Creeping In On Little Cat Feet

The fog, that is. We've been sitting in the middle of a large bank of it all week.

It amplifies the rustley noises in the trees, which causes me to jump a lot when I'm in the garden, listening to all those rustley noises.

It also hides the hawks until they are just overhead, which is causing the chickens to spend a lot of time hiding in the coop.







Given that they look like this right now, I think I'd be hiding too, but I'm superficial that way. For those of you on the fence as to whether you want chickens or not, this is a photo of a moulting chicken. They do this once a year. This moulting chicken has her quills growing in: before those quills come in they look like an inflatable chicken that had its plug pulled. It's three parts gross, two parts weird and fascinating, and five parts creepy.

The first time the chickens moulted we thought they were dying. Some of us might have panicked a bit as to whether this might be a form of bird flu. After consulting a chicken book I discovered that this is an annual event, which was kind of comforting because none of my friends who kept chickens knew what I was talking about - turns out they get rid of their chickens after a year, so they never got to this stage in the relationship before.

Brings up all sorts of very shallow issues for me, I must confess. It's definitely the low point in MY relationship with the chickens, that's for sure. They feel the same way: they spend more time in the coop than ever and always look rather embarrassed when I take their photo. This particular shot took me 22 takes, because Fern went and hid in the layer box, Pip shoved in there with her, and Prunella (who is a bird of very little brain) was left trying to squeeze her way through the wire. Which she can't do, even with fewer feathers than usual.


Here's the greenhouse getting ready for winter. I'm trying something new in terms of keeping the warmth for the citrus: a ceramic heater. I usually use those old-fashioned Christmas lights, but they really light up the back yard, and given that I am rather intolerant of don't particularly like our neighbour's penchant for leaving their outside lights on all the bloody time, I thought it might be rather, err, hypocritical of me to leave two sets on this year, as opposed to one (the lemon arbor). Wait for it - I bet no one but me will notice the lack of outside light on this year. Sigh.

Here is something I'm rather excited by: I've fixed up a heat mat under my bench, and covered it with a few pieces of guttering. The gutters have some pea sprouts in them, which I think might come in handy in a few weeks, once they've sprouted and formed nice long salad-y tendrils.

I even buried the electrical cord under the gravel. I'm getting neat and tidy in my dotage.

With winter coming the statuary have to come in. In the old days they covered them with burlap and left them out, where they would weather the weather in grand, if somewhat muffled, style. These days everything is made of pulpy crap so we have to bring them in or they melt in the rain. Not as stalwart as their forebears, obviously.

I bought this last year at Costco. It was labelled as a Calamondin Orange. Beware O' Innocent Gardener: I saw that label and thought "Oooh! an orange tree! Just what I need!"

Ha.

I got it home and googled it. Turns out my orange tree is a fussy, miniature orange-like tree that needs care, attention, space, and attention. Did I already say attention?

So I sulked for a year, wishing that I'd googled it before I bought it. I mean, I've always wanted a kumquat, but a miniature orange-like object? Who wants one of those?

Then it fruited. I decided I liked it after all. So it doesn't have oblong fruit? Round is just as nice.

And look at all the fruit to come. I feel somewhat abashed admitting this, but giving a citrus plant care, attention, space - and more attention - works out in the end.

Fragrant heliotrope blooms at long last.

















So does the Braveheart mallow.

We put in some new beds in the lower garden last weekend. I say WE but I really mean Richard. He watched me struggle rather wimpily then went and got his saw and made me some stakes and planks. He even put them in for me. I added the stepping stones and tidied up the beds. I'm rubbish with a saw but I'm very good with stepping stones.

Remind me to show you what this bed used to look like. Once upon a time it was a grassy hillside. Then it was an awkwardly placed garden, with higgeldy piggeldy beds.

Now it's a navigable space. I no longer see myself falling over. Tripping. Tipping. Tumbling.

It gives one the illusion of level ground.

Bright lights chard.

Brighter lights chard.

Spider webs through the breaking fog.

The last of the raspberries.













































Then, just when I'd finished this post and thought "Gosh, the fog is so beautiful!" it completely disappeared and the sun broke through.

And it looked like this.

How I Spent My Sunday

Driving up the island to the site of so much summer fun.

Taking out water pumps, draining water lines, filling toilets with antifreeze (so they won't crack in the winter), raking leaves, listening to the kids run around in the back yard exclaiming at the cold, looking at the beach from a fall perspective instead of a hot summer sun perspective.

 Watching the boats go up and down the coastline. Tugs. Sailboats. Ferries.

Seabirds scattering at the approach of a few intrepid kayakers.

People hauling seaweed for their gardens.

Lunch on the beach. 

Then back in the car and home again, home again. 

Jiggedy jig.

