Spider in the Bathtub

My Fingers Are Crossed

2010-04-22T07:33:00.001-07:00

Heathrow airport has re-opened. Therefore...

My bags are packed. My fingers are crossed.

We leave around noon today to travel to Vancouver, and tomorrow evening we fly to London and then on to Cairo, Egypt.

Anybody reading this who decides to also cross their fingers, send good vibes, pray/sacrifice to deity of choice on our travelling plans behalf would be a good friend. :)

A Volcano: So Magnificent, So Making Me Cranky

2010-04-16T22:50:00.000-07:00

It's beautiful, an awesome and fiery geologic force. It's an erupting volcano with a massive ash cloud swaddling the upper skies of northern Europe. It's an unstoppable force of Nature. And so...

I'm trying to see that my travel plans are something very insignificant in the grand scheme of natural world events. (Deep breaths, be zen...) But Heathrow is closed and my connecting flight to Cairo goes through London. Whenever I've gone over my mental list of possible trip glitches (though I try not to wallow in these sorts of thoughts...bad ) I never once paused and considered whether an Icelandic volcano might throw a wrench in the works.

Well, I'm trying not to be a little despondent/cranky/irritable/anxious that only time and Nature and the good scientists/people of air traffic control can tell me if I'm actually going to be able to go on my trip next Friday.

A lot can happen in a week so I'm crossing my fingers. This is the first time I've ever wished that a trip was not until...later.

The Flaming Gerbils of Armageddon

2010-03-30T16:52:00.000-07:00

Last Friday night the forces of the Flaming Gerbils of Armageddon were ready for Trivia Night out in Cumberland.

Oh, it's not that the Flaming Gerbils were the winning team or even MY team, but I thought they deserved a mention (or maybe even an extra point) for having the most awesome name.

MY team (cough, choke) was called The Little Wonders, but in my defense, I didn't have ANYTHING to do with that.

Anyway, the Trivia contest was part of a fund-raiser for the Cumberland Community Forest Society, and my friends Louise and Sherry invited me and Jeff along to join the team and duke it out (nerd-style) with DENSA, We're Right, Nerdgasms, THe Sunshine Girls and the rest.

Last week I mentioned to someone that I was going to go to the Trivia Night thing, and they were curious as to how one got ready for something like that. "What are you going to study up on?" they asked.

The answer, for me at least, is that I DON'T study up at all.

I know the trivia I know. I just have to dredge it all up from the primordial mud layers of my brain at the right time.

I know there are nine circles in Dante's Hell. I know that Hecate is the name of the witch goddess in Shakespeare's MacBeth. I know how to spell "sarsaparilla".

Somethings you just DON'T know. Like, who won the Stanley Cup last year? Sometimes I'm just not paying attention. (And apparently nobody else at our table was paying attention to the Pittsburgh Penguins either.)

Sometimes you have to GUESS that the only domestic animal not mentioned in the bible is the cat. Actually, I DID guess that. But my vote was over-ruled in favor of the llama, which was the wrong answer according to the people running the event, but is also technically correct I think, seeing as how the llama is a New World animal. Oh well. It's trivia.

What is the digit 1 called when it is followed by one hundred zeros? Answer: A googol. (We got this one.)

What is a pulicologist? Answer: Someone who studies fleas. (We didn't get this one.)

Anyway, it was a fun evening. There were bowls of free pretzels, the cheap wine flowed, and there was much healthy (loud) competition.

Or team tied for fourth/fifth place out of fifteen teams so all our total lack of studying paid off. :)

Tax Time and Greek Islands

2010-03-24T15:55:00.000-07:00

Every year around this time it seems there is a fairly steady stream of relatives dropping by for tea...and to get their taxes done.

I visit and drink tea, Jeff gets to do the taxes. :)

Last night, as Jeff worked away on his lap-top with my friend Claudia's paperwork, Claudia and I had a nice long talk, something we haven't done in a long while.

One of the things we talked about is Greece as Jeff and I are travelling there soon and Claudia has lots of fond memories of that part of the world. Being from Germany, flying to Greece for a week or a weekend was as simple as Canadians jetting off to Mexico.

Claudia's ex owned property on a tiny little island near Naxos in the Cyclades and they returned again and again to the same village and beaches. They had a little house with no electricity or running water and enjoyed roughing it.

A local shepherd would sometimes bring them fresh goat cheese. So fresh it sometimes still had goat hair in it.

Tales of Greek ferries in rough sea, gypsies, hiking and beautiful beaches...

Geocaching and Woodpecker Love

2010-03-23T21:13:00.000-07:00

Jeff and I spent Sunday afternoon doing some combined hiking/geocaching Cumberland. The trail head is really close to our friend Kim's house and she has hidden five caches in the woods there, most of them along the mossy path that is sign-posted Mama Bear's Trail of Tears.

Somewhere between A Cache for Miss Dickinson and Mama Bear's Second Cache we came across two pileated woodpeckers courting---circling round and round a tree, peeking around the trunk at each other and bobbing their red-crested heads. There was no pecking of wood involved.

(Finally remembered my new camera can take video and took the below clip of them.)

Forty-five minutes later, as we retraced our steps along the trail, we came across the same two birds--they were still at it. Round and round. Ah, wood-pecker love in the Spring-time!

Number 28

2009-12-09T22:04:00.000-08:00

Thirty minute coffee break--what should I do with it? Hot beverage? Or geocache with Kim?
Well, obviously I just don't need caffeine that bad! :)

Hearth

2009-11-08T22:12:00.001-08:00

The weather is wild and stormy tonight.

But in my house it's cozy by the hearth.

We've been in this house seven years this past Halloween and it was only as this winter started approaching that we thought about getting a chimney sweep in to have a look. The chimney was clean and bare.

And so now let the coziness begin!

I spent this evening in front of the fireplace with a Terry Pratchett book and visions of a winter talking with friends in front of a lit fireplace.

Egypt?

2009-11-06T19:46:00.001-08:00

We've been planning on going to Greece this Spring, you see, and looking at all sorts of brochures and possibilities.

Well, we're STILL going to Greece, but in our research we couldn't help but notice how tantalizingly close Egypt is.

Hey, in the world of ancient civilizations, they're practically just down the block from one another.

So here is a trip to Egypt that we're seriously considering. It's the same company we went to Africa and India with and therefore we'd get a discount. So, so tempting!

Zombies

2009-11-06T19:00:00.001-08:00

So, it's almost a week after Halloween, but zombies are on my mind. Maybe it's all the zombie-like motions I've been going through this past week as I dealt with my "flu-like symptoms" (that's the correct media term lately I believe).

Yes, I got quite good at shambling around the house and moaning. No matter.

Last Saturday was Courtenay's first ever official Zombie Walk and I'm rather sorry that I was merely a spectator as this sort of thing obviously has great potential merit to be an Awesome Annual Cultural Event in this girl's book.

In no particular order, Things I Learned at the Zombie Walk:

* Canadian zombies may lurch menacingly down the sidewalk, but when they need to get across the street, they use the cross walk. Yay, zombies!

*For the vegetarian-inclined zombies out there, a cauliflower covered in fake blood makes a rather convincing brain. so no need to feel left out when your fellow zombies are slathering apart something more squishy.

* If you're a zombie dog-owner and you can train your doggie to play fetch with your own severed arm, that's extra points or something.

* Finally! a use for all that stuffy formal wear at the back of your closet! Zombies like to dress up when they eat out. Yeah, it may have a few stains...

* Zombies appreciate a good cheer-leader. "Give me a B! Give me an R! Give me an A! Give me an I!.." Well, you probably can figure out the rest. Zombies are a little bit single-minded.

* The sight of hordes of zombies apparently don't traumatize local children at all. One baby's mom had turned into a nasty pus-filled zombie and there he was all gurgling and happy in his carriage draped with black tulle.

* Zombies sometimes talk on cell-phones.

*Zombies seem like a fun crowd.

Shoreline Cleanup...What Went Right...and What Didn't

2009-09-21T20:39:00.000-07:00

So Saturday afternoon was the day slated for our part in the Great Canadian Shoreline Clean-up. It was a pretty nice day despite a few clouds. We had our gloves, our garbage bags. We had our team of cleaner-uppers.

But sometimes things don't work out exactly as planned.

Our team was scattered to the winds: one friend on the team had emergency gall bladder surgery, others in the emergency room with him, another friend was hours away with a car that wouldn't start....it was one of those days where cleaning the beach falls way down the priority list!

But Jeff and I decided that we had already planned to do this thing---and the beach wouldn't clean itself after all..

Among the eighty pieces of garbage we removed from Gartley Beach:

* a shotgun shell casing
* a moldering piece of carpet
* umpteen beer cans
* miscellaneous pieces of metal and plastic
*tangles of twine and disintegrating rope
* a smashed pair of eyeglasses
* a piece of green house plastic
"You're taking a picture of me picking up garbage?" Jeff asked quizzically. Well, yes, I am.

Halfway down the beach we saw a lone figure pulling litter from among the rocks. It was Mike, Kim's brother! Hurray, somebody else had come for the clean-up! He couldn't believe all the garbage we'd found! He had himself acquired quite a large shopping bag's worth of styrofoam and disposable coffee cups.

It's funny--when we arrived we really wondered if the beach had any garbage on it at all. To the casual eye, the beach stretched pebbly and clean and was littered with nothing more than oyster shells.

I am remembering all the pristine-looking shorelines we boated by on our whale-watching trip last weekend, hoping that they were as clean and untouched as they looked, and knowing that probably just wasn't so.

So anyway, we were halfway through the part of the beach that Kim had signed us up for, when the heavens opened up and our warm and pleasant afternoon turned into a pounding downpour. We got wet so fast we might as well have rolled a little in the tide-pools. Water dripping down our collars, we decided that finishing the other half (from the access road down to the Trent river) was a job for another day.

There's probably (sadly) lots of garbage waiting for us still. So if anyone wants to join me on a sunnier afternoon....? I'd like to finish the job. Oh yes, and then go have dessert at the Kingfisher like we'd planned!

Whale Watching Anniversary

2009-09-14T22:56:00.000-07:00

Seventeen years married was celebrated this past Saturday by taking a whale-watching tour out of Campbell River. What a beautiful day out on the water!

This was a little video I took near the end of the afternoon as we encountered a playful group of Pacific white-sided dolphins for the third time that day. There must have been at least forty of them, puffing and whistling and playing all around us, jumping and feeding and sliding under our boat to look up at us through the water with bright eyes that looked both intelligent and mischievous.

Seven years ago, for our tenth anniversary, Jeff and I rented a kayak near April Point Lodge on Quadra Island,and had the thrilling experience of an orca whale rocketing through the water past our little boat, its giant fin and broad shiny back glistening in the sun. I have no pictures of that, but that moment in time has been replayed over and over in my head.

Whales are just magical. When I see them in nature, I feel some tug on my heart that is hard to explain.

On Saturday, when the tail of a humpback whale broke the surface of the water before its deep dive, that moment will also be part of me forever. Nobody snapped a picture because sometimes all you can do is stare in wonder, caught in a moment, and then it is gone.I think a memory like this is one of the best anniversary presents ever.

My Birthday Present Bathroom Renovation

2009-09-07T13:09:00.001-07:00

A short while ago, I dug my fingernails under a tiny corner of some extraordinarily ugly rose-covered wall-paper and pulled a long ragged shred of it from the wall.

There. I'd done it. I'd officially committed to renovating the Very Ugly Hidden Room that was our downstairs bathroom.

These are the after pictures. These are not fancy renovations--just some nice updates so I don't have to scream and lunge in front of house guests when they go to open the door. Fresh paint, new mirror and vanity, new light, new baseboard heater, new towel bar, new tiles.
It was a birthday present (from Jeff, because he did a lot of the work) but also to myself. It was one of those things pushed very far down the List of Things to Do that in an Ideal World Would Have Been done Long Ago.

Below is what it looked like before---pink plastic towel bar, afore-mentioned wallpaper, fake-wood vanity, bad lino, rusted radiator, unframed mirror, wicker kleenex box painted pink and covering hole in the wall. It was bad.
It's been like that for the six years we've lived here though, hidden away off the rec room, unused and unloved.

Here's the thing though. At the beginning of July, three things happened to make a change.
One A vow. I opened the door one day to take something out of the shower stall (used as storage space) and thought: "I am DOING something about this room. Soon!"

Two A phone call. A friend called me to tell me about free interior design advice being offered on a new local website. They were looking for "Ugly Rooms". My friend said she thought of my downstairs rec room and, you know, that awful bathroom I had. My friends..always thinkin' of me. :)

Three A Visitor. A friend who hadn't visited in a long while opened the door, and made a face, "Hey, I didn't know you had another bathroom...GAWD, it's UGLY!"

Three times is the charm! Fine, fine, it's ugly! Let the renos begin!

Below are pictures of the floor, before and after...

Anyway, it's not like an ugly basement bathroom defined my house. But it sure feels nice now that I can leave the door open.

All the clutter stored there has been disposed of too.

Shoes

2009-08-14T19:54:00.001-07:00

This blog post inspired by the shoe decluttering blog post of my friend Pol...

As I embark on my quest towards an emptier basement--- flying in the face of my SIMULTANEOUS quest to collect junk to sell for fund-raising-- I find myself with NINE bags of stuff to leave the house sitting in the basement. Stuff I can't flea-market or Craigslist. Stuff I can't possibly justify keeping. That's a lot of bags lined up in the basement waiting for the next CDA neighbourhood pickup--probably not until September. And I'll probably be filling more...

This afternoon I'm down to eight bags, having dropped a large load of shoes off at the thrift store. Out it's going, bag by bag, this holiday week *she vows to herself*

Sometimes I'm tempted to put aside shoes for a clothes trade, but this particular Pile O' Shoes only merited one pair for possible Future-Use-By-Friends.

Like I said, this post was inspired by my friend who likewise posted pictures of her shoe collection online. "Wow", I thought to myself, "My friend sure does like shoes!" But apparently, um, I have a similar problem. Nothing like a picture or two to illustrate.

The Before picture shows all twenty-eight pairs of shoes I found in various places around the house. (Not even counting my snow boots.)

How is it possible that I have collected so many? Friends will attest I don't enjoy shopping for shoes, can't wear heels without hobbling myself, and will wear a pair of favourites until the sole is separating from the uppers--HAD to leave my old hiking shoes in Kathmandu for just that reason. It's a bit of a shocker for me that I am nevertheless, after reviewing all evidence, a horrible hoarder of shoes. Sigh.

But...after this month's shoe purge I am relieved to say I am now ELEVEN pairs lighter than before! Although I am for some reason STILL holding onto the pink Italian strappy shoes I wore painfully to the Crazy Ladies Tea Party--oh, the memories!

Jeff pulled all his shoes out too and similarly junked out. Total number of pairs: eleven (two not pictured as they were later discovered hiding in trepidation).

Blackberries

2009-08-14T14:13:00.001-07:00

I have ten days of holiday stretching ahead of me...my treat to myself is my birthday week off work.

Well, one treat anyway. I'm planning on having a good week.

To start with, I got off work early and wandered down the lane to the blackberry patch and picked a little pail of sun-ripened yumminess.

The bushes are laden with green and red berries--the potential for a blackberry-filled freezer bounty is enormous this year. All the recent hot weather has made the bushes amazingly productive.

Wild strawberries are good, fresh raspberries are a favourite, but nothing is more tasty to me than a perfect blackberry.

Alaska Photos

2009-07-26T23:29:00.000-07:00

A month ago we were riding on a train from Seward to Anchorage! I can't believe this summer is going by so fast. And this hot weather is making me wish I was back in Alaska. Well, not in Anchorage. Maybe Skagway or Ketchikan though.

Anyway, below is the address to our Alaska trip photos on Photobucket. They are totally un-annotated, but I'll be posting notes on them later and stories here too. As soon as the temperature drops.

Heat. Making. Me. Unmotivated.
See the ice in the photo? Mmmmm...so, so chilly. :)

Alaska Photos June 2009

Makin' Baby Icebergs

2009-07-04T17:13:00.000-07:00

Back from Alaska!

One morning we got up early, braved the chill, and watched from the ship's deck as enormous chunks of ice calved from the Hubbard Glacier.....

The blue wall of ice stretched and towered, squeaking and creaking and rumbling constantly, sending little mini avalanches trickling into a sea already bobbing with ice. It sounds like a rifle shot mixed with thunder when something the size of a house breaks off and crashes into the ocean.

This is also my first YouTube video. :)

First Geocaches for "Spideyjen"

2009-06-06T21:26:00.000-07:00

Ah, the great outdoors....

Nothing like getting outside on a beautiful day, venturing through forest and meadow and creekside, discovering hidden trails...and, er, turning in circles while muttering darkly until your GPS unit decides to start picking up the signal correctly.

Yes, we are venturing into the hidden world of geo-caching.

There is probably more than fifty hidden caches within a few miles of our house, so today we set out for the nearby ones.

The first cache we found while ostensibly wandering (quite incorrectly) toward another cache. Once we realized we were in spitting distance (well, 500 feet or so) of it, we changed our target and soon had discovered a hidden trove of fishing lures (it's the hunt, not the prize, right?) tucked away in a little tupperware container in the hollow of some tree roots.

We went back to our first target, got on track, and found ourselves in a little park. The GPS swore up and down we were practically standing on top of a cache, but there were people about and we didn't feel like crawling through the leaves while other folks hovered. Also, it was too darn hot out to concentrate. Later this evening, we returned and found the little log book and pencil after some pondering on the subject of where, oh where could it be.

Third hunt took us through deer trails and serious brambles . Serious bush-whacking. This was the geocache that my dedicated geocacher friend, Kim, suffered many long scratches on her legs to find. Well, we didn't find it, although we stared at and prodded a long series of fallen tree trunks in the hope that something man-made might appear. Alas, not.

Well, two out of three ain't bad.

Birdsong and Massage

2009-06-01T21:21:00.001-07:00

I'm feeling blissed out and serene right now, freshly back from a massage at my friend/co-worker's little studio.

The little cottage backs onto the forest, and as I lay there, so relaxed I was practically in liquid form, two deer walked right by the open window. Birdsong poured in, a duet with the soft Asian music playing.

I've been meaning to treat myself to this for a while now. It's funny how you can vow to make time for yourself, just yourself, and then somehow the months go by and making time to luxuriate is forgetfully pushed to the bottom of the list.

Mmmmm. Do not forget again.

Magee and Colby

2009-05-31T16:49:00.000-07:00

The kitties are settling in...

Magee is the one on the right. They're a little hard to tell apart in this photo. :)

Magee is very, very affectionate and while she's not a replacement for Lestat, she is already making herself a very loved part of the household. She will sit on your lap for hours and rumble away in a very quiet purr.

