CANADA'S BIG 1-5-0

We are a people who like to mark milestones.  From the birth of a baby onward we count first the days, the weeks, and then the months until the first year is feted by poking a candle in a cake and singing a song in celebration.  Our years tick by in a succession of such celebrations while we grow and learn and mature.  Time flies by.

As adults we focus less on the individual years and more on measuring by decade. Our friends and family begin to make a big deal out of when we reach "the big 4-0".  And then "the big 5-0".  And then, barely the blink of an eye later, "the big 6-0" and "the big 7-0" too.  By this time the field of competition is starting to thin out; these big days become even more note-worthy.  Before we know it the milestone of 100 years has been achieved and some reporter is sticking a microphone in our face and asking us how we've made it this far.  Who would have thought it was even possible when we uttered our first cry a century ago?

One hundred years is a significant thing when measuring a human lifespan, but in world history it's nothing.  Even in recorded history it barely counts as a blip.  If you compare one measly century with the age of such things as Aztec ruins, Egyptian pyramids, or the mystery that is Stonehenge our time as a country is puny and of no consequence.

And yet, here we are, celebrating our country's birthday: Canada's big 1-5-0.  And puny as that number is, this a big deal and one deserving of celebration.

Countries aren't made - they form.  They coalesce out of the common needs and aspirations of the people who populate the land.  Whether it be the primitive cave-dwellers of the past or the sophisticated 21st centurions we think of ourselves as, our safety, security, and prosperity are still the common focus that bring us together.  The specific threats and currencies have evolved over time but our very nature is wired to understand that there is strength in numbers, power in diversity, and richness in culture when we work and live together in peace.  This is as true now as it always has been - we band together under common goals to make all of our lives richer.

What is different about Canada and a handful of other countries is that we have an actual birth certificate.  We were "born" on July 1st 1867: we know how old we are.  Our formation was not like that of the ancient nations of Europe and Asia, done over millennia.  But,our Fathers of Confederation did take into consideration all the lessons of world history and tried their best to prepare a path into the future with this new experiment of Canada and we formed our wonderful country out of our desire for strength and unity and the wisdom to follow their leadership.

To be sure we are a work in progress; we have made mistakes but we have gotten some things right too.  As nations go we are just barely cutting our baby teeth but we are healthy and strong and other nations look up to us.  As we step into the future we are poised for a leadership role.

Typically when we observe a birthday it tends to be a look back at the journey that has brought us to this point, but as we sing Oh Canada in celebration this year and take in the fireworks at the end of this day it seems like the perfect time in history to turn our attention and look in the other direction - toward the future.  Let this be a celebration of where we are headed as Canadians.

                                 HAPPY CANADA DAY !

                                                        COMFORT ZONE

There are perks afforded to country dwellers that people who live in towns and cities can only dream of.  Of course there is the fresh air, acres of green space, and every day interaction with Mother Nature's creatures to name a few, but the best thing for me is the privacy. 

I don't say this to make it sound like our neighbourhood is high end exclusive or that we don't want visitors because folks are always welcome to stop by for a cup of coffee or a cold beer, depending on the day.  My meaning of privacy is very laid-back and unpretentious and probably not an easy concept to explain to people who live surrounded by other people.

Although we live seven miles from town we do have neighbours who live closer than that ... like two miles away.  We can see their yard lights at night and hear their dogs bark if we're outside and the wind is from the right direction.  Otherwise we are alone with the foxes, coyotes, gophers and the odd moose or deer who wander through.  When the pond at the low end of our yard fills with water we have ducks calling it home, and we wake each summer morning to the soft coo-cooing of Mourning Doves and the cheerful chirping of Robins.  Our deck is like Grande Central Station for hummingbirds all summer long between the flowers and feeders I have out there to invite them into our space.  While I was preparing lunch an hour ago there were at least four of the tiny warriors trying to claim ownership of the airspace between the two feeders.  I love to sit and watch them in the afternoon.

The feeling of privacy isn't all about being simply far enough away from population to have lots of wildlife though.  It's more about the comfortable solitude we enjoy on a day to day basis.

My favourite thing to do after I pour myself my second mug of coffee these days is to drink it on the deck.  The rose at the back door is in full bloom at the moment and the scent is everything a rose is supposed to be.  I check the state of my planters and decide if they will need watering and then wander on to my rock garden to see how things are growing there, pulling the odd weed as I go.  Before I know it I am in the back yard assessing which of the vegetables I've planted will be the first one to be ready ... I'm betting the radishes will win again this year but the lettuce and spinach aren't far behind.