Dear Target Canada

When I first heard you were coming to Canada, I was probably the only person I knew in a radius of 500 miles who wasn't wildly excited. That's because I knew what "coming to Canada" would mean. It wouldn't mean American Target prices. It wouldn't mean American Target clearance deals at the end of every aisle. It wouldn't mean American Target stock, either.

I wanted to love you, I really did. Your commercials were a hit: the patch-eyed dog riding shotgun on the motorbike was irresistibly cute (being a non-dog person, this was an odd place to find myself), the poppy tune was catchy, and the charm of all those Canadian landmarks had us by the heartstrings. FDPG was agog by the clever juxtapositioning of the Target symbol alongside a solid red heart and a maple leaf. "LOOK! Target loves Canada!" she would shriek delightedly every time we drove by. All the pre-teen and teen girls I know were in a palpable tizzy, plotting their pre-dawn raids at the two store openings. Even more telling, the local retail competitors: London Drugs, Shoppers Drug Mart, Save On Foods, even Walmart, were slashing prices left right and centre as they quaked ever so slightly in their boots. Slashing prices is SO not the Canadian way, which is how I know they were quaking. We do things quietly.

So it was hard to remain both silent AND in a state of anticipatory gloom, but for the most part I managed. I AM Canadian, after all.

When you finally opened, Dominic, FDPG, and I waited until the second day before we went on a tour of inspection. We'd been warned that this particular store had had a "soft opening" (read: wasn't fully stocked), but even I was taken aback. There were entire aisles of empty shelves, plastered with tiny signs saying things like "We're in the process of stocking up. Thanks for being patient!"and distressingly large spaces of...nothing at all. Even worse, the store takes up two giant floors, with the children's section on the lower floor and the change rooms on the top floor. I don't know about you, but I LOVE having to navigate several sets of busy escalators while my kids sit half-naked in a change room, waiting for me to get 6 more pairs of jeans, dresses, or tops for them to try on (there is a 6 item limit in the change room).

FDPG's mission was to wheedle the cost of an ice shaving machine out of my wallet, so we went to inspect them. They were $10 more here. I know this because I was in Bellingham three weeks before that and I'd taken careful note of the prices. I also noticed that there were 5 varieties. Target Canada had 1. I am not one for reading the stock market pages in the newspaper, but even I know that the exchange rate is better than that.

So we trundled over to the cosmetic section. If the aisles had had any stock in them they would have been impressive, but again, the emptiness was a bit disconcerting. The prices were also higher than most places I shopped at. I asked a stock girl if she knew anything about Target bringing in any items in the Boots line, because if there is one line cosmetics that thrills me, it's the Boots line, but she knew nothing of this. "The what line?" she said uncertainly, "don't think so." "Can you check?" I asked. "No, sorry," she responded. And yes, that WAS how we left it: me wondering why she couldn't check and her wondering why I wanted so much effort of her.

FDPG thought we could salvage the situation by checking out the food aisles and doing some cost comparisons, but again, the prices weren't great and the products we loved most in the American Targets just weren't there. In most cases we noticed that Walmart is cheaper, too, by about 10%.

Nice one, Target. I mean, we're glad to have you, but we're not that stupid. We won't willingly pay more just because you're you. It's almost insulting, to be honest. If you're going to do well here you have to do your research on what it is that Canadians like about Target. It's not what you think it is.

And fill those shelves while you're at it.

Going To See Ron Sexsmith

One of the things about getting older is how birthday present expectations change. I don't seem to get as excited, nor do I get as worked up about presents.

Boring of me, I realize, but there it is.

Anyhow, my birthday is not for another couple of months, but when I saw the ad in the newspaper announcing the (wildly joyful) fact that Ron Sexsmith was going to be in town, I decided that I wanted Ron tickets for my birthday. So I told Richard, who was hugely relieved at having A Great Birthday Idea, particularly since I'd already squashed his other Great Idea by buying a copy of Howl's Moving Castle after getting paid for a garden lecture I gave to a local club.

I really did - and if you don't believe me, click on this link. My MIL wrote that blurb, which is kind of nice given our - ahem - fractured relationship. I sound like a sensible holistic back-to-the-lander, don't I?

I won't ruin that image for you.

Tickets. Right.

