Last week over 200 seniors attended. Some of them dance like me, stumble, plod - plod - plod, in no particular rhythm, but many of them dance beautifully, with lots of energy, bounce, fancy footwork and precision. The idea is to have a good time, socialize and it looks like dern good exercise too.

The band may not be world-class, and the songs they play may have somewhat indeterminate and wandering melodies, but they have a good beat and you can obviously dance to them! I enjoy watching them all enjoy themselves so much.

But it suddenly struck me funny that, here I sit at 61, watching folks mostly a few years older than myself, dance on television. Fifty or so years ago I was doing the same thing, hurrying home every day after school to watch Dick Clark's American Bandstand, where kids a few years older than myself danced round and round and round...

The more things change the more they stay the same.

Tickety-Boo

It was an adventurous sort of day. Remember back, some weeks ago I landed in the ER? The doctor on call (who has become our new family doctor) was suitably horrified by my wonky EKG which often sends ER personnel into a tailspin. So, today we went off to Penticton so I could visit a cardiologist (heart specialist) and have some appropriate tests done.

The last few days have been three or four degrees above freezing, so the ice and snow we've had on the ground since November has finally almost disappeared, on the valley floor anyway. The mud is drying up and the trees and bushes are sending up tender new growth in a rainbow of colours.

Penticton is 30 miles (43 km) from Oliver, and all along the route we saw the delicate golden green of new willow fronds, rosy-coloured shoots in the orchards so thick that they looked like pink smoke, and along creek beds the cranberry glow of coral dogwood branches. Not a leaf in sight, though the grass in the occasional vineyard or field is greening up.

It was a pleasant drive, if you ignore the 18-wheeler that sat on my back bumper at 90 km an hour in the long no passing section. I was doing over the limit which was not enough for him. We finally hit a wider spot, I pulled to the shoulder and let him fly past, where he sat in front of me, going no faster than I had been, until we came to the government way station and he was forced to pull off the road to weigh his load.

We found the hospital easily. The young cardiologist was very pleasant, and I passed the BP test 110/80, aced the echocardiogram, and managed five minutes on the devil mill. I could have gone ten minutes if need be, at a moderate speed. But when they turned it to "roadrunner" my legs quickly forgot how to work my feet.

The cardiologist asked, "What do you mean you are having trouble making your legs work?"

"I can't coordinate them this quickly! They simply don't work this fast. I sort of have to think about walking anyway and I can't think this fast!"

He pushed me to keep at it 20 seconds more, which I did by hanging onto the bar and supporting part of my weight on my arms. But it was my legs and not my heart that stopped my walk.

My heart is fine, according to him. Like I said, I have a wonky EKG and when my potassium gets low my heart muscle complains that it isn't getting the blood it needs. I have no chest pain with exercise under normal conditions.

Once I was finished we found a restaurant which had been recommended and we had lunch. Then we retraced our steps, enjoying the scenery in reverse. I think my arms will be sore tomorrow but the drive wasn't hard.

The cat wasn't even upset when we got back, which he usually is when we leave him for any length of time. He probably slept the whole time.

Mud Time

The water for which we may have to look
In summer with a witching-wand,
In every wheelrut's now a brook,
In every print of hoof a pond.
Be glad of water, but don't forget
The lurking frost in the earth beneath
That will steal forth after the sun is set
And show on the water its crystal teeth.

Two Tramps in Mud Time; Robert Frost

The snow lies in scattered, broken patches, holding on as if hoping that another blast of winter will come and stop its migration to mud. In between the snow patches are the puddles. At night they freeze up, but it doesn't take much warmth to dissolve the ice.

The cat walks as if he's walking on broken glass. He doesn't stay outside more than 10 minutes, even though it's not cold. He hasn't yet learned to tolerate wet paws. I stump around with great clumps of mud hanging off my shoes. You'd think gravel wouldn't make a good mud, but it has excellent adhesion and more comes in the door than I am prepared to welcome.

Mat count has reached four. A rubber-backed felty thing started out as the principal mat, laid outside the door, but soon sank beneath the responsibility. A black rubber thing was put on top of the grey felty one. The black rubber has lots of intersecting rings, to scrape the shoe soles on. Both disappeared beneath the snow for weeks.

Mat three is ugly and brown, rubber backed, lying inside the door. A drip-catcher, foot stomper mat, bought because it was small enough to fit in the entrance without folding, stapling or mutilating.