Since I've got that far I turn toward the big garden/orchard east of the house and inspect it for weeds and potential strawberry readiness.  By the time I am done my coffee I am a long way from the house, which is nothing unusual except that I'm still wearing my pyjamas.  There is no worry about being caught at this too-lazy-to-get-dressed-yet game because in the quiet of the countryside I can hear any vehicle coming from miles away and have plenty of time to make my way back to the house should I need to.  They say that your home is your castle, and where city dwellers can claim that kind of comfort within their walls we rural people can expand the luxury well beyond our doors.

Many years ago I had a conversation with a guy from Toronto who was filming a documentary about rural issues.  We were standing in our barnyard and he was trying to capture the illusive sizzly sound of grasshoppers and crickets in the grass in late summer.  As is usual with city visitors he asked how much land we owned and I was trying to explain what a quarter section was.  He told me about the duplex he lived in and how much it cost.  What he said next has always stuck with me: gesturing to our yard - large lawn, gardens, house and out buildings that every farm has - he said that this is what millionaires sought to own.  To be this far away from the noise and hustle of the city, to have the green space and natural surroundings, and above all the solitude and privacy - these were the things wealthy people spent their money on.

There are two ways to measure value: one is by using the measuring stick of the almighty dollar.  And the other is by merely recognising how lucky you are to have something that you love. 

I'm no millionaire, but when I'm on my early morning pyjama stroll I sure do feel like one.

                                                   ANTICIPATION

We are ready.  We are so ready.

The month of May has come and gone without a drop of rain in most places.  Farmers were out there in the fields as soon as the ground was warm enough and had a clear month long run of seeding.  Mother Nature just sat back and let them get the crop in the ground.  On the one hand it was great to have day after endless day to do the work, on the other hand it was one endless day after another with no rain-induced down time.  But, as everyone who gathered for beer and pizza on Wednesday night to celebrate the end of seeding agreed - it is sure great to be done.

There is all kinds of residual moisture in the ground.  Last fall had a lot of rain and the snow pack this winter was higher than normal too.  Our basement sump pump has slowed down some in the last week or so but still cuts in regularly; the water table is not that far down. 

In the past few days though, our weather has gone from super, crazy windy and a little on the chilly side, to just plain hot.  I got my first sun burn of the season mowing grass yesterday because it was just so nice not to have to wear a coat and mitts that I never even thought I would need a hat and sunscreen.  I'm paying for it today.

Whether it be lettuce and tomatoes in the garden or canola and barley in the fields, everything could use a big drink of cool rain now.  Even though there is moisture in the ground we farmers and gardeners have turned our attention to the sky ... well okay, that's not exactly true any more.  The old fashioned way was to look to the skies, now-a-days we open the weather app on our phones and try to peek into the future that way.  It's every bit as reliable as cloud watching but the little video showing those coloured radar images moving across the blue dot that is us inspires high tech hope.

With the temperature at 32 degrees and the sun glaring down today we are investing a lot of hope in the weather forecast video.  The actual warnings are for Manitoba but we only live 10 miles from the border so it's easy enough to mentally include our farm under their clouds; surely they will share? 

The best kind of rain is a day long soaker - a gentle, steady rainfall that gives the ground time to drink it all in, but the weather system that they are talking about for today is not that.  Their warnings are all about unstable air masses and cold fronts which spell out thunderstorms in the weather world.  It means long odds, hit and miss possibilities, a downpour five miles away and not a drop at our place, being able to smell the rain, but not taste it.  Who needs to go to Vegas to gamble?

Beggars can't be choosers though; we'll take whatever we can get ... and if all we get is to watch the light show, feel the thunder, and smell the rain ... well, we'll take that too.

This family is a bunch of storm watchers and we have the perfect deck for it.  About two thirds of the deck is covered; the perfect place to sit and appreciate the power of a summer storm.  Rain, hail - it doesn't matter because we're safe under the roof.  It's like having the best seats in the theatre, and the door is just a few steps away if the wind turns on us and suddenly gusts out of the south or east.

Through the window above my computer screen I can see the clouds forming and I'm tempted to check the weather app again to see if anything has changed.  Or, if I went outside would I be able to hear thunder in the distance?  We've stacked the odds as much as we can think to do ... I watered my flower beds and Glen spent last night and this morning pumping out the slough at the bottom of the yard so it can dry up and I can mow it too ... now we'll just have to wait and see if we get anything out of it.

But we are ready.  We are so ready!

