Building the Pond and some Garden Photos

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?

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

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

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

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!

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

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

Science for Small People

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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!