WHEN IT’S SPRINGTIME IN Saskatchewan

Here we are at the first of June, still technically spring but feeling a whole lot more like summer. 

My ancestors came from the misty cool highlands of Scotland, I am genetically unequipped to deal with summer on the Canadian Prairies but here I am anyway – already sporting sunburned arms and a peeling nose.  I have two natural colorings in the summer – either the pasty white of mushroom soup, or the vibrant red of Campbell’s tomato.  I do manage to develop something that looks like ‘tan’ but only when compared to other of my body parts that never see the sun at all.  There was a time in history that women were supposed to have milky white skin.  I hope my forebears made the most of it.

My reluctance to participate in the heat and glaring sun of summer is overridden by my desire to have a garden and enjoy my yard, though.  After spending winter longing for green and warmth I’m as anxious as any farmer to get outside and start things growing.  I don’t even wait in fact, I plant seeds in the house about mid March so I can see them either grow spindly and weak or just keel over and die depending on their individual descretion.  Some actually make it to the garden, usually just in time for the last frost, but the effort keeps me busy and my livingroom looking like a mini greenhouse for a couple months while we wait for the snow to go away.

Time seems to pick up speed around the middle of April.  Farmers get antsy to get out on the land.  Their wives get antsy to get the men out of the house.  I take up a daily walk around the yard looking for signs of life … a first green blade of grass, the first buds on the trees, even a fist dandelion makes me happy in April; anything that shows proof of life.  Last fall I went crazy with over 100 tulips bulbs so spring was very colorful and rewarding this year.

Our front yard is a natural basin so there is always a period of flood with the snowmelt in the spring.  ‘Lake Hainsworth’ had been and gone enough for me to mow 80% of the yard before Mother Nature decided everyone needed to take a break from seeding and gave us three inches of rain in May.  Seeding was stopped for two weeks and I am now back to mowing around smelly swamp.  The moisture was welcome (especially for those of us who got their gardens in before it came) but it could have been better timed.  I say that like Mother Nature cares what I think; she does not.

Another sure sign of spring is our rise-and-shine time.  In the dark of winter I can manage to ‘sleep in’ until 6:00 or 6:30 somedays.  I know.  I know.  This is a dismal fail for a retired person but I literally can’t help it.  And, as if that’s not bad enough, when the sun starts getting up earlier, so do I.  This past month it’s been more like 5:00.  My mom always said it was the most peaceful time of the day and it turns out she was right … about just this one thing, of course.  I love my solitary coffee and game of Wordle.

These past few weeks I’ve been awakened even earlier – like 4:30ish - by my phone buzzing that there is a text.  It kind of spooked me the first time it happened because there is an unwritten rule in this house that you don’t call after 9:00 or before 8:00 “unless someone has died, someone has been born, or a house is on fire”.  Apparently, there is another allowable circumstance – If you’ve just spent the morning touring Italian towns and are sitting at a quaint little streetside café having lunch, this is a perfectly acceptable time to send pictures to your sisters in Canada.  The first morning it kind of freaked me out but after that it just gave me something more to do after I poured my coffee.

Sadly, the surest sign of summer has arrived.  Forest fire smoke stains our skies, makes us cough, and hurts our eyes … and we are hundreds of miles away from the real damage and destruction.  I sure wish Mother Nature would brew up another three inches and send it north.

 

THE SOUND OF RAIN

There is nothing quite as peaceful and soothing as the sound of rain falling outside your window.  Unless, of course, it is the heavenly scent of rain - petrichor.  They announce to your soul that all is well with the world.  That plants will grow, that we will have shelter from the trees and food from the fields and gardens, that animals will be fed and watered.  That our lives will be filled with abundance simply because water falls from the sky.

We woke to that sound and smell this morning.  It wasn’t a surprise, the weather people had been telling us it was on the way for several days, but it wasn’t quite as much of a blessing as we would have liked.  If the predictions are true this rain is too early and way too much.

At first they were talking about only a half inch for today.  That would have been perfect for the middle of May.  Seeding has been going great guns for two weeks – some farmers are almost done, some are halfway, and some just nicely started.  A half inch would give them a day of maintenance time for both human bodies and farm machinery, but the downtime would be short-lived.  They would be rolling again in no time. 