So Richard buys the tickets. They arrive in the mail and I take great pains to remember where I put them (unlike the LEGO tickets I tacked to the pinboard and promptly forgot about). Last night we get ready, even though we're in the middle of a Severe Wind Warning that has all ferries to the mainland COMPLETELY SHUT DOWN and has already knocked down two garden arbors. We weren't completely irresponsible: we made sure the kids had working flashlights and gave them strict instructions not to fly their kites while we're gone. Then we drive through a deluge to the university. It is such a deluge that the gutters in the roofs are all overflowing, so hard and fast is the rain falling. Richard is a little puzzled when I demand to be dropped off near some form of overhang but he goes with it, because it is ostensibly My Birthday Event and he likes to humour me. We run through the rain to the university centre, me stealing one of the concert promotion posters along the way, and dash into the hallway with all the other sodden concert goers. There is no power outage, and really, truth be told, the wind has pretty much died down. Even so, I call the kids using the Courtesy Phone, mostly because I am excited to a) use a free phone, and b) call the kids and remind them that I am going to see RON SEXSMITH! (they humour me too and all take turns shrieking witticisms into the phone)

Then we sit in our seats and I take a couple of photos with my iPad mini, despite the arched eyebrows of my seat mate two seats over (who spent the first 10 minutes checking her stupid phone messages until I gave her some arched eyebrow action of my own). Jenn Grant, his backup act, comes out and sings. The sound in the hall is, for lack of a better word, sublime. It's clear and gorgeous and hauntingly beautiful and we all sit captivated. She sings with her husband, who has his head hanging so low I'm sure I'm not the only one wondering why. She tells some funny stories about emailing her songs to Ron and asking him to sing on one. At the intermission I go out and buy a CD from her. I ask her which one my 12 year old daughter will like. She puts her arm around me and we both laugh into each other's eyes. Then she signs it with a big heart. She's so friendly that I'm mildly regretful that we couldn't be friends in some alternate universe somewhere. We file back in, I take another photo. Then Ron and band mates come out. He is SO good and SO musical and SO mournfully sweet there is a collective shiver of pleasure from the audience.

And so we all sit for the next 90 minutes, with pauses for some extremely loud applause. I shriek YES! very loudly when he asks if his piano playing is okay, the audience all laugh and he hangs his head, sheepishly pleased that we like him so much. I wonder, not for the first time, why he isn't way more famous than he is. He reminds us that a certain song wasn't actually written by Feist, even if she HAS made it more famous than he did. After the concert, I buy his latest CD because I worry a bit for his pension plan.

Then it's home to the kids, the flashlights, the ruined garden, and the rain. What a spectacular birthday present.

(Although if you're reading this Richard, the Pacific Rim DVD is being released in, ahem, October...)

Cinematic Trivialities

It was a good summer for movie viewing, even by my standards (must have lots of action, no predictable or cringe-worthy female nudity, and preferably a large monster or two). Our library has taken the recent video store closures to heart and stocked up on a variety of films, so we were able to see Cowboys & Aliens, Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, Moonrise Kingdom, Life of Pi, and Argo without having to pay through the nose for them. Good movies, all of them, even if Max did find the facial hair in Argo a bit much. "Did guys REALLY wear their moustaches like that?" he asked, incredulously. We saw the original TRON, but all I'll say about about that movie is this: BAD BAD BAD.

We went to the cinema a few times, too, although I am increasingly dismayed by the fact that everything seems to come out first in 3D IMAX, which means that I'm paying $97.50 for the five of us to see one single film. I don't know about you, but I find that excessive. Even my kids, who think I give new meaning to the word cheap, think it's excessive. And none of us even LIKE 3D. Half the time it adds nothing to the film.

That said, Richard and I went to see Pacific Rim in 3D IMAX, because a) the kids were elsewhere for the weekend so we didn't have to pay for them to see it too (or listen to their bitter complaints as to why we never take them), and b) I love Guillermo del Toro. I took the kids later, once it had settled into a Regular Price run, and it was just as a-MAZE-ing second time round. Kaiju vs. Jaeger!  

Michael Bay, take note - you could learn a thing or two about making action movies from Guillermo del Toro (and trust me, you really DO need to learn a thing or two about making action movies).

I had to drag Max to Despicable Me 2, a film the twins and I were desperate to see. "It's a KIDS movie and I am NOT a kid," he said, "I'll feel stupid in there." Fortunately good sense prevailed and we all went. It's got it all: funny script, witty characters, lack of cheese, and wonderful voice actors (which always has me wondering what was up with Christian Bale in Howl's Moving Castle). Afterwards even Max agreed that he'd been a bit too self-conscious, idiotically teenish, and judgemental quick to label it a kid movie. 

I am shocked at how many people walk out before the credits roll. In the case of Pacific Rim they miss one MAJOR plot element, and in the case of Despicable Me 2, well, I won't tell you what they miss. Because no one should walk out before the credits roll. For one thing, they irritate ME, because I have to peer around their shuffling hulks to see who did what, where, and when. Or worse, go stand somewhere while the masses shuffle and trip around in the dark. There is a reason they don't turn the lights on until the credits have rolled. Those people should have learned this from Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Sigh.

So, in the spirit of Zealous Movie Devotees everywhere, I'm going to leave you all with a Code of Conduct that I think everyone needs to know about, even though it says nothing about leaving before the credits roll...

