Our KIVA Loan for July

Ahon Sa Hirap, Inc. is the oldest existing micro-credit organization in the Philippines. In the Native language of the Philippines Ahon Sa Hirap means “to rise above poverty.” With more than a third of the nation’s 90 million Filipinos living below the poverty line, ASHI was established with the vision of helping to alleviate poverty in the Philippines.

Dedicating to empowering women, ASHI lends only to women and specifically those in the lowest 50% of household income, so to the “poorest of the poor.” In addition to general business loans, ASHI also offers educational loans, house repair loans, savings funds, and social development programs for its members. ASHI is committed to translating its social mission into practice.

Evelyn Sandajan is 46 years old and lives in Hamtic, Antique, Philippines. She is a very humble woman who enjoys her life to the fullest despite her poverty.

When she became a mother, she was motivated to find a way to help support the family and educate the children so they could escape the poverty the family lives in. Her motivation has intensified and their eldest child is now in college, and the second has entered high school.

Through a field partnership with KIVA we joined with several other investors to lend Evelyn $400 which she will use to expand her business. She will repay the loan over time and we will reinvest the money as she repays it.

With determination to see her children graduate from college and improve their standard of living, Evelyn joined ASHI in 2003. The first loan she received was used to finance and grow a vegetable business. This kind of livelihood activity is the most common source of income of the many families in the village where Evelyn and her family live. Every day they go to different municipalities to market their products.

Evelyn works hard with her husband to bring home money to support the needs of their children. Given the opportunity to have larger amount of capital, Evelyn and her husband hope to make their business more stable and profitable. Through this, they will be able to educate their children until they are capable of living lives free from poverty.

Try to keep up...

I know, I know. It's madness. I'm as mute as a fish for weeks on end and then write three posts in two days. What can I say? The tide comes in, the tide goes out.

We caught another chapter in the never-ending story that is the BP Blowout on the news tonight, Gulf States July 4th tourist visits down by 80% as the beaches slowly disappear under a layer of sludge. Dying fish, corals, plankton, shellfish, birds, marine mammals, estuaries, marshes, reptiles... the Gulf is suffocating in a toxic stew of oil and methane gas.

British Petroleum shares have lost half their value on the stock market, their assets have plummeted as they struggle to contain and clean up their mess, and look forward to years of damage control and horrendous image problems.

You know what? Concern for the environment is not just felt by economically naive tree-huggers. Environmentally responsible policies are good for both the bottom line and the planet. BP might have spent a couple of million dollars more putting the wellhead in to begin with, but they wouldn't be in this mess now if they'd have done it.

As it is the impact of this disaster will probably be felt for the next 100 years. Birds species will make their way south this fall for the last time, never to return. Turtles which have paddled our oceans for millions of years will vanish forever. The next four generations will live with the consequences of BP's economic decision to make a penny more profit a barrel by not installing an emergency excluder valve which would shut the flow off should there be an explosion. The penny difference per barrel was important enough to them that they were willing to risk the health, safety and livelihood of every man, woman and child living along the Gulf coast and beyond.

This in itself reveals exactly why business cannot be left "unfettered", because corporations will always choose profit over the public good, and are indeed compelled to do so, for their only definition of "immorality" is to fail to return a profit to the stockholder. Corporations must be constrained by law from harming the environment and the public, because they are by nature self-serving. Like a two-year-old who will run into a busy street and cause a 10 car pileup, corporations need a parental government, to protect themselves, and others, from their own risky behaviour.

Companies need only look to BP's example to see that the corporation who places itself in a risky position to obtain profit may lose everything if a single thing goes wrong. BP may never recover from this. They may well go down in well-deserved flames before this is done with. Unfortunately it will take many an investor and family business with it, and a once productive and beautiful area of the USA may become a shadow of its former self.

Only after the last tree has been cut down
Only after the last river has been poisoned
Only after the last fish has been caught
Only then will you find you cannot eat money
-- Cree Saying

Eat Local!

The flier for the annual Summerland Fall Fair arrived a few days ago and I was excited to see that this year their focus is on supporting the 100 mile diet.

Each year they have a spectacular dinner which is always sold out long before the date. This year the menu is made up of entirely locally grown foods. We live in a garden of plenty, yet we don't see much of the local bounty, as much of it is shipped to other markets, while we eat food brought in from Chile, New Zealand, Mexico and California.

It's time to change. Anthropologists can look at a 1000 year old skeleton and determine where that person lived. The minerals from the food they ate were incorporated into their very bones and teeth. When Natives said, "We are this land," they knew what they were talking about. But it was true of most people.

Local eating is becoming more than a "crank's" way of eating. More and more people are putting some thought into how they eat, and choosing to be Locavores.

I fell off the wagon and bought nectarines from California last week. I knew I shouldn't have but I was so hungry for some fresh fruit beyond the apple. What a disappointment. They were nectarines only in name. In the same way growing up in a citrus orchard spoiled me for eating oranges picked green and shipped 2,000 miles, eating nectarines picked fresh and ripe for the past three summers has spoiled me for eating sour nectarines with the texture of cheese. I'll buy no more until they are offered fresh from the tree here in my own backyard.

Pete's Greens: at the heart of the locavore movement from lovetomorrowtoday on Vimeo.

This is an interesting video. Local production of vegetables providing jobs and rescuing depressed economy. Who would have known that the family farm was the answer all along?

Do you hear what I hear?

The flowers in the garden are so thick and vigorous they are crawling over each other trying to escape the bed. Surrounded as we are by the astonishing wealth of nature, it's easy to become almost blind to it, but you really have to be deaf not to hear all that's going on around us.

Just now the neighbourhood pack of coyotes broke into one of their bloodcurdling choruses. I can't say it's a song I particularly like, unless I hear it from very very far away, and this was pretty close.

The last few nights I've been hearing the raspy "reeeeeekkkks" of a family of what sounds like three juvenile great horned owl chicks, begging for food. She brings the kids up and parks them in the trees while she hunts for the fat moths, and maybe the occasional bat, swarming under the streetlights on the street.

Three or four nights ago one of the owlets was parked on our next door neighbour's roof. Every so often the reeeek would turn into a gargling ruggleekruugreeeekkk as Mama Owl stuffed something into the demanding youngster's screaming and insatiable maw.

I heard the cries of a baby bird today and looked out the window to catch a flash of bright orange on the path in the garden. Closer inspection revealed that it was a male Bullock's Oriole feeding a very small chick which had managed to fall from the nest.

Knowing that a chick on the ground has absolutely no chance of surviving our resident mouser and bad cat (read opportunistic birder) I went out and caught the little oriole. It was the size of a small hen's egg, and while it could flap and glide, it could not yet fly. I put it as high as possible in the big willow, then thought, That was stupid! The cat will have it in a minute. I should have put it on a limb too small for the cat to climb on.

But it was too late. The chick was climbing up the bark and was well out of reach. I left it to its fate and came back to my housework. An hour later I went to find our Park Groundsman and who should come flying out of the tree and land at my feet but Baby Oriole. This time I was smarter. I carried him around and put him on a small branch which was inaccessible to the demon cat. It was sheltered by overhanging leaves high above. He held on and started calling his parents. ("He" could be a "her" for all I know, but I have to call it something and it just looked male to me.)

After two or three minutes of full-throttle screaming the Daddy Oriole appeared and shoved food down the gaping beak. Thirty seconds later Mother Oriole repeated the process. They must just have the one chick left because they fed it all afternoon except for a brief 20 minute break about 5:00 pm when I figure they must have collapsed in a heap and gobbled some dinner for themselves. Baby seems to have taken a nap, as he said not a word during that time.