Magee

2009-05-20T21:54:00.000-07:00

Is Magee the cat for us, a companion for Colby and a new little creature to take into our hearts?

We don't know yet, but we've made an appointment to go see her tomorrow at the house she's being fostered at.

She's just over a year old and was a stray picked up as a dirty thin kitten from Hornby Island. She'd been living rough for a while the shelter people think. Her torn little ear speaks to that. Lestat had an ear like that-- he wasn't living rough but he was a bit of a scrapper in his youth.

She's apparently a bit handshy at first, but with a sweet personality. I hope there's a bond.

This is how we picked Colby---looking at pictures of local adoptable animals and making a list of possibles. When we met Colby there was an instant bond and we barely glanced at the other cats I'd selected on paper. She sort of threw herself at us, and from Magee's description it's doubtful we'll be greeted in the same way at first.

It's a big decision and I thought I'd wait much longer after Lestat was gone to go searching, but I am missing having a second cat in our household more than I thought. Not missing Lestat more than I thought (I miss him sure enough), but missing two cats in general as well. Two hopeful faces at breakfast time, two furry bodies warming the end of the bed, twice the trouble, twice the purring.

If Magee is not a match, as may happen, there will be others I know, but we both think she has an appealing little face and I'm a sucker for a hard luck story.

Mosaic Path Idea...or what to Do With All Your Weird Junk

2009-05-19T19:56:00.000-07:00

What to do with all those miscellaneous things in our lives? Rusty tools and broken teacups and bits of pretty rock sitting on your windowsill and things you somehow can't part with....well, you COULD line the pathway to your house with them like this home on Denman Island.

The crazed lamphrey eel tile below is what first drew my eye of course....

But there were Mexican clay pots, runestones, marbles, and plastic insects set into the concrete, slivers of stone and glass glittering in the sunshine: the effect was enormously appealing and I found myself mentally evaluating the contents of my own personal odds and ends for a reincarnation in something similar. Recycled debris as art at the entranceway to one's home: your neighbours will know you're not boring.

Bluebell Garden

2009-05-16T21:56:00.000-07:00

We visited this garden towards the end of the Mother's Day garden tour last weekend. It had the feeling of a hidden parkland as scrubby trees and fencing was the only view from the street. Best things here were an ornate fountain spouting water from lions heads--exactly what I want for the courtyard for my villa in Rome or for er, somewhere in my present garden.

Gave me great ideas for using bricks to floor my patio and the artful use of screens and lattice work and climbing vines to create the feel of outdoor rooms. Also liked the use of mosses and woolly thymes among stones.

This garden made me envision mass plantings of bluebells under my own trees. Thousands of bluebells. I loved its nut-tree orchard and blossoming trees.

I was happily gifted at this stop with a hankie full of white Star of Bethlehem flowers and bulbs. I was assured that they would soon explode in my garden everywhere and I may yet regret taking them, but they looked lovely here.

Thanks All

2009-05-15T13:51:00.000-07:00

Here's a pic of Lestat's grave in the ferny-mossy-cool-and-shady corner of my garden.

Thanks all for the hugs and visits and phone calls and comments in the past week. Nice to know other people understand that a pet passing away is not an easy thing.

I also want friends to know that I have come to the peaceful conclusion that it was the right decision to put him to sleep. I think making the decision and making the appointment was the hardest thing. Followed only by the mental turmoil and re-visiting the decision over the next days that followed before we actually went to the vet. I think I did almost all of my grieving before his death and it's heavy work and an unhappy place to be. My eyes felt too heavy from so much crying.

But last Thursday, the fateful day, Lestat woke me up at about three in the morning, nuzzling my chin and cuddling into me, and I felt this curious, almost physical sensation of peace about what I'd decided. Hard to explain but since then, even through the vet appointment, and through his burial in a catnip-lined grave, I do feel a sense of okay-ness even through my sadness.

And it was a very nice thing, too, that the weekend right after this all happened was both the Denman Island Garden tour and the local Mother's Day garden tour. Two days of wandering through flower gardens is good for the melancholy. I will be posting pictures of the gardens soon.

Saying Goodbye

2009-05-06T21:20:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow I'm saying goodbye to my dear old cat, Lestat.

He's been a companion for twenty years and I feel so torn apart inside right now. I miss him already.

Posting on Spider on the Road blog now..

2009-04-15T22:07:00.000-07:00

I've just added a post tonight to my Spider on the Road blog. I've been wanting to share more about my trip to India and Nepal for a while, so as I re-read my journals and organize my thoughts about that trip, I'll be posting there.

Hope you enjoy my pictures and meanderings. I tend to journal a lot when I travel, and later, much as I enjoy the beautiful art and trinkets I buy on a trip, it is always my journal that I treasure most.

Syracuse and Sunshine

2009-04-04T23:01:00.000-07:00

Here are some pictures from the local high school musical I went to tonight, a comedy of errors based on Shakespeare's, er, Comedy of Errors: the musical The Boys From Syracuse.

It had some rough edges and a lot of the silly slapstick humour that would probably have my friend Tai muttering, "I'll just go wait out in the car...", but it was fun and me and Jeff and my mom had a good night out.

Next weekend, the three of us are going to see the musical, Oklahoma. Yep, it had been a dry spell for Spidergirl, not seeing a musical play or show since December, but all that was a-changin'.

In other news:

1. I spent an enormously enjoyable hour or two in my big round papsan reading chair in the sunshine today. Face turned up, eyes closed, soaking that feeling of winter's-over up. This was the first time this year I felt good about putting a stick of furniture outside. I'd tell you what I was reading, but it's five or six different books at the moment. Wait, no, I will tell you, but I'll wait till I'm done at least one of them.

2. I joined Twitter today, although I'm not sure if I'll actually use it.It's a social website which is like mini-blogging--you can only type 40 or so characters in a post. So no excuse for not having time to post? Nahhh....probably wouldn't work that way anyway. Well anyway, my address there is http://twitter.com/Spideyjen.

I think I was partially goaded into checking out the website because some newscaster flippantly commented the other day that if you're over twenty-five, you've probably never even heard of Twitter.

3. Thursday, we got free tickets to a Toronto Film Festival movie that was playing for just one night here, and I though I'd pass along a movie recommendation because I thought it was really a sweet, thoughtful, thought-provoking film. It's called One Week, and I had second thoughts when I read the film synopsis --- it's about a man who discovers he has a terminal illness---- anyway, he decides to go travelling by motorcycle across Canada from Toronto to Tofino in search of...well, a lot of things---from inner peace to the world's biggest hockey stick, and I guess I was in exactly the right mood for a movie that was funny and serious all at the same time.

4.There's an enormous bright ring around the moon tonight. Absolutely gorgeous.

Eeek...it's the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch!

2009-03-24T23:33:00.000-07:00

Okay....I think the whole world needs to take a deep breath and just...relaxxxx a little. The link tells the tale of how a pleasant afternoon swilling beer at a pub was completely ruined by the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch.

And the Lord spake, saying, "First shalt thou take out the Holy Pin, then shalt thou count to three, no more, no less.

'"Three shall be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out.

'"Once the number three, being the third number, be reached, then lobbest thou thy Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch towards thy foe, who being naughty in my sight, shall snuff it. Amen."'

Sometimes I Feel Just Like T-Rex

2009-03-18T18:23:00.000-07:00

Hey, why AREN'T I taking a helicopter to the grocery store?!

Actually, my evening does not feel dull--I'm playing video games with friends and curling up with home renovation books. Relaxing. Comfortable. Aaahh.

Besides, even if I'm not having an awesome adventure right-this-second, I AM pretty happy that we just finalized our holiday plans today---travelling by cruise up the Inside Passage to Alaska this June! And if that's not quite as exotic as some of our past trips, I'm very okay with that too. I'm reveling in the potential excitement factor of having a hot tub and spa on board my boat. :)

(by the way, you'll probably have to click on the dinosaur cartoon to read it...unless you already have a magnifying glass at hand)

Chocolate Kitchen

2009-03-17T18:14:00.000-07:00

A few days ago my kitchen was screamin' Spanish yellow, immediately nicknamed "Wowie-shazam" a colour which I had always wanted to splash on a wall and did so about eighteen months ago.

(It's seen here with a wind-chime, currently one of my many Craigslist fund-raising knick-knacks....five bucks...anyone?)

It's a gorgeous colour which shouts out loud. A colour which refuses to be subdues. A vivid wake-up wake-up WAKE-UP colour which greets you in the morning in no uncertain terms.

And when the sun falls on it...mmmm...nice.

Alas, here on the west coast, the sunshine avoids my windows for seeming months at a time, and lately that colour has felt oddly cold and industrial--more "Bob the Builder" than Mediterranean sunshine.

So, no worries, it simply means it's time to paint the walls again.

My mother says I'm like an Auntie Mame, painting the walls a different colour as her mood changed.

I don't know who Auntie Mame might be, but I can fondly identify. It's funny because the lady who lived here before me was also a serial-painter: I saw my potential new kitchen at three different house showings before I bought (over the course of two years), and viewed this room in THREE different colour schemes. Pink--ugh. Blue--slightly less ugh, but I was still mentally changing the colour. Then, the day we sat at her kitchen table signing the real estate forms, I couldn't help but notice that the walls were now coloured like a cantaloupe with a crazy green and white plaid thing going. (Note: I actually lived with it and, perhaps oddly enough, liked it enough to keep it like that for a good long while).

The colour I chose is called Belgian Sweet, a cozy chocolate brown that I am currently enjoying very much, although for a while during the painting process my colour scheme resembled an enormous bumblebee.

It's a delicious earthy colour, and the choice was deeply influenced by a photo of my kitchen that my friend Pol sent me a long while back (back when my kitchen was orange actually). In that photo, she digitally changed all my wall colours to deep dark ones (as well as throwing in new counter-tops and cabinets to boot), and I quite liked the look.

After a lot of deep meditation sessions in the paint sample sections of the local hardware stores, I almost chose a sage green colour but since my living room is red I thought I should probably avoid looking like Christmas all twelve months.

P.S.Here is the infamous Auntie Mame, circa 1958 , played by Rosalind Russell. As well as both liking to change decors, we also both apparently appreciate a good flamboyant hat.

Seal Hunt Petition

2009-03-15T22:56:00.000-07:00

So, here's wishing the weather was better this blowy,rainy Saturday as we gathered to protest the ongoing seal hunt in eastern Canada, and to support a bill that has been introduced to finally put an end to it.

I don't write on this blog nearly enough anymore, and so, good readers, I know there are probably not many of you who will read this that I don't see quite often already, but if I haven't given you a chance to sign my petition, let me know, and I'll have a pen and a nice cup of tea for you. :)

By the way, that's yours truly, in the upper right hand corner of that little photo collage above--that's not my number above, but if you want more information on Mac Harb's bill to end the seal hunt, you could not speak to a person more dedicated to helping animals.

Cheers, everybody! (I promise to write more often if y'all bug me more about it). :)

The Power of Nickel and Diming and Telling Everyone

2009-02-01T21:45:00.000-08:00

So I've been busy lately with a little fund-raising goal of mine. I love goals, that feeling of focus, that brain-storming of ways to get to what you want to do. Truth is, I feel a little lost unless I want something that feels possible, but just a little out of reach at the moment.

Hmmmm...lesseee...there is a billion cents in $1 million dollars. There are 20 million nickels and 10 million dimes in $1 million dollars. Clearly, if I'm nickel and diming my way to fortune it might take a while to make a million dollars.

However, right at this moment in time, fresh from my visit to Childhaven in Nepal, I'm only concentrating on raising the money for a very specific goal: my friend Hritika's education fund.

I figure that six thousand dollars will go a long way in Nepal towards helping her, and although I don't actually know what the final amount of money she will need to get through school, I figure this is a contribution that I can commit to. And I know it will make a difference. I love that.

Right now, I'm telling everyone I know about this goal because that is one way I know to make something happen. Mostly, right now, I am asking people for donations of junk and stuff that I can sell on Craigslist and in garage sales because that is such a comfortable way for me to raise money by now. I've been doing it to fund my travel since my first trip in 1999.

My base goal is to raise one hundred dollars a month this way to put aside for Hritika: twelve hundred dollars a year. So far, so good: I made $132 selling stuff in January that would probably have gone to the landfill otherwise. Everything was five bucks or under and I STILL made my goal and then some.

Since she has only just turned sixteen , I figure that by the time she is eighteen years old, I will have enough put aside to get her started JUST from doing that.

But my real hope (positive thinking here) is that serendipity will come along and help me out. It already has actually. Twice this past month. And one thing led to another.

The first thing that happened was that my father woke up one night from a Compelling Dream telling him that a certain piece of valuable but never-seen or worn jewelery currently residing in a safe deposit box should be sold and the money given to Hritika's family. And he's decided to DO just that.....

To say that my jaw nearly hit the floor when my mother told me the news is an understatement. WOW. Really. (You gotta know my dad...)

And THEN, the following day, full of joy and uplifted by my parents' generosity, I told the story of my dad's dream to a co-worker.

Behind me, a voice said "That's it! I've just had an epiphany!" I turned around and there was a dear sweet person from work who was mulling over what to do with an expensive ring from an ended relationship. "I'm going to sell it and give the money to the Hritika fund", she declared.

And she is! Later, I went to her and asked her if she was sure. "Yes", she said. "This is the right thing to do with it. Sometimes you get a flash of intuition and you just know..."

I am just overwhelmed. :)

Always New Places to Go

2009-01-26T17:17:00.000-08:00

My brother Adam and his wife Kira have just returned from Singapore, Thailand, and Cambodia. And now, of course, I have to add these places to my ever-expanding List of Places to Go Before I Die, which means I have a lot of travelling to do before I croak.

BubbleShare: Share photos - Find great Clip Art Images.

Happy New Year!

2008-12-31T08:47:00.001-08:00

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Festival of Light--Here and There

2008-12-24T21:11:00.001-08:00

It's Solstice time, it's Christmas time, and coloured lights are shining everywhere now on shrubberies and trees and houses here in Canada. It's the part I like best about this year I sometimes think. Despite the fact that I won't climb about in the cold and storms to bedeck my own house, I will happily admire the neighbours, and content myself with the lighting of candles. Besides, I feel like I've already just celebrated in a festival of light that moved and amazed me.

In November, I witnessed a beautiful spectacle along the banks of the Ganges River.

On the night of the full moon in the month of Kartik, the gods descend to earth to celebrate in the Hindu holy city of Varanasi, and the people there welcome them in a festival known as Dev Deepawali (or sometimes Kartik Purnima). Candles and earthen lamps known as diyas line the ghats (steps down to the river) and the many, many temples at the river's edge are hung with lights and decorations. Miles of temples!

I am in a hired rowboat, one of hundreds, maybe thousands out on the Ganges tonight. Varanasi is a pilgrimage city, home to millions, and a good portion of the populations has turned out for the celebration both on land and water. The gathering of boats is so great that flower-sellers and food-merchants are able to jump from vessel to vessel with ease.

We have bought special votive candles from a young boy that are circled with marigold flowers. When we set these floating candles out on the river (make a wish!) to drift like tiny lanterns I am fondly reminded of the times at home when I've set candles on the river at home on the winter solstice.

But unlike the quiet and icy peacefulness of remembered Yuletides, this celebration is filled with the clanging of bells and gongs, the chanting of Brahmin priests performing the fire aartis by the river's edge, and wild Indian flute and drum music broadcast with loudspeakers over the dark water. There is the sudden and constant pistol-shots of firecrackers going off at close range, launched from the prow of a neighbouring boat, there are crackling bursts of fireworks, and shouts from the shore as a large paper lantern released into the air lodges in a tree and sets it alight, endangering the building it grows beside.

The Youtube clip below is short (and not my own), but gives you an idea of the soundtrack of that night.

It was chaoes. It was magic. :)

And somehow, thousands of miles from home, I felt very, er, uh, Christmasy.

I'm Back From India and Shovellin' Snow

2008-12-21T18:42:00.000-08:00

I'm home again!

Well, most everybody knows that already, but few could tell from looking at my poor neglected blog. The good news (well, I like to think of it that way) is that I took about two thousand photos while in India and Nepal and so I have plenty of things to post soon. Very soon. Um, I just have to go shovel the blasted driveway again. :)

I leave you with a few pictures from a very marvellous and thought-provoking trip, and wish you a very Happy Solstice!

One Week till We Go

2008-10-28T19:28:00.001-07:00

The last week before I leave on a trip I go into list-making mode with a fury.

On my List of Things to Do Before We Go there is a eclectic bunch of tasks ranging from the fairly significant (confirm flights and make copy of passport pages/visas) to the fairly trifling ( take back library books and paint toe-nails pink).

That last item is actually something I don't want to forget--here in Canada it is no longer sandal-wearing weather, but I've been following the weather forecasts for India and Nepal and this morning it was 34 degrees Celsius in Delhi.

Also I need to: clean out the fridge, bring in all the clay pots in from the garden, do a huge laundry, pack my bag (this may be the lightest pack so far!), confirm with various wonderful friends who are dropping us off and picking us up at the ferry next Tuesday, find something to read on the airplane, make a rupee to dollars conversion table, make something to bring to Sherry's potluck party, and er, you know, breathe deeply.

There's other stuff on the list, but you get the picture.

This last week before we leave finds me poring over traveller reviews of the hotels we have booked ---anything with the words "miserable hovel" or "cockroaches" needs to be reconsidered!

Also, I find myself desperately trying to avoid the stomach flu that is circulating at work while at the same time shopping for immodium tablets for the inevitable upset that people who pick India as a holiday destination will most likely encounter.

I've been reading, reading, reading about the places I'm going to be: Jaipur, Agra, Varanasi, Lumbini, Pokhara, Kathmandu......

I'm spending a week in the Kathmandu Valley! And last night Jeff's mom came over with a little gift---money ear-marked for a small chartered plane flight over Mount Everest. Between that, and my own mom's gift of money for two theatre nights in London on the way back home I can't help but feel that presents don't get much cooler. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

As well, Ritika, my friend in the village of Aru Bari outside of Kathmandu is sending little excited emails to me. I've never met her, but I'm really glad I am.

I'm getting those little travel butterflies.

List of Wondrous things I Want to Do

See the giant fruit bats that hang out in trees in Kathmandu---bonus points if I can see them flying out of those trees at just the right time at dusk.

Breathe in some Himalayan air.

Meet a sadhu, an Indian holy man.

Eat three things I've never tried: momos (Tibetan-style dumplings) for sure, but I'm game for anything that is not viscera of some sort.

Ride down the Ganges River at dawn (or dusk) in the ancient city of Varanasi--this is a city so old that it was a contemporary of Thebes, considered the oldest continually inhabited city in the world even.

Visit a cremation ghat (from a respectful distance). I am so interested in funerals, and India is one of the few countries where death is not always hidden behind closed doors.

