THE TREE OF LIFE

Instead of a guest book the bride and groom had requested us to sign our names on a large poster board with the image of a large rambling tree on it.  Here and there, scattered across the paper, were leaves of varying sizes to choose from; I picked a pen and a leaf and added our names, and thought how this fit into what I had been thinking earlier while we waited for the ceremony to begin.

It was an outdoor wedding in the happy couple’s backyard.  Rows of white chairs, a garden gazebo decorated in white fabric and green vines, white petals tossed along the path the wedding party would use, and as a backdrop to the scene tall and mighty trees.  The skies were threatening to let loose on us and I felt protected with them there. 

Or maybe it was a sense of being ‘at ease’.  Or, a little bit blessed?  Perhaps ‘at one with the Universe’?

Wedding crowds are a gathering of many people – some that you’ve known all your life, and some you’ve never laid eyes on until you arrive for the ceremony.  Seated all around us were the aunts and the uncles and the cousins of the bride and groom, and with the groom’s side of the family that’s a lot of people.  That’s the side I hailed from, and it was good to see so many of their familiar faces.

But thinking of how good it was to see them inevitably brought my thoughts to those who were not there.  The groom’s mother, his uncle, a cousin, an aunt, all of his grandparents – if this was the tree of life it had certainly been through a few storms, there were branches missing.

My daughter and her two little boys sat beside me; her father’s branch had been ripped off when she was younger than they are now.  Time has passed, the tree stands strong and vital, but there is still a scar where the damage was done.

My sister, the groom’s aunt – the empty spot on the trunk where her branch was is a much newer vacancy.  It still feels odd to be with all of these people and not to have her there too.

The mother of the groom – such a lovely lady – gone too, but the crowd is dotted with her sisters and nieces.  I hear her laugh, her voice.  Without a doubt she is the most missed person of all on this day.

And yet ... I had this feeling of being surrounded, of being in a bubble of contentment and peace.  Was it my thoughts of those who were missing that stirred these feelings up?  And if so, did the feeling come from me?  Or them? 

For a moment or two their absence felt more like a presence.

There’s this children’s animated movie that came out a few years ago – Coco.  You should see it. 

When it first came out there was some controversy about whether it was appropriate for little kids; it’s about death.  But it’s not about how our North American society sees death, it’s about how the people of Mexico and other Latin American countries see it.  They keep the memories of their ancestors alive and believe that they are always close by.  In our sophisticated, North American, common sense approach, we believe that if we can no longer see our loved ones, or interact with them, then that must mean they are completely gone.  Sometimes being practical isn’t the smartest thing to be.

Of course the story line of the movie is much more involved and entertaining, and the colors they used are amazing, but the part that stays with me is the final scene where the living are having a family celebration.  Everyone there is dressed in their finest clothes, there are tables of food, and happy music, and little children run about playing ... and right in the midst of all this (although unseen) are their family dead, their ancestors, as natural a part of the scene as anyone else.

I’d like to think that’s what was happening at the wedding dance.  There was food and music and small children dancing.   I wonder if there  were a few leaves on that family tree poster that remained unsigned - well, by any ink that we could see, anyway.

BEING BUZZED

I’ve got a bit of a stubborn streak in me. 

Oh maybe ‘stubborn’ is a trifle harsh.  Let’s use the word ‘persistent’.

Anyone who knows me also knows that I can procrastinate with the best of them.  I even amaze myself at how many excuses I can come up with not to do an unpleasant task ... or even a task that is pleasant but I just don’t feel like doing.  Put these two personality traits together and you’ve got someone who can be downright determined to avoid work that they don’t want to ... yet.

My plight this week is that ‘yet’ had finally caught up with me.  My gardens are at the tipping point between ‘a terrible mess’ and ‘too far gone to even try’.  If I wanted to harvest anything – heck, if I want to be able to find anything to harvest – I have to tackle the weeds while I can still pull them out.  Another week and their roots will be wrapped around bedrock and the opportunity will be lost.

This gardening year has been quite the journey.  Right from the get-go things have not gone according to schedule.  It did not rain.  It did not rain before I planted.  It proceeded to not rain after I put seeds in the ground.  Nothing germinated.  Well, except for the stinkweed.  Apparently all stinkweed needs to germinate is the memory of moisture.  For the longest time it was the only green I had and it seemed a shame to pull it, but eventually I did.

