BLIZZARD BLISS

I went to bed last night listening to the roaring prairie wind blasting its way through our shelterbelt trees and throwing loose snow against the side of the house with all its might.  It made me snuggle further under the covers and smile.  I love nights like this.

Now, before you call up the nice people with straight jackets and have me hauled away, hear me out.  Don’t question my sanity just for a silly little thing like enjoying a good, old-fashioned blizzard every once in a while.  I’m prairie, born and raised.  We’re kind of an extreme life form.

First of all, please note that my embracing of the storm was done from the inside of my house.  A house with central heating and excellent insulation.  Furthermore, I was tucked into my toasty warm bed and under a down-filled duvet.  And, most important of all, I knew that everyone I loved was home, safe, and warm, as well.  I didn’t need to worry about a single person or thing.  I could relax and listen to the wind howl its one, long song, feeling its power pushing against the walls but trusting that my shelter was up to the task of protecting me and those I care about.  The louder the wind, the cozier I feel.

 This morning dawned with bright blue skies, dazzling fresh white snow and the wind still blowing, it kind of looks like a Christmas card picture out there – very pretty, but nasty cold.  We were at the southern edge of the storm so we got a major part of our precipitation in freezing rain throughout the day yesterday.  Although the videos of kids skating on city streets and other people throwing curling rocks down stretches of pebbled highway are fun for the novelty of it all, the potential for concussions and broken hips are important factors to consider before a person ventures outside.  So far today I’ve made it across the yard once, sticking to where the snow is deep so that if I do slip on the ice underneath there will be that fresh powder to cushion my fall.  You gotta think ahead, you know.

At the moment we haven’t tried to leave the yard yet.  The man says he figures the 4X4 with the studded tires could probably make it but he also is planning on spending the next few hours clearing the driveway out.  There’s lots of light, fluffy snow to push around but the lack of traction underneath might make the job a little more challenging than usual.  This is not my problem; it’s a man thing.  I stay in the house and make soup; that’s my job.

As much as I enjoy the fierceness of prairie weather; the wondering of ‘how bad will it get?’, the photographing the aftermath, a blizzard also likes to rearrange schedules.  School buses don’t run, hockey practises and games are juggled to new times, Christmas concerts are cancelled.  Hair appointments are rescheduled (thank the Lord, and halleluiah!  No one wants to go through the holidays looking like a haystack).  It looks like the two Australians’ flight will be landing in Regina this afternoon as has been planned for weeks.  Sure glad their reservations weren’t for yesterday.  I’m pretty sure they would rather witness the Northern Lights than participate in a blizzard although both have a bragging rights quality to them, don’t they?

The next week is going to be full of company and food and visiting and family gatherings and a hockey game or two.  I have several lists of jobs to do and groceries to buy on the go.  Most of my baking is done, all of my cards and letters are sent, by tonight the guest beds will all be made up.  Once I’m completely ready Mother Nature can send another storm our way.  As long as everyone is safe and inside I really do love a good blizzard.

 

ONLY ONE DOWN, BUT IT’S A START

It’s the end of November people.  There is less that a month until the big day when Santa does his thing and we all eat turkey and chocolates until we nearly explode.  There is SO MUCH TO DO before then!  And I haven’t even started.

Well, actually, that’s a lie.  I have started.  Recently I woke up to my usual let’s-worry-about-things-I-can’t-control time of just after 3:00 in the morning and selected as my ‘worry de jour’ the fact that I hadn’t even begun my Christmas letter yet.  I know that this is an antiquated custom, but it’s a really nice one where folks keep in touch and share their family’s news with a Christmas card and letter every year.  I know I’m an oddity in 2025 to keep this up but I have a small fan club who look forward to my annual news and season’s greetings.  I don’t want to disappoint.  Realizing that I wasn’t even started this letter in the last week of November sparked a tiny flame of momentum.  I would get right on that in the morning.