All this time he was on the little branch but after dinner break the parents began a tag team effort to get him higher in the tree. One would bring food but lure the chick six or eight inches higher before feeding it. The other would stay at the chick's side flapping and encouraging the it to hop up. Once it was up the second parent would feed it.

In this way they had moved the chick into the higher branches before dark, to a place much less accessible to the cat. Now they just have to keep him warm for the night. I don't know if they have lost the nest, or if the chick left it too soon, and they were trying to lure it back. I hope they have a nest and can get it back in and all get a good night's rest. If anyone deserves it they certainly do.

The owls are reeeeeeking ever so often. They are closer than they've been all night. The crickets seem to have been sensible and gone to sleep. It's closing in on 3:00 am, and soon the dawn chorus will begin with a single trill. Time for an old insomniac to try once more for a few hours of sleep.

3 July Edit: Little Oriole survived a chilly night and is yelling his head off for food, which the parents are providing in 30 second shifts. I am ever so pleased. Ruth next door says it's okay to let a stranded baby bird die because, "It's nature." But I can't. I'm such a sucker. I'm the only person I know who rescues ants from the water in the sink. I take spiders and bugs outside, and even shoo flies out. Everything loves its own life. Even an ant.

4 July edit: 8:43 pm. Baby Oriole is still happily screaming for food, and still being stuffed by two obliging parents. He should be the size of a young turkey by now. Nature and nurture collide. I do hope he's not too fat to fly by the time he grows flight feathers. :)

Where were we again?

Yours truly, who cannot muster any enthusiasm for writing blog posts when she has no photographs to go with them, has finally figured out how to capture still photos from her video camera, and posts can resume.

We had a cold, windy, sodden spring which held on until the last minute of its official term of office, like a politician who has long worn out his mandate but cannot be coaxed, bribed or blackmailed into stepping down.

But, right on schedule, on the morning of the 21st, Summer arrived in all her shiny glory. Plants which have sulked and hung back through May and most of June have suddenly burst forth in wild and joyous exuberance.

Our friend Tony up the way, who has what must be the most spectacularly beautiful garden in the park, brought us a beautiful bouquet last Sunday. A melody of every bloom from his flower garden in the nearby orchard where he works, it is still gracing the counter. Though one or two of the roses are a petal shy of their original glory, the fragrance is heavenly.

All Sunday evening we kept wondering where the fragrance of ripe peaches was coming from, until we tracked it to the white roses in the bouquet. Who would have thought that a rose would carry with it the scent of a fresh peach?

In the vegetable garden we are covered up in rainbow chard, Asians greens, every kind of lettuce, and beet greens. Every other day I practically have to take a machete to the mint to keep it from enveloping every other plant in the garden. The neighbours are beginning to wince when they see me coming down the street laden with yet another bag of chard, bok choi, lettuce, beet greens or mint.

Next step is a market stall on the highway, maybe set up like a border crossing. "No M'am, we don't want to see your driver's license, we just want you to take this bag of bok choi and keep on driving."

For our potluck on Sunday I made bbq'd ribs and an enormous salad - a 16" wide bowlful - of baby chard, beet greens, half a dozen types of baby lettuce, mint leaves, Asian greens, bok choi flowerets, thyme flowers, and lavender flowers. I dressed this with the lightest drizzle of olive oil and balsamic vinegar and it was a great hit. It was the first time I'd ever seen people go back for seconds on salad.

But never mind, though we turn green from salad and/or greens at every meal, it's a bounty we long for all winter. Chard, bok choi and beet greens five minutes out of the garden are an impossible dream in the depths of winter. The "greens" at the grocers in January bear only a passing resemblance to what's bursting from my garden today. Gather ye chard-leaves while ye may.

KIVA Loan for June 2010

Our KIVA loan this month goes to this smiling group of women from Bougoula Ville, Mali. In this Group: Sali Bamba, Fatoumata Kone, Habi Ouattara, Aminata Traore, Macoura Traore, Chata Sangare, Mariam Coulibaly, Oumou Bagayoko, Rokiatou Djire and Sarata Coulibaly.

All the group's members are married, some in the traditional polygamous family structures common to this part of Africa. They have a median age of 34 and between them have 40 children.

This is their 11th loan with the microfinance institution Soro Yiriwaso, and all their previous loans have been paid in full. This ability to access capital to invest in their businesses is vitally important to business people everywhere, but even more so to women like these, who have no access to capital through the regular banking system which demands collateral and is only interested in large dollar loans. This is the reason microfinance is so important, especially to women in the Third World, who have little hope of improving their lives otherwise.

The women in the Benkadi Group each have their own business selling diverse articles like potatoes, soap, second-hand clothes, etc. Sali Bamba (a group member) sells potatoes and will use her loan to purchase 20 cases of potatoes at the large market of Médine in Sikasso. She will resell these potatoes at the local village market and from her home on a cash basis. Sali envisions making an average profit of the equivalent of $31.00 US monthly. A part of the profit will be used to support her family's needs and the other part will be invested back in her business.

Seriously Amissing

But then I get bored reading my own posts, so I expect everyone else must be absolutely stunned into unconsciousness by them!

But to list the last week or two's most exciting occurrences:

1) I added a new bird to my list - the yellow breasted chat. The book says this is a shy bird who is more often heard than seen. Apparently the one coming to gobble the seed I toss out morning and evening hasn't read the book. Or perhaps he is just the extrovert of the family.

One of the blackbird pairs is bringing their four or five noisy, begging youngsters to the seed pile. The kids follow the parents around with gaping beaks, shaking their wings and screaming like a banshee reunion. After poking seed down the kid's throats a time or two the parents start dealing out peckings and beatings instead of seed, and the kids get the message and begin to pick up their own food.

We have a pair of quail who come from across the road to eat seed. I get very tickled watching him trying to herd her back across the road if she hasn't yet eaten her fill. She runs a circle and ends up right back pecking seed while he dances and curses in frustration. (Women are not always easy to herd!) One morning I hadn't gotten out with the goodies yet and Mr. Quail marched up the walk and crowed his head off until I came out and served breakfast. Birds are very entertaining.

2) Our weather has been uncharacteristically cool and damp. Evening before last there was a double rainbow across the entire span of the sky. It went from the clay banks right across the lake to spill onto Naramata. I'm not sure I'd ever seen such a brilliant rainbow.

3) The garden is progressing at a satisfying pace. We've eaten a couple of salads out of the 4 x 4 behind us. That's the 4 x 4 where all the cherry-type tomatoes were planted last year and it is now chock full of two-inch high volunteer tomato plants. Although I have planted about two dozen tomato plants I cannot bear to pull these plucky little volunteers, so I'm not sure what will become of the chard, beets, leeks and onions I planted.

I'm going to pretend it's an experiment. If the volunteers do well I will seed my tomatoes directly in the garden this fall and let Mother Nature do the work next spring. To heck with greenhouses and trouble lights and packing flats in and out of the sun. It will be "Back to Nature" for me. I grew so many tomatoes I've been begging neighbours to take the extras and finally got desperate enough this afternoon to put the last 30 on Freecyle.

They are going like hotcakes, with people mailing to ask if they can pick up four or six. Yes, please. I'm tired of babysitting them and have no place to put them! I'm beginning to consider sneaking out in the dead of night to plant a tomato into each flower bed in the park.

And that is the extent of my exciting life. Practically comatose really. And loving every minute of it.