See rhinos safely from an elephant's back in the forests of Chitwan.

Go to an Indian theatre and watch one of those so-dreadful-I-like-em Bollywood films.

Write in my journal every day. Could I not do this?

Things to Do: Wash an Elephant

2008-09-27T20:01:00.001-07:00

Our trip to India and Nepal is getting closer and closer: it's just over a month until we go!

I'm starting to make a mental list of things I want to do, am really going to do.... We've already signed up for an elephant-back safari in this national park (it's the best way to get close to rhinos around that neck of the woods) so why not take the whole elephant thing one step further?

Number One on the List of Things to Do: I'm going to take a bath with an elephant in Chitwan Park, Nepal. Apparently I'm going to get very wet. Have a look at these people doing just that. I'm going to be just like that girl who had a bit of trouble figuring out just exactly how she was going to climb up on its back, I'm betting. :)

Bug Whisperer

2008-09-13T00:54:00.001-07:00

Today it was gorgeous and sunny and as I walked around the playground at work an enormous dragonfly with luminous blue eyes landed on my hip.

I called the children to come over and have a look at it, and quite a little crowd of three year olds toddled over to peer at the large insect on me.

The dragonfly stayed put for quite a while, and two of my co-workers drifted over too. I cupped my hands gently under the dragonfly and lifted it up so the children could see better.

The dragonfly seemed quite at ease while I touched it gently and showed it to all the big and little people gathered around and only flew away when I lifted my hand up into the air above my head.

"That was magic!" said one little girl. "You are magic with bugs!"

Yes, agreed my co-workers, bugs seem to really like me. This sort of thing is not an isolated incident.

"She's the Bug Whisperer!" said Terri.

I kind of like that thought actually.

My co-worker told me of a story she'd heard about a man who one day had a butterfly land on his clothing while he was at work. The butterfly stayed with him all day, and then stayed on him as he travelled home. It was still with him the next day, and, much bemused, he placed the insect carefully in his garden.

It stayed for quite a while among his flowers, lighting on his clothing every day before fluttering away again.

At last, on the very last day he saw the butterfly, it sat on its shoulder for a while before flying up and up and up until he couldn't see it any more.

While it may or may not be a true tale, there is something deeply appealing in it to me.

Sixteen Years

2008-09-13T00:30:00.000-07:00

Sixteen years ago... Jeff and I were still shaking the blasted flower petals out of our formal clothes---it's amazing how the pretty little confetti can fall right down one's wedding dress into the most confounded places.

Sixteen years ago.... we were sharing our first meal together as married couple---ravenously wolfing down sandwiches made by the B.C. Ferry Corporation because we were so busy running around smiling till our smile muscles were sore and posing for pictures at the wedding that we barely got to taste the wedding cake before zooming off to catch the boat.

Sixteen years ago...we were flying off to Disneyland on our honeymoon to ride on the teacups and visit Tomorrow Land and stay in a hotel themed like a castle with a stream running through the lobby.

The wedding day went by really fast and the honeymoon was lots of fun: it's kind of like the last sixteen years with Jeff.

It's gone by rather fast, and it's been rather fun. Happy Anniversary to us! :)

Shopping Binge

2008-09-07T10:21:00.000-07:00

What?! Spider Girl went on a shopping binge?!

Yes, armloads (two) of stuff came home with me in a unprecedented, out-of-character consumer frenzy. It was hours of trooping from shop to shop with my friend Sherry, and the shopping beast was temporarily unleashed within me yesterday afternoon...

The good news is, of course, that the stores were all second-hand ones and no credit ratings/bank accounts were drained in the process.

Do NOT, do NOT buy clothes at retail prices.It is INSANE how much they are charging for things when you can get the same thing in brand-new condition for three bucks.

It's amazing, actually, how much a girl can wring out of a twenty-dollar bill: two pairs of shoes, five tops, a very pretty skirt, two sparkly dressup purses for my preschool kids, two bags of building blocks (also for the kids), and this amazing bright and beautiful-ugly prism bead curtain which I am planning on taking apart so I can hang strings of it in a window at the preschool to catch the light.

And the good thing is that when I buy stuff for the preschool I can pay myself back from the recycled-bottle fund that I take care of. Excellent use of a frighteningly huge amount of empty juice boxes in my garage.

So, all told, I didn't spend a whole lot of cash....but I was reminded of why I stay well away from thrift stores and garage sales usually. Note to self: I BUY stuff. Good gravy.

It was a very fun day though,and I managed to catch up on things with an old friend. Also, we had dinner at the Gatehouse in Cumberland: their wild mushroom salad is divine!

Monster Art

2008-08-21T19:41:00.000-07:00

I present to you these two powerful pieces filled with raw expression. I work with the artists. They are largely unknowns in the contemporary world of art...for now. They work mainly in mixed felt-pen media.

Also, they are really short.

Exhibit A:

A gruesome mouthful of teeth. Sinister eyebrows. Might be Mr. Potato Head's unbalanced cousin.

Exhibit B:

Menacing claws. Dilated pupils. Bizarre appendages. Artist claims it is a portrait of sibling.

Anybody care to analyze these works further?

And what do you think? Do I have the seeds of an art show here?

Blogging on my Birthday

2008-08-19T15:19:00.001-07:00

Ten Things I'm Happy About:

1)The tickets are paid for, the visa applications filled out--we are flying to New Delhi on November 5th for a month in India and Nepal! I'll be travelling again soon!

2)The roofers have arrived and a new roof is going on the house. No more buckets catching the deluge underneath the living room window every time it rains!

3) This time tomorrow I'll be at the spa having a hot-stone massage. A little birthday present to myself.

4) I saw four moons of Jupiter through Kim's telescope the other night. And the bright geography on the face of the full moon. What a gorgeous summer night!

5) My friend Tai is visiting this weekend!

6) I am halfway through writing a short story and so far I'm happy with it. It's a writing game that three friends of mine and I sometimes play.Actually, part of the reason I'm happy maybe is just that we decided to give the writing game another try!The rules this time are I somehow have to use the words shame, well, wine, escape, amplitude and slumgullion.

7) After three months of gardening in someone else's yard instead of my own, I'm finally getting some time in my own. The extra money for the gardening job is nice, but

8) I decluttered the Linen Clost of Doom the other day. My house is about fifty bazillion old sheets and towels lighter.

9) Terri brought me back earrings from Murano for my birthday. The sweetie!

10) I'm happy that I'm off to my birthday dinner at Toscano's! :)

Rosetta Stone

2008-07-27T20:39:00.000-07:00

This is a picture of the Rosetta Stone, that ancient stone that provided the key to unlocking the mysteries of the Egyptian hieroglyphics, now housed in the British Museum in London (where I surreptiously reached out and touched it years ago---its behind glass now probably because of curious hands like mine).

The key to deciphering this famous stone was that its text was the same passage written out three times in different languages. And once you know how to read the classical Greek and the Demotic Egyptian bits, understanding the once-indecipherable hieroglphics come easy. If, you know, you're a scholar of ancient languages and you are good at sticking with this sort of thing.

Me, I've spent the past weekend trying to decipher my own kind of Rosetta Stone. The computer software version of Italian Levels I and II.

I'd heard it was a very good program to learn languages because it follows a sort of immersion process, the same way a child would learn a language. It doesn't translate the vocabulary for you, it doesn't provide a list of grammar rules to follow, it just assumes you are reasonably attentive and can figure out what's going on in the little pictures.

It's FANTASTIC! It's addictive in that 'I'm-playing -a-video-game-and-must reach-the-next-level' sort of way. I wish, I wish, I wish I'd had this before travelling to Italy.

So, anyway, a few of my friends and I were recently talking about goal-setting, and what really happens if you are serious about doing something. But what goal to set? That is the question. Because these things take time and energy.

But here's a worthwhile goal: learn a second language. Maybe Italian because it's a beautiful language. Maybe French, because after all I'm supposed to know it already....I'm tired of being one of those Canadians who took French in school but is too embarrassed to speak the few phrases she knows when faced with an actual French-speaking person. (My poor French friend Edith did her best but I distinctly remember freezing up when introduced to her mom who only spoke French.

Yes, I can forsee acquiring the French version of the Rosetta Stone sometime soon....

And best of all, I recently read an article that has really encouraged me to try harder: it explained that it's a myth that adults are not able to learn a second language as well a child can. It's a rather discouraging belief for grown-ups who feel like trying after all.

Children do pick up new words and language quickly of course, but adults have the advantages of learning context and grasping grammar faster. The barrier to adults learning languages is mainly the embarrassment of making mistakes, not an innate inability past a certain age.

It's a relief, right? As long as I don't mind talking funny, I can do this thing. In theory.

Ciao!

Our Italy Trip Photo Album

2008-07-23T19:02:00.000-07:00

Hi everybody,

Jeff's been working on uploading some of our photos from last year's trip to Italy. If you're interested, have a look. (A co-worker of mine just returned from Italy this week and now she's got me missing it all over again):

http://s322.photobucket.com/albums/nn437/spidercats/Italy%202007/

Cats

2008-07-16T19:08:00.000-07:00

See this grey beastie here?

He's pushing twenty years old and still thinks he can take on the neighbourhood.

That's partly why he's an indoor kitty. Other reasons include him being deaf as a post, and as we live on a busy street, and as he has a brain the size of a walnut (love him, but it's true) that could be a dangerous combination.

But we still leave the upstairs balcony door open much of the year day and night so that him and Colby can wander out and enjoy the sunshine/fresh air/watch the birds and bats flying by. (And so Jeff and me don't swelter on these freakin' hot summer nights.)

Anyway, the other night about three in the morning, there was a blood-curdling yowl and my grey beast either leapt or fell off the balcony in pursuit of Louie, the mostly mild-mannered orange tabby that lives a few doors down.

(Louie has been in the habit of visiting our second story patio to check out the air up there lately. How does he jump up? We just don't know. He's quite portly. It's quite a jump. I'm guessing he levitates. Seriously. I briefly considered the possibility. )

Anyway, the other night it was Lestat's turn to initiate things. Well, at the very least he was nowhere in the house or on the balcony, so we figured that was the most likely explanation.

Jeff and I spent a long while searching the neighbourhood by flashlight, but he was just gone .

Aargh. Nothing like being woken up like that. There was nothing for us to do but go back to bed and hope he'd return. I was really worried he'd hurt himself.

About a week ago, there was a cat funeral in the family (my mother-in-law's cat Taylor) and I've been commissioned to select and paint the grave marker. I was dearly hoping I wouldn't have to worry about more cat-related funeral items.

Well, the suspese ended the next morning when I heard piteous mewing sound coming from outside. There he was,making a beeline for the front door and his breakfast bowl.

He's fine. Not a mark or a limp. (Well, he always walks a bit stiffly because twenty years old is like being George Burns in cat years.)

Okay, cat, no more making me worry!

Ghost Hunting Weekend

2008-06-29T21:36:00.000-07:00

This is Helmken Alley at eleven o'clock yesterday night, a squalid and ghost-infested little hole between buildings where all manner of dark things have occurred all around and nearby. Prisoners beaten and murdered. Hangings. Suicides. Mysterious bodies unearthed in the foundations of buildings.

And recently it seems, a number of folk have also taken a whiz here. Grim.

So what was Spider Girl and friends doing in such a place you might ask?

Well, we were listening to local historian and talented storyteller John Adams tell us unearthly tales and spooky legends on one of Victoria's nightly ghost walks, a walk which took us from the Inner Harbour where the Tall Ships are visiting--- past the very-haunted Empress Hotel, past haunted walkways, haunted restaurants, haunted hotels, and even haunted chocolate shops. We concentrated on the Bastion Square area.

It seemed as if every building had a tragic story or a tale of passion and woe, indubitably ending in a resident spirit or two. Even the pub we'd had dinner in (The Bard and the Banker) was rumoured to be haunted by the poet Robert Servicewe found out afterwards.

Victoria is often billed as the most haunted city in British Columbia. Easy to believe that (or not believe I suppose, depending on your level of skepticism).

In fact, a four-day paranormal conference is being held here just next week. I'm predicting a imminent rise in spook-based tourism.

As for me, I'm quite interested in the possibility of ghosts. Although I've never seen a ghost, enough things have happened that have raised the hairs on the back of my neck to make me go hmmmmmm in a thoughtful fashion. That, and I was raised with many, many family ghost stories which I would bug my dear old great-auntie to tell again and again.

Aside from the Ghostly Walk walking tour (which I'll recommend as good for both exercise and entertainment),this weekend in Victoria took me from the haunted fairways of Victoria's golf course to the peaceful lanes of Ross Bay Cemetery to eating samples this morning in the delicious chocolate shop that was on the ghost tour the night before.

Saturday afternoon my dear friend Tai drove me out to the golf course where one of Victoria's most famous ghosts resides. It was a glorious summer afternoon out there on the manicured green where I briefly trespassed (most assuredly not being a member of any golf club whatsoever). I wasn't sure where the notorious seventh fairway was located, but if we were anywhere nearby the ghost of poor murdered Doris, she was lying low. Apparently she can be quite a startling spirit to observe--flying around in the air and even walking right through cars on the road we came in on. No such luck this day.

Next we went to the very old and beautiful Ross Bay Cemetery. It's my favourite kind of cemetery with mossy mausoleums and tall, leaning moss-covered gravestones. Not like those soulless modern places where evey marker has to be flat as a pancake so that the ride-on lawnmower can sail over without a fuss.

And the best thing about Ross Bay is the huge, beautiful trees that grow along the carriageways and among the old graves. Wouldn't you love to be buried underneath a tree like those? So serene. A walk here left me feeling tranquil and happy.

It's rumoured to be haunted of course. But the only unusual thing we saw was an extraordinarily approachable crow that lit in a tree right beside us and studied us closely as we looked at the graves.

This morning, after Tai once again showed off her mysterious powers at finding a parking spot in the hideously crowded downtown core, we retraced some of the steps on the ghost-tour. We revisited the yucky haunted alleyway, purposefully walked along a street where a ghost has supposedly shoved a few people into the path of traffic (yep, we laugh in the face of danger, uh huh), didn't get shoved...

We also had a delightful conversation with an employee of the Maritime Museum (the former site of the coutroom of Matthew Begbie, the "Hanging Judge"), which is known as a place just chock-full of grumpy ghosts.

He was one of those folks that starts out the conversation seeming to call the whole idea of ghosts "ridiculous nonsense" and then goes on to qualify that statement by mentioning all the times things have mysteriously levitated across the gift shop in front of multiple witnesses. Including himself. Heh. :)

Pond Building Party

2008-06-14T18:15:00.000-07:00

A chance conversation with a waterscape designer led to an invitation to a Pond Building Party this weekend. That's the kind of party where instead of BYOB the invitation says: Bring Your Own Shovel .

Strangely enough, this kind of party seemed like just the way to spend my Saturday. I've been trying to make connections with other gardeners and horticulturalists of various types. I have an inkling if I ever decide to make a career change, this is the field I'd like to be in.

Doesn't hurt to network, right?...Well, unless you hurt yourself networking by carrying large rocks to build a pond. Nah.....I'm stronger than I look. :)

In the beginning.....There was only lawn.And then there was digging. A whole lotta digging. It was like that show Two Feet Under . Or something. Of course, with fifteen people digging, the work seems a lot less arduous than you might think.

Also, our spirits were kept buoyed by good coffee and treats from Tim Horton's.

Three feet deep is not extraordinarily deep for a body of water, but regulations classify anything deeper than that as a swimming pool, so we had to keep our depth to about two and a half feet. It may not sound like much, but that's a lot of dirt when the pond is going to be eleven foot by sixteen foot (plus a ten foot stream with waterfall). The dirt that came out was recycled into a large berm that the stream would run down.

Dave (our very charismatic pond-building teacher) taught us how to dig a pond in several tiers....

....how to fit the two layers of liners.... and how to select and place the rocks.

The shape and size and location of each rock is important to the overall effect of the finished pond, Dave taught us in his enthusiastic manner. I've seen some of his stream/waterfall work around town and in gardens and he has quite a talent for making the whole effect seem genuinely nature-inspired.

He showed us how to construct "fish caves", natural hiding-places for pond fish fleeing from the inevitable herons and raccoons attracted to backyard ponds.

I learned about pumps and filters, acid-producing rocks, PVP piping, Ph levels, and the biological cycles of pond bacteria.

I learned nifty ways to lift boulders using two-person slings, the value of constantly applying sunscreen, and to never ever get any of that black gooey stuff used for sealing rocks together on your hands. It may never come off till you're dead. :)

It was a hot day. It was hard work. But frankly, I came away from this event inspired.

When the pond was filled and the first water came tumbling and rushing musically over the edge of the waterfall that I had toiled to build, it was a beautiful moment. Sweaty, but beautiful.

The owner of the home has invited me to come back when all the plants and edging and gold fish have been added, and I think I will.

Indiana Jones and the Guy Who Rear-Ended My Car

2008-05-28T21:58:00.000-07:00

In the new Indiana Jones movie there are people who are flung off the back of jeeps, who fall into pits with stone floors, who free-fall off waterfalls, and oh, I'm sure I'm forgetting some of the more painful incidents that happened to our protagonists.

Ah, yes, there was an incident involving that atomic blast and a flying household appliance. Ouch, That's gotta hurt.

But Indy and those around him (at least the ones we're cheering for) end up a little dusty and dishevelled, but otherwise apparently feeling fine. What I want to know is...will they be stiff and sore the following day?

Cuz if they aren't going to feel a little uncomfortable the next day, I feel like a major wuss.

Some guy barrelled into the back of my car yesterday with a sudden crunching noise that, let's say, didn't make me enjoy the beginning of my day more. My poor, dented bumper. My poor, discombobulated morning.

Anyway, I was going to rant here a little about how the guy reeked of marijuana, and phoned me up later that day to beg me not to report the accident to ICBC (um, too late there, my new not-paying-attention-in-traffic friend...) and that he'd give me a thousand dollars in cash if I wouldn't. Hmmm...well at least he's not trying to say it wasn't his fault....

But, anyhoo, today I'm feeling unpleasantly stiff along the tops of my shoulders. I'm rather annoyed by this, and I'm hoping it goes away before I have to whinge to a doctor about it.

Hey, I just know Indiana Jones (or any of his side-kicks) would be able to brush off a mere fender-bender without a second thought. I bet his hat wouldn't even fall off.

Garden Tour Day

2008-05-11T18:45:00.001-07:00

Garden Tour day finally here.
Happy. Very happy.
Tired. Very tired.
One hundred and seventy five people in my garden today...

The cherry trees were in bloom. The birdhouse Blackcrag gave me is being loved by the birds.

I love having a stone lantern in the Haunted Garden.

That's me, Spider Girl, your garden tour host today.

It's all cheery and pink by the mailbox.