I confess, it wasn’t the very next morning, but I did get it done.  All I need to do is proof read it and hit SEND and I can cross that job off the list.  Except for a few elderly folks who get hard copy letters they all go by email.  I know I am eating into my Canada Post pension by not buying stamps but my ‘fan club’ membership is over 100.  I have to be frugal.

That’s one job down, about a thousand to go.

The next one better be getting gifts in order.  I was inspired back in August and found something that I think the youngest grandkids will enjoy.  I bought them.  They are only a partial gift so I can’t even wrap them, let alone send them, but they sit in a box of my inertia awaiting lord only knows what … divine inspiration, I suppose?  It better happen pretty soon.  A lot of my family lives on other continents and I’m already late. (See? Canada Post still gets a sizable chunk of my pension back!)

My outdoor decorating has been sizing itself down over the past decade.  As strings of lights die I haven’t been replacing them.  I’m down to two deer and a pole Christmas tree.  I have them out in place on the front lawn and will march across the yard to plug them in on December 1^st.  That will be job #2.

Baking.  Ah!  That baking thing I do every year.  Gingersnaps and puff pastry/lemon cheese tarts, mincemeat cookies and butter tarts – some with raisins and some with pecans. Other cookies with macadamia nuts and cranberries and some with white chocolate chips.  How we can go through that many crazy calories in such a short time makes my head spin, but I’ll make them again this year and they will all disappear like they do every other time.  Best not to start that too early though – a person wants some of them to still be around to serve guests on the big day.  Meanwhile I will probably make at least three batches of poppycock.

This lots-of-baking thing is especially important this year because I believe it’s my turn to host the feast.  I haven’t done a potential head count yet but except for the Covid years a gathering of our clan tends to number at least 20 and quite often almost double that.  We have a decent sized house but the term ‘bursting at the seams’ applies.  It’s noisy and happy and fun to be together and I’m always glad when it’s not my turn for another few years.

The one thing I am looking forward to is decorating the tree.  I love to do this all by myself, with Christmas music playing softly in the background.  Sorting through the ornaments and memories of all the other trees I’ve decorated in my life.  In 70 years that’s a lot of memories … of my mom and dad, my siblings and our intense excitement over what gifts we might be getting. And later of having my own young family and seeing the ancient magic through their eyes, and now being the grandmother carrying these moments forward to share with the next generation.  The most magical moments in December are sipping my early morning coffee, bathed in the twinkle and glow of Christmas lights – just me and the tree.

The glass of wine to celebrate finishing decorating it is a close second.

There are the other periphery treats too: twinkle tours around town  to enjoy the pretty lights, phone calls from people who don’t write letters but like to stay in touch anyway, and ridiculously saccharine Christmas movies with their happily-ever-after story lines to name a few.  It’s all part and parcel of this festival time of year.

May we all find the peace and promise we are seeking.  For me it begins on December 21^st when our wobble back towards longer daylight hours begin.

 

 

DEJA-VU, ALL OVER AGAIN

You know that feeling that you’ve been here before?  That, somehow, when you walk into a building that you already have your bearings?  You know where you’re going to go sit?  And who you are liable to meet there?  And where the kitchen is?  The memories are a little fuzzy around the edges but you just know that you’ve been there before.

It looks like we will be hanging out at the Redvers Rec Center a lot this winter.  Except for social functions on the curling side and the swimming pool on super hot days in the summer we haven’t been there much since the end of our previous minor hockey days at the end of the last century (that’s about how long ago it seems).  But, as of the beginning of October 2025 we are once again lining up equipment, scheduling in practice days, paying ice fees, and doing fundraising.  This morning I’m washing a game jersey because team pictures are tomorrow night.  I never imagined this to come up on my bingo card but here we are, and it’s a good thing.