The Canary-Colored Dream House

I have watched rain advance steadily toward us, across the lake, over the fields and orchards, and as a peal of thunder rolls over us, the first drops splatter against the roof. The scent of ozone and raindrops arrives. The blackbirds eating seed outside scatter briefly as the shower becomes a downpour, but a very determined and obviously weather-proof quail continues to peck his fill.

As always, when I can't get outside to work I busy myself in other ways. For example I surf the "tiny homes" blogs and forums. I have an on-going fascination with very small houses, which explains the RV, but while practical, a travel trailer lacks the charm of a Jay Shafer Tumbleweed tiny house.

Sadly, even the larger Tumbleweed homes lack room for the amenities we depend on, like the washer/drier, the dishwasher, hot showers, a functional kitchen and a bed on the main floor. But like an overweight 15-year-old with braces who secretly hopes the captain of the football team will somehow fall madly in love with her, I still yearn for a tiny house with Victorian gingerbread and Dutch doors. We couldn't even live in one, but dreams are rarely practical. :)

My dream home is the wish of a child, a fantasy fueled by a favorite book. All through high school, as I read my way through Will and Ariel Durant's 11 volume Story of Civilization a little green book would reach off the shelf and pluck at my sleeve. I always pulled away, I was a serious student and The Wind in the Willows was obviously a children's book.

But on our weekend honeymoon Tony and I wandered into a book shop in Park Ridge Illinois and bought our first book together, that book that had silently called to me for so long, Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. As we read it together we were caught in its spell. It was our book, the book I read to our boys as they lay nursing and as they grew. Never mind that it had no bright pictures, its pictures were painted with words.

As the book's characters Rat and Mole row out onto the river on a summer's evening you read:
 
"The line of the horizon was clear and hard against the sky, and in one particular quarter it showed black against a silvery climbing phosphorescence that grew and grew. At last, over the rim of the waiting earth the moon lifted with slow majesty till it swung clear of the horizon and rode off, free of moorings; and once more they began to see surfaces -- meadows wide-spread, and quiet gardens, and the river itself from bank to bank, all softly disclosed, all washed clean of mystery and terror, all radiant again as by day, but with a difference that was tremendous. Their old haunts greeted them again in other raiment, as if they had slipped away and put on this pure new apparel and come quietly back, smiling as they shyly waited to see if they would be recognised again under it."

As usual my posts wander as aimlessly as a six-year-old on a summer morning, but I was talking about my dream house and it is in Wind in the Willows that we find it.

[Toad] led the way to the stable-yard accordingly, the Rat following with a most mistrustful expression; and there, drawn out of the coach house into the open, they saw a gipsy caravan, shining with newness, painted a canary-yellow picked out with green, and red wheels.

    'There you are!' cried the Toad, straddling and expanding himself. 'There's real life for you, embodied in that little cart. ... Come inside and look at the arrangements. Planned 'em all myself, I did!'  ... It was indeed very compact and comfortable. Little sleeping bunks - a little table that folded up against the wall - a cooking-stove, lockers, bookshelves, a bird-cage with a bird in it; and pots, pans, jugs and kettles of every size and variety.

And so you see, in this rather long-winded and rambling fashion I have come around to saying my "tiny home longing" was not only forged by living in a small mobile home from the age of 10-18 but also by a Toad's salesmanship. The Dream Home is a Canary-colored cart.

New Birds on the Life List!

Okay, this might not be all that exciting to you, but this week two birds I'd never seen before landed in my garden.

The first was a male blackpoll warbler. He came and sat on the clear roof of the deck, giving me a close look at his delightful little self. The blackpoll winters in South America migrating north to Northern Canada or Alaska. It migrates farthest of all warblers.

We have several different warblers. They are tiny birds, very active. They remind me of bees as they flit around in the trees.

The other one I saw was a magnificent big boy. We'd been hearing him all day, without recognizing the bird, but I was delighted when I saw him. Larger by third than our Brewer's blackbirds, I had seen the Yellow Headed Blackbird in books, but never in the feather. He sat quite happily eating the seeds I put out for a good five minutes while we had a good long look at him.

A Special Mother's Day Gift!

Ian knows how to make his Modder happy. He sent her a KIVA gift certificate for Mother's Day. Never one to let money burn a hole in my pocket, I immediately lent it to the six women of the Demim Group, in the village of Kamalen Sirakoko, Mali.

Pictured are: Sali Kone, Awa Koita, Aïcha Kone, Djeneba Diakite, Mamou Diarra, Fanta Sylla.

The members of group Demin are married women with an average age of 35 years old and 4 children each. They are on their third loan, having repaid their previous loans. The members of the group sell different foods in the market, like smoked fish, ginger, fruits and vegetables. Their loan will enable them to buy in enough quantity to purchase their products at a wholesale price, enabling them to increase their profits.

Group member Sali Kone intends to buy 50 kg of smoked fish for resale with her part of the loan. She buys her supplies in the big market in Sikasso town, retails in the village market in Kamalen Sirakoro and also sells to women customers from her home.

She hopes to make a monthly profit of the equivalent of $50 USD which she will use to meet the needs of her family, add to her savings, and continue to invest in her business.

And, from a mother in Canada, the very best wishes to six mothers in Mali. May your lives be peaceful and full of joy.

KIVA Loan for May 2010

This month our KIVA loan goes to a group of six women living in Mali, Africa. This is loan number 11 for us, and we have now reached a point where the repayments coming back from each person we have lent to underwrites the entire new loan. KIVA loans enable even those of limited means to reach out and have a positive impact on the world. With a $25 dollar loan you can help lift a whole group of hard-working people out of poverty. Our $25 is not much, but when combined with $25 from 10 to 50 other people it makes a big difference to the mothers in Africa, enabling them to improve their family's diet, send their children to school, and provide them a more secure future.

The Women are: Dado Bouaré , Awa Traoré , Bah Traoré , Mariam Traoré, Tété Diallo and Oumou Coulibaly.

The Tientigui group is made up of six married women who live in monogamous families. They average 39 years of age and have an average of five children each. They all live in the Darsalam district of Ségou, Mali and met through neighbours and marriage.

The members of this group trade in fodder (food for livestock), tomatoes, children's clothing and calabashes (vines which can be dried out to be used as bottles or utensils). They work well together as a borrowing group, and this is their fourth group loan.

In the picture you see Mrs. Mariam Traoré holding one of her decorative calabashes. Mrs. Traoré buys and sells decorative articles, and is planning to use her loan to buy 200 calabashes. She gets her supply of calabashes in Tona and Konodimini.

She peels the calabashes and engraves them with small figures or designs, in the traditional method of her community. The finished calabashes are resold to order to newly married couples, and sometimes on a door-to-door basis to both men and women in the various neighborhoods. Mrs. Traoré hopes, along with the other members of the group, to make an average monthly profit equal to about $54.00 USD, part of which will be invested in their businesses, part will go for savings, and part of which will be used to repay their loan.

Those Yellow Pansies HAVE to Go!

When we last left our heroine she had just written a cheque to the neighbour down the street in exchange for his help with the garden.

The next morning she went out, and with some assistance from next door neighbour Art, turned a couple of bushels of compost into the 4 x 4 raised bed in back. Then, between downpours, she planted the following; red onion sets, red Holland onion seeds, early wonder beets, bok choi and rainbow chard.

Afterwards of course she realized that used her valuable sunny garden space for plants which would happily grow in part shade. Nothing like being organized.

Well, nothing will perk up a disgruntled gardener faster than a plant-buying expedition. I had a list. I wanted: foamflower, cranesbill "Blue Buxton", lamb's ears and perennial forget-me-nots. Three nurseries later I had ONE plant on my list. I managed to find and buy two nice oakleaf foamflowers (see photo), which are shade-tolerant and have been planted about 1/3rd of the way down the black tunnel that is the middle section of my garden.