Some visitors to my yard. Just beyond these ladies is the magnolia tree that I planted after being inspired by my friend Fireweed's tree-planting project. That whole area used to be just a pile o' dirt until a month or two ago. It's come a long way in a short time.

My youngest visitor, who was scolded by her mother after picking one of my yellow flowers. "I thought it was a dandelion", she protested. Easy mistake. :)

So many, many cars parking in front of my house. I wish I got this kind of traffic when I have a garage sale. Actually one fellow stopped by thinking it was a garage sale. He was right disappointed it wasn't. Flowers schmowers.

Tulips!

More tulips! (The bunnies didn't get them all after all.)

The pond and beyond.

I love the driftwood in the background--thanks Nik and Linda.

I'm rather in love with these blue and white pots but they belong to my mom. I'm going to very shortly go clay-pot shopping and get something like them for my very own, you better believe. I love 'em.

This is the patio underneath my wisteria arbour. See the little garden mirror peeking out from behind the honeysuckle vines? A very appreciated gift from my brother.

Anyway, the experience of having all these people here was a very positive experience overall.

Pros:

Compliments.

Hearing people exclaim in delight over something I worked hard on.

Finding out the names of your own plants that you didn't know from experts wandering by.

The enormous amount of calories that must have been burned during one hundred and forty hours of digging, pruing, and weeding in three months.

Meeting other gardeners.

Cons:

Dirty fingernails.

Wearing out the knees in your jeans weeding.

Not being able to resist running up the tab at the local plant nursery.

Worrying about the weather forecast for today weeks in advance. (Mostly sunny, one rain shower that deterred nobody apparently.)

This morning, total butterflies in my tummy!

A Year Ago Today

2008-05-08T21:26:00.000-07:00

A year ago today, me and three of my best friends in the world left on a trip to Italy....

(And since all I've been doing lately is working and gardening, gardening, gardening as I get ready for the garden tour (which is finally almost here) I thought I'd post a few excerpts from my travel journal for the next little while........)

Nanaimo:

"Pol is right. It IS only a ten minute ride drive from her place to the place where the sea planes leave. But I am impatient, oh so impatient to be off. As soon as we are on that little airplane, our travels will begin."
"This is my first time in a sea plane. It is a quintessential West Coast experience, bringing to mind old Beachcomber episodes, and all the times I've watched with fascination as float-planes have lifted off from Vancouver."

"It was a fun ride. There was an enormous amount of gentle turbulence, making the plane rock and tip as the crosswinds caught us this way and that. We zoomed over ferry-boats, and crossed to the harbour in richmond in twenty minutes, landing with a splash and a roar in the Fraser River."

Here we are at Vancouver airport, waiting for our flight to Amsterdam.

This is Pol's first experience in a big airport. "So far", she said as she peered around, "it's like being at the mall." She practices yoga tree poses as we wait in the check-in line for KLM.

****

"We have checked our luggage before we realize that although the four of us are all travelling together to Amsterdam, Pol has been placed on an entirely different plane for the connecting flight to Rome...what was our travel agent thinking?"

*****

At security in Vancouver: They didn't seem overly concerned with the recent liquid toiletries restrictions. I overheard one of the security guards drawling sarcastically: " Oooohh, toothpaste! This stuff scares the shit out of me...."

Vancouver to Amsterdam:

The first time EVER that I fell asleep properly on an airplane, with help from a sleeping pill from Pol: "I pulled my hoodie over my head like a blanket and drifted and dozed peacefully (if uncomfortably) for over three hours. I feel like a curse has been lifted, I told my friends."

In Amsterdam:

"Pol set the security beeper off with her watch and got a pat-down which she smiled through. "I have to say I really enjoyed that. ", she told us. The security person also asked what the lump in her back pocket was.

"Yoda."

"Yoda?"

Pol pulled out her faithful little green plastic Yoda.

"Ah! Yoda!"

Tai has brought along her Pirate duck as well, trip mascots of sorts.

The above picture is from the very very end of our long travelling day....but technically speaking it was a brand new day before we actually got there. That's the thing about travelling---the getting there takes a looooong time.

Somebody needs to write a book on the Zen of Waiting in Airports.

Building the Pond and some Garden Photos

2008-04-14T22:40:00.001-07:00

So... my brother is officially forgiven for any annoying thing he did to me in childhood...thank you thank you thank you Adam!

He phoned me last week to tell me he'd bring a few rocks over to my house to help me edge my pond. I don't know what I was envisioning, five or six nicely shaped rocks maybe?

Instead he shows up with an ENORMOUS amount of gorgeous river-bed slate that he somehow hiked out of the bush in his trusty rock-collectin' backpack. The amount of brutally- heavy manual labour involved in this favour for his sister staggers me. I am so pleased.

The pond is looking great. It still needs new water-plants and some plantings above and around it, but the rocks are fabulous and the new pump is burbling merrily away.

Me, I haven't written here lately because I've literally been outside gardening any moment I can. Dusk has been falling around seven-thirty lately, but it's still just light enough to wield a pruning saw (carefully) until almost an hour after that.

Things are looking healthy out there, which is good because there are only about three weeks until the garden tour. I found out today that there will be only six gardens on this tour, so no pressure to make this one count, eh? :)

I've been masochistically keeping track of the hours weeding/ digging/compost-spreading, etc. and I've logged over seventy this season. I'm so sorry if I've been neglecting to visit your blogs. I still love you all. Okay, I have to go garden some more now. :)

So I'll just post a few more photos from my project....

My little violets are everywhere..they have a faint and delicious scent, especially if your nose is about two inches above them.

My "Wanda" primroses peeking out from a rhodie bush. One of my favourite parts of getting ready for this tour is finding out the names of some of my plants. I discovered I have one sassy flower called "Brazen Hussy" . I can't help but admire her more now somehow, plastic-looking petals and all.

Pretty blue pulmonaria--- really its other name, Lungwort, doesn't suit it at all. You'd think it would look more pink and squishy somehow...

A shady corner by my garden bench. Things will look more colourful here in a couple weeks, but I kind of enjoy the quietly green look it has now.

And, finally, a pottery fish hanging out by my pond with some anenomes.

My Friend Makes a Good Johnny Depp, yes?

2008-03-20T21:34:00.000-07:00

Here's my dear friend Deb, whom I'm spending the holiday weekend with over in Vancouver.

She's looking rather Captain Jack-ish in this photo because it's Halloween, and also because she moonlights as a makeup artist. I think she makes a rather fabulous (hot) pirate.

In this photo she remains suave despite actually being in the midst of calling 9-1-1, having just been robbed at the bank where she works as a teller.

" I've been robbed, matey! Sort of ironic, yarr, being robbed, me being the pirate and all!"

The officer taking her statement had a hard time taking her statement without cracking a smile.

This wasn't the first time Deb's been the teller facing a bank robber.

The other time was a few years back, on Valentine's Day. My friend told me she sometimes wonders if she should perhaps not show up at work on the lesser holidays.

Deb has a massive collection of the tools of the make-up artist's trade, including the The Death Wheel , which is a handy palette of shades designed to make one look decidedly unhealthy and er, dead. So for all my Zombie Pirate costume needs, I now know where to go.

The real Johnny Depp is currently in Vancouver working on a film. He's staying at the same hotel where Deb's husband works as a chef, but he hasn't yet managed to spot the elusive fellow.

Warning: This Post Might Mention Puke

2008-03-19T22:14:00.000-07:00

A couple years back I made a post that explained Why I Could Never Ever Go on Fear Factor. I'm re-posting it here because I told Kim I would. Why, you may ask?

Well, let's just say I told Kim all about getting a double handful of a little kid's puke the other day at work. And instead of reliving it again by typing out the most recent incident here, I'll just regale y'all with some of my old musings on grossness. Have a lovely day, dear readers, and after you're done reading, go out and smell some flowers. It's Spring! :)

................................................

Besides the fact that I would never climb out on a plane's wing, bungee jump off a sky-scraper, or ride in any car that goes purposefully airborne (except for that one time in Tai's old Charger), I could never win at a show like Fear Factor because they would probably ask you to eat something disgusting.

Now, embarrassingly enough, I used to enjoy that show because I figured I could at least do as well as the onscreen contestants at the gross stuff like eating tentacles and bugs. I'm not Eval Kneivel perhaps, but I'd always prided myself on not being grossed out by...things.

I mean, come on, I tried worm pancakes in Grade 4 science class, and once I tried (didn't actually get very far to be honest)eating a mouse as a child. WHAT was I thinking, you may ask. Well, thank you very much Mr. Farley Mowat (mmmm, remember the recipe for souris a la creme in "Never Cry Wolf" when he tries out what the wolves are eating?)

Also, I seem to recall some really disgusting "corn" bread made from gerbil food when my dear pre-adolescent friends and I liked to play "We're Lost in the Woods and It's a Survival Situation".

So I hypothetically had a shot at winning if I should ever find myself in front of cameras on that sort of reality show eating or wallowing in something gross. But now I know I've been fooling myself.

Somewhere along the way, my olfactory sense has honed and turned against me. NOW what would I do In a Survival Situation?

The SMELL factor would really be my downfall.

Two recent incidents have led me to this conclusion.Once, several months ago, I opened a small Tupperware container from the back of the fridge. "Hmmm, I wonder what this could be?", I said all unknowing.

By the gods! How could vegetables in salad dressing become a Thing of Satan? The thought of eating this runny lettuce suddenly sent chills down my spine! I would probably die if I had this smell in my mouth.

Suddenly the rat-milkshake people from television had more of my respect (if that's the word).

And today at daycare, just at the end of a sunny pleasant day, my intestinal mettle was tested anew. I heard my co-worker calling out for someone to help her. I went in to the children's bathroom and was met with the sight of one of our kids projectile vomiting. My co-worker was splashed to the knees. The four other children in the washroom were similarly decorated.

There was a tide of chunky pink puke everywhere. On the mirrors, the baseboards, the art cupboard.

Everywhere.

And the smell was a creature all its own.

The other kids and Justine started to heave in sympathy. No, please, no!! If there were going to be six people throwing up, I don't get paid enough!

I helped Justine herd them all out before disaster could strike. She took care of the poor little sick girl. And me, I was on cleanup duty. I waded in with rubber gloves and towels and bleach.When I came out of there,my eyes were watering from the smell.

Bazooka barfing in Technicolor Smell-A-Vision. That'll do it to ya.

And that's why I will never be seen on Fear Factor.

Sploosh

2008-03-16T20:54:00.000-07:00

Hmmmm...that's funny...the water filling the bathtub won't warm up.

Hmmm...strange... we don't have any hot water from the kitchen tap either.

Funny how that impending sense of doom comes over you when you're walking down the steps to check out what's happening with your hot-water tank.

Yep. I think the water tank's gone bye-bye. I think SPLOOOSH is a fairly accurate description of the area of the floor in that vicinity.

Sigh, so apparently hot water tanks that are run on natural gas have to be installed by a licensed gas fitter (which is fine by us as we really don't want to mess around with that sort of thing ourselves, do-it-ourselfers though we usually are).

But our tank blew on a weekend and gas fitters charge time and a half for Saturday and double-time for Sunday, so we're waiting for Monday to get our new heater installed by the only fellow who returned our phone calls.

He charges seventy-five bucks an hour which makes me feel like I might have gone in for the wrong career choice, oh, plus travel time and plus eighty cents a kilometre driving down from Campbell River. He seems like a nice enough fellow (gave us the tip to drain the tank ourselves first so he doesn't have to charge us for that time), but it seems like a lot of money that all of a sudden is (ahem) going down the drain.

But, drat it, I need my hot water. Bath-time is just not the same at the moment. *sigh*

Now, if I put the kettle and a large pot on every burner on the stove, heat them up, run them up the stairs and pour them into the tub, run downstairs again---repeat. Well, then I have roughly two inches of warmish water. Ah, woe!

*more tragic sighing*

My Garden Has Been Interviewed

2008-03-14T20:16:00.000-07:00

Yes, my garden has been interviewed....and I'll be on the garden tour this May. :)

It almost did feel like a job interview of sorts when two of the local garden society representatives arrived to evaluate my garden, notepads in hand: there were background questions to be answered, inquiries about shrubberies which required botanical lingo to answer (most gardeners do their best to appear as if they speak Latin of course), and garden design questions to field.

Half an hour later, they shook my hand and thanked me and congratulated me.

This despite the fact that:

*despite the crocuses featured on this page, my garden is a squishy, muddy bog this time of year, and anybody who is not a horticultural type will have to take it on my word that those funny pinkish bumps in the dirt will two months hence be glorious peonies

* that I obviously had no clue that the odd-looking plant off in one corner was a Himalayan honeysuckle (and not the What-sit as I have referred to it for the last five years), or what species my ornamental cherry trees might be

*that my sword ferns were looking particularly unruly that afternoon (they gave me some fern-whacking tips)

*that there was a large dead mouse lying across one of the pathways ("I have bunnies too!" I exclaimed brightly)

Yes, they seemed to quite like it despite all that...and I'm glad because I've been working my hiney off out in the yard since I put that application in the second week of February. I've put in about thirty-five hours out there (ahem, not that I'm counting, but I'm curious to how much effort I'm eventually going to expend on this project now that I've committed to it).

And speaking of that....

Who needs the gym, my friends, when you can burn off huge amounts of calories weeding in Spider Girl's garden?

Yes, don't waste your time on the StairMaster people! Free "Garden Gym" memberships for all--- I've got plenty of toning and er, weight-lifting activities around about.

Just ask Jeff about the physical benefits of digging large holes.

He's, er, thrilled that we're on the tour.

Just thrilled. :)

Happy Birthday Pol!

2008-03-01T09:13:00.000-08:00

There are some friends that you can't imagine the landscape of your life without...... They've been a true friend forever, and they can hold a photograph where we're all in it from ten years before the one we just took, and in theory we could have a tinier image in that photo taken ten years before THAT.

It's Pol's birthday today, and Tai (who is at my house and drinking tea right beside me as I type this) and I just wanted to wish her a "HIPPO BIRDIE!"

No matter where in the world we are, we will always be friends....

...knowing that our creative, art-appreciating....

...beautiful....

....scampi-loving...

...sensible and sun-shy....

...bottom-appreciating....

....amazing friend is OURS! We will always love her. Happy Birthday!

Love Spider Girl and Tai

Crow Door

2008-02-25T22:37:00.001-08:00

My mom took me on a walk in her neighbourhood to point out this door. I love it.

Science for Small People

2008-02-22T21:31:00.000-08:00

In theory, the building blocks of science can be learned in the preschool classroom with such things as bugs, baking ingredients, wooden boards, marbles, straws, and magnetic sand. Oh, a little PVC piping is useful too.

I spent two hours yesterday evening in a workshop put on by Vancouver's Science World called Big Science for Little Hands that is directed at people like me who would like to teach science to small and very, very curious people.

It was one of those free, fun, hands-on events that encourage grown-ups to crawl around on the floor rolling things down ramps, dabble our hands in goop, manipulate marbles around in paint, and blow at things through straws until we're all decidedly light-headed.

I have to say that although I had fun, I didn't come away with any brand new ideas--my workplace is already all over alternative uses for salad-spinners and we know how to make a mean baking- soda-and-vinegar volcano too.

However, I'll have to look into buying some very cool sand that I had fun playing with there. You put it in water where it makes interesting lava-like formations....and when you scoop it out of the water it's dry to the touch.

It's like magic!

Um, I mean, science.

Apparently each grain of sand is coated with some sort of waxy chemical substance that repels water... today's word, children, is "hydrophobic"!

Can you say that? I knew you could! :)

There was some interesting conversation going on in the room too. For instance, one woman recalled being given liquid mercury to play with in the classroom when she was a child, Another person remembered that too. Apparently, this was in the seventies. Er, when exactly did people find out that you probably should not play with mercury? Anybody know?

Anyway, the powers that be in the early childhood licencing world have recently tripled the amount of professional development hours we need to keep our teaching licence from twelve to forty hours. So, when any free workshop comes along to help me get my needed hours, I'm usually there.

Even if it's the most yawning-est academic lecture that can be: sample title "Beyond the Discourse of Quality to the Discourse of Meaning Making". (I didn't make that up, by the way).

If a workshop promises to interesting and even *gasp* fun, and has little bowls of jelly-beans scattered around the room for our sugar-high pleasure, I'm definitely there.

Now if only Bill Nye had been there and we'd gotten to blow something up....

Signpost

2008-02-13T18:34:00.001-08:00

I was playing around with Google Earth last night.

First I located my house on the globe ---it's a little spooky still to be able to zoom in to an aerial photo of North America, then British columbia, then Vancouver Island, and then, you know, my street and my house and practically see the car parked in my neighbour's driveway...

Then, using my house as the starting point, I'd spin the global map and land on a faraway city, somewhere I've travelled to, so I could know how many kilometres away (the shortest route, as the crow flies) that place was.

I'm thinking that building a signpost something like the one pictured above would be an interesting addition to the garden.

The results :

Rome: 9033 km London: 7628 km

Nairobi: 14, 353 km Marrakech: 9055 km

Madrid: 8487 km Paris: 7973 km

Dublin: 7216 km

Also, a little closer to home, Vancouver,BC : 145 km

I think I'd probably include Kathmandu, Nepal (10,915 km) and Varanasi, India(11, 238 km) too because Jeff and I are planning on travelling to those this fall.

Hey, if we painted those last two places on our sign, then we'd almost be obligated to definitely go.... yeah... * mentally cementing vacation plans*

Would You Buy a Ticket to My Garden?

2008-02-11T21:25:00.001-08:00

Welcome to my garden!

I've loved it for six years (longer, if you count me coveting it before the house went up for sale) , and although it doesn't look very much like these pictures right now (being bleedin' February and all) I'm posting them to remind myself that Spring is on its way, and it will soon thrive and bloom and burst out of the mucky ground once again. Well, I'm sure hoping....

I'm especially hoping it will look good, say...oh...the weekend of May 11th. That's the week of one of the Courtenay garden tours.

And *gulp* I'm hoping to be one of the gardens on the tour.

After some soul-searching (and letting the article I cut out of the paper mellow on my desk for about three weeks),I answered an ad in the local paper that read "Gardens Sought for Touring", spoken with two nice representatives of a local garden society in charge of the May fund-raiser tour, and have submitted my garden as one of the candidates.

It's always been a little vainglorious dream of mine to have a flower garden nice enough for people to buy a ticket to see it.

So far I've answered a lot of questions about the kinds of plants I have, the general lay-out of my property, sent them many photos, and now I'm just waiting for a deciding committee member to return from her vacation in Hawaii to pop over to my place and interview my yard in person, and make the decision yay or nay on whether my garden makes the cut.