The Rec Center isn’t exactly the same as it used to be.  The main lobby has had a facelift, the inside seating has had an upgrade, the menu has evolved and the washrooms have migrated across to where the little mini-ice surface used to be – remember that?  That’s how old I am; I remember that. 

Lord help me but the first hockey player I drove to practices was my little brother in 1971.  I can’t even recall if there was a kitchen then, probably because I didn’t have any money to spend there.  The addition to the lobby decor I like the best are pictures and posters honouring the people - the athletes who put Redvers on the map, and the local hometown heroes being recognized for their contribution to recreation in our community.  This is an excellent idea and I like it a lot.

It's kind of weird/strange/funny, but it appears we have been away from the Redvers hockey scene for exactly one generation.  I know this a small town and we are going to know the people we meet at the games, but in a super focused delivery of Deja-vu some of the people at these 2025 practices and games are exactly the same folks who attended the games in 2000.  Only now, the players that were are the parents today, and the parents of before are the grandparents.  This should not be so confusing.  After all, we are the grandparents this time too, but I keep forgetting which generation I’m in.  It’s like the intervening 25 years never happened because we weren’t there for them.  The coach today was Mitchell’s team mate back then.  Everything is a little out of whack in the time/space continuum.

People tease us that ‘this will keep us young’.  For sure I will have to renew my ever-sketchy knowledge of hockey rules and learn a whole roster of players by how they skate and their style of play.  I must say that jumping in at the U15 level with a roster of kids you’ve never met is challenging.

It will also keep us on the road.

And probably broke buying rink burgers (that part will be just like the good old days).

In the meanwhile, if you happen to run into me at the rink and we strike up a conversation be prewarned I may wander in my time line orientation, and almost inevitably I will refer to my player by his uncle’s name (a sad/happy occurrence that happens regardless of hockey). 

At our ages these slip-ups could be blamed on senility but I’m going to lean towards it being a simple case of Deja-vu overdose.  Be patient with us; we’ll get it all worked out by spring.

 

BE THE REASON

I have been reading a book.  Well, actually, I have several books on the go.  There is a whole stack of them on my bedside table, all with bookmarks carefully placed so that I can pick up where I left off weeks, months, and possibly even more than a year ago.  Maybe my life needs to be a little less busy or maybe I just need a better light to read by, but I just seem to stall out in a book these days.  Luckily, I own them all so I don’t have to deal with library return dates.

But, back to the one that inspired me to write this.

Written by Rhonda Byrne, the same author who wrote The Secret, and The Power, her new book The Magic expands on her life themes of ‘sunny side up’ and ‘cup half full’ philosophies.  It gets a bit sugary at times but I’m not going to say she is wrong – optimism beats pessimism any day of the week.

I have to say that this kind of inspirational book is not my normal pick.  I like stories.  Well written stories with believable characters and a strong story line.  The Magic is not that kind of book so who knows why I picked it up and spent my money on it, but I did.

When The Secret came out (and spent 190 weeks on the New York Times best seller’s list) a friend of mine sang its praises and told of how much it had impacted her life.  So much so that my curiosity got the best of me and I read it and was introduced to the idea of the law of attraction.  That we can and do attract what comes into our lives; if you believe that good things will come, they do.  And likewise, by expecting bad you will attract bad.  Of course, that is an over simplification of the book but it’s an uplifting read and opens a person up to a new way of looking at things.

I’ve never read any of her other books but something must have caught my interest on The Magic.  Everyone needs a little magic in their lives, maybe I was looking for some in mine.

The premise of this book is even simpler that the first.  Basically gratitude – being grateful – has immense magical power.  Somehow, she stretches this theme out to fill 254 pages but the bottom line is “if you are thankful your life will be blessed”.

She looks at ancient scripts and finds references to happiness and gratitude.  She quotes famous philosophers.  Teachings of several different religions are used to show this universal truth as well, her point being that humanity’s most potent survival tactic was just to be thankful for what we have, and that showing gratitude to others is a powerful form of magic.