The only cranesbills I found were a lurid pinky-purple. There were no forget-me-nots, and no lamb's ears. I comforted myself with perennial violas in both white and deep velvety purple, and some fabulous hen and chicks (I have a weakness there) and with a half dozen miniature rose bushes. I love the dainty flowers of the mini rose. I got two with white blossoms blushed with pink. These grow about on 12" tall. I got two peachy pink ones which get about 24" tall and two climbers, one deep pink and the other a spectacular red stripe on a pale pink background. Roses didn't thrive in Calgary. Here (or so I'm told) they grow like weeds. I've always wanted climbing roses.

I managed three or four dozen annuals, deep blue lobelias, a couple of dark (but not black) leaved begonias with gorgeous white camellia-like blossoms, alyssums and the usual suspects one covers the garden floor with early in the season while you are waiting for the more serious growth to begin.

Sadly it's turned even colder and wetter than before. Our high today was a grey, damp and very windy 11 C (51 F). The tomatoes, peppers and other teenies in the greenhouse are shivering, even with a lightbulb to keep them warm. They would very much like a sunny day or two, but we are promised nothing of the sort. When it should have been cold and raining it wasn't and now we are crossing our fingers that frost doesn't get the annuals we've already planted out.

Speaking of things planted out. I put pansies in the new flower bed as soon as I had soil in it. I sincerely regret it now. Every time I look out the window, that yellow pansy, with its 10 huge blossoms is like a needle in the eye. I had to go to town for groceries and to run errands today, but hopefully tomorrow it will be dry enough for me to go dig out that yellow pansy and a couple of its more lurid neigbours and move them somewhere else. The colour balance is all wrong. I even had nightmares about it last night. But such are the nightmares of spring. Yellow pansies in a bed of blue-green.

Dig, Dig, Dig, Dig, Dig the Whole Day Through

It's a backwards spring. While March was warm, April has been cool, even cold (it was snowing on the hills above us today!) But we finally got a bit of rain over the last two days, which we sorely needed. Hopefully it will rain again tonight, as we have had heavily overcast skies all day.

Finally realizing that there was no way I had the strength to get my garden beds ready myself I hired a kind and willing neighbour who spent little more than half an hour doing what would have taken me a week, and left me sick to boot. I forget what it is to have strength. Then I see someone almost effortlessly do a job in a fraction of the time it would have taken me. It's hard not to be envious.

Bill, the willing neighbour, turned over the soil in my two 4 x 4 raised beds and my three foot across kiddie pool planter, adding compost, peat moss and composted "moo poo" to each. He moved the kiddie pool into a more sunny position in the community garden. He dug out the compost bin and filled a large container with finished compost so I can get to it easily, and he dug in a bag of dry leaves and got the compost bin off to a good spring start.

He laid plywood between the top level of my garden tiers in the back, creating a shelf. He placed the large container that had been on the ground on the new "shelf" where the plants will get more sun and air.

From the garden beds he took soil to fill a dozen pots, loaded them into the wheelbarrow and brought them to the front, where they can be planted with a mix of flowers and vegies. This is my neighbour Randy's area, but he said he was happy to let me use it, as he had no plans to garden there.

And all this in about 30-40 minutes. I couldn't believe it. I can plant my cool weather crops now. I just have to decide where to plant everything.

Defining Bliss

Sun, warmth, a light breeze and blossoms everywhere! I look out through the transparent deck roof to watch the flower-laden branches of the mock cherry tree toss in the wind.

Out in the greenhouse I was delighted to see numerous wee tomato plants had emerged this morning. They were planted only five days ago; these guys can't wait to get growing!

Generous friends have contributed a few new plants for my garden. Cat brought a lovely bleeding heart and a package of blue flax seeds. Ruth brought several red begonias to plant in the shady area of the garden. The two hosta plants are sending up thick spears which will soon unfurl into huge heavily ribbed leaves.

And inside, the platform for the desk is built, and the desk is on it. Moving the desk from a diagonal placement to sitting against the wall makes a huge difference. There's also a space underneath the platform which will serve as useful storage. We still need to finish the platform, i.e. cover the surface of it with flooring, and put paneling on the end, so we don't see the raw wood structure.

And, on the fourth try we finally got that dad-blamed TV bracket installed in the corner, so the TV sits diagonally above the left end of the desk. Little by little it's beginning to look more like home. When the renovation is finished I'll do a video tour.

I'm hoping to spend the next few days out in the garden, readying the raised beds and containers, planting cool weather crops and generally soaking up the dirt.

And that in only a page or two, defines bliss.

We Could Always Just Lie on the Floor

We always have a project (or a dozen) on the list. If you remember the layout of the Beach House you'll know that a wheel well, about eight inches high and 15" wide projects into the corner of the living room by about a foot. There was a cabinet there when we bought the place, but it had a single eight inch wide door on the far end, so it was essentially a waste of space. An obliging friend ripped it out for us.

We have a drop-leaf desk with three drawers in the corner, but it has to sit at an awkward, space-hogging angle, because of the wheel well. The little TV hangs on the wall above the desk, but is also awkward to watch because of all the reflections.

So, two projects are at the top of our list at the moment:

1) Install a new TV bracket which will allow us to raise the TV and tilt it so it's easier to watch. Easy peesy.

2) Build a platform over the wheel well, eight inches high, 16" deep and 36" wide. Then the desk will sit on the platform, flat against the wall and we gain several inches of floor space. (Inches count in a space this small!)

We'll start with the TV. We bought the bracket in March, and found that articulating brackets aren't cheap. This one set us back $74.99 on sale! However it's rated for a 45 pound TV set, and ours only weighs 11 pounds, so it shouldn't fall off the wall, providing we can get it on the wall in the first place. The fellow said "Keep the packaging, you can bring it back for a week if it doesn't work."

Of course first thing I did was take it out of the package to see if it would fit the spot we have for it, and somehow the packaging crept out the door in the dark of the night. (I'm not sure how this happens. The stuff I need to throw away sticks to the place like three-day-old bubble gum. Stuff I want to keep evolves legs, tendrils, wings, or some other mode of transport and disappears in the middle of the night through a locked door!)

Anyway, no problem. The bracket's going to work. Look at how nice and smooth that silvery metal is. Cool and silky... Stuff that looks good works good - right? (This does not always apply to men - or to women for that matter.)

We'd not had the energy opportunity to install it since I bought it but today is a good day! So, after lunch we dug out the instructions and studied them - four sheets of very fine line drawings filled with small details, arrows pointing in all directions, and incomprehensible symbols. Then we hauled out three tool boxes, a drill, a power screwdriver, a stepladder, and our limited stores of strength and patience and went at it. We sweated and strained and (I have to say it) screwed that thing in the spot where we wanted it. Our arm muscles shook like jello as we held the TV up to shoulder level and bolted it to the bracket. Unfortunately all this accomplished was a TV that would hold only one position - face down screen aimed directly at the floor.

We scowled at each other, said a few choice words to the hardware, and sat down with the instructions again. What did we do wrong? Well, the thing swivels so the wall attachment should be able to go on vertically or horizontally. Our space dictated a horizontal placement, but maybe that wasn't okay. We tore it all off and started over.

Now, the only place to put it vertically is not big enough to hold the attachment, so we get a big chunk of cedar and attach it as reinforcement. Great. Much smoother install! (This is as ugly as a junkyard.)