This means I have until early March to wake up my garden and give it a good talking to---

There's going to be a lot of work involved--I spent five and a half hours out in the drizzle this past weekend weeding and pruning my little heart out. It made quite a difference, I'm pleased to say.

But when ever one thinks that soon droves of horticulturally-minded, possibly critical strangers could be roaming along the flower-beds, one does take a more jaded eye around one's own garden and sees all the things that need doing:

The porch railing that needs painting.... The sad-looking area by the compost that needs re-vamping (I have a plan).... The spot where I yanked out an ailing and ugly shrub last season and the empty spot it left behind that needs filling...

Someone said to me, "Are you sure you want to have all those people tromping through? Are you sure its worth the work?"

Yes! Oh yes! (Um, well, I hope so anyway.)

I remember last spring I had a garage sale just before I left for Italy, and one of the little old ladies who showed up at my sale with three of her elderly friends asked me if they could go on a little tour around my yard. It was so fun, pointing out my favourites, and having them stop and smell roses and exclaim over this and that.

I love going on garden tours myself. I get lots of inspiration from them. I guess I'm sort of hoping somebody will get excited over my garden too.

Wish me luck!

Aquacize

2008-01-31T21:31:00.000-08:00

There are not many occasions in January for which I'll don a bathing suit.

For instance, traditional New Year's Day Polar Bear swim down at Goose Spit?

Uh uh. No way.

Are those people insane?

Nope, I don't care for winter-time beach fun much I have to say.

But I guess I'll put on a bathing suit (somewhat reluctantly I'll admit) if I'm indoors. And the pool is heated. And if I have a friend who invites me to go a-aquacizin' with her. And if I talk myself into it.

Yep, Tuesday night is Aquacize Night at the local pool, and I thought I'd give it a try because:

a) Melanie is my friend and I want to hang out and talk with her more

b) it sounded kind of fun despite the whole sorry mental bathing-suit/body-image/skin that glows white-in-the-dark thing

c) exercising in a pool means there is no sweatiness involved

d) Note to self: Go bathing-suit shopping and find something like the 1920's suit pictured here. Elegant. Refined. Covers one's butt completely. It's all I ask of a bathing-suit.

What I Learned:

a) The aquacize class is actually called The Power Hour ....because it is...an hour. And it's well, vigorous. Non-stop. Taxing. ( How do all the little old ladies who take these sorts of classes do it?) Hey, wasn't there some sort of bizarre evangelical television program called "The Power Hour"....hmmm...

Anyhoo, whatever happened to the Twenty-minute Workout-and Go-Relax-in-the-Hot-Tub class? The instructor actually smiled as she told us, "I'm not paid to be merciful."

b) Despite the initial shock of having to exercise harder than I have in (*gulp*) quite a while, it is actually quite fun thrashing around underwater to songs from Flashdance and the extended dance-mix version of I Will Survive .

c) You can't sink if you try with one of those floater-belts around your waist. Which is a good thing when you're like me and sinking is mostly what you can skillfully do in a pool.

d) LEAD WITH THOSE OBLIQUES! SQUEEZE THOSE GLUTES!

DOUBLE-TIME! MORE! FASTER! COME ON, YOU PEOPLE! GOGOGOGOGO!

e) If, like myself, you suffer from Aerobic-Class Choreography Dyslexia where your legs jump out when the instructor's legs jump in, and your arms want to go in exactly the opposite directions as being demonstrated at the front of the class, this might be the kind of class for you. You're underwater. Nobody can see you thrashing around.

And that's a GOOD thing. :)

Owl

2008-01-29T22:37:00.001-08:00

It was just after dawn on a crisp winter morning not long ago, Christmas Eve day actually.

I was on my way to work, and some happy quirk made me take a different route than usual.

As I drove slowly down a quiet street I saw an unusual huddled and bulky shape on a telephone wire and I pulled over to get a closer look at it.

It was a large owl.

I've very seldom seen them, and the ornithologically-minded side of my self combined with the superstitious omen-seeking side of myself to give me a momentary shiver of delight at such an unusual sight.

I walked slowly across the street and we regarded one another.

I don't know what species it was, but it was tall and had ear tufts so it may have been a Great Horned Owl. It looked down at me with that slightly unnerving round-eyed glare, and then took wing down the street until it alighted in a tree not far away.

I love the way owls fly--it's like they are drifting through the air. *shivers happily again at the memory*

The last time I saw an owl was in Kenya, two years ago. I was at Fishermen's Camp near Naivasha and had to leave my tent on a nature-call in the middle of my first night in Africa.

I was feeling a little bit nervous because even though this was not a game reserve, there was still plenty of unfamiliar wildlife making strange sounds in the dark. Hippos laughing in the nearby lake and giant two-hundred pound frogs (no, wait, those were later determined to be colobus monkeys making the strangest monkey-sounds I've ever heard). There was also a creeping white ground fog that bounced my flashlight's beam right back at me and made the way to the outhouse particularly daunting.

But despite initially regretting drinking so much Tusker beer right before bedtime, I was so glad I ventured out because of the owl.

He was perched on a branch by the showers. I wouldn't have seen him except that I'd followed the sound of his calls. Hooooo...hooooo....hooooo. He was large and by my flashlight I could just make out his large shape. I was thrilled.

A bird book from the overland truck we were travelling in identified my owl as most likely being a Verreaux eagle-owl, a kind of owl that will actually wade into the water to catch fish and who may particularly like to snack on hedgehogs.

Shiny Things

2008-01-27T12:28:00.000-08:00

Ah, an insulated stainless steel French coffee press that was being sold at a party I went to last night.....

Sleek-looking. Elegant. Its seductive siren-song promise to keep my coffee so much hotter.

And, drat it all, the little black crow in my head was happily shrieking Ooh! Shiny thing! Pretty shiny thing!

Obviously, while it wasn't only hours ago, such a thing is surely now essential to my life.

I decided it was. :)

Some of you who know me will now probably remind me that I'm supposed to be in the process of paring down, decluttering, simplifying. Yes, it's all true.

Which simply means in this case that I have a plain but perfectly functional glass coffee press that will now be up for grabs to the family member, friend, or neighbour who would appreciate it. Let me know.

Aside from this little splurge, I've been pretty good at getting rid of non-essentials lately. I recently attacked the Cupboard of Doom in my kitchen and reduced its contents by at least half. Many of the storage boxes in my basement are now completely empty and clothing items that are holdovers from the early nineties are being marched out the door.

However, I had a close-call weekend before last when Jeff and I were visiting down in Victoria with Tai and Chris (and even a surprise appearance of Kim and Shawn and Zoe). Our wanders took us through antique stores and upscale furniture emporiums and I was hard-pressed to look away from items like those pictured here.

Especially the tall black jewellry chest with doors that swung outwards to reveal hidden drawers and unexpected side panels and secret little hidey holes.

Mmmmm......furniture......it's a good thing to have friends to talk you down from impulse purchases.

Books, Books, Books

2008-01-16T18:01:00.000-08:00

I sometimes think of a passage out of Roald Dahl's book " Danny, Champion of the World (a favourite childhood read), in which Danny's father (a keen naturalist as well as a pheasant poacher) explains to his son how birds have the amazing ability ability to hold onto a branch while they sleep. They close their eyes and fall asleep, but their little claws somehow hold on tight and keep them from falling from the tree.

I'm reminded of the scene from this book, occasionally, when I myself fall asleep holding onto something and I somehow manage to hold tight to it anyway. I'm not about to fall off a tree branch though. I will,however, maintain my Sleep -Grip of-Death on the book I am reading in the bathtub. As I slip peacefully beneath the bubbles, my fingers simply lock into place. I start awake at some point, and my book is still held high, with nary a soap bubble to mar the page.

I asssure you:

1. I have never yet dropped any book into the water.
2. And particularly I would never EVER drop your book that you lent me into the tub. Just so you feel more reassured about lending me your books.

I thought I'd post about this because it seems that a LOT of you are lending me, even giving me books lately.

Marvellous books.
Inspiring books.
Mediocre, but excellent-for-curing insomnia books.
Books that I might need to rush out and buy so I can own a copy myself.
Books that I'm sure glad I didn't spend thirty dollars on at the bookstore.
Books that I wished I'd written myself.
Books that I'm planning on recommending to my friends.

I've devoured ten books in the last two weeks.

Blogging? Er, oh yes, I should do that too sometime...

My boss at work has lately begun referring to me as "Belle". You know, from the animated movie, "Beauty and the Beast"?

Belle was always reading as she walked, and so do I. A co-worker said that some of them watch me returning from my coffee break and wonder how I'm able to walk without tripping over things or wandering into traffic.

Like my talent for not dropping books in the bathtub, so far so good. *Touch wood *

I walked home from work today reading The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler. (It was lent to me by one co-worker who raved about it; another co-worker wrinkled her nose and told me the plot was sideways---me, I like it so far but my walk home only got me to chapter three).

I walked home last week accompanied by Ivan Doig's The Whistling Season, which was a thoughtful book with cozy characters, and I also particularly like a recent book of short stories by Elma Marston called Figs and Fate: Stories of Growing Up in the Arab World.

I also recently drooled over a book of architectural design and interiors called Northwest Style by Anne Wall Frank. Some books are just made to sigh over the photos.

Well, tonight (thanks to Chris lending me the entire series) I am taking Book Five of the Dresden Files to the bathtub with me. It may not be high literature, but it's
got a wizard's detective agency, werewolves, gangsters, plant-monsters, and great one-liners.

Keep lending me books, my friends! I love it!

Happy New Year!

2008-01-02T20:59:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year everybody!

May 2008 bring you interesting conversations, time with friends, renewed creativity, and good books to read!

(Yep, just wishing you all what I'd like for myself...seems only fair).

Me, I've been writing in a luscious new red journal---yes, pen on paper instead of hands on keyboard. It's been a while since I've indulged in that perhaps old-fashioned habit but I'm rather enjoying it.

I visited with friends I hadn't seen in a while over the holidays and the talk turned to writing. I mentioned that I had a blog (sadly neglected but only for the moment) and invited them to read it if they liked. They had no idea I had one, or indeed really what that was. I explained that it was a good way to keep in touch with people I seldom saw, and a fantastic shared writing outlet.

"But anybody can read it!", said a friend, sounding alarmed.

This is true. But I assured them I only share in my blog what I'm willing to share and no more--truly private thoughts would only be written in my private journal.

"But what would happen if somebody read that one? What if you'd written something about them that they didn't like?" My friend was frowning.

I laughed and said then they'd be in big trouble for reading my journal, but I guess they'd know me better. (Of course, this reminded me of what happened to poor Harriet the Spy---I just re-read that book over the holidays.)

"But what if you died, and then everyone read what you wrote?" She sounded really alarmed.

I couldn't help but laugh again. I said words to the effect that I can only hope that my life is exciting enough for everybody to want to read them after I die.

(Note to self: Write more interesting things in journal so post-humously I don't bore everybody silly.)

Lola's Puppies

2007-12-18T17:51:00.001-08:00

This is Lola.

Once upon a time she was a puppy.

But now she's a mommy with puppies of her own. Five of them!

So now this means my brother-in-law's household has seven Saint Bernards, two other dogs, one cat,some fish...oh, and a toddler and a newborn.

Now that's going to be a busy Christmas. :)

By the way, Adam, I put this up for your benefit.... (Yes, my brother is seriously considering a new puppy in his household...)

Nothing Dire

2007-12-08T16:30:00.001-08:00

A friend said to me the other day: "I was afraid something was up with you, you know, something dire ."

"Dire?", I said. "Why is that?"

"Well, you haven't written on your blog in a long time..."

No, I can assure you all that nothing dire is up with me. :)

Mainly the last part of November, first week of December has flown by in a bit of a blur. Well, some of it has slogged by in not-so-much of a blur actually, but it's been filled up with distinctly non-bloggy activities.

Like participating in an online course for professional development. I had hoped it would be a little more interesting but the problem is you can't have a good online discussion group if most of the group is not into discussing things.

Which leaves the other part of the course, which includes reviewing and assessing scholarly and long-winded draft documents/recorded seminars of child-care related issues.

In one three minute video-clip I was being asked to comment on, the speaker used the word "paradigm" twenty-two times in under three minutes. Excrutiating!

Anyway, by the time I'm done on the computer lately, all I want to do is go kill things in World of Warcraft. Sigh.

But, if you've read this far, I shall give all a update on the highlights of this past month.

1. I sprained my shoulder at work, much to the consternation of the children gathered in a concerned circle around my prone form. I didn't realize it until the next day because I landed on my head first and that was the big owie I was most concerned about. Tackle-hugs. The love of a child can be heart-warming...but potentially dangerous.

Note: Although I didn't have to take a single hour/day off work for this injury, I STILL had to go through paperwork hell to document it of course. My shoulder hurt, sure, but it was a bigger pain in the butt, so to speak.

2. This was the month I finally decided to take a step towards getting over my fear of highway-driving. (Those of you who may not know me well, let me inform you I'm a bit of a wuss when it comes to driving. )

Well, white-knuckled or no, I made it to Nanaimo going 110 km/h. Oh sure, people were still passing me by going mach, but I'm still pretty happy with myself.

3. I went to a burlesque show with Jeff and Melanie. (Okay, this was even a while further back, but it's worth mentioning). There were twirling pasties, fishnet tights, and feather boas flying everywhere. I won a risque purse that I'm quite fond of, featuring faux leopard print and a vintage brassiere advert.

4. My beloved old troupe of bellydancers had a reunion at my friend Emily's house.

5. My friend Lisa got married and I went to her most entertaining bridal shower.

6. I got an email from my mother-in-law in Kathmandu the other day telling me I should look on her dresser for her ticket to Winterharp . She figured after arriving back in Canada after forty-eight hours of flights and layovers beautiful harp music would only put her to sleep. Since I'd tried to buy tickets for this sold-out concert a month ago with no luck, this was a nice surprise. Gorgeous uplifting performance!

In other (non)- entertainment news, I ended up turning down a ticket tonight to go see an Elvis impersonator. Not like me to avoid any sort of free ticket. Guess I wasn't quite in the mood.

7. I've also spent quite a bit of time this month working on home-made holiday presents. This is mostly to avoid the dreaded Curse of the Holiday Shopping Mall , but then I turn around and make plans to meet up with Tai in Nanaimo tomorrow at Chapters, and I just know we'll be perilously close to entering a mall.

Okay, that's my life in a nutshell. :)

Adventure and Photography

2007-11-18T19:18:00.000-08:00

Every once in a while I feel a tremendous emotional response to an artist, and often I find that artist is a photographer. Perhaps it's because photography takes images from the real world and can transform them into so much more. Art. Poetry. Mystery. Humanity.

I am presently full of breathless admiration at the work of Phil Borges.

Through his travels--to Africa, India, Mongolia, Irian Jaya, Afghanistan, South America--he has created striking hand-toned photographs of people from far-flung places. His images are often of the very old and the very young.

I was lucky enough to meet Phil Borges at a conference at the University of Victoria this Friday.

I'd been listening to some pretty interesting speakers all day on a variety of topics that loosely fell under the subject of perspectives on childcare from multicultural viewpoints: there was a talk on child labour issues in India, a lecture on the experiences of migrant children crossing the border north into the States as seen through their art-work; a talk from schoolteacher trying to reintroduce the Maori language into the New Zealand school system. There was a preschool activist from Hong Kong, a professor from a university in Cameroon, and a representative from the Potawatomi Nation talking about childhood intervention in Native American communities. It was a very full day.

But I think I would have travelled to Victoria just to hear Phil Borges speak for forty-five minutes.

One of the things he talked about was the disappearance of culture, and how preserving diversity was hugely important. The main goal of his photography, he says, is to help preserve the world's diversity through images and story-telling.

Did you know of the 6000 languages spoken on earth today, 3000 of them are not spoken by the children? "Every two weeks another elder goes to the grave taking with them the last spoken word of an entire culture."

Every time a language dies, said Borges, "It's like burning down a little library."

The thought of it hits me in the gut somehow.

As he showed us his pictures, Borges told us fascinating tales from places like Tibet and Nepal---about photographing the Dalai Lama, about meeting nuns just released from years of prison for the crime of displaying a poster asking to free their country, of Buddhist oracles in ninety-pound hats.

He took us deep into the land of Irian Jaya where one of his picture illustrates the results of the custom where each time a loved one dies, the women cut one of their own fingers off.

In another picture, a little girl waits outside the hut where her grandmother lies on her deathbed and he described the goodbye rituals and the special connections between the very old and the very young --for one is just about to return to the spirit world and the other has just left it.

Some of his photos tell stories of heroic women--of a woman teaching girls in a forbidden school under the Taliban, of an Ethiopian girl who bravely defied tradition and single-handedly ended the practice of female circumcision in her tribe.

Some of his photographs, like that of the regal African woman at the top of this post are of shamans. Another of his adventures took him into the jungles of South America where he witness the "shape-shifting" of one of the shamans there, as he took on the essence of the jaguar.

Oh, this person had some interesting travels!

He is also involved in getting children all over the world involved in "telling their own stories" through photography, and then using the photographs they've taken to make little films.

For instance, the children of one Guatemalen village wanted to stop the pollution of the river in their town (people would throw all kinds of things into this, their drinking supply, without regard). After documenting this, the children took their film to their mayor and filmed him saying he would take action. And he did. The river was cleaned up.

In a beautiful little film (that we saw during the talk), a Tibetan girl decides that it is not fair that only boys can have their own football team and she decides to change things...

(Apaprently you can view some of these child-made films online somewhere and I'm going to go and look for the link. )

Anyway, photographer Phil Borges has several books out, two of which I'd love to own. There were samples at the conference, but none actually for sale. Too bad, because I know he could have sold a lot. One is called Enduring Spirit and the other is Women Empowered .

Why I'm Not Going to Hug Any Trees Just Now

2007-11-13T17:35:00.000-08:00

So, there are definitely better ways to start the morning than this .

I was standing at the living room window listening to the weather report (while staying tuned to try and win a radio contest that would take me --please please-- away from all this torrential rain to sunny Mexico). The weatherman was telling me it was pretty nasty out there (not exactly new information) and to please do watch out for downed power-lines and falling trees....

when suddenly there was an enormous CRACKING sound as my neighbour's tree decided to uproot itself and CRUNCH my friend Tai's car!

Following the CRACK and the CRUNCH , there the was sound of Spider Girl's high-pitched disbelieving voice wailing my friend's name as I charged upstairs to wake her.

This is so not how I usually like to treat my house-guests.

Tai has posted on this subject over on her blog and I thought she was remarkably calm considering the situation. "Never a dull moment", I believe was her wry comment as she surveyed the damage.

Things I Have Learned From This #1: Never tempt the gods.

Why, just the night before, Tai and I discussed the time a small branch fell on my car once while I was driving during a winter storm and how that totally unnerved me. She said, I don't believe I've ever had a single branch ever fall on my car...."