The book is set out like a exercise book with a chapter to read and then an assignment of sorts to help the reader apply what they have read to their own lives.  I admit that I didn’t stick with the homework assignments I fell off the wagon but that’s not to say I didn’t get anything out of the book, because I did.

Did you know that you can’t feel anxiety or sadness or disillusionment if you are feeling grateful?  Gratefulness takes up all the emotional space you have if you let it in.  And there is always something to be grateful for.  That was one of the assignments – to spend the last few minutes of your day before you went to sleep naming ten things you were grateful for.  Even writing them down and then saying them aloud because repetition gave them more power.  Or you could simply go over your day and pick the best thing that had happened all day – another way to identify what you were grateful for.

The lesson that stuck with me the strongest though was the advice to show gratitude to others.  I think I’ve always been pretty good at saying “thank you” but after reading this book I make a point of making my words more meaningful.  Whether someone has held a door open for me or taken the time to help me in a store, or given me advice, I try to let them know how much I appreciate their time, effort, or kindness.  It makes us both feel like something wonderful has happened.  You should try it.

There are days when it seems like the world has gone sour and we are left feeling that there is nothing we can do to fight the darkness.  But we can. 

Be grateful.  Express gratitude.  Treat friends and strangers alike with the feeling that they are appreciated.  Be the source of warmth and kind-heartedness.

Set out to be the reason someone has a good day, and in doing so your day will be better as well.

Simple magic.

 

DOING BIRTHDAYS IN STYLE

Many years ago, my farmer husband explained to me in his typical stressed-out-about-harvest voice that if I had wanted parties to celebrate my birthday I should have known better than to be born in September.  I mean, this was a life-long handicap what with being both a farmer’s daughter and then choosing to be a farmer’s wife.  I really shouldn’t be surprised to have my birthday barely acknowledged between filling bins and fixing combines. 

I’m not, really.  This girl isn’t one of the high maintenance variety.  Besides, I have scored a few significant birthday memories over the years.  In 1982 he actually took a whole day off and we went to Brandon to pick out an engagement ring.  Looking back, having only known the man less than a year I can only say that this astonishingly atypical behavior was lost on me at the time.  The term ‘false advertising’ certainly applies.  

It’s too late to do anything about it now, though, I think the statute of limitations on that crime has run out.

I think it was the very next year, as a newly wed, that he gave me a blank I.O.U. to be redeemed after harvest.  He was probably thinking that meant taking me out for supper or some such easy thing.  Imagine his surprise when I called that debt in and insisted on a clothesline.  It was a whole day’s work and I never got another I.O.U. but it was so worth it.  I love my clothesline.

The years have rolled on by and luckily I have continued to have birthdays.  The kids got old enough to bake the cakes and make or buy the presents.  Like I said, I’m not high maintenance so it’s worked out okay.  He remembered to wish me a happy birthday without being prompted this year, so that’s something.  It’s a low bar but he aced it.  By that time he was on his 5^th or 6^th swather knife repair and more than a little on edge.  It’s all good.

This year other plans had been made.  2025 brings me to one of those significant ending-in-zero birthdays and the womenfolk of the family decided that this called for a spa weekend in Moose Jaw.  Who needs husband input when you can gather all the sisters and an assortment of nieces/daughters together for a two day spa visit?  As a bonus there was also one tiny grand daughter for us to all fuss over; she and her mom are kind of a package deal at the moment.  When the family is spread out from Calgary to Redvers there aren’t all that many opportunities to get together.  It was a great time.

We didn’t do anything fancy.  We talked about doing one of the Tunnels of Moose Jaw tours but never got around to it.  A few of us bought souvenirs as we wandered through the downtown shops, but nothing too much.  We treated ourselves to two lovely evening meals, enjoying the food and the atmosphere … and teased the sister who had “forgotten” her wallet mercilessly.  We spent time in the mineral waters pool – especially in the outdoor pool under the stars on a very warm prairie night, but no one took time for an actual spa treatment, we had too much visiting to do.