We put the TV on the bracket. It now sticks two feet out into the room. Even worse the TV slowly sinks until it is (once more) facing the floor. We raise it, adjust the tension, as per instructions (we think, hard to tell). It sits upright for about ten seconds and slides back into a face down position. We are done. Our muscles will handle no more holding TV in the air, or fussing with three-inch long screws.

Achieving this bliss of television positioning Nirvana has taken two hours, a great deal of hard work and some language best not repeated here. If we want to watch it we will have to lie on the floor. Since there's not enough room for us side by side we may have to do a double-deck arrangement, which isn't as much fun at our age as it was when we were 25 and more supple (also more... oh, I won't say that. Our children read my blog.)

Tony has gone to have a nap. I am in my chair, muscles twitching like greyhounds waiting for the rabbit to shoot out of the gate.

However the next time someone says that TV doesn't provide exercise, mental stimulation or "quality time" for a couple I will suggest they try mounting one on a articulating bracket in an RV. Who knew that a $74.99 TV bracket could be a great alternative to a $5000 home gym?

!Por Fin!

Or for those of you who do not know two words of Spanish - "At last!"

Last week we laid out the new garden bed in front. Very simple really, just Holland pavers laid in a curved bed, and staggered brick style. No mortar, no real prep, other than pulling a flat spot out with the hoe. But that's as far as we'd gotten. Cold days and a bug sidetracked me all last week, but the weather has warmed and I feel better, so time to get to work. :)

Day before yesterday I dug out the gardening tools, plant trays, starting pots and greenhouse cover. All these were scrubbed and bleached to kill any lingering pathogens, and then left to dry overnight.

Yesterday morning I set up the table on the deck, went through my seeds and selected those I wanted to start in the greenhouse now. This means tomatoes, peppers, red onions and leeks. If I tell the truth I planted half a dozen pots of leeks, the same of onions and 30 pots of tomatoes.

I planted a mix of small "cherry" types, Mosaic Mix (three different colours), Gardener's Delight, Tumbler F1, and one I've never tried before, Chocolate Cherry.

Then for large tomatoes I planted Starfire which is always a reliable producer for me, Purple Prince a dark intensely-flavored medium-sized tomato, Red Brandywine a large, high-shouldered tomato which has a great flavour, and a mix of several colours of Brandywines, Zebra striped which is green striped, Yellow, Yellow and White. This bunch is an experiment, as I've never tried these colour variants before.

Then today we unloaded the bags of soil mix I bought last week and filled the new bed in front. I moved the Coral Bells Heuchera from the back, where it has sulked in a too-shady spot for two years. I planted the pansies and Autumn Joy Sedum I bought a few days ago, and dug up and replanted the cranesbill, catnip, heather, hen and chicks and mint that were growing in the bed before. I also had a silver and green foliage plant which I planted in one of my annual baskets last spring, and which has survived and thrived. So I popped it into the bed. It is a low-growing spreader, which should make a good ground cover for the slope coming off the new bed into the rest of the garden.

This basically means I am pooped, but I still took my new video camera and went out to film the whole thing. The Helleborus Niger Easter Rose is putting on an extravagant show with 24 blossoms! The grape hyacinths are just beginning to open.



You hear our neighbour Randy, who came out to chat while I was filming. And as I watched this afterward I remembered the phrase from Robbie Burns' poem, To a Louse; "O would some power the gift to give us, to see ourselves as others see us."

Apparently this is exactly what today's video camera allows. Having filmed only three or four short videos I realize I have a very annoying habit of whistling under my breath all the time. Okay, I listen to a lot of classical music and there's always a concert going on in my head. I can kick in on a bar of any of 100 different pieces and hear (and apparently whistle) it right through to the end. Dear dear. I know where I got this habit. My Dad whistled non-stop. I guess I am my Father's daughter. But I think I will try to keep the music in my head from now on. I'm sure friends and family will be thrilled. LOL

Opening Day!

The plastic covering on the deck is turning us into a hothouse. The temperature out there reads 32 C (88 F). Granted it may be cool enough in the coming week that we'll wish we hadn't taken down the storm windows, but what do you do when it's 26 C (80 F) degrees in the living room and you can't open the windows?

Outside the trees are leafing out, the mock cherries are getting ready to bloom and there are flowers all over the park.

I am anxious to get my greenhouse seeds started and my outside gardening areas prepared and planted, and I've been sick all week. At first I thought maybe it was just that I had done too much on two consecutive days (Friday and Saturday) but I'm beginning to suspect that I actually have a virus of some kind. Fever, aching muscles and joints, upset stomach and digestive tract and that "run down by a steam roller" feeling.

Fiddle. My "to-do" list is a mile long and there is no energy to work with at all. But there's not a thing I can do about it but wait to get better.

But the day is glorious. First day we've had when you could actually wear short sleeves or go outside without a hat and coat. We flipped from winter to summer in a single day. I may feel like poo on a stick, but I can't help but enjoy this beautiful day.

The Wind in Our Willows

It is the time of wind. We are buffeted and rocked. The deck covering snaps and billows like the sails of a tall ship. Above us the willow branches reach after the retreating wind like forsaken lovers.

I have a new video camera, and though I'm just learning to use it I can show you the wind in our willows and the sun on the clay banks. And you can hear both the wind and the roar of traffic, which is amplified as it echoes off the cliffs.

The green blushes of our trees are early this spring. Along the road to town the apricot trees are in full bloom risking everything. This March was the warmest on record, and not just by a degree or two but by eight and ten degrees. But as April arrived the thermometer dove downward and we are now eight to ten degrees colder than average and wishing the sun of March back.

Faces Without a Name...

One of the reasons I have been so conspicuously absent these last couple of weeks is that I'm on another genealogical binge. Having failed to find hide nor hair of my George Perkins I had to find another line to work on which would cause less frustration.

So I decided to finally enter the information I have on Tony's family into the family tree program. I got into the "dead ancestors" box and dug out the family group sheets that I filled out while interviewing Tony's Mom (Kinette) in the spring of 1982. Mom's been gone for 20 years now, hardly seems possible. She and I were good friends and had a lot of fun together, even though we butted heads a good many times too.

Mom knew a great deal about her own family history, and I've been able to expand on what she knew (with help from a professional genealogist in Belgium some 10 years ago.)

But sadly she knew very little about Tony's father's family. George died within a few months of Tony's and my wedding, and I really only got to spend a short time with him. His parents had sent him off to England to a boarding school when he was five, which was what all the prosperous families with great ambitions for their only sons did. He resented the separation and was not particularly interested in talking about his family, and we didn't anticipate losing him so quickly.

When Kinette died I inherited a stack of old pictures with no names on them, and an even larger stack of questions. Who were these people? Bit by bit I figured out the relationships, but that gives me no help at all on the names.

The surnames I am wrestling with at the moment are Greant and van der Elst. Both families were wealthy. Tony's grandfather Camille's nickname in school was "the golden brick" because the family owned so much property in Brussels. (Alas, the depression and WWII took care of the family fortune.)

Margaret van der Elst (on the right with dark hair) married Camille Greant in 1902. They are Tony's paternal grandparents. This photo shows her as a composed young lady of about 14, with her younger sister (whose name I do not know). Her hair is up, and she has all the fresh beauty of a girl on the threshold of womanhood.

The other two photos were taken probably about 1916. These are contact prints, probably made with glass negatives. They are too fragile to display, lest they fade.
But they convey a sense of warmth and pride seldom seen in old photos.