Tai pointed out this morning that actually still holds true as it was obviously not a branch that fell on her car.

Things I Have Learned #2: Large trees have disturbingly shallow and small root systems.

Look at the roots on this enormous tree! I've seen more impressive roots on dandelions and creeping buttercup in my flower borders!

And there are several more trees like this in my neighbour's yard. Don't get me wrong---I like trees. But I'm eyeing them rather more suspiciously today.

The one that fell was so long it fell (not only onto Tai's car) but completely across the street and bounced onto the roof of my neighbour's little red car before the power wires pulled it up a little ways again.

Things I Have Learned #3: I need to try to look more polished when I roll out of bed in the morning.

You know, in case I'm required to give an interview or two before breakfast.

Obviously, you never know how a morning's going to go.

First this cameraman shows up.....

And then another TV station showed up. Oh, and I think I saw Tai hob-knobbing with a newspaper reporter as well.

Tai's little car was certainly the hot topic on the block.

And we made it onto two TV stations tonight. Of course, I actually didn't have any power to watch them at my house (our wires got nicely ripped out of the side of our house), but I did borrow my mother-in-law's electricity and so was able to catch our remarkably cheerful faces on the news at six.

Next time I'm hoping our fifteen seconds of fame is because we've won the lottery.

Poor Tai! See what happens when you come and see your friend!

The Spa

2007-11-07T17:04:00.001-08:00

I've been saving up this experience for a while--45 minutes of blissful head and shoulders massage at the Kingfisher Spa......

It's been nice to look over at the mantle and see those envelopes with the gift certificates waiting inside for me, but I'm ready for some pampering.

About a month ago I used the one for the Pacific Mist Hydropath experience--that's an hour I spent pretending to be a mermaid princess in tonic mineral pools, massaged by waterfalls, comatose in an aromatic sandstone steam cave, and soaking in mystically-beneficial glacial lake mud. Aaaaahhhhh.....

Then warm, blissed out, and wrapped in a cozy robe I spent a while watching the full moon rise over the ocean in the relaxation room while nature sounds burbled in the background.

Life is good, my friends. I am looking forward to this evening.... I shall report back to you later if I'm not too relaxed to type..

Meemies

2007-11-02T20:40:00.000-07:00

1. Name one person who made you laugh last night?

Tai (otherwise known as Myscheef, second from right in this picture.). She was jumping up and down on Andanar's head in Stormwind Keep, laughing manaically and pretending to perform CPR. Another player commented that this was truly a Kodak moment. I think you had to be in the video game we were playing. Trust me.

2. What were you doing at 0800?

Squeezing in some reading before I started work.

I'm reading a book called Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. I'm enjoying it immensely. It's about a woman who takes a year off to find herself and spends it in Italy (seeking pleasure), in India (seeking spirituality), and in Indonesia (trying to put both those things together).

3. What were you doing 30 minutes ago?

Drinking tea and downloading photos.

4. What happened to you in 2006?

I had to think about this for a few minutes because 2006 was not a year where I could say "Oh, that's the year I went on safari in Africa" (2005) or "That's the year I went to Italy (this year), etc.

The year 2006 was sadly travel-free. However, I did still manage to be a tourist in my own neck of the woods.

I went to the amazing Bodyworlds exhibit, visited the Bug Zoo , went on garden tours, sang along at a Spirit of the West concert, imbibed Shakespeare at Bard on the Beach , saw the musicals Cats and Urinetown and the ballet Amadeus, and saw a Chinese dragon parade.

On a more personal level I attended a peace rally, danced in a bellydance show, bought a new car, painted my kitchen, went to a Full Moon pajama party (or two), saw my brother get married, and moonlighted for a while as the cleaner at a dentist office after hours in addition to my full-time preschool teaching job and my part-time gardening/flea-market gigs.

Yep, 2006 was a busy one.

5. What was the last thing you said out loud?

"Bah! Murlocs!" (Er, I'm sure there's no explanation needed...)

6. How many beverages did you have today?

Two coffees and some tea.

It really depends how many more cups of tea I throw back before I go to sleep.

7. What color is your hairbrush?

Black.

8. What was the last thing you paid for?

Big beautiful butterfly earrings for my pen-pal Ritika. Jeff's mom is leaving for India/Nepal this weekend and I thought I'd send along a little gift with her because I know she'll be visiting her while she's in Kathmandu.

9.Where were you last night? Home playing video games.

10. What color is your front door? Brown like the wood it is, with a pewter door-knocker in the shape of a cat's head.

11. Where do you keep your change?

In my future.

12. What’s the weather like today?

Frosty, chilly, hung with clouds--the kind of weather that finds you contemplating the purchase of woolly eighties-style leg-warmers.

13. What’s the best ice-cream flavor?

Chocolate-chip mint. Unless you're talking gelato and then it would be a toss-up between limone and frutta di bosca.

14. What excites you?

Buying a ticket to somewhere far from home and knowing that soon I will be there. It's an addictive feeling, this travel-bug.

15. Do you want to cut your hair?

Depends on how it's behaving. I was just admiring my pony-tail a few days ago and today I'm pulling at the tangles in impatience and fiercely contemplating going back to the days of the chin-length bob.

16. Are you over the age of 25? Happily, yes.

17. Do you talk a lot?

Does a duck like water? Does the Pope wear a tall hat?

18. Do you watch the O.C.?

Instead of confessing my ignorance on what exactly this might be, I'm going to say warily....noooooo.

19. Do you know anyone named Steven?

He looks a little bit like Harry Potter, has whirlwind energy, and keeps my friend Pol constantly busy.

20. Do you make up your own words? "Hista kea!" (Well, at least one or two people reading this blog might remember that....)

It's not words I make up so much as that I have creative spoken grammar.

21. Are you a jealous person?

Not unless you've stolen my cookie. Then I might be.

22. Name a friend whose name starts with the letter ‘A’.

Ara! (Who I might actually get to see this weekend!)

23. Name a friend whose name starts with the letter ‘K’. Kim! (who tagged me with this meme)

24. Who’s the first person on your received call list? Er......what?

25. What does the last text message you received say? I'll let you know if I ever receive one. Doesn't seem likely though.

Do you chew your straw?

Absolutely not! Bleah! Plastic is so bad for you!

27. Do you have curly hair? My hair is as flat as Saskatchewan.

28.Where’s the next place you’re going to go?

If all the stars and signs fall into place, Jeff and I will be going to India and Nepal next winter, probably in November as we're really keen to avoid anything resembling monsoon season.

29. Who’s the rudest person in your life? Fortunately I had to think very hard about this before venturing, "Telemarketers?"

30. What was the last thing you ate?

Mexican food at the new restaurant in town. I fell in love with their pottery serving dishes.

31. Will you get married in the future?

I am so so married already, my dears. :)

32. What’s the best movie you’ve seen in the past 2 weeks?

Y'know, I haven't actually watched any movies lately. Not one. Unless you count YouTube clips.

33. Is there anyone you like right now? I love you all. Well, mostly. :)

34. When was the last time you did the dishes? This afternoon. I came home from work vowing to get three annoying tasks out of the way and that was one of them.

35. Are you currently depressed? Nope. Feeling quite mellow and at peace with the universe actually.

Much better than oh, say, yesterday afternoon. I'm generally on a pretty even keel emotionally. But now and then small storms sail through (on this occasion at work) and fortunately I'm able to stand up and say what needs to be said in a calm, cool manner (outwardly).

36. Did you cry today?Nope, all yesterday's issues have been ironed out so no need to let out all my righteous indignation.

37. Why did you answer and post this? Because Kim tagged me. (And I was avoiding my real homework!)

I'll Sleep in a Haunted House for a Bathtub Like That

2007-10-28T17:12:00.001-07:00

I spent Friday night in a haunted house.

And I didn't mind at all--Halloween is approaching and it's certainly a traditional holiday activity.

Besides, I was actually looking forward to the prospect of staying as a guest there. I'd admired the gorgeous clawfoot tub upstairs on previous visits... and no mere ghost was going to deter me from having a bath in the bathtub of my dreams.....

The haunted home I'm talking about actually bears no resemblance to the traditional looming Victorian kind with bat-filled turrets and gloomy cob-webbed corridors.

My haunted house is bright and airy and immaculate, with gorgeous waterfront views over Baynes Sound, high ceilings, polished wooden floors, stained-glass windows, and a 1600 square foot wraparound deck to die for. The bathroom in the master suite is heart-breakingly beautiful. It's currently on the market for one and a quarter million dollars and I'm having covetous thoughts.

My friend who once lived there for many years (a different friend than the one who is currently care-taking the property) tells me that the home's original look is almost unrecognizable now after extensive renovations. But it was built in the 1920's and has a colourful history, including once having an illegal still/speak-easy located in the basement.

And there's the ghost, of course, at no extra cost to any potential buyers.

The ghost's name is Jack and he has been seen and felt by many people over the years.

"He's not a mean ghost, at least I've never felt so", said my friend thoughtfully, after I asked about the house's history. "But he does seem to like to startle people. Maybe he's bored. I would be, if I were a ghost."

She looked at me quizzically and asked if I thought I might be nervous sleeping here. I assured her I was quite interested at the possibility of meeting a ghost.

"Well, he probably won't bother you then", came the reassuring reply. She added that the ghost seems to prefer appearing to prepubescent girls. Of course, I'm *cough cough* a little past that.

Jack has been known to move furniture, take small objects, and make a lot of noise. He is thought to be the spirit of a young man in his twenties who died of spinal meningitis in the nineteen fifties. The room he died in is now a small office.

The night I stayed, a group of friends and I stayed up till around two in the morning talking in the living-room.

We'd been warned that the fridge made a knocking noise occasionally and not to be alarmed. Sure enough, it did make a funny knocking sound at one point and we all laughed that if we had been alone in the house with that appliance we surely would've jumped to a non-scientific conclusion if we hadn't known that before.

But a little later there was a flurry of loud banging sounds that came from the general direction of the kitchen. "Hmmm", said my friend when we all looked expectantly at her. "Well, it wasn't the fridge..."

None of us got up to investigate.

That night it was myself in the magnificent bedroom at the top of the house and another woman who stayed at the opposite end of the house in a guest bedroom after everybody went home.

I wondered if I'd see or hear anything. Well, here is my experience:

A loud chorus of barking noises all night long.... AR AR AR..ar ar ar ar ...AR AR AR ...ar ar ar....(Okay, that was from the sea-lions out in the nearby ocean. But, man, were they loud!)

Rustling coming from the bedroom closet. (I went over and opened the door and the noises stopped. It sounded suspiciously like mice, but wasn't that brave of me?)

Fitful sleep with strange dreams about the ghost. (Hmmm, dreams don't actually count as strange phenomena, do they? Oh well...at least I can ask if the ghost has red hair because he did in my dream where he was showing me around the house.)

Whenever I sleep in a strange bed, I always wake early with an urge to prowl around. I tried to be quiet. Hopefully the other guest didn't hear me moving around at six in the morning and think I was a haunt.

I went and stood in the room where Jack had died. It was very peaceful. Lots of interesting books on the shelves. Nothing jumped out and yelled boo.

A French door downstairs that previously opened and shut without effort seemed to resist my efforts at closing it but perhaps it was just feeling irritable that one time. Let's try to be rational here... :)

I ended up curled up in a comfortable chair reading until breakfast time.

So, was there really a ghost? I dunno. My night here was inconclusive on that subject.

But before I went downstairs that morning I had my wonderful magical bath in that enormous tub overlooking the mountains and sea. And that was worth any amount of clanking chains and spooky stuff in this girl's opinion.

Child Haven Dinner

2007-10-21T14:55:00.000-07:00

The Child Haven Fundraiser dinner my mother-in-law hosted this week was an enormous success!

Whew, I'm so relieved it's over....every year my fingers are crossed that people will turn out in droves and that the event will go off without a hitch. (Last year it was a bit of a gong show behind the scenes; we were better organized this year.)

And every year the Child Haven dinner project snowballs into a bigger event as Jeff's mom gets a little more ambitious. She spent three months volunteering in a Child Haven orphanage in Nepal so she feels a special connection to the children and women we are helping. (There are eight children's homes altogether in India, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Tibet. My pen-pal Ritika lives in the home outside Kathmandu.)

But all the scurrying around selling tickets, painting signs and posters, committee meetings, chaotic kitchen work, and the general stress and organization one might associate with putting on a huge Indian dinner for two hundred people was worth it---we raised over six thousand dollars for Child Haven International this year, almost doubling what we raised last year.

My main job that night was to man the sales tables with assistance from my mom--brightly coloured Indian cushion covers and caftans, jewellery, prayer-flags, little purses sewn with mirrors, silk neckties with elephants, so many beautiful little things to buy. It was fabulously, marvellously busy and I saw so many people I knew there.

Bonnie and Fred Cappuccino, the directors of Child Haven seen in the video below, stayed with my mother-in-law while in town for the fund-raiser. The morning after our dinner they left to travel down island to the next fund-raiser in Qualicum. They just never stop! It's amazing--I've never seen such energetic senior citizens. Of course, having raised twenty-one children (nineteen of them adopted) you know they have to have a special sort of energy and dedication driving them.

Spider Art

2007-10-16T18:48:00.000-07:00

I can't help but think that my garden would be the talk of the town with THIS kind of garden sculture on the front lawn....

From a short article on Parisian artist Louise Bourgeois :

According to the artist, the spider is a feminine hero figure.

Bourgeois created the spider sculptures to honor her mother, who was her best friend and, like a spider, was deliberate, soothing, and patient.

Spiders also create webs which refer to Bourgeois’s early work with tapestries—her parents owned a tapestry restoration business—so the web is a metaphor for connection-making......

...While the spider’s body is above your head, (it is over 11 feet tall) you may examine its legs which are smooth bronze, yet with many different bumps and ridges to create the effect of a natural shape. Each leg is different. Here our giant spider is positioned to suggest that she is walking up the lawn to attend to her baby spider which is attached to the Museum’s facade....

Isn't that lovely? I've never heard of spiders described as "deliberate, soothing, and patient" before.

The article excerpt from above describes the sculpture in the upper left photo on this post. The other photo shows another two of Bourgeois's spider sculptures, these ones thirty feet tall and located in the garden of the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg.

These scultures are from a series of six sculptures, some of them selling for several million dollars and one of them gracing the outside of the National Gallery in Ottawa.

One of the bronze arachnids is called Maman, after her own mother. And I'm glad she meant it in a nice way. :)

As some of you may know from my moniker (and some of you can confirm from knowing me), I have become fond of spiders both in actuality and in symbolism. But even though, I like them I don't collect spider things, persay.

Well, okay, I DO have one spider knick-knack. It actually reminds me a little of one of Louise Bourgeois's sculptures. Only it is only two inches high (and only cost me a dollar). And it's lying on its back on my living -room floor at the moment playing dead because my cat thought it might be interesting to eat.

But it wasn't.

Titanic Exhibit

2007-10-08T15:34:00.000-07:00

The boarding pass I held in my hand gave me second-class passage aboard the fateful White Star Line ship the R.M.S. Titanic ...

My name was Mrs. Joseph Philippe Lemercier LaRoche, also known as Juliette Lafargue. I was 22 years old and sailing in the company of my husband Joseph, and my two young daughters Simonne (aged 3) and Louise (aged 1). My family was travelling to Haiti from Paris, France on the tenth of April, 1912.

Haiti was where Joseph's family lived. Due to racial discrimination in France, Joseph, an engineer and a person of color, had been unable to find a good-paying job. In Haiti, Joseph's family was very wealthy and my husband's prospects were better.

We switched our tickets from the steamship France at the last moment because the France would not allow children to dine with their parents and we didn't want the separation at mealtime to upset our daughters...

With Juliette LaRoche's biography in my hand (every visitor was given a boarding pass with a passenger's name and history on it when entering), I wandered through the Titanic Artifact Exhibition at the B.C. Provincial Museum in Victoria, now feeling a personal connection to the people on board the doomed ship.

Would "my" family survive? I would find out when I read through the lists of survivors at the end of the exhibit. Until then, I just didn't know....

I stopped short and exclaimed when I passed a large family photo of the LaRoche's on the wall during the exhibit.

There's something so compelling about history when you can see the human faces involved!

When I was a girl of about eleven, I read a paperback copy of A Night to Remember and have been fascinated by stories of the Titanic ever since. I remember poring over the passenger lists at the back of the book, morbidly curious about the fates of the children on board who were aged like me....

The museum in Victoria held many articles retrieved from the wreck at the bottom of the ocean floor. Clothes and jewelry retrieved from amazingly preserved leather suitcases and trunks. Even paper articles survived like money, tickets, menus, and letters survived. I was amazed that perfume samples carried on board by a travelling perfumier can still be smelled! ( We were able to smell them through a glass box with air holes).

(Although microorganisms in the sea will literally eat away the huge metal ship hull in time, converting it back to metal ore, items protected by inedible leather are relatively unscathed. I learned that the calcium in the human bones that went to the bottom with the ship would have very quickly been dissolved.)

The exhibit held pieces of the Titanic itself: metal doors, port-holes, railings, giant rivets, and a decorative metal cupid---after watching an IMAX film where some of these items are painstakingly retrieved by small three-manned submersible vehicles from two and a half miles under the ocean, after seeing the strange bleak landscape where strange bug-eyed fish and creepy white crabs scuttle--it feels like I am seeing human things that have been retrieved from another planet. It's like outer space down there.

One image that sticks with me is a set of white dishes that was found stacked neatly in rows upon the sandy ocean floor. The wooden cabinet that came with them to the bottom had long since rotted away, leaving them in eerie geometry. Brought to the surface, they look white and pristine as the day they served in the Titanic's opulent dining-rooms.

The exhibit showed us like-size recreations of what the cabins on board looked like. If you were REALLY rich, (like a woman called Charlotte Drake Cardeza that Jeff's boarding pass described), you could have reserved a very, very nice first class cabin.

In fact, the Carteza entourage brought fourteen trunks, four suitcases, and three crates of baggage along. They stayed in the most expensive suite on Titanic (B-51-53-55), featuring two bedrooms, a sitting-room, and a private fifty-foot promenade.

What did a first-class one way ticket cost for this supposed one-week ride? In 1912 dollars, it was the sum of $4500, an incredible sum when you consider that in today's money that would be just under seventy-nine thousand dollars!

A third-class passenger (most likely the many new immigrants aboard seeking a new life in North America) bunked with other folks in considerably more humble quarters. (Though there are tales of passengers registering as third-class to disguise the fact that there luggage contained diamonds....)