Mat four is a ridiculous thing I bought in a moment of nostalgic insanity because we had one like it when I was a small child. It's pale blue and has heavy twists of cotton cording looped into the backing. It shows every spot and while it's washable it takes an hour ($4.00 worth of quarters) to damp dry in the big commercial dryer at the laundromat. It lays beyond mat three, to catch more drips. I've given up on keeping it spot-free and will not wash the dam thing again until summer, when I can hang it on the line, or lay it on the picnic table, to dry.

Despite the sloppy conditions and general muckiness, this is the way the earth forces winter out of its den. Flood it out so spring can move in and coax every living thing awake. Mud time is a time for celebration. When mud time comes spring is never more than a short step behind.

Holy Man

Word spread across the countryside about a wise Holy Man who lived in a small house atop the mountain. A man from the village decided to make the long and difficult journey to visit him. When he arrived at the house, he saw an old servant inside. "I would like to see the Holy Man," he said to the servant.

The servant smiled and led him inside. As they walked through the house, the man from the village looked eagerly around the house, anticipating his encounter with the Holy Man. Before he knew it, he had been led to the back door and escorted outside. He stopped and turned to the servant, "But I want to see the Holy Man!"

"You already have," said the old man. "Everyone you may meet in life, even if they appear plain and insignificant, see each of them as a Holy Man. If you do this, then whatever problem you brought here today will be solved."

Sun, Sleep and Snow

I'm going to take a break from researching and writing stuff that hurts the brain. I'm going to wager, tender reader, that as long as it doesn't affect you you don't give a flying flip that metabolic acidosis is defined as a primary decrease in serum HCO3- concentration and, in its pure form, manifests as acidemia (pH <7.40) and can be caused by a shift of hydrogen ions into the intracellular space during hypokalemia. No, I didn't think so.

So, I'll talk about everything in general. It's 3:30 in the afternoon and the sun has come out for the first time in many days. The warmth spills in the windows and makes it hard to see the computer screen, so I got Tony's ball cap and put it on. I look like a real home boy now.

On the 30th we celebrated Tony's 66th birthday by having lunch at the local Indian restaurant, called appropriately enough Best of India.

Here's a picture of the birthday boy, who always seems to take a good picture, but then he is awfully cute. It was taken at the Park's Christmas dinner by Mandy and Zak's friend Racheal Ashe who came to Oliver with them for Christmas week.

She took a picture of me too, but the camera doesn't like me as much as it does my husband. I always wince when I see pictures of myself. Oh, well. You should be battle-hardened, having seen the odd photo of me before.


Now, where was I? Oh, yes, dreaming of eating chicken curry again! The Indian restaurant glows with the warm, vibrant (but not garish) colours of the Indian subcontinent, raspberry, lime, green and apricot. Gorgeous! There's a border of blue elephants which marches around the dining room. The owners are ever so nice. They are a handsome middle-aged couple who have been in Canada for 13 years. Their son has joined the RCMP and their daughter is a nurse, and like all parents everywhere they are proud as can be of their children.

We enjoyed their incredibly delicious food and the excellent conversation. We will go back. Next time I will take my camera. If you come to Oliver be sure to visit Best of India on Main Street (highway 97), across from the movie theatre.

I don't know why but I'm going through a phase where I wake up anywhere from 2:00 to 5:00 am and can't go back to sleep. Thankfully Tony sleeps as if he's been brought down with a tranquilizer dart, so I can turn on my light and read, watch a video (with the headphones in) or get the laptop, write, listen to music or surf without waking him.

I have looked up some old friends and acquaintances, read up on questions I've had for years and learned that Wikibooks has some great on-line material.

Macs have this great "thing", I don't know the name for it. You click the little icon while you are listening to music and a screen comes up which generates all kinds of colorful fractal-like images, generated by the music. It's rather like a digital kalediscope and soothingly mindless and hypnotic when you are too tired to think, write, read or surf.

Red Chief was shredding the place and being generally naughty, so I forced him outside for a walk in the early afternoon. It was not cold, but we had snow yesterday and he hates getting his paws wet. We stuck to the melted spots as much as possible, but there were places where I had to drag him across the snow. At one point he climbed a tree and growled at me when I suggested we move on.

I picked up some apricot tree trimmings, as James is pruning trees right now. This should have been done a month ago, as there is new growth and green, swelling buds on the trees, but poor James has been so busy shoveling snow I'm sure he hasn't had a minute left to trim the dozens of trees in the park. Anyway, I brought some little branches in and put them in water. They may bloom, what a treat that would be!

I am way past ready for winter to be over. Enough with the snow and freezing days! But surely it won't be long now, the Canada geese are passing overhead in great honking flocks, headed north.