I love the van der Elst grandparents, so proud of the grandchildren lined up with them. I see a distinct resemblance between Grandfather van der Elst and my own dear husband. In this photo Tony's father George is the small boy in a dark suit with the large white collar, second from the right. George's sister Simone is the tallest girl, holding a baby cousin.

The second van der Elst family photo was taken one or two years later, on a charming bridge which Kinette says was on their estate. It includes the two grandparents and their adult children and families.

It appears there are two daughters and a son, their spouses and a child or two. Tony's grandfather Camille stands with crossed arms, the only one who appears ill-at-ease. His wife Margaret stands with her elbow on the bridge railing. Their daughter Simone stands by her mother and George is at the foot of the bridge. There is also an extra woman, who appears to be the grandmother's sister, seen in the earlier photo, when they were 12 and 14.

These are treasures, but they bring with them a deep longing to know these people, to give them names and their place in the family history. For your family's sake, sit down soon and write the names on the back of your family photos. All it takes is one memory less to lose a connection that may never be forged again.

Kiva Loan for April

I have neglected my blog for too long, and I can't promise I won't continue to do so, but must report on our KIVA loan for April.

Angela Nneda lives in Lagos Nigeria. She is 35 years old and married with three children. For four years she has owned a shop where she sells groceries and textiles and other sewing supplies. She is a hardworking woman; she opens her shop every day of the week and is friendly and helpful with customers.

Angela asked for a loan of 80,000 nairas (about $500) to purchase more groceries and textiles to expand her stock. This will enable her to contribute more to help her husband in maintaining their home.
She expresses her gratitude to lenders for their financial assistance.

This is our ninth KIVA loan, and all the business people we have loaned to are paying their loans back on time.

The Doldrums

Sailors used to dread being caught in the doldrums, no wind, just the rolling sea and constant featureless vista in every direction. Well, that is exactly where my search for George Perkins is. I pore through the records, and peer over piles of ancient-and-gone Perkins' and see no sign of George, who was my 3rd great-grandfather. The genealogical sea ripples with Perkins families, none of them apparently willing to claim my George.

I'll tell you what I know. He is silent and uncooperative. He told the census takers that he was born in 1781 in Georgia. He married a woman named Elizabeth and had two sons and five daughters; John W, Keziah, Rachael, Nancy (my gg-grandmother), William, Rebecca and "Polly" (usually a nickname for Mary). He owned a fair amount of property in the area of Mobile Alabama in 1830-1850, then he and Elizabeth moved to Union County Louisiana to live next to their son John W. John and other members of the family moved on by 1860 to Angelina Co Texas, finally settling in Robertson Co Texas. But George doesn't appear to have gone with them. He and Elizabeth disappeared for good between 1850-1860, last seen in Union Co Louisiana.

Another researcher says George was the son of Jacob Perkins and Betsy Cole Perkins of Richmond Co North Carolina. This is possible, as a George Perkins in the right age category lived next door to Jacob in 1810. This theory is strengthened somewhat by the fact that George's first child (John W) was born in 1810 in North Carolina. But there is no mention of a George in the well-documented lists of Jacob and Betsy's children. Nor can I find any other documents which tie George and Jacob together in any way.

You always come to a dead end with genealogy (no pun intended). There comes a point when historical records fail, but for the most part that's been long before 1781 for me. One thing Colonial America was good at was keeping records.

So, George, if you read blogs, and have any pity at all, please step from the shadows and drop some documentary evidence of your parentage into my mailbox. It's the right thing for you to do, because I know you didn't spring fully formed from a mushroom patch.

Of course, I'd take hints or documentation from anyone with Perkins blood, or data. :))

Time to Say Goodbye...

Walking the cat in the brilliance of the spring sunshine I note that the branches of the weeping willows look like strings of gold beads, the buds on the mock cherry trees have burst open to reveal what looks like tight clusters of infinitely small green grapes. Over the next month these will swell and evolve into fragrant white blossoms.

Cat is interested in rolling in the grass and lying in the sun. I stand and watch a red tailed hawk spiral in the current rising off the clay banks.

A lovely day.

I hope that it's as beautiful 2500 miles or so to the south, where at this moment, a funeral is being held for my sister-in-law June.


June entered my life as she entered my brother's, when I was five or six years old. She was small, with dark blond hair and an air of neatness and precision about her. She was the first person in the family to realize that I was no longer a child, and treat me as an adult. She and I became really good friends. We had many interests in common, genealogy, quilting, good food, but it was more than common interests that bound us together. We just clicked. I was the sister she never had.

June passed away Friday. It was not unexpected, and death came as a mercy. She had Alzheimer's and June the person had been gone from June the body for years. But her loss, even the loss of the tiny, fragile, immaculately-cared-for but unconscious body hurts.

I have her letters, her recipe for German chocolate cake, the sock monkey she made me the year I turned six, and a long, long memory. I have a June-sized, and shaped, hole in my heart. Bye June-bug. I miss you.

Two in love can live on the edge of a sword

It just occurred to me that we began this journey four years ago this month, when I got the crazy notion that we should ditch 90% of our material possessions, move into a trailer the size of my brother's walk-in closet and head for a place we'd never even visited before.

And so older son Ian and I found ourselves on a cold March day, in a sodden parking lot, inspecting a battered 35-year-old trailer that smelled like well-aged piss and deteriorating foam cushions. It was horrible, but had a good floor plan and appeared structurally sound. We bought it before we could talk ourselves out of the idea.

We spent the next several months ripping and renovating, and in July I started this blog. But lately I find myself floundering. What's the point? Time to go back to the beginning and start afresh.

Back in July of 2006 I began my first post with this:

I've come to a point in life where the material accumulations of a lifetime are weighing on me. And, though I speak in the singular, I think "We've come". Thankfully for my mental health my significant other shares my feelings. So, we have begun to divest ourselves of the collected bits 'n pieces of 40 years together. Early in our marriage we could move house in the trunk of the '59 Ford we'd named Rocinante (after Don Quixote's reluctant plow-nag). Two in love can live on the edge of a sword.

Then came babies who became growing boys. We needed some things and wanted others. He built model ships, planes and lovely furniture. I sculpted, painted, quilted, collected dolls, china and antique linens. Our children made wonderful things for us. We inherited beautiful things from generations past. We clutched at our possessions and they clutched back. Like fractious infants they demanded tending. I worried about spots on the crystal, wrinkles in the tablecloth and dust collecting on 200 "objects d'art".

One day it dawned on me that everything I own owned me back. That's fine when you have the interest and motivation to keep up with your mutual ownership, but time marches on, and I find myself without either. I would rather spend my energy elsewhere. Our children thought we had finally flipped our collective lid when we said we were simplifying our lives enough to move into a 25' long travel trailer, and head for warmer climes. I suppose time will tell. Lids may have been flipped, but, in our own minds, we are preparing to move back onto the edge of the sword.

---

Surprisingly the transition has been almost painless. We've had a huge amount of help from our sons, from friends, and from people we've hired to fill in the occasional gap. The tiny trailer has been swapped out for a newer, larger and much better equipped one, but the principle remains the same. Live as simply as is comfortable. Enjoy every day, every hour, even those which are uncomfortable. Listen to your body and follow its wisdom. Stretch your boundaries.

As we enter year five, who knows what we will discover?

Spring is...

Apparently on its way. Down the street Del's crocus bulbs are blooming, the trees are budding and the daylight hours creep longer and longer.



The average daily high for this two week period is nine degrees C (48 F). The warmer temperatures are much appreciated I assure you.

KIVA Loan for March

This month our KIVA loan is going to Janet Igbinoba of Benin City, Nigeria.