                                          SPACE AND TIME

I had the opportunity this past week to travel across time, to walk the paths of my youth, and touch base with moments long forgotten.

Now, if anyone happened to be watching this time travelling feat of mine they would be confused with my description.  To the casual observer it would have looked very much like a woman who had left her car at a service station for an oil change and walked downtown to take care of some business while the work was being done.  And, truth to tell, this is exactly what it was until I decided to take a short cut across the school yard.

Magic happened when I stepped through the caragana hedge at the northeast corner and started down towards the running track that didn't used to be there where I went to school.  Except for a few ball diamonds and the sand pits used for field day events like the running broad jump, the hop, skip, and jump, the high jump, and the pole vault there was nothing but open space between the east end of the school and the west end of the hospital.  Rhodes Street didn't go straight through like it does today and the hospital was much a much smaller building than the condos that now stand in its place.  One of the sand pits remained and I walked along side it remembering all my failed attempts at trying to get my 'hop', 'skip', and 'jump' in the right order.  I was a dismal athlete.  It is quite possible that it was at this very location I came to understand the word 'klutz', and how it applied to me.

There is a real dip in elevation as you head to Broadway from there.  There have been many a storm in recent years that show that this is the lowest point in town - the whole track area turns into a gigantic wading pond for a day or two.  I don't remember that ever happening when I was in school, but I was a farm kid; we missed a lot of what went on in town , especially during summer holidays.

When I reached the other side of the track I had to stop and get my bearings.  The whole property is wide open now but back in the '60s the landscape was different.  As a center piece to the whole town there stood the two story red brick school - two classrooms to each floor, cloakrooms to the front of each.  There was a main hall on both floors, a staircase up either side, and a teacher's office at the back where the health nurse came to give needles.  At the ground floor entrance there was a divide - straight ahead took you into the school, access to the boy's basement was to the right, the girl's to the left.

Just to the west of this huge building stood the little flat-roofed green school and to the northeast was the little one room school where grade one was taught for years.  Where the student parking lot is today was a big slough; I would have forgotten this except those trees are the backdrop for the class photos taken in 1961.  There is not even a hint of any of these landmarks ever existed anymore.

I stopped in my journey through time for a moment.  The caragana hedge along the east boundary hadn't been there so many years ago but there had been one between the school and the ball diamonds.  It took me a minute or two to figure out that that it had started at the end of Carlton Street and ended even with the brick school.  It was a place where we sat in the shade at noon hour and daydreamed about where life would take us.

How many games of marbles and/or jacks were played in this yard?  And the recesses when all the little girls practiced skipping rope - either on our own, or with the long ropes where we tried to synchronize our jump rope talents with rhyming verses, eventually graduating to the intricate patterns of Chinese skipping done with elastic loops scavenged from our mother's sewing supplies.  I smiled at the memory - did the Chinese really have anything to do with that game, I wondered?

It was time to move on - I had things to do.  There used to be a cinder/gravel pathway to the street but there is no sign of it now.  The only hint of where it would be is the two tall pines on the north side of Dr. Arthur Avenue.  I walked this path's imaginary course and stood between those trees for a moment.  The clarity of my memories were so real it was as if I was I was looking at a photograph, and I could almost hear my friends laughing and talking as they did tricks like skin-the-cat from the lower branches while I stood off to the side wondering how they did it.  I really did suck as an athlete.  Still do - like I said, scarred for life.

It was time to step back into 2017 so I crossed the street and continued on my way.  It's funny how taking a 'short cut' had added so much time appreciation to my day.

                                              WIND, WIND, GO AWAY

I've always wondered if Saskatchewan doesn't translate from a Cree word for "windy as heck".  When I'm trying to work outside - especially in the spring - it never seems to go away.  It makes it great for drying clothes out on the line; something I love to do, but for that one benefit there are a hundred other things that are made a lot less pleasant when I have to battle wind every step of the way.

It's been a while since I caught up with this blog - there is so much to do in the spring if you want to enjoy pretty flowers and productive vegetable gardens throughout the summer months.  I started with building a rock border to my rock garden; that was over a week's work digging a trench, finding and hauling in rocks and then placing them and packing sand around them so that they settle and stay in place.  It looks just like I planned it in my head (which doesn't always happen) and the work was so worth it, but man, was it ever a lot of work and sore muscles.