I'm dwelling more on the physical things I saw in this post rather than the enormity of the disaster that occurred for the most part, but I want to say I couldn't help shivering with horror and empathy after touching a small man-made iceberg in this gallery and realizing that the water that the ship sank in was four degrees colder than the ice I was touching. It was so cold it felt like it burned my hand. Most of the 1500 or so people who died in this wreck did not drown; they died of hypothermia. *shivers*

The family standing behind us in the line-up as we waited to enter this exhibit had a personal connection. The older woman's grandfather had been a fifteen-year-old lad with a third-class boarding pass for the doomed shipin his hand. He got an awful feeling in his gut about the ship, strong enough that he decided the morning of the sailing not to board.

I looked at this man's great grand children and wondered if they would exist today if not for that decision. If you were a man, and even more so a third-class passenger, the odds of boarding one of the criminally- few lifeboats aboard would not have been in your favour.

One of my favourite stories about surviving the Titanic is about a man who also never made it aboard, although his luggage did. He was literally shang-haied, kidnapped and bundled away to the Far East just before boarding. The friend travelling with him figured his buddy was just being late as usual and brought his suitcases on (which were retrieved from the ocean in 1993). The fortunate victim of kidnapping escaped later and one can only imagine that he counted his lucky stars. His friend on the ship perished.

As for my family, the LaRoches? Juliette and her daughters survived. But sadly her husband did not.

Rocky Horror Picture Show

2007-10-01T20:09:00.000-07:00

I remember when I was about twelve years old and over at Ara's house for her birthday party.

Her mom had rented a movie for us, and, rather inexplicably considering our age group, that movie turned out to be The Rocky Horror Picture Show which follows the flamboyant sexual adventures of a lingerie-wearing alien called Dr. Frankenfurter from the planet Trans-sexual in the galaxy of Transylvania.

There is a Frankenstein monster who looks a lot like a surfer-dude in gold lame shorts. There is Meatloaf served for dinner in more ways than one. There is a very young Susan Sarandon dancing around in her underwear. There are more corsets and fishnet stockings than you can shake a stick at. Plus *gasp* it's a musical.

Yes, my mom wasn't very pleased at the time when she found out what Ara's mom had provided for entertainment. But I can honestly say my twelve year old self wasn't at all corrupted by the experience. The sexual innuendo went way over my head (yes, perhaps unlike twelve year olds nowadays) and I thought the dance numbers were hilarious.

(My mom has since admitted that the song "Let's Do the Time Warp Again" is rather catchy after all.)

Anyway, this past weekend I had the opportunity to take in the musical mayhem that is the Rocky Horror Picture Show once again. This time, at the UVic student theatre in the company of Jeff, Tai (dragged somewhat under protest) and Chris, and with only an hour's notice. (One of those spontaneous evening entertainment choices that Christopher so delightfully comes up with.)

So this Rocky Horror virgin didn't really have a chance to dress up for the experience, you see. Drat. I felt quite under-dressed for the occasion. Or is that OVER-dressed? I wasn't wearing a single item of kinky lingerie. Oh, the embarrassment!

Because that's what you do when you go to a late-night screening of the Rocky Horror apparently. It's quite an exercise in audience participation.

You can dress up like a French maid like the character of Magenta. You could dress in gold-sequined coat-tails like Columbia. You could put on your pearls and vamp like Tim Curry's mad scientist.

In fact, looking around the theatre, this is probably the best opportunity to use that push-up bra/corset/pair of thigh-high boots, etc. that's been languishing at the back of your closet since who knows when.

Yes! come and wear your underwear in public! It'll be fun!

Plus:

You can dance around in front of the movie screen, shout out the rude and traditional additions to the script with the rest of the audience, throw rice and toilet-paper streamers, shoot off water pistols, and learn how to dance the Time Warp . You should also bring a noise-maker, a lighter, a newspaper to cover your head, a pointy party-hat...oh, I'm probably forgetting some of the other things you should bring....

Oh yeah, most importantly, bring a sense of fun and a love for really really bad alien-horror-musical movies.

Fabulous, darling!

Old Fashioned Girls

2007-09-28T15:36:00.000-07:00

Here I am, circa 1844.
And the photo below is my dear friend Tai, showing off her wasp waist in clothes that were quite fashionable in 1898. Yes, who knew that Spider Girl and Tai were such old-fashioned girls....

Apple Magic

2007-09-26T17:08:00.000-07:00

I have found no better way to truly celebrate the spirit of the Fall Equinox, a traditional harvest holiday, than to be outside in the warmth of the newly-autumn sunshine actually harvesting something.

I'm going to write more about what I was doing on this glorious bee-buzzing apple-laden afternoon a bit later, but I'll leave you with these pictures for the moment.....

Okay. It's later. :)

Here's a link to what I was up to:

http://www.denmangardenparties.blogspot.com/

Denman Island Community Garden Parties follow the basic principle that many hands make light work. Volunteers arrive at various farms, orchards, and vegetable gardens at specified times and dates and put in two hours of cheerful unpaid labour to support the production of fresh, organic produce.

If ten people show up, that's twenty hours of work done. If twenty people show up, a whopping great forty hours of work get done.

I'm mentally scanning a list of friends that might want to get behind this philosophy in oh, let's say, MY garden!
With a good friend by my side, and a huge canvas pouch on my front that made me feel like a kangaroo, I helped pick the gazillions of apples that grew on a mere three trees.

This in an orchard where long lanes of many, many trees populated an enormous meadow.

There were other jobs to do too, if we were willing. There were potatoes to be hoed, blackberries to be picked, and manure to be spread on the garden pathways. The few hours there sped by. I've discovered that I really enjoy outdoor work. Well, as long as the sun is shining and the breeze is cool that is.

It also helped that Fireweed and I had a really good conversation as we picked, and that we were rewarded with fresh-pressed apple cider at work's end, a few of the really good purple grapes that hung from the farmers' fence, and a good haul of apples to take back to the evening's harvest dinner back at the Denman Hall. (Those apples later met their fate in an apple crumble.)

Oh, the food at dinner was marvellous. Fresh, fresh, fresh produce made a delicious meal. Even Fireweed's lobster- mushroom soup (that's a kind of mushroom, no crustaceans were harmed in the making of this soup) was picked fresh from the forest floor. Yum!
And the dessert featured pears from an ancient tree that justy groaned with the weight of fruit. Happy Equinox to all!

Spot the Spider

2007-09-18T21:01:00.000-07:00
Did you spot the little spider on the Black-eyed Susan flower from my garden above? He's right at the top of center. That's spider number five thousand, four hundred and sixty-three I spotted today.

Two were hanging from my garden hat at one point. And kind though I am to spiders, I unknowingly barged through and utterly destroyed quite a number of little webs in the garden this week.

Some not so little. :)

Autumn is the time for a spider's last hurrah before winter when things get pretty bleak for our eight-legged friends. Live fast, die young, I guess. Some of them live really fast. You should've seen the fat brown one that ran over my shoe move.

I'm on the look-out for two particular kinds I haven't seen yet: my mom spotted a spider that imitates a large ant in appearance and my mother-in-law claims there are also HUGE SCARY FAT yellow spiders scampering around like puppy dogs.

Spider Girl is on the lookout.

These last couple weeks I haven't been near my blog much.

Partly because it's the beginning of the new school year and that's the time when teachers of little kids everywhere go a bit crazy-busy.

My past two weeks have been full of new kids with new little personalities and new little eccentricities to discover.

Activites have included:

*participating in slug hunts
*tasting mud pies (mmmm...yum)
*dipping myself in paint, glue, day-glo coloured shaving-cream, and any number of messy forms of abstract preschool art
*learning the fine art of cutting out a hundred construction paper leaves without having my fingers cramp
*trying to grow the eight arms which would suddenly become very helpful
*discovering how many pairs of socks have been left outside in the sandbox
*closing my eyes and trying to go to my inner quiet happy place

As I'm a sucker for punishment I have also applied to and been accepted in a Early Childhood Education research/discussion group course through UVic. Once again I'll be a student of sorts. An online one at least.

Another reason I haven't blogged (at least this week) is that I have nearly four hundred flower bulbs in various stages of being planted. (I have my mom to thank for a lot of those daffodils next spring!)

Between my mom's gift and my own budget splash-out on bulbs (daffodils, tulips, crocus, jonquils, allium), I have my work for the next week of non-rainy evenings cut out for me.

It's tedious work--dig hole, stir some bonemeal at the bottom, plop the bulb in, cover up, repeat. And repeat. And repeat. I think I was practically meditating by the time I got through the first bag of one hundred.

The zen of planting bulbs.

Anniversary

2007-09-12T16:46:00.000-07:00
I love this guy. :)

And we've been married FIFTEEN years today!

Your Own Heart on Display

2007-09-04T19:12:00.000-07:00
This is from a BBC news article that made me realize that no matter how strange and miraculous life gets, it can always get a little more surreal....

Imagine seeing your own heart in a jar.
(And I thought seeing an X-ray of my foot was sorta nifty....)

Jennifer Sutton, 23, from Ringwood, Hampshire, successfully underwent an operation to replace her heart earlier this year.
She had developed a life-threatening condition called restrictive cardiomyopathy in her teens.
Now the original heart, which nearly killed her, has been put on temporary display by the Wellcome Collection in central London.
The exhibition explores the medical and cultural significance of the heart.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6977399.stm (Here's a link to the whole article.)

She said: "Seeing my heart for the first time is an emotional and surreal experience.
"It caused me so much pain and turmoil when it was inside me. Seeing it sitting here is extremely bizarre and very strange.
"Finally I can see this odd looking lump of muscle that has given me so much upset."

Helicopter Ride, Part 2

2007-08-29T17:02:00.000-07:00
I've just been over to my helicopter-hating brother's blog and had to laugh at his video response to my first Helicopter Ride post.

He writes: "The video below captures my true feelings about flying.Like the ride described by my sister, we are flying high in the mountains above a glacier. Yes, it is pretty. See the beautiful blue glacial lake? Now see the helicopter fly downwards at breakneck speed like a demonic roller coaster that has jumped the track. Now see the man clutching the seat as his heart tries to jump free from his chest. Now see the response he gives the cameraman for filming said event...."

You see, diversity is what makes family so great. Me, I grin my fool head off when I leave the ground. I love that perilous feeling when the helicopter banks and tilts on its side as you circle a mountain-top.

My brother...loves it, er, not so much. At least, that's what I got from his eloquent hand-gesture gesture to the camera-man on his helicopter ride.

Mind you, I don't have to get in a helicopter routinely as part of my job (he's a forest technologist, otherwise titled as the Grand High Treeplanter.) Our pilot (who owns a logging company) showed us some crazy mountainside spots where heli-loggers are sometimes required to land and honestly I wouldn't really want to try to disembark in any of those places.
No, I think I'll just sit back in my comfortable seat and enjoy the ride.

We flew over Mount Washington, somehow looking far less large without its crown of snow and with all its summer-bald ski-runs on display.

We flew over some of the logging areas near Cumberland---it all looks so neat and tidy from above. (It's much uglier from the ground, trust me.)
From our vantage point near Cumberland, we could see Kim's house!

Then we flew down-island towards Union Bay and flew over the log-sort there. We skimmed very low over the water, like a scene out of the old Beachcombers TV show titles, and some of the seals sunning themselves on the logs dived into the water as we approached.

Other seals just regarded us lazily, as if they couldn't care less that a strange metal bird was hovering beside them.

Now we were starting to head for home, back over my town and then....

....OVER MY HOUSE! :)
See where that red car is turning the corner? The house surrounded by shrubbery is mine. It looked so cute from up high. We circled around twice.
The coolest thing about seeing my house from a thousand feet up was that I couldn't spot a single weed in my yard....

Helicopter Ride Birthday Present: Part One

2007-08-26T20:22:00.000-07:00
I'd like to share my birthday present from Jeff with you all---a helicopter ride! I love helicopters! (And I certainly don't mind stretching my birthday celebrations into their second week.)

Our whirly-bird belonged to Jeff's boss, a wonderfully sweet guy who flew us all over the Valley this sunny August morning , taking us soaring over the Comox Valley Glacier and beyond......
I took so many photos that I'm making this a two-part blog post. Here we are flying over the pretty green farmlands and beyond.....

Comox Lake.... Everything is so clear and beautiful from the air. The trees look so small. I can see the old road to the lake I used to ride on the schoolbus.

We fly higher, up into the mountains, flying between rocky hills, wreathed in smoky mist. I am reminded that I live in one of the most beautiful places in the world.

We are flying at 2300 feet, rising up over the mountains toward the glacier. Our pilot cautions us that we might be disappointed at the size of it---it has apparently shrunk over the years and is not as magnificent as it once was he tells us.

I can assure you: I was not disappointed.....
From my street I can see the glacier. It's been part of my daily landscape since I moved to Vancouver Island as a young child. And I've always wanted to see it up close.
It's something so familiar and yet suddenly so new. Life is good.

Beneath the glistening expanses of snow, ancient blue ice shone out.
And the feeling as we crested the face and the world dropped away on the other side is unforgettable.
Look at the colour of this glacial lake rimmed with ice--it was just the most unreal jewel-like blue I'd ever seen.

We swung around the top of the mountain for a second pass over the glacier. Down below, hikers waved and we flew over a group of people camped on one of the exposed rock faces.
It's beautiful--but I'd rather be flying than walking. :)

Undersea Birthday

2007-08-25T09:34:00.000-07:00
When I was a little girl, about five years old, my Gran would take me to the Vancouver Aquarium. Not just once or twice.

No, we might go once or even twice a week to stand in the blue-green underwater light to look at the fishes, to be splashed with sea-water at the killer whale show, and to have irridescent butterflies land on our shoulders in the ferny paths of the Amazon rainforest gallery. It is a beautiful, cherished childhood memory.

So last weekend, for my birthday present, Jeff and I left our island Rock (enduring an excrutiatingly long wait in the ferry lineup) and travelled to the mainland. We visited with four long-unvisited friends, wandered the living-room and kitchen showrooms of IKEA, and visited the Aquarium for the first time in many years.
While part of me has worries about the ethics of capturing whales/tropical fish, I still want to see them. I rationalize that there is an argument to be made for the educational value of the aquarium. There is a strong environmental/caring for the oceans message in many of the exhibits displayed. One underwater gallery highlighted the diverse sea-life to be found in our own waters off British Columbia---Sechelt, Tofino, local inlets, coastal microcosms.
The Aquarium also runs a marine mammal rescue program (you can contribute an extra five dollars to your admission price if you wish to help with this).

But I am quite sure that all I really cared about as a child coming here was the sheer wonder of peering about under the water, imagining I was a fish. Fascinated and feeling brave as I watched the sharks swim by...eye to eye with the octopus...giggling at the tickle of sea anenomes in the children's touching-pool.
And that's all I really wanted to re-experience. Thirty years later, my eyes are older but still-wondering at it all.

What would it be like to be a jellyfish anyway? Your body is as ethereal as imagination, you pulse and undulate and float through the depths all your life--what does a jellyfish think about I wonder...I think its whole life must be like a meditation.
And here in the aquarium, I was able to see a little of what Jeff saw when he snorkelled in the shallow Indian Ocean off Zanzibar---white sand, coral and small, brightly-coloured darting fish. I didn't go on the dive then because there was a strong current and I am a very poor swimmer. I didn't want to get pulled too far away from the boat.
"It wasn't so bad", Jeff told me. "All you needed to do was snorkel up-current of the boat and then stop swimming. Then you'd just bump right back into the boat."
Perhaps. But although I'm fascinated by the element and mythology and beauty of the ocean, I'm a little scared of it too. I like the Aqarium much better.
And I love the insights it gives you. See these starfish? When you watch them they seem calm and sedate and almost motionless. But watching the video feed from the time-lapse camera next to their tank reveals that these little sea stars motor all about, crawling frenetically over and about the rocks and each other, wiggling an incredible amount.

Crazy.

And mostly unseen. Unless you're at the Aquarium.

Princess

2007-08-17T09:30:00.000-07:00
This is me, at work. Why yes, I am a princess.....

Bumper Boats

2007-08-13T16:45:00.001-07:00
There we were, bereft of bathing-suit or towels, spinning about a swimming pool in saucer-boats that had two controls: GO and SQUIRT YOUR FRIENDS WITH WATER . Previous plans to not get too wet were quickly abandoned.....
...in favour of an all-out aquatic assault on each other!

Oh sure, Jamie picked the boat that seemed to have more awesome water-volume power---but he simply didn't bet on the power of his friends GANGING UP ON HIM. :)

It was merciless.

And I was just reflecting the other day how I hadn't gone swimming or gotten wet much this summer.

Out the Door Again!

2007-08-11T10:49:00.000-07:00
It's probably a sign that this is a good summer---I have no time to blog!

In fact, in a few minutes I'm out the door again to go and play mini-golf....

There's been a sheaf of tickets I've carried around in a little envelope in my purse all summer. At one point I could fan out all the tickets for events I was going to like a deck of cards. It was daunting! (In a good way)

The last two nights I finally used the last remaining tickets on the very excellent Showcase Festival productions of the Canadian set-in-wartime play Waiting for the Parade , and the lingerie-clad musical Cabaret which had everything going for it except for Liza Minelli herself.

As well, in a few short weeks I've attended:

*the entire CYMC musical line-up including the Jazz festival, three chamber music concerts, a student orchestra recital, and a night of opera selections

*Jekyll and Hyde the musical

* the Filberg Festival --one day to look and shop, and another day to see Bruce Cockburn in concert

Friends have been visiting me, and I've been visiting friends, and the summer is somehow nearlygone.

Canadian Mermaid

2007-08-01T20:17:00.000-07:00

Mermaid sightings are rare. Canadian mermaids seem even rarer. So I was astonished to find that a mermaid had once been seen off my own Vancouver Island.

Did you know that in 1967, B.C. Ferries passengers saw a mermaid sitting on some rocks in Active Pass near Victoria?

Reports in the Times Colonist newspaper at the time said that the mermaid had long blonde hair, the body of a porpoise from the waist down, and was apparently eating a salmon when sighted.

The brief article on the tourism website also mentioned that a man in an aircraft took a photograph that supported the ferry passengers claim, and the Victoria newspaper printed the picture. Unfortunately, the passengers involved are "no longer available for comment".

How could I not know about this? We Vancouver Islanders have our very own rumoured sea-serpent Caddy ("Cadborosaurus"), we're home to the elusive Sasquatch, a healthy population of ghost-stories, indeed, why not mermaids?

So, I have been searching the internet for the alleged mermaid photo. But I can't seem to find it. My co-worker (an ex- Saltspring islander) nodded when I mentioned the article and said she'd once seen the picture.

How would she describe it? She frowned skeptically. "Well, somebody must have digitally altered it, I guess." Then she fell silent. I guess it looked like a mermaid.
While searching for the picture I came across other mermaids though. I include this mesmerizing YouTube clip for your enjoyment.
It is said that Christopher Columbus mentioned mermaids in his log book during his ocean travels. Apparently he was disappointed. "I somehow thought they'd be more attractive..., "he wrote. I'm sure he didn't see anything like the mermaid in this movie.
Underwater mermaid model Hannah Fraser is about as close to a real mermaid as a human can get. An article on Hannah said that through yoga and breath-control practice she has learned to become comfortable staying underwater....I think she's beautiful.