Janet is a 60-year-old widow with six children and several grandchildren. Life as a widow has been very challenging to her and the family.

Right now she has a small stall from which she sells groceries and drinks. She loves her business because of the one-on-one interaction that she has with her customers. She uses her years of experience in business to attract and retain more customers. She hopes to own a supermarket in the future. She will use her loan to buy more stock for her stall and sends a "thank you" to all KIVA lenders.

Ch ch ch ch changes...

Arg.... it's been that kind of week. Tony was hospitalized from Monday 'til Friday, weak, in pain and hallucinating from the morphine they were pumping into him.

I spent my time driving back and forth to the hospital (15 miles one way), bathing and shaving him because they had a full house of even sicker people than him, and they never seemed to get around to bathing him. I was am pooped.

Ian arrived Thursday (YAY IAN!) to aid and abet his old mother. He did the driving after that, and once we had Tony home Ian started some reno work which we've wanted to do for a long time.

The person or persons unknown who decided it was a good idea to put a banquette in an RV kitchen had never tried to use one. They are impossible to get in and out of, horribly uncomfortable and take up huge amounts of space. The slight amount of storage they offer is difficult to get at under any circumstance, especially with the eager "assistance" of a large cat who wants to explore any open space he is not usually able to get into.

So, Ian did his old mother a world of good by ripping out the banquette table and benches. This left a large (by RV standards) open area. I sketched up a cupboard and shelving unit that would stretch along the now empty wall, and while I painted the wall white he started carpentering. Unfortunately he ran out of time before he got the moldings and doors on, but I think I can get the moldings cut and on. The doors will have to wait 'til his next visit.

No matter. I now have accessible storage I don't have to crawl into, climb a ladder to get at, or unearth like King Tut's Tomb every time I need a can of tomatoes or a skillet.

I've been wanting to paint since we bought this place. The brown-linen pattern paneling on the top part of the walls and the dark fake wood on the bottom half makes me feel like I have moved into a somewhat commodious coffin. The one white wall and shelves makes a huge difference in the light of the interior. It's fantastic! I will go buy another litre of this latex paint and some painters tape and paint all the brown linen-pattern paneling. Bob the RV guy says if I don't and and prime the wall the paint will come off. I have news for him. I sanded and primed all the walls in the Tinpalace, and that paint came off like it was painted on a teflon pan. This couldn't be any worse. At least it has a woven pattern which grabs the paint.

At the end of the visit Ian also came up with a clever idea to fix my upper cupboard problems. Picture a six foot run of cupboards with three 12" doors. Each cupboard door has a 12" space between it and its neighbour. And everything you put in the cupboard immediately begins to inch into the nigh inaccessible spots between the doors.

So he suggested tearing out the doors and the spacers, and either adding more doors or put in sliding doors, Japanese style. I've had those before and I very much like them. So I'm thinking that would be a great idea.

I also bought a couple of nice, comfortable dining room chairs and now must shop for a table. I know what I want, it's just finding it.

In the bathroom we have a new toilet, higher and easier for old folks with somewhat wonkified legs to get on and off. After Bob the RV man told us we cannot replace the tub with a more accessible shower stall he suggested a built-in step which would take the step-over down from 17" to 7". He is replacing the tap and we will get a bath chair. All this in aid of husband's safety and mobility.

Other projects slated are:

1) replacement of the sofa
2) the building of a storage drawer in the empty, but now inaccessible space beneath the sofa.
3) a platform to compensate for an inconvenient wheel well, so that our secretary desk and drawer unit can sit on top of it, next to the wall, instead of 9" from the wall, and at a space-hogging angle.
4) a movable bracket for our wee flat screen TV to make it easier for Tony to watch.

This will probably take a year's worth of visits, but the year will go by, whether we improve or not. Might as well go for it.

Pictures later.

That Kind of Day

Mr. Blue is the neighbour's cat. He's still a kitten really, only about nine months old, but he's allowed to run loose because he is number one top mouser of all times. He has cleaned up the mouse problem which developed after Elvis and Priscilla, the park's previous mousers, moved away. He's a pretty cat, grey blue, nice dense coat, and as agile as any monkey. He's also smart, as he's learned to ring a set of chimes hanging by the door when he wants to come inside.

He and Sal play through the netting around the deck. When Sal is outside Blue stays well out of reach, since he is about five pounds of kitty and he obviously recognizes a potential danger when he sees one. I don't know that Sal would hurt Blue, but I am not eager to find out. Vet's bills are expensive.

Blue teases Sal mercilessly from the freedom side of the net. They dash back and forth the length of the deck, shadow box, and chatter to each other but recently Blue has taken to climbing on top of the clear deck roof and walking back and forth overhead, just to get on Sal's wick.

Sal will ignore him for just so long, then he watches intently for a while and finally he will scramble up his scratching post, stand on his back feet and pull on the netting, trying to get loose.

The pole climbing and net-testing were already over before I got to my camera this morning, but they went back to Cat and Cat, allowing me to get these pics. Not a great picture of Blue since I was shooting into the sun.

All this entertainment in exchange for a few cans of Fancy Feast!

Gathering Leaves

Robert Frost wrote:

Spades take up leaves

No better than spoons,

And bags full of leaves

Are light as balloons.


While it's poetic, it doesn't apply to raking leaves in springtime. My little rake is a rough toothed comb on the tender earth. The leaves are sodden and sullen. They have to be pried loose from the branches of the lavender bushes and coaxed ever so patiently away from the emerging lime-coloured spears of hyacinths and the bulbous pink and white tips of the Helleborus niger. Unless it turns cold there will be blossoms before long.

The Helleborus comes up in inch-thick spears, pink as a blunt thumb fresh from a long session of dishwashing. The blossoms will come on white and darken through a long season to end up green as leaves, before falling off to reveal a handsome clutch of seed pods. The splayed leathery leaves are prehistoric looking. Touch them, they could be plastic or stiffly starched polyester on an umbrella frame.

The scent of sage and thyme envelope me as I rake the leafy cover from the green stems. Later in the year the heady fragrance will be most noticeable across the road, 40 feet away, but for now it follows me like the smoke of a campfire. Furry catnip is up and growing, as are violets and some completely unspectacular heather.

The knotted silver and green stems of dead nettle pop up as soon as the leaves are removed. No doubt looking for new territory. Dead nettle is the Vasco da Gama of my garden, always setting out for new shores, and frequently arriving there.

The bearberry is there, but the hostas are no where to be seen. After agonizing last year over whether the one survived the long, bitter winter I am not even concerned over their temporary absence now. They will be back, once the willows begin to leaf out. There will be one and then two and then an explosion of rolled cigar-like green shoots. Lovely things hosta plants.

The toad lilies are missing too, but they too should emerge in time. The mums are coming up beneath and around the old growth. (I should cut the old growth back, and will, soon.) Some of those mum shoots have buds on them, though there won't be more than handful of burgundy blossoms in May. They reserve their energy for a spectacular fall show.

I turn the rake over and use it to shovel the piles of wet, moldy leaves into bags. I'll seal them up and add them to the garden once they are turned entirely to leaf mold. A worthy harvest for an afternoon in sunny garden.

Wow! Sun!

Sunthing we haven't seen in weeks!

And while the predicted high for today was seven degrees C (44.6 F) at 1:12 we are sitting at a balmy 10 C (50 F). Ahhhhh.... feels like Spring!

In the garden a few brave sprigs of green appear from under the blanket of leaves, including this "hen and chick". I buoy myself with the knowledge that gardening season is not far off now.