We also added to the orchard we are creating.  This year's additions were black and red currants, grapes, high bush cranberries and a couple more apple trees.  Of the four apple trees I planted last year only one remains standing because the deer helped themselves to the trees' bark during the winter.  One looks like it may come back from the bottom but it has probably set it back 4 or 5 years.  I was so mad when I discovered the damage, but it was too late.  I have since bought some disgustingly smelly spray that is supposed to repel deer - they haven't been back but there's lots of other tasty things to eat now.  Winter will be the real test.

This week I have moved on to planting garden and weeding the trees, raspberries, strawberries, and asparagus.  I know it's impossible to stay ahead of the weeds all summer but it sure feels good to get ahead of the spring mess.  It looks clear and tidy at the moment; such a good feeling. And over a period of three days I managed to plant my vegetable garden too.  The men are busy in the fields seeding this year's crops and don't want any rain to slow them down, but secretly I'm hoping that the half inch the weatherman is predicting shows up on Tuesday because it would boost germination and give my garden a good start.  Once the seeds are in I just want to see things pop out of the ground.

I don't know how I managed to pick the right morning to plant.  Thursday there was actually not even a slight breeze.  For the heavier seeds like beans and peas and corn a stiff wind isn't such a bad thing, but lettuce and carrot seeds are tiny things and it's hard to get them to fall into the rows you've made when the wind takes them and blows them sideways.  By that afternoon the wind had picked up and it hasn't let up since.  I mowed lawn yesterday and nearly froze.  Sunburn one day and hypothermia the next ... maybe that's another translation for Saskatchewan.

Now all I have left is to put bedding plants in my flower beds and fill my deck planters - the local greenhouses are about to get rich because I just can't help myself.  Some women love to shop for clothes or shoes but my vices are greenhouses and bookstores.

It's too windy to expose bedding plants newly removed from the pampered environment of a greenhouse so I will tackle other jobs today.  I think my day will be spent clearing away broken tree branches.  The blizzard we had in March left such huge and heavy snowbanks that the trees really suffered - they were literally crushed under the weight of the snow.  Tomorrow I will know if I use the same muscles for sawing branches as I do for weeding and hoeing; I can hardly wait to find out.

It's not all bad though - those 5 pounds I gained over the winter doing nothing physical are already gone, plus a few more. 

                                                  OLDER THAN DIRT

With spring fever raging through my veins and Mother Nature cooperating in the weather department I moved beyond just staring out my dirty windows wishing away the last of the snow banks and decided that the time was finally right to hang laundry out on the line.  There is nothing that smells better than sheets and pillow cases that smell like fresh air.

That's how it all started.  Bright and early one morning I took my basket of washing to hang out on the line and then took to meandering around the yard because the sunshine was warm, and who wanted to vacuum anyway?

My next favourite thing to do in the spring is to go and poke around in my flower beds to see if anything is coming up yet.  Besides quack grass, that is; quack grass is always coming up.

I had an hour or so to play in the dirt so I grabbed a digging fork and started turning over soil and weeding out the unwanteds.  One such unwanted was the plastic border that was supposed to be keeping the grass out and had proved itself useless at the job for years.  Sometime before the snow fell last fall I had begun ripping it out and now it lay across the lawn asking me "So now what are you going to do?"  It was either re-install it, or grab it and keep pulling.  Full of vim and vigor I chose the latter.

Time flew by.  Demolition can be so fulfilling.  You go into it knowing that you're going to end up with a big mess, but that it will all lead to something new.  You don't let yourself think about the work involved: it's just better that way.

I worked my way around the circumference of the garden and eventually came to a small pile of rocks left there last summer by some (unnamed) crazy lady who thought the answer to this garden border quandary was to dig a trench all the way around, lay geo-teck along it so as to confuse the quack grass with something new, and then fit about 1000 multi shaped rocks into it like a gigantic puzzle she would make up as she went along.

"Easy peasey" you say?  Of course you would say that - you're not the crazy lady who did all the work.

The first day, while my sheets dried on the line, the work was mostly digging - done while in a standing position and using the standard muscles a person tends to use on a regular basis.  It ended off with placing the few rocks already there - just enough to show the potential for how this was absolutely the right thing to be doing.  It was approximately 10 feet out of 140, but I was energized with a taste of success.  And I slept well in those fresh aired sheets.

Day two dawned cool and cloudy but I had momentum on my side.  Not only that, but there was a whole rock pile behind the trees - suitable material at my favourite price from a time when my Farmer was going through his rock splitting phase.  It was a mere 100 meter trek, round trip.  Wheel barrow full by wheel barrow full I picked, loaded, transported and dumped rocks at my project site.  I got another 14 feet done that day and I slept really well that night too.  It was getting out of bed the next morning that was challenging.