This newer forecast of 4 inches over 5 or 6 days is a whole other matter.  That much moisture will stop fieldwork for two weeks; you can’t plant in the rain or in the mud, and if we get 4 inches there is going to be a lot of mud.  Everyone in our neighbourhood worked late last night trying to get as much planted as possible.  If this plays out as predicted there will be two distinct harvests in the fall of 2025 – the crops that were planted pre rain, and what went into the ground after it was dry enough to go again.

Farmers weren’t the only ones pushing to get done though – gardeners play by the same rules for the same reasons.  Knowing that the rain was coming I put in some long, physical hours to get my garden tilled and planted.  Except for tomatoes I can call that job done, and I have the sun/wind burn and sore muscles to show for my work.  It’s not perfect and I got a little devil-may-care rebellious with my farmer’s expectations of straight rows toward the end.  Heat and wind and mosquitoes (who knew that all three could exist at the same time?) weakened my give-a-damn on all rows after the onions.  He can worry about perfection on his own rows.  It’s hardly a level playing field though - he has GPS on his tractor and my method and tools pretty primitive in nature; two stakes and a length of bale twine.

It's not raining at this moment and the little voice in my head keeps telling me that I should be out getting some bedding plants and dahlias planted.  A slightly louder voice insists that if it rains 4 inches that flower bed will be under water for a week and everything will be drowned out so my work and the plants will all be wasted.  I’m listening to the loud mouth because I just want to be lazy today.  I anticipate regretting this decision at some time in the not-too-distant future.

Instead I will spend my afternoon happily tapping away at my keyboard and then make an actual sit down meal for supper where we eat together at an hour typically associated with the evening meal, and then have the dishes done before bedtime. 

It’s funny how it’s the little things that make a person happy.

Like waking up to the sound of rain gently falling on the roof and the scent of petrichor on the wind.

It’s not the desired amount for this moment in time, but the sound is still soul-cleansing and the smell is divine.

 

 

JUST LIKE GRANDMA USED TO MAKE IT

A while ago I received a phone call from my daughter asking for my recipe for cheese cake.  Although it neither ‘my’ recipe, nor is it actually ‘cheesecake’, I knew what she was talking about and went to dig out the recipe book it’s in.  It’s been a while since I’ve made that dessert so it took me a bit of a search.  I have a full shelf of old-fashioned, spill-stained, dog-eared, beat-up recipe books and could only remember the one I was looking for was a local fundraiser project I had inherited from my grandmother’s belongings.  I had the idea it was the one the Redvers Lodge of the O.O.R.P. put together in 1967 but that’s the one that the banana bread recipe is in.  Turns out the PHILADELPHIA CREAM CHEESE CAKE is in ‘Kitchen Kapers’, a book compiled by the Golden Age Center back when their address was where The Optimist Café is now. 

Obviously my recipe book shelf is a historical reference site.

Anyway, back to my daughter and her request.  Her son had chosen grandma’s cherry cheesecake for his birthday cake.  Of course he thought that meant it was my cake but we need to go back at least one more generation to get to the rightful grandmother and yet another generation to the original owner of the recipe book.  I know my mom used this recipe because it’s her writing that says the cup of icing sugar is too much - the first modification in it’s journey to 2025.

To begin with I was going to just snap a picture of the page and text it to the cake baker but thought the better of it when I realized the deletion of icing sugar was only the beginning of the alterations.  I have tweaked it a few times myself.

I don’t use a whole box of graham crumbs – that’s way too much.  I use 2/3rds of a box and then and let the rest go stale in my cupboard. 

The ½ cup of melted butter is actually margarine. 

The 8 oz package of cream cheese is accurate, but the womenfolk in our family use real whipping cream – Dream Whip just seems wrong for people who grew up on a dairy farm. 

As far as the can of cheery pie filling goes, I never feel that one can is enough but two is definitely too much.  I know this because I tried it; who knew too much of a good thing is no longer a good thing?  Using only 1 ½ cans of cherries would have a ½ can going bad in my fridge and that seems like more of a waste that a 1/3 box of graham crumbs so I settled on just the single can.

I suppose, if I got all thrifty and technical I could use a bigger pan, all of the graham crumbs, and two full cans of cherries but then I would need more margarine, cream cheese and whipping cream … I can’t remember which (or how many) of my teachers told my sceptical younger self that I would need math and fractions in my adult life, but here we are.  In the end, for practical purposes I choose not to build a bigger cheesecake.  It would only result in a cake that wouldn’t fit in my fridge, and eventually to me not fitting through doors.  Best to leave that part of the recipe unaltered.