Sticky the Crow

2007-07-28T09:31:00.000-07:00

We were out for a walk last evening with Loki the Dog when we met some friendly crows.

We had just turned up Camp Road, a semi-rural stretch lined with ramshackle character homes and potters' studios when a crow soared straight towards us at eye-level before alighting in the canopy of trees above us. We regarded it curiously for a few moments before walking on because it had struck us as quite unusual behaviour from a wild bird.

Loki and Jeff and I had walked a little further when a golden-coated lab came onto the street barking at us. Loki was so well-behaved!

Anyway, the owners called out to us from their yard, saying Goldie was quite friendly. I couldn't help but notice that the man had a beautiful black bird perched on his arm.

I love crows. They may be a common sight but I've had a fondness for them for a long time. Back in high school my friends and I would go out to the field at lunch hour and share our food with them. We got quite a black-winged following that year.

They have an intelligent, cocky, mysterious air about them, and I've always privately thought of them as a little bit magical.

Sticky the Crow hopped readily onto my arm as we talked with his human about how he had come to have two pet crows. (The crow that had swooped low over our heads and into the trees was Sticky's nest-mate.) I loved the feeling of his little black feet on my arm. His little black eyes seemed to regard me curiously, and I suspect he was definitely eyeing up my shiny earrings too.

A few years back this man had been crossing some recently-cleared land and had come across a fallen tree which had taken its load of crow chicks to the ground with it. The two beautiful birds we saw tonight were the survivors.

We talked a few minutes before moving on. Sticky's friend says that it's nice how everybody who passes through has a crow memory to share.

As we walked away, the two crows kept up with us for a while, hopping along the telephone wires above.

I love meeting interesting people (and birds) by chance. Obviously dog-walking has its benefits, at least in sunny weather. Thanks to Kim for letting us be dog-sitters this weekend! :)

Deer (Lilies on the Menu)

2007-07-23T16:50:00.001-07:00
Now if this were my garden, I probably wouldn't have stood by in delight, watching all the little deer nibble their way through my lily patch.

No, I'd probably be clapping my hands and making all sorts of hissing/shooing sounds and motions. I'd probably have smoke coming out of my ears.

But this was not my garden, and so I just wandered by the little darlings in peace as they grazed and as I killed time waitng for the Pacific Jazz Festival to begin last week at the Filberg Park.

P.S. I am adding more to this post after reading gnightgirl's comment about deer being rather unpredictable. Once upon a time, not very far away from these lily-eating deer, my friend was driving slowly by a golf course with his car windows down. And a deer jumped through the window and into the car.

Yes. It happened. And my friend vacated his car as quickly as he could. The beast was not at all happy about its new location and had sharp, panicky flying hooves. Fortunately, it all ended happily with my friend just being scratched up a little and the deer escaping and furthermore swearing off jumping in small automobiles thereafter.

Murder Party

2007-07-20T20:24:00.000-07:00

"Oh, it's been SO long since we've had a MURDER!", sighed my mother-in-law recently. "We should get together for another one."
And so, soon after this rather eye-brow raising remark (at least outside of my family), I was invited to another (I think this might be the fifth) Murder Mystery Dinner Party .

The guests cheerfully sit around the supper table pretending to be embezzlers, wealthy low-lifes, snobs with something to hide, and other ne'er-do-wells. Then, following a loose, highly ad-libbed script from our character manuals, all eight guests enthusiastically hurl calculated accusations back and forth over a four-course meal.

If you've never tried out this form of evening entertainment, I do recommend it. Meet new people, accuse them of heinous crimes....

I got to play the character of the rich, flashy, bitchy businesswoman who played watchdog for the public relations of her family's company.

I had at least two people figuring I was the one who did it! It was quite a lot of fun. And, just to add extra entertainment value, one of the evening's guests was the family's female pastor who was playing a suspicious character who happened to be heavily pregnant. Her waddling was very convincing. . :)

Los Lobos on the Wind, and Reaping the Rewards of a Garage Sale at the Garden Centre

2007-07-08T21:52:00.000-07:00

If you stood on my deck about eleven o'clock on Friday night, you would have heard the band Los Lobos performing down the street in my neighbour's garage.
Well, that's what it sounded like. You could hear the song they were playing, but the sound was a bit muffled.

Actually Los Lobos were playing Clear Across Town at the Island Music Fest, but acoustics in my neighbourhood seem to spookily funnel the sound right down my street. I wonder how many streets in my town got a free concert this weekend.

Of course, every time a car went by, the quality of my listening experience went down, but I lay in bed with the patio door open and fell asleep listening.

So I was up late, and then up again early for my garage sale.

A few posts back (you may recall), my previous garage sale was rained out, but this one absolutely wasn't.
I was out there on my front drive hawking junk by quarter to seven in the morning... Oh,sure, my advert in the newspaper claimed I opened for business at nine, but I'm not willing to turn away people giving me money even if it's at an ungodly hour.

So, after a busy sale, I had some Guilt-Free Spending Money ear-marked for the garden and burning a hole in my pocket, and today Kim and her mom went to the garden centre with me to help me spend it.

I really REALLY wanted to buy oodles and oodles of plants, (I was all geared up to casually drop a hundred bucks or so), but (alas ) Kim's mom lately remembered that the back of her van was actually full already and I had to cut my spree short.

Nonetheless! I emerged with two large pots of gallardia (blanket flower), three pots of golden tickseed, and five containers of a campanula called Carpathian Bellflowers.
And I still have plenty of Garage Sale money left to spend.....

I spent a warm July evening out planting and watering my new additions to the garden.

On Friday evening (before the Los Lobos concert), I actually went to another (proper) concert with my mom. But before we went to see the Cantiamo choir sing, Mom took me on a tour of her own garden.

It's looking fabulous! It has a sort of Mediterranean theme going with lots of lavender and coreopsis and creative use of gravel. I thought I'd post some photos of it.

Ahem, also pictured is the fat black bunny that lives under the cedar tree in her front yard. Yes, my mom has a beautiful garden, but it is fraught with munching bunnies.

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Oh, I thought I'd post this picture too as I've just met this plant.
I saw it for the first time last weekend when I was wandering around Victoria with Tai, peering admiringly into people's front yards.
This is a tree poppy, and it's taller than I am. Absolutely magnificent.
I mention it particularly because I saw a much younger and less impressive version of it at the nursery today. I would've have gasped at the price tag of the specimen if I hadn't recently seen its potential.
No, wait, I still gasped....
Drat, but plants are expensive. (Either that, or people just want to give them to you for free. There is seemingly no middle ground.)

Four New Things

2007-07-05T19:17:00.001-07:00
New Baby

As I said before, I'm an auntie again!

My niece is tiny and pink and waves her fists in the air while making gurgly sounds. Quite lovely, as babies often are.

But probably a bit more lovely than the average baby, I think....

She also came into the world after only (not to diminish the actual work involved) forty-five minutes of labour. My sister-in-law almost didn't make it to the hospital in time. When I mentioned this at work, my co-worker gushed, "Now doesn't THAT make YOU want to have a baby!?"

Well, in a word, NO! I'm sure 45 minutes can still seem a VERY long time....

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New Chair

I may not want to have a baby, but I did want to have this chair.

Circa 1910. Victorian-style channel-back armchair. Reupholstered in the 1940's.

I pounced upon it in an impulsive fashion while browsing in an antique shop this weekend in Victoria. It's amazing what one can stuff in the back seat of one's car if one is motivated.

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New House
As in the new one that Tai is renting and moving into in a couple of weeks. It's gorgeous. Really.
I'm experiencing pangs of friendly, happy jealousy. I especially love the wooden floors, high ceilings, the stained-glass windows, and the little built-in details like spice cupboards and china hutches. The house was built right around the same time as my newly-acquired chair, but has just been extensively renovated.
(Later, I spent a happy evening on the MLS real-estate pages pretending I was shopping for a character home in Victoria, but I couldn't find anything this nice that was under three-quarters of a million or so.)
The yard needs some work, but after a morning making sure Tai had her very own Weed Pile of Doom with the clippers I'd brought from home, my friend and I wandered around a garden center (one of my favourite things to do) and made plans....

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New Window
...at the daycare where I work. We had to have it replaced after the Lawn Mower Man sent a rock pinging like a bullet all the way across the playground and sent it into our tall glass door where it shattered top to bottom into a spider-web like mess of cracks.
Thank goodness for safety glass (and that we don't let kids outside when the gardener is there). We could hear the door crackling for the next half hour as the cracks got bigger and bigger.
The rock that hit it? Smaller than my little fingernail!
Me and the children were very impressed.

Auntie Spider Girl

2007-06-29T15:18:00.000-07:00
Here's a picture of me and my cat, trying to get some reading done.

One of my dear friends recently complained that I'm not blogging enough--how will she keep track of what I've been up to lately?!

Maybe I've been reading too much? (I've only gone through five or six books in the last two weeks, so that can't be it...) :)

Anyway, I thought I'd make a mini post of some random things to catch her (everybody) up to date.

1. I am a new Auntie! Jeff's sister had her baby three weeks early, and we are off to Victoria see our new niece tomorrow. Her name is Avery.

While in Victoria I'll also get to see the new house Tai and Chris are renting--I've been advised to bring my gardening shears so perhaps it will be a working weekend...

2. Adam and Kira visited me and snapped up twelve pots of the windflowers on offer from two posts back. Bless 'em! I need the room in my garden. I have planted all the new dianthus and lavender that my mom treated me to--the dianthus plants have names like Rasberry Swirl and Strawberry Sorbet , makes me hungry just reading the tags.

Kira also informed me (after consulting her GPS) that I have three geo cache sites within 500 metres of my house. Treasure, of sorts. Intriguing, no?

3. I have given my notice at the Dentist Job. Now that I'm back from Italy (and don't have to supplement my income for the purposes of spending it on gelato and knock-off Prada purses), I feel no need for having two jobs. I am forseeing soft and warm summer evenings where I'd much rather be out grubbing in the garden than rinsing off bloody pliers.

4. And after I gave my notice, I serendipitously learned that I was getting a raise at my daycare job. It's the first real one in eleven years (I didn't count the 5 cent and 10 cent raises respectively) so I just about fell off the chair I was sitting on when I heard.

I had to leave that staff meeting early to get to one of my last shifts at the dentist, and I let our new administrator know that I had to be going to my other job by seven.

He said: "Why did the daycare worker cross the road?"

Me: Why?

Him: "To get to her second job."

I was all prepared to laugh politely and then think bitter twisted thoughts about being underpaid, but then he gave me the good news.

Well, I'm still underpaid most likely, but I'm happier in the moment.

Okay, I blogged! Now back to my book! (Don't worry, Mom, I'm almost finished with 1000 days in Tuscany. You know, the problem is I read more than one at a time....

Mii and My Wii

2007-06-27T20:25:00.000-07:00
Don't you just love it when you get a new toy?

Oh, I wouldn't have one except we fell prey to the siren call of the impulse purchase after an afternoon spent at Kim's house, playing with her Wii.

I didn't even really know what a Wii was until she explained over cups of tea why her arms and shoulders were so tired and sore that day. She had been boxing on her Wii, you see.

""I'll show you ", she said. "But first I have to draw my blinds, or people walking by on the street will think I'm crazy".

A Wii (pronounced "wee" as in 'very small' or 'I have to go') is a gaming system that exercises more than your thumbs. You actually have to move around and expend real energy to play. My friend held a small remote strapped to her wrist in one hand and another smaller one in her other hand. She started up the Wii Boxing game and then demonstrated how it all worked by punching the heck out of the little cartoon guy on her TV screen.

She swung, she punched, she ducked, she danced back and forth on her living-room floor. She glared fiercely at her animated opponent, and then finally gave him the 'ol KO. He was down for the count!

It looked so fun Jeff and I had to try. There we were: insanely punching the air with all our hearts, and having a blast.

We played virtual tennis too, swinging the Wii remote like a tennis racket. And bowling too!
(As in life, I wasn't very talented at tennis and bowling, but I rocked at boxing! ) (Oh, and there's golf and baseball too..)

So now, three days later I have a Wii system of my own--its great exercise, really! And yes, you do sort of look silly hopping about in your living-room, but apparently it's rather a popular game, and it's only me who's never heard of it. I've been missing out. :)

A few people on the internet have actually posted their own Wii "Weight Loss Experiments" and had some success. The YouTube movie I post here is a compilation of footage put together by one of the guys who lost weight by playing with the Wii gaming system for half an hour a day for a month or so.

It so totally beats eating carrot sticks! I actually get out of breath playing this thing, and my triceps don't know what hit them. (Ah, I am so totally trying to justify blowing more money on video games...)

Come to my house and I'll let you play! :)

Alive-o Again..and in the Garden

2007-06-20T18:30:00.001-07:00
Well, I've coughed and honked my way through a dilly of a cold these last few days. I'm rather sick of it actually.

At least it didn't stop me from getting in the garden. I've spent hours out there this week.

A good thing too--it needed attention after almost a month of getting along on its own while I was in Italy. Everything exploded into bloom while I was gone. Remind me not to go away in the spring too often--its too pretty to miss!

The foxgloves and peonies and campanulas are in full bloom. But the red-leafed shrubbery in fromt of my kitchen window badly needs a haircut.

My favourite rose at the end of my driveway...sometimes a golden colour, sometimes almost pink, sometimes orange. A delicious smell too. I wish I knew what it was called.

Alas, the leafy green ground-cover and pink-flowered geraniums in the background of this photo are deceptively pretty and have to go. I have started a weeding/giveaway campaign to rid myself of these over-enthusiastic lovelies because they are choking other plants out. They are bishop's weed and Geranium 'Claridge Druce' respectively. I started to read up on them once I realized I was entertaining murderous thoughts about them.

I learned: Bishop's weed is a fast-growing ground-cover and lovely if you need to cover large area, but its very invasive and hard to get rid of-- it was popular in Victorian times as a border plant; according to the article I read there are plots of land abandoned a century ago where the only evidence there was once a garden are the thriving mounds of bishop's weed.

As for the geranium called 'Claridge Druce' (I was glad to find its name as I have so much of it), it is a very popular and hardy species, but if you live in the Pacific Northwest(which I do), its will go forth and multiply like a bunny. Okay, more like a weed I suppose.

It's so pretty I hate to pull it out...but my mind is made up. Mom, if you want more, bring me some pots. You can have as much as you like. Kim, Nell, anybody else?

Ah, more pictures of flowers in my garden.....

You know, while I was away I encouraged friends like Kim to come over and share my perennials.

Please! Take some! :The cry of the perennial plant gardener with too many plants.
Anyway, I came back from Rome, scanned my garden, and concluded nobody had taken me up on my offer....but they had!
My friend Kim said she came over THREE times (with helpers) to cart away plants for her newly-acquire flower garden space. Sure enough, I can spot the evidence of that in her yard.
But I missed nary a one.

The offer is still open: this week Spider Girl's Special Garden Give-Away is Japanese anenome, aka wind-flowers. They are pictured below....

I have scads of them! Scads, I tell you!
They are gorgeous, but they are not actually in bloom yet (these are from last year's crop). When they are, they will put on quite a long-blooming show. But until then they make a sea of foliage and I simply have too many for one yard.
Any takers?

Whoosh. Kablooie. Sigh.

2007-06-16T09:07:00.000-07:00

WHOOSH.

That's the sound of the pouring rain cancelling my garage sale this morning. I can hear the weatherman's quiet mocking laughter for (firstly) believing his forecast earlier in the week that Saturday would be cool and sunny, and then for furthermore doubting him last night when he started saying that an enormous rainstorm would dump on my plans this morning. I was out in the garden late last evening and it was a gorgeous warm evening at that.

BAH! That's the sound of me cursing weathermen in general, and the fact that I'm down six dollars in garage sale advertisement fees.

Yes, and this weekend is also the time for the Denman Home & Garden Tour---those poor, poor gardeners who worked so hard to get their gardens in shape for it! I feel so bad for them!

I procrastinated on buying a ticket this time because I like to go with someone and everybody I asked was otherwise occupied this weekend. I guess that's the bright side: I'm down six dollars from the news ad, but I didn't buy the fifteen dollar tour ticket. Hmmm......that means *furrowed brow* ...er, I'm up nine bucks.

Sigh. Not enough to cheer me up because....

KABLOOIE! KABLOOIE! *honk snort cough* That's the sound of Spider Girl waking up with a horrible sore throat and cold this morning.

And what's more I had a garage sale anxiety dream last night. Yes, that's a sign of my inner mental workings.

I dreamed that I slept in late on my garage sale day and when I woke up I heard irate voices outside wondering where I was. I leapt out of bed and ran out on my balcony, and there were all these people in my yard carrying various posessions of mine around in their arms that were NOT part of the garage sale. I tried to call down to them but my voice was so hoarse I couldn't talk (that part of the dream was prophetic anyhow).

I ran out willy-nilly in my pajamas and decided to sell the stuff anyway they were holding to them anyways, just to placate the crowd. In the dream I made pots of money, but it wasn't a very fun time.

Happy

2007-06-13T18:07:00.000-07:00
I'm so happy about something I've just heard today.

And I'm just bursting to tell the news, but I guess I have to wait until the person (people) involved shares the news first.

Yes, I'm in a state of happy frustration.....

So instead of telling you what's up, I'm going to post this picture of a bride and groom I saw in Rome. I think it tells a story, but I'll never truly know what it is.

They were young, elegant, obviously very much in love, and smooching in front of a panini, pizza & gelato stand.

Why were they getting their wedding photography done here? Did they own the stand? Was this the stand where they shared a slice of pizza on their first date? Did they have an insatial craving for gelato as soon as they spoke their vows?

I don't know.

But it begs the question...do the people I'm so happy for today have a craving for gelato too?

Isabella's Garden

2007-06-11T18:07:00.000-07:00
In the north of Italy, floating like a jewel in Lago Maggiore, there is an island called Isola Bella.

Long ago it was a barren, rocky place, but in the mid seventeenth century, a Borromean count decided to make it into a place of beauty, dedicating the island to his wife, the Countess Isabella.

An enormous amount of soil was brought in, an airy summer palace was built, and a many-tiered garden of baroque splendour was created.

It may be a little over the top... I mean, you have to appreciate a certain amount of rococo statuary...but it's truly one of the most beautiful places I know.

I was so happy to be able to visit this island for a second time.

Now I must leave off writing this post and go out into my own garden for a spot of weeding. Heh, my own garden is not quite as baroque and manicured, I can assure you.