Yesterday was shopping and errand day. When I got to the grocer's there were no parking spots in the lot. I had to circle the lot like a vulture waiting for someone to pull out when I was close enough to get to the spot before someone else did. I ended up parking Betsy in a tight spot which had a concrete "bumper" to protect the adjacent sidewalk. When I pulled in the tires were turned slightly to the left, and when I stopped they were in place against the bumper. I should have known better -

Betsy has a weird feature. I don't know if it's common or an idiosyncratic quirk, but in certain positions the steering wheel locks in place, and when it does you can't turn the key.

I shopped, paid, loaded my groceries into the cart, and then from the cart to the back of the truck, returned my cart to the lineup and got in the truck. I was getting a bit weary by this point, as I had already run several errands before getting to the grocer.

Hoisted myself into the truck, belt on, dropped the steering wheel. The key wouldn't turn. Tried to move the wheel the inch or so it takes to unlock it normally. It would not budge. It was set in concrete.

I wrestled with the wheel, an ant against SuperTruck. Truck won. I sat with my head on the steering wheel, waiting for the pain in my chest to die down. What to do?

After a few minutes I went back into the store and asked the cashier who had just served me if there were two young strong guys I could enlist briefly. She called and two stock boys came on the trot, both about 17. I explained my situation, and that what I really needed was the truck pushed backward just the inch it took to straighten the tires.

They came and pushed, and rocked and pushed. No luck no luck no luck. But finally Betsy saw sense and at the height of one of the pushes I was able to move the wheel to the right enough to disengage the lock. Whew! I gave the boys $20. They were delighted. I was delighted.

One more errand and I was home, but done like dinner.

This morning, Salvador was being teased by "Mr Blue", the eight-month-old mouser/cat-monkey who has the run of the park. Blue is frequently seen on roof tops and up trees, and this morning he was taunting Sal (who was on the deck) by walking the edge of the roof next door.

This apparently was one taunt too many, and being something of a monkey himself, Sal put his claws to work and climbed the mesh the six feet from the covered shelving to the roof overhang, which is not meshed in. I heard his claws scrabbling at the plastic, and when I looked out all that was inside was his furry bum and tail, swishing madly.

I yelled at him. He turned and jumped back inside, but we had to keep him in, because when he went out on the deck he immediately began looking for an escape route.

So, that's why this afternoon I was on a ladder with mesh in one hand and staple gun in the other, meshing in the overhang in those places he has any possibility of breaching. He was visibly disappointed.

And now I am sitting, probably for the rest of the day. But I had my housework done anyway, and the sun is coming in the windows. And who could complain with weather like that?

KIVA Loan for February

Not far from Naryn, a beautiful town in the mountains of Kyrgyzstan, there is a little village, Kochkor, which is famous for its salt. Here lives Tursun Smanova, the leader of her borrowing group of four people.

And it is to Tursun and her three friends that we make our KIVA loan this month. We'd had some unexpected (large) expenses in January, and money is not falling from our pockets as we walk along, but I had a book order, which will offset the loan. So we loan away!

Tursun is a 64-year-old widow. She lost her husband 10 years ago; however, she has raised two children by herself. Her daughter is 12 and she goes to the local school. Her son graduated from the university and now helps his mother fatten and then sell sheep.

About 10 years ago after her husband's death she decided she could not just give up the future of her children and let life decide what to do with them. So she bought five lambs to fatten and sell. She was successful and now continues in that business. Now she and her son earn about $113 per month. Their lives are better than before and she is planning to expand her business and buy a car in the future. She asked for a loan of about $112 which she will use to buy more lambs.

The second member of the group is Asel Alapaeva. She is 40 years old and married. She has a daughter who is 11 and in fourth grade. Her son who is 10 years old is in third grade. Her husband works as a builder whose salary per month is $115.00. About six years ago, she started a little business where she sells cattle in the local market. They are building a new house, which will be finished in the future. However, they want get a loan to buy four calves to raise as breeding stock, because cattle sell well in the market right now.

The third group member is Elmira Andagulova. She is 45 and has a daughter who is 16. Her daughter helps her mother after school. Her husband works as a builder and earns $115.00 per month. Seven years ago, Elmira began a business. She sells staple foods, products that are used daily. Her profit is about $150.000 per month. Her business is growing and the income has improved her family's well being. With her loan, she wants to buy 100 kg of sugar, different cereals, vegetable oil and other staple goods.

The fourth member of the group is Musa Kurmanov, a 56-year old man whose wife is on a pension. He began this business three years ago. He raises calves and sells them at the market, earning about $90.00 a month. He is going to expand his business by increasing the size of his herd. With the loan he wants to buy a bull.

In a group loan, members know each other well, and trust each other. Each member of the group receives an individual loan but is bound by a group guarantee. Under this arrangement members of the group support one another and are responsible for paying back the loans of their fellow group members if someone is delinquent or defaults.

This is our eighth KIVA loan, and all lenders are making their repayments on time. This means that each month the payments are put into our KIVA account, and we may choose to withdraw or reloan the money. To this point we have reloaned it as it has come back. So the money we loaned is being recycled as it were, and is going back out as new loans.

A Revolution in the Fields

If you've looked recently, you may have noticed that TV is a mostly vast wasteland of mindless crap. As the fella said, "Four hundred channels and nothing on."

I turned on the set to watch the news over the weekend, forgetting that on the weekends the early news is supplanted by the emetic "Family Guy". I flicked the channel, looking for news and happened on Suzuki's "The Nature of Things".

This episode was on the Cuban agricultural revolution, and proved to be absolutely fascinating. Back in the days when the Cuban economy was propped up by the Soviets Cuba used to export sugar and citrus fruit to the Soviet Union. It imported most of its food. According to the Cuban government, they were pouring 10-15 calories of energy into the production of a single calorie of food. In other words, they were doing exactly what the rest of the industrialized world is doing now.

When the Soviet Union collapsed and the ships full of oil, fertilizer, pesticides, and staple goods quit coming, Cuba's economy fell to pieces. And the agricultural system turned toes up. The calorie intake of the average Cuban fell from about 2,600 calories a day in the late 1980s to between 1,000 and 1,500 by 1993. Essentially, people had to get by on about half the food they had been eating.

So, with an US-enforced embargo cutting them off from the most basic industrialized products, they went back to basics, and prioritized food production and the small-scale farmer. With no fertilizers and pesticides, they turned to composting, vermiculture and organic methods of farming. Tractors were parked and farmers began working their fields with oxen. Elderly farmers who had worked with animals in their youth were recruited to help train a new generation of farmers.

Seed programs were started, where farmers saved seed from their most productive plants, and a free seed exchange was set up. This improves productivity for all farmers, and produces the kind of bio-diversity in plants which gives them resistance to pests.

Cuba now has over 7,000 urban allotment gardens, (called organoponicos, which fill more than 80,000 acres. Some are tiny plots in the middle of apartment-block complexes or tucked between the crumbling colonial-era homes that fill Havana. More than 200 such urban gardens in Havana supply the city with more than 90% of their fruit and vegetables.

The Vivero Organoponico Alamar is considered one of the most successful. Started less than 10 years ago, the one and three-quarter acre plot employs about 25 people and grows a variety of healthy, low-cost food for local consumption. Average daily calorie intake in Cuba is back to 2,600 a day, and what's more it's fresh, organic and almost entirely sustainable grown. Cuban food production uses just 5% of the energy used to grow food in the US and other industrialized nations.

In Cuba farming is a desirable occupation and farm communities are thriving, rather than dying, as they are where agri-business has taken over.

May be time for all of us to take a good close look at Cuba's agricultural revolution and learn a thing or two.