And then I replanted the tiny seeds and counted the plants that did grow.  I had 7 peas, 12 beans, 5 beets, and 17 corn plants spread over four rows.  Every single potato I had placed in the earth came up; that’s nothing short of a miracle, even in a good year.  The only up-side to this pathetic scenario was that the weeds weren’t germinating either.  I dithered about what to do.  I could give it all a drink of well water but I was reminded that this might be making the choice of garden veggies this summer or being able to shower next winter – not something to be taken lightly.

The rains finally did come, and then Mother Nature turned up the heat.  Up came the first planting of vegetables ... and the second ... and the third!  But who could tell?  The ground was a solid carpet of pigweed and portulaca, lamb’s quarters and a million baby maple trees.  This work overload situation immediately triggered a procrastination period; why pull four inch weeds when you can put it off till they are ten inches tall?

As of this past week I have moved on.  The strawberries needed picking and since I was out there I kinda got into the groove of pulling out anything that didn’t belong with the berries.  It looked so much better from where I like to sit on my deck and admire the rows from a distance ... except that the rows didn’t really show very well in the sea of green.  I knew the time had come.

It’s always easy to identify prime weeding weather – it is at least 27 degrees with a humidity factor of 106% making it ‘feel like’ you’re going to melt somewhere between the zucchini and the zinnias.

But my ‘persistent’ streak had kicked in.  Heat and humidity be damned!  I was going to have clean rows, or die trying!  It’s been close a time or two, but I’m still among the living and I only have about one third left to go.

I am greatly aided by the aerial crop sprayer who buzzes our house at 5:00 in the morning; no need to set an alarm clock.  Then it’s breakfast and coffee and off to the trenches before the sun is too nasty.  Just so the job isn’t too overwhelming I choose how much I’m going to tackle for the morning and then proceed to ‘get down and dirty’.  The rule is I can go beyond my daily allotment but I can’t quit until at least that much is done. 

I have powered through blisters on my hoe hand.  I have to continually stop to wipe the sweat away from my eyes.  I wear a big sun hat to keep the sun from crispy frying my ears. The dirt sticks to everywhere I have applied sunscreen, but the spot I missed sizzles to a lovely shade of tomato.  The other day I was almost hit by a terrified bunny.  Actually, I never saw Mr. Rabbit but the dog loping through the corn gave me a pretty good idea what had grazed the top of my head.  Don’t ever let anyone tell you that weeding the garden in a July heat wave isn’t without its risks and perils.

Once I have my persistent little brain focussed on something, though, I just don’t want to give in.  I know sunstroke is a serious thing but I just have to finish this one... last ... row.

I couldn’t tell you how many times the horse flies have had to come and save me from my folly but they did it again this morning.  I ignored the blisters and sweat and heat and the dirt and the dog and even the bunny but, just as the crop sprayer flying over the house at dawn got me out to my garden, being buzzed by a horse fly told me I was done for the day.

                                                              ANOTHER LAND LINE LOSS

The debate has raged on for years: lose the land line, or keep it.  Having been totally won over to all the goodies a cell phone and the Internet gave him the man refused to even use the phone stuck to the wall in the hallway.  I hated to give it up.

I liked the comfort of how the old fashioned receiver fit in my hand and against my ear on those long chatty calls with my sisters and friends, and how I could grip it between my jaw and shoulder if I had to peel potatoes and talk at the same time, and I liked being able to actually hang up on telemarketers; merely touching a screen just doesn’t give a person the same sense of power and defiance.  The trouble was, for the past year or so, those were the only calls that ever came in on that phone - sister calls and telemarketers.  It’s really hard to justify the bill that kept coming every month for something that we barely used.

Still, I argued.  Firstly there is the land line emergency factor.  Do you realize how useless a cell phone is if the power grid goes down?  I’m not talking about an hour here or there.  People have vehicles and generators to get them through short spans of time.  How about in a real emergency?  Something so catastrophic as to knock the power grid down for days or weeks?  Once you’re out of fuel to run your car or generator you are done – in the middle of a REAL emergency when you will need real help and communication.  Government guidelines won’t even let you set up an emergency command post unless you are equipped with a land line.

My second point of contention is also my pet peeve in life ... people who cancel their land line simply disappear.  You can’t phone them, they are not in the book.  Back in my days as a postmaster the words “this number is no longer in service” became my most frustrating issue.  How do you let someone know their parcel has timed out and is about to be sent back if they are unreachable?  People can have multiple phones on them 24/7 but unless you are one of their inner circle you have no hope of getting in touch with them.