It's funny; when I looked over the list of ingredients and the method to put them together it was obvious that sending the next generation a copy of what my book said would be totally misleading.  The words printed on that page are more of a list of suggestions than actual instructions.  Each line is reminder of what has been changed and sometimes a note to show who changed it. 

Besides, I knew she would be writing down what I gave her in her own notebook.  You know, the one she’ll go find when her daughter calls her someday for Grandma’s cheesecake recipe.  I wonder what it will look like by then?

 

 

GOLDEN

I know it’s cliché, but when they say that the best music originated in the ‘50s and ‘60s they are dead on correct.

 Well actually, ‘they’ don’t say it, ‘we’ do.  It’s my generation that says that.  I’m that old.

But, I’m also correct.  The musicians, singers, song writers and producers who experimented with sound and talent after WWll ushered in a new era.  They pushed the envelope of never-heard-before musical innovation and opened the doors for performers like Elvis Presley, Roy Orbison and Buddy Holly to earn their rightful place in history and our hearts.  Every time I read about or watch a documentary covering those artists in their early days I’m always amazed how they all knew each other, how they toured together, they wrote songs together and admired each other’s work.  The crucible that was the birthplace of rock and roll was very small but the cultural growth that it generated was enormous.  In fact, it took over the music world.  By some lucky stroke of fate this was the generation I was born into.  I was there when it happened. 

Well, actually, I was a little late to the party.  I was born in the mid ‘50s and probably didn’t pay much attention to the music scene for a decade or so.  There is no doubt that I owe my introduction into that world to my sister’s record collection (LPs and 45s) and of course, the fine-honed talent of knowing how to weight the needle arm on the turntable with a penny to keep it from skipping. 

That, and The Ed Sullivan Show on Sunday nights.   

Old Ed prided himself of presenting “A really big show!”   He was the one who gave Elvis tv time – but would only allow him to be filmed from the waist up.  Elvis was too provocative for a full screen, but too good not to have him on the show.  Huge controversy back in the day and a night to remember.  Probably massive ratings numbers too, come to think of it.  

There was also the night Nancy Sinatra performed These Boots Were Made For Walking, and the night The Beach Boys played Good Vibrations (I was home alone that night and nearly blew the speakers on our poor, old tv set).  And, how about the night The Beatles preformed She Loves You, Yeah Yeah Yeah. with teenaged girls swooning and fainting all over the place? 

There was one other of his shows that sticks in my memory.  Sometime in the ‘70s there was an act on that speculated what music would sound like in the 21^st Century.  Being in the middle of this musical revolution and loving it all, I recall being intrigued with this offered glimpse into the future … until they played what they envisioned.  Instead of the warmth of guitars, drums, and pianos there were machine-generated synthetic noises, no vocals, and no drum beat to tie it all together.  I was appalled.  I realize that this shows me to be a cranky old coot at a very young age, but how dare they degrade my music into something so awful?  I was pre-old.

Thank goodness for Sirius XM with their channels sorted by decade.  I can choose whether I want the birth of rock and roll, it’s adolescent Hippie years, or a mix of soft rock or ‘80s country music that it matured into.

But as good it is to have my favourite music on demand, there is absolutely no substitute for a live, in-person show.  Sharing the experience with a crowd is electric, the instrument-playing talents of the musicians always blows me away, and the power of the music stirs my soul.  The opportunity for live music is rare but still possible: two of my ‘also old’ besties (sorry girls) attended “Walk Right Back” a tribute to the Everly Brothers in Regina this weekend.  It was so worth the ticket price, the long drive home, and even having to explain to our waiter at supper who the Everly Brothers were (we gave up and told him to ask his grandmother).  The show was a step back in time to the pure sound of rock and roll’s childhood.  The evening was golden.

To make it even more special I happened to run into friends I hadn’t seen in ages.  No surprise that they would be drawn to this concert – they’ve been playing music all their lives and live right in Regina.  They said they were spending their retirement playing music at seniors homes now and were busier than they had ever been playing some of the very songs we were hearing at the show.  This was the music that made seniors happy.

On the one hand that gives me pause … playing rock and roll to old people?  It seems to upset my space/time continuum.

On the other hand, old people are much younger than they used to be, so I guess it’s okay. 

Maybe it’s a new way to explain “The Golden Years”.