For other movie-related posts, click here, here, and here. 

Last Gasps

 You can feel fall in the air but today is one of those perfectly warm, gorgeously sunny End of Summer Days. The kind where you eat out on the deck, glad that it's not dark and gloomy. Or cold. Or windy and wet. The kind where you marvel once again how gorgeous it is here when the sun is out. And how clear the sky is.

Then I look down at the garden and see how exhausted everything is. The cherry tomatoes have to be picked just slightly ripe or else they split. We had a bumper crop of cherry tomatoes this year: Sungolds, Yellow Pears, Supersweet 100s, and while we tried to eat most of them I ended up making passata after a while: get a cookie sheet and cover it with cherry tomatoes (I like to separate them by colour), then pour a generous amount of olive oil over them. Place in a moderately hot oven (375ºF) and roast until they almost brown on the top. At this point you transfer them to a glass bowl or something similar, and dunk large slices of baguette in the juices. You can purée the mixture if you like, or just bung it in a bag and freeze it as is. This makes a superior pizza or spaghetti sauce. I've seen recipes that include salt, pepper, thyme, basil, etc, but I don't use any of those things. Just olive oil. It's irresistibly delicious. Besides, I need to hoard the basil for pesto, of which I now have at least 20 pints in the freezer. And one pot in the fridge, for everyone to spread on toast or crackers or sandwiches (for those of us at work or school).

The pumpkins are slowly turning orange, as are the butternut squash and the potimarrons, even though they were both dwarfed by the giant marigolds. Oddly, the Mortgage Lifers in the hoop house are still green - it's curious how behind they are compared to the plants out in the open. I'm rounding up the last of the raspberries, although this particular plant produces well into November if the weather is dry enough.

Picked the last of the Macintoshes and Ultraspires, which were not hit by scab this year, thankfully. I don't know how much more "Ew! What's this on the apples? Ick! I have to PEEL IT!" I can take. Not that I eat the scab, but hearing about it every time someone picks up an apple is starting to drive me a bit mad. Molded by too much grocery store perfection, obviously.

I need to write about our new school year, but there is just too much going on with our harvest right now to coalesce my thoughts properly. Suffice to say that the kids are now in grades 11 and 7 and working hard, while I'm inside AND outside picking, peeling, grating, chopping, and canning.

In Which I Am Frustrated By More Than One Organization

Dear Girl Guides of Canada phone help person,

I called you this morning, trying to get help with my daughter's Pathfinder Unit. Perhaps you didn't have a satisfying cup of coffee this morning, or perhaps you're merely constipated, but I feel compelled to point out to you how entirely unhelpful you were with my dilemma. "I guess I'm back to square one," I said to you, after you'd spent one too many minutes patronizing me, pointing out things about the online website that I already knew. "Yes, you are," you agreed. I could hear the OHMYGAWDTHISWOMANISTOTALLYGETTINGONMYNERVES in your voice, so no worries there. I was quite aware how much I irritated you. For someone representing an organization that purports to teach young girls to be confident, resourceful, and courageous, not to mention making a difference to the world, let me just say that you forgot the bit where YOU model those ideals. What a great face you put on the Guiding organization. Poo on you. I hope you stay constipated all month.

I am publicly identifying you because you should be ashamed of yourself for being so unhelpful. What is the point of being on the other end of a 1-800 number if all you do is act like a total twat when you talk to us confused peons?

So I did the only thing I could: I thanked you for being SO unhelpful and I hung up on you.

signed,

Sheila


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Dear Online Sales Person,

(Note: this is most definitely NOT the online LEGO store as they are possibly the nicest people to deal with in the world)

I called you this morning because you sell LEGO parts that my son wishes to purchase. He saw them in the 2013 catalogue but they did not show up on your online site. We were puzzled so I telephoned your help line. When I asked you about this, you sounded, to put it diplomatically, like you needed some very heavy tranquilizers. "If it isn't on the online site then we don't carry it!" you snapped. "Then why is it in the most recent catalogue?" I asked. Stupid of me, I realize, but that's me: I see something in a 2013 catalogue and I assume it's possible to purchase it, mostly because it's STILL 2013. "It can't be in the catalogue because we don't have it!" you again snapped, with perhaps more vigour than before. "So...does that mean that your catalogue printers made a mistake?" I asked, thinking that the situation called for a little levity. "Can I help you with anything else?" you asked pointedly. When I asked if our call was being recorded for customer satisfaction purposes you did not respond. I hope I put a little thrill of fear into you, because if you stop to think about it, that item HAD to be around somewhere. It wouldn't BE in the 2013 catalogue if you didn't sell it now, would it? Silly goose.

So I did the only thing I could: I hung up on you.

signed,

Sheila