Quietly, back on the home front, I continued to pay the bill, but eventually I decided to look into what the options were for going ‘full cell’.  Not that Sasktel wants to encourage customers to cancel any of their services but they do offer ways to help you out.  They will keep your old number for a set period of time in case you change your mind, and they will install a recording on the old number to inform callers what your new number is.  While this info was comforting I still held back.  The straw that broke the camel’s back though, was when our old phone decided to die.  How was I going to justify buying a new phone for a line we never used?

I gave him the job though.  The account was in his name and he was the one who wanted it gone so it seemed fitting.  And, I will admit I congratulated myself on avoiding the hour plus that he spent on hold to get that job done, but that little bit of self satisfaction has come back to haunt me.

I thought I had provided him with all the info he would need and how to avoid any pitfalls that may arise, but it seems there was one glitch no one saw coming.  Apparently I was a very early subscriber to email.  So long ago that my email account and the phone number it was associated with were married.  When one died, so did the other.  It might have taken me a day or two to become conscious of my lack of email, but with every passing moment since then it’s become more and more painful.

My first call to Sasktel confirmed my fears – that my problem was linked to cancelling the land line, but the gal I was talking to said “no worries” and promised it would be all fixed in five minutes.  She was too young to know what she was talking about.  The fellow I was referred to on day two of my plight was also too young to know about the old ways but knew enough to ask a senior admin.  It seems, back in the day, Sasktel would give their own admin email address to an account and then let you make up your own which they referred to as an ‘alias’.  When gal #1 ‘fixed’ my problem on my first call in everything disappeared.  My buddy from day #2 went looking for it but he couldn’t restore it in the same way.  He left me with my new account and a back door way to be able to go fetch any old emails I might want. At the time we both thought this arrangement had everything covered.

We were wrong.  I have just discovered that the complete list of email addresses in my address book have been obliterated. 

Deep sigh.

And so, should you want to get hold of me by phone the technology is in place for you to do so – NO PROBLEM.  If you ever want me to be able to email you ever again you might want to send me one so I can capture you address ....

STRESSED IS JUST ‘DESSERTS’ SPELLED BACKWARDS

It’s like the Universe is trying to tell me something ... like “go make a rhubarb crisp” or “this is a cinnamon bun baking kind of day”.  Heck even a puffed wheat cake would be a good use of my energy.

My jittery, hyped up, nervous energy.

I’ve got some things on the go.  Nothing Earth shattering, really: just Life.  Projects I’ve started, stuff I’m involved in, committees I belong to.  Individually they are all just small things - just a meeting here and there and a little volunteering from time to time.  I actually like this role of giving back to my community.  It’s just that back in February when plans were first forming for our summer season it all seemed so far off and laid back.  As of yesterday we are officially past the first day of summer and February’s far off big picture has made its usual progression into multiple lists and details and duties that seem to get more numerous each day.  July 1^st is only nine days away.  The crunch is on.

We’ve literally done everything there is to be done at nine days out.  There have been blips along the way, for sure, but at this point in time we are on top of it.  I think. 

I’ve double and triple checked the lists from other years and nothing seems to be missing.

We’ve made up the worker’s list and even have a few new names to work with.

The posters and ads have been proof read several times – let’s hope we caught all the important stuff.

And there’s absolutely nothing I can do about the weather.

I try (in vain) to recall how it feels to have the whole day behind me:  that happy kind of tired we get because it’s all done for another year, the writing down of ‘lessons learned’ so we have them for next time, and the occasional pat on the back for the work we’ve done.  I know the antidote for all this pre-event stress is a successful ending, and I just can’t wait to get there.

I also have come to understand that it always is a success – even if it rains, or the band cancels, or we run out of hotdogs.  It is what it is.  People will eat cake in damp clothing, sing Oh Canada with a lump in their throat and stay for the fireworks because it’s our country’s birthday and we are all there to celebrate.

And yet I still can’t shake the anxiousness I feel.  I wish it was July 2^nd already!

Whenever an award like Citizen of the Year or Woman of Distinction comes up on the news I always listen in awe to the years of service these people have devoted to earn such a reward.  I add up their years of service and multiply that by the meetings they’ve attended, the ideas they’ve tried out, the cold calls they’ve made, and the donations they’ve asked for, and I think to myself that the recognition they are being given is like the light of a single candle when the mega watts of a search light is what should be called for. 