 

 

DAYS OF WINE AND HUMMINGBIRDS

When you’re retired every day is wide open.  Every morning is a fresh new decision on what to do with your time. 

Gone are the solid, regimented, industrious days of gainful employment.  No longer am I safe within the boundaries of a prescribed schedule, meeting deadlines and commitments for a paycheck, working for ‘the man’. 

Ah! Those were the days!  It’s so much easier now that my main reason for being is to decide what to make for supper.

I wonder, how does one retire from making supper?  (asking for a friend)

But I’ll leave that quandary for another day.

Meanwhile, back here in the middle of March, my decision-making processes must be applied to what to do with today’s sunshine.  We all know about March’s lion and lamb.  We also know how untrustworthy this is.  Sure, we began with a lamb but what does that prove?  It’s just something to talk about while dithering about whether if it’s safe to exchange winter snow boots for spring rubber boots yet.  Like, how many times do you really want to haul them up and down the basement stairs until Mother Nature tires of her game? 

What’s that you say?  Just leave them all spread all over the porch floor until Easter, just in case?  With the boot dryer plugged in at the ready?  Besides, the resulting chaos is great cover for the inch deep layer of mud all over the floor.  Win/win, for sure.  I’ll do it!  That will take care of the porch until the end of April.

What about the rest of the house?  While I’m pondering my next move I pick up my vacuum cleaner hose to hunt down the morning’s collection of little stripey flies and fugitive maple bugs.  Their Zombie Awakening is one of the clearest indications of spring so far as they stumble out of their winter hidey holes to test my insect hunting skills.  They will disappear about the time mosquitoes begin the show up.

My insect hunt has taken me to my windows.  They were so clean last fall; they are so not clean now.  I am not prepared to do anything about this today, but hey … my window policeman isn’t home this afternoon … an hour or so of fresh air couldn’t hurt anything …  

And the fresh window air will nicely complement the freshly aired bedding I washed and hung out on the line this morning.  That was one of my very first decisions today; bedtime is going to smell like heaven tonight.

As always I have a list of things I need to do – I better confess to the jobs I am avoiding:

·         Dog poop patrol … for the obvious reasons.  There’s fresh snow on it at the moment thank goodness!

·         Take down the last of the Christmas decorations and put them away.  Some of them are still frozen in the ground so, awe gee, can’t do anything about that!

So I find myself back on my deck, surveying my kingdom.  This is where all my best decisions are made … like what flowers to plant this year, where to put them, and who to share them with.  It just doesn’t get any better than this.

I have marigolds and zinnias already sprouted, dahlias to bring out of cold storage, and over 100 tulips and daffodils ready to make spring 2025 special.  The Internet promises me that hummingbirds have already started North.  What more could I ask for?

Oh yeah, that making supper forever until I die thing …

 

 

I’M PLANTING SOME FLOWERS

There is a meme that surfaces on Facebook occasionally that I feel is particularly, poignantly perfect for the times we find ourselves in this spring.

There are multiple versions of this meme but they all have two people talking.  One asks “Aren’t you worried about what the future will bring?” and the other replies “I think it will bring flowers.” to which the first person responds “Oh really, why is that?”

 “Because I am planting flowers.”

In his farewell address in 1989 President Ronald Regan spoke of the United States of America as “A tall, proud, shining city built on rocks, stronger than oceans, windswept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity.” His words being inspired from a bible verse Matthew 5:14.

These are lofty words but they came at a time in history where the men and women whose leadership got us through WW11 and who realized that peace isn’t just the absence of war but rather ‘the presence of justice, of law, of order – in short, of government’ and had put into place NATO and The United Nations to ensure the safety and freedom that we in the western world have taken for granted for 80 years.  It hasn’t always been perfect but it beat the heck out of what is happening now.  We watch in horror as all of Regan’s high ideals crumple like a house of cards at the hands of a man who wants to make it into the history books.  No doubt he will – if anyone is left to print or read them.

But, enough about that.  Sorry about being so dark.  Let me get back to planting flowers.

We are days away (again) from Trump’s threats of tariffs.  Will his fear of crashing the stock market make him back off again?  Who knows?  Is it really the tariffs he wants, or the turmoil and uncertainty that he likes most?  Regardless, we have to prepare for … well, we don’t really know, do we?  How will this affect our lives?  How deep with the economic pain go?  We will hurt, but the experts say so will the Americans.  How this affects regular people, no matter which side of the border they are on concerns him not at all.