The days went on and the stones got scarce so I moved on to another rock pile even further away.  Braving ticks and burrs and smashed fingernails I would climb the pile and sort through it.  My building blocks had to be flat on one side, about four inches thick, the bigger the better up to the point where I couldn't move them anymore.  Also, I was looking for unique colours and textures; if I was going to do this I was going to make it interesting.

By day four my body was getting down right balky about moving.  But I was more than halfway - there was no quitting now.  My trips to the rock pile did slow up a bit and I found myself sitting down more often, and getting all philosophical about my place in the space/time continuum.  At one point I found a particularly superb rock and began to marvel that it had probably been waiting for decades in that rock pile for me to discover it and place it in my garden - because, you know, in the 4.5 billion years of its existence the blink of time it's going to spend in my garden will matter.  I think I may have been a little dizzy from pushing the wheel barrow.  I can't even remember which one it was now, but they are all 4.5 billion years old and all just tickled to be chosen for my garden.  Of this I am certain.

By the last day the work was being done in slow motion - the only speed I had left - but I am done.  In every sense of the word, I am done.  And I feel that the space/time continuum has caught up with me ... I am now 4.5 billion years old too.

                                           TURNING THE LIGHTS ON

It all started innocently enough.  The little guy in kindergarten was telling his grandma and grandpa all about the eggs they were hatching at school.  In this new age world his teacher was sending the kids videos of the hatching progress because, of course, Mother Nature wasn't keeping the action limited to the hours of 9:00 to 3:30 Monday to Friday.  As of suppertime last night the video showed they had two fluffy babies to their names.

This news led to Grandpa asking what was going to happen to the chicks when they were all hatched.  The grandson had thought that everyone in his class should get one to take home and it had to be explained to him that not everyone would want one.  Or know what to do with one.  He lives on a farm where he feeds the chickens and gathers eggs every day; it hadn't occurred to him that everyone else doesn't do the same thing.

This took us to the discussion of how few people know about these things.  If the food production and distributions systems were to suddenly disappear there wouldn't be many folks who would even know where to begin to feed themselves.  Of course from there we went straight into hearing Grandpa wax poetic about "the good old days".

Now, this is not a new subject for our supper table conversations.  When the kids were growing up there was many a night when we were all regaled with stories of him having to "walk to school, up hill, both ways, in a snow storm, riding his pet dinosaur because horses hadn't been invented yet."  And so on.  And so forth.

I give you this background to show that her father's age and experience is something that this little boy's mother is well aware of.  Or should be, at least.  But as we (Grandma and Grandpa) carried on with this topic of conversation she fell silent; amazed at the things we were saying.

I think it started out with how these chicks were being hatched under a light, using electricity.  Of course she knew that this was a job mother hens would have done naturally, it just hadn't occurred to her that there was no other way when her dad was young - they didn't have power until he was in his teens.  It wasn't that she didn't understand that there hadn't been a time when houses didn't have lights at the flick of a switch; the hard part to believe was that this had happened in her parents' life times.

For myself, I couldn't be sure.  I couldn't remember a time that the house I grew up in didn't have power but I knew my grandparents didn't have it when I was very young - I could remember them lighting coal oil lamps.  Out came the local history book: only to find that there really wasn't a specific mention of when the rural power grid came into being.  I was in on the planning and preparation of that book.  Why on earth hadn't we thought to give that very important achievement a notable segment in our history book?  Was it just a misstep of planning?  Or does it mirror our daughter's reaction - that electricity is such a constant in our lives that we forget it wasn't always there?

With both my parents unavailable for comment I called my sister who was pretty sure that by the time mom and dad were married there was power at the farm we grew up on - so that was 1946.  It is highly likely that we were ahead of other households because we lived along the main highway making it on the main route of the power grid as it was installed - the further you lived from the main line, the longer it would have taken to access power.  This was something that made sense to us old people but kind of amazed the 30 something gal whose experience of Sask Power as a business entity is to tell them when she moves so they will change the billing.

Later in the evening, after our daughter and her two non-stop energy sources had gone home, I got to thinking about our place in history.  My grandfather lived past his 100th birthday and I don't know how many times I've heard people note how he had been born in the days of horse and buggies but lived to see the moon landing, but it is almost as amazing that in a much shorter time span my generation has gone from lighting coal oil lamps to complaining about our Internet speed.  I wonder what the little guy in kindergarten will see in his lifetime?