And as I watch the winner of the award accept her pretty plaque and graciously acknowledge all the people who deserve this prize with her I think to myself ... did she spend the time between the planning stage and the actual event baking desserts because she was stressed too?

PURVIS STEW

Given the kind of day it is today – cool and rainy (finally, thank goodness!) it seemed like a great day to make a pot of stew.  Comfort food, and since I like to cook it in the oven, the added warmth of having the oven on all afternoon is an extra plus.  Yes, it was a good day to make stew.

As I thawed out the meat there was a decision to be made:  would it be Hainsworth stew?  Or Purvis stew?  The regular, safe, ordinary gravy-based stew, or the weird concoction written in my mother’s handwriting that includes tomato soup and chopped cabbage along with all the regular meat and veggies normally found in stew? 

It had been quite a while, I decided ... out came the tomato soup.

Since tomorrow is Father’s Day I had been thinking about the man whose surname this recipe has taken on.  I smiled as I peeled the potatoes; he didn’t even know that he had a stew named after him.  Eons ago, in my growing up years, it was just ‘stew’.  It was only after joining this Hainsworth clan that I had to differentiate between two kinds of stew – after I learned how to make the meeker, plain, gravy version.

And, personally, I’ve often wondered how much dad liked mom’s version of stew.  I remember the food that his mother served – it was good, and wholesome, and plain.  I cannot imagine Grandma Purvis being so adventurous as to experiment with tomatoes and cabbage in a stew, let alone cooking the meat with some brown sugar and vinegar first to give it a bit of a sweet and sour flavour.  I think that would have been way outside the box for her.  Dad probably didn’t have ‘Purvis’ stew for the first thirty years of his life.

Which means, of course that it is not named correctly.  In the interests of not putting my mother’s maiden name out there on the Internet, though, we’ll just leave that one be.

It’s times like today when I’m thinking about such questions, and there is no one left who can answer them, that I enter into the world of regrets that all grown children visit from time to time.  Why do I only have my vague, one-sided memories to go on?  Surely there were times when we could have had conversations that covered silly, every day things like this!  Why don’t kids pay attention to these details that will matter to them some day?

The memories I do have of meal times are sweet though; our places at the table were him at the head of the table and me to his left, just around the corner.  I always had to watch him if green beans were on the menu.  He didn’t like them and if I wasn’t paying attention the serving on my plate mysteriously got bigger; it was a game we played.  As far as I can remember I never had to make him take back a scoop of stew, but I know mom only made that new-fangled dish, chilli con carne, on nights he wasn’t going to be home for supper because he said it was too spicy.  Something just tells me that dad would have preferred Hainsworth stew over his namesake.

And, for some reason, my sisters insist that I have the recipe wrong – that’s not how mom made it.  I had to show them the page in the wedding shower recipe book that mom gave me that proves it was her recipe.  Again, it would be nice to ask mom if her recipes evolved over time and I just got the 1973 version?  Something else I’ll never know.  All I know is that I’m the only one who makes it this way.

Which, ironically, means that it is only made by me – now a Hainsworth – so technically it should be the one called ‘Hainsworth’ stew. 

How’s that for a weird twist of Fate?  Something for my kids to try to figure out someday after I’m gone.

HIDING OUT

The dog and I are hiding out today.  We’ve been at it a lot this past week or so.  It’s just plain too hot to go outside.  When I say this aloud poor Turbo just rolls his eyes at me.  Apparently he feels that I don’t know the half of it – I’m not wearing a permanent, fluffy fur coat designed to withstand an Arctic climate.  He needs to understand that my genetics have evolved to keep me from dying of starvation and/or hyperthermia in the Scottish highlands.  We are both out of our element.  The 2019 version of June on the Canadian prairies is going to be the undoing of both of us.

The house maintains its cool, thank goodness.  We open the windows at night and close them when we get up.  Years ago we installed a very large area of ceramic tile flooring.  At the time everyone kept saying “Oh, I’ve heard they are so cold to walk on.  You’re going to be sorry with your choice.”  I can’t claim that I knew what I was doing, I just liked the tile and wanted something that could stand up to the wear and tear a family of six can dish out, but I have since learned that the miracle of heat conductivity in ceramics is my friend, not my enemy.

Those tiles take on whatever temperature they are surrounded with.  In the winter when the furnace is running they stay at a pretty constant and acceptable temperature.  If you’re cold and want some extra warmth you go over to where the furnace venting runs under the floor and stand there for a while.  Much more beneficial though, is how in the summer it takes on the night cool and keeps the house an oasis of cool the whole next day.  We don’t have an air conditioner but people don’t believe me when I tell them that.  It’s 28 degrees outside today, and only 22 inside without so much as a nickel being spent to keep it that way.