At his first threat we Canadians felt powerless, but then someone came up with some ‘flower seeds’ to plant.  His tariffs are all about money, it’s the only thing he is interested in … so let us speak in the only language he understands – dollars.

His threat of tariffs and the insult of making us his 51^st state has galvanized Canadians into the most thorough anti-American shoppers ever to wield a shopping cart.  It’s so ironic that in past Free Trade negotiations it was the USA who insisted on country-of-origin labeling; now the very thing that is making identifying what we don’t want to buy so much easier.  Not that it’s all straight forward, ‘Made in Canada’ is not the same thing as ‘product of Canada’ but there are websites and Facebook pages set up to help you understand what you are buying and advice on where to find what you need.  Don’t think for a moment that you can’t make a difference, those big companies watch their market share and down is not a direction they want to see.  Canadians are known for our ‘nice-ness’ but read the history books – we are not to be messed with.

The world order tipped yesterday, spilling out the security we have enjoyed for so long and allowed evil and greed for power to seep in.  All is not lost, there are still good people in the right places to make a difference, but as we head into this year there is lots to worry about.

Personally, I’m going to plant flowers.  It won’t change the big picture, but at least there will be flowers.

 

SNOW DAY

My early morning routine always begins with a big mug of coffee and a scroll through Facebook on my phone.  It’s not as comprehensive as an actual newspaper, and a person has to be careful about what they are going to believe, but it’s the best that I have.

But on Wednesday morning, before I even got as far as Facebook, I discovered a message from Australia.  It was a screenshot, actually, an announcement of cancelled classes and campus shutdown for the college in Coquitlam, BC where grandson Shae is going to school.  His Canadian born father (no doubt relaxing by their backyard pool and maybe enjoying a mango off their own tree) was the one who sent it, along with his comment “Shae just got his first Snow Day!” 

It gave me a chuckle too: snow days are pretty rare occurrences for Australians.  I had seen the news coverage of the winter mess Vancouver was getting and wondered how the boy from Down Under was enjoying BC’s version of winter.  He’s a pretty happy-go-lucky guy and adapted well to the ten days he and his Aussie girlfriend spent here over Christmas holidays.  I think she struggled a bit more with the intense cold.  There is no way to prepare first timers for what to expect at 40 below zero. 

I’m sure the question “Why would anyone choose to live here?” went through their heads.  Truth to be told, it goes through ours too from time to time.  When the air hurts your face and drawing breath in freezes your nostrils shut, it really does make you wonder what you’re doing here.

But, then again, it’s not so bad.  If our ancestors managed to survive in sod shacks, burn buffalo chips for fuel, haul wood by horse teams from the Moose Mountains, and do it all without wifi! surely to goodness, we can weather a few months of, shall we say, a hostile environment.

And, those of us who live here know that winter isn’t boring.  It has many faces. 

Today is a beautiful day: even though it’s minus 15, the sunshine is strong enough to melt smaller patches of loose snow on our south-facing deck; our dog is out there soaking in its warmth.  The sky is a dazzling blue. 

Also, yesterday’s new snow is sifting along the ground from west to east, polishing roads out in the open but in the shelter of our yard the wind and the snow are collaborating to form banks and drifts only to reshape them again and again as the breeze changes directions.  Today’s windspeed is minor so the banks are staying soft and fluffy, but should Mother Nature take a notion to turn it up, we will be treated to spectacular snow sculptures.  She does fantastic work blowing snow through trees at 90kph.

Over Christmas Jack Frost put on a fairyland display of fog and rime frost, decorating every surface with dazzling, white crystals.  As I drove home with one of our Australian guests on her first day in Saskatchewan I asked what she thought of what she was seeing.  Of course, I was expecting her answer to be an echo of my opinion of its beauty, but with her fresh eyes and unique perspective, her reply was even more profound.  After a moment of quiet thought she said “I feel like I’m in a black and white movie.” 

She is from a place where the sky and the sea are always blue, the grass is always green, and there is never a time when something isn’t in vibrant bloom.  She must have felt she had been abducted to an alien world.

It’s February now, the worst of winter’s darkness is behind us.  With each morning it’s a little bit brighter.  This is Canada so the snow days might be done for this school year, or we might be just getting started.  I’ll let you know at the end of March.  Better make that April.  Can’t really rule out May either …

Thank goodness we have wifi.