It’s not like I haven’t been outside.  Every day I go out and survey what this nasty heat and lack of rain is doing to all my plants.  Some are just withering in the sun.  Some are cooking against the black soil.  The poor things that survived 4 degrees of frost a couple weeks ago are now sun scorched and giving up in the intense heat.  I water them and apologise profusely every day that I can’t make it rain. 

I’ve tried ... washing my car, hanging clothes on the line ... nothing seems to work.

So, me and the dog are just hanging out in the house.  He is laid out flat on the cool floor, only to open an eye when I enter the kitchen – he wouldn’t want to miss out on a treat if there is one to be had.  Other than that his only movement is to get up and find a new cool spot when his body heat has cancelled out the cool where he was at.

As for myself, I tend to wander from window to window, looking out at the jobs that need doing.  Jobs that I would even enjoy doing – if only the sun wouldn’t melt my brain while I was doing it.  There are dandelions to cut, and weeds to pull, and trees to water, not to mention dead trees to clear out of the shelterbelt and branches to put through the wood chipper.  I could be busy for days.  But also I might die.

I have also gone back to my weather app habit that got me through the winter.  What is Environment Canada predicting for my future?  Is it ever going to rain again?  How long are the brain-melting temperatures going to last?  Can I go outside tomorrow? 

You do all realize that summer isn’t even here yet, don’t you? 

If you happen to drop by and find me laid out on my ceramic floor next to the dog, don’t worry.  It’s no accident – just us coping with eons of evolution in an era we weren’t designed for.

MAYBE THIS TIME

I’m so excited.  Well, I’m also a little wary, but still pretty excited.  Holding my breath.  Fingers crossed.  On the edge of my seat.

One of the primary benefits of living out in the country is the wildlife feature.  Oh sure, it would be nice to have pavement right to the yard, a store just a few blocks away, and if sewer and water problems develop they are someone else’s problem, but these are more than balanced out with the tranquillity of being miles from your closest neighbor, the endless green space we are surrounded by, and sharing the whole setup with wildlife.

There have been beaver and moose wandering right through the front yard, fox and coyote that keep our evenings alive with their wild music, and in the next month the yard will be twinkling with fireflies at dusk.  There are also white tailed deer that hang around but I’m not too happy about that right now.  They like my apple trees more than I like them at the moment.

At this time of the year though, it’s the birds that are the most fun.  Throughout April and May, as each warmer day follows another, birds of all shapes, colors, and sizes arrive back to declare spring is here.  The crows squawk it first, then great flying wedges of geese honk their greetings, followed closely by the robins.  Each of these harbingers of spring making us happier than the last.

Then the wait begins for the rest ... the morning doves, the meadow larks, the wood peckers, the little junkos and wrens, the noisy reunion of redheaded blackbirds on the slough north of the house.  I’m also always glad to see our blue heron back, and hear the strange sound of the slough pump (egret); it means that we have all made another trip safely around the sun.

I don’t know if they are the last to arrive – maybe I quit paying attention once I spot hummingbirds at the feeders – but their arrival gives me the biggest sigh of relief.  So good to see them “home” again!  In the thirty plus years that they’ve been summering here we’ve had as many as four nesting pairs at a time.  It makes for some crazy bird watching (and ducking) by mid August when the juveniles come to feed too.  They are like tiny Samurai warriors defending their territory; dipping, weaving, diving and chattering threats at each other.  It’s quite the show.

Almost at the same time as they arrive, the orioles do too.  I don’t know if they are travel buddies or that that they just know to follow the hummingbirds to where the sugar water feeders are, but sure enough they are a package deal.  Almost.  The hummingbirds stay, the orioles fuel up and move on. 

I want them to stay so badly, but they don’t.  I know they like oranges so I slice the fruit and set it out; they dine and leave.  I’ve tried grape jelly too; no dice.  It makes me so sad.

But this year (and I hope I’m not jinxing this by talking about it) it’s beginning to look like we have a couple of keepers.  We’ve been through seven oranges and they are still coming back for more.  It’s been more than a week – that’s never happened before.  The part that makes me the most hopeful is that the last two days it’s only been the male eating the oranges.  If my guess is right, the little lady is sitting on some eggs.  I am so excited!