The best times by far, though, were sitting around our suite sharing a carafe of Tim Horton’s coffee with muffins and fruit and cheese, telling stories of our kids and grandkids, our gardens and animals, the holidays we had taken and the places we still dream of going. 

You know, the kind of things that womenfolk talk about.

We gifted stories from one generation to the next, honoring the mothers and sisters who are no longer with us. Hopefully the two month old baby was soaking it all in as she slept; there was a lot of familial ambience in that room.  She and her generation will be the ones who carry this magic forward.  

We told stories from long ago while making fresh memories for the next time we meet - which we should probably do sooner rather than later.  Those ending-in-zero birthdays get a little more serious as time goes by.  It’s not the zero that scares me anymore, it’s the number in front of the zero that is concerning.

 

 

TAPPING OUT

Here we are in the waning days of August.  The swathers and combines are chewing through the acres and municipal roads that don’t see traffic for months on end are major trucking routes.  My grass needs cut again but 30 degrees is just too brutal for this girl – it will have to wait.  Sometimes a person has to know when to tap out.

Some crazy lady (who looks a lot like me) planted her usual too-big-for-two-people garden in May and I have been dealing with the consequences of that rash act all summer.  Germination was pretty fair except the yellow beans which were a complete failure.  My cucumbers also struggled to give me a measly four plants.  It’s funny, in June this concerned me greatly because that didn’t seem to be enough.  Then one of them died and I was down to three.  We like our cucumbers so this was very concerning.  It is now the end of August and I have been giving them away by the bag full only to have another twenty ready to eat the next time I walk past the pickle patch.  Obviously poor germination has no bearing on productivity if the rain and heat come at the right time.  It’s getting to the point where they need to tap out.

The strawberries started out the year producing very well and have moved on to spectacular.  They seem to be taking the name ‘ever bearing’ very seriously.  I was still picking asparagus until the end of June, and the raspberry crop was phenomenal.  I had to discourage my peas from further productivity by yanking them out of the ground.  I’ve never had better success with corn, and I even got most of it into my freezer before a few very rude and greedy raccoons wreaked havoc one night.  Let’s just say they won’t be back next year.

Zucchini are playing their usual trick of being eight inches long at 10:00 in the morning and two feet long and weighing 20 pounds by suppertime.  Any beets I have left out there are the size of soccer balls.  The dill has all gone to seed.  Luckily the pigs love Swiss Chard … and any portulaca, redroot pigweed, and sow thistle that happens to be growing where it’s not supposed to be.

The onions don’t have root rot.  The potatoes are prolific and not rotting from the inside like on some years.  We have been eating, pickling, and giving away carrots for a month now and I still have two twelve-foot rows to harvest.  What was that lady who looks a lot like me thinking in May?  Oh yeah, I know what she was thinking … She was thinking “There’s only half a package of seed left, I’ll make another row.”  That’s what she was thinking.  Somebody needs to tap her out.

It's the pumpkins that are the winners this year though.  Remember that hail storm with the hardball -sized ice bombs from the sky on July 4?  Not sure that I’ll ever forget what that sounds like under meatal roofing or the way the yard looked like the inside of a popcorn machine or the ground being covered in deep pock marks for weeks afterward.  It was a doozy.  Luckily our yard was at the edge of the worst action; no windows were broken and most of the garden dodged the damage. 

The pumpkins took the brunt of it with their huge leaves out there like catcher’s mitts, and yet they came back swinging!  Those plants must cover one quarter of my garden space and are spreading another ten feet daily.  There is fruit of all sizes under those huge leaves and the canopy is so tall you could lose small children in there.  If we have a late frost there should be enough jack-o-lanterns to supply southeast Saskatchewan.  No need for them to tap out – I’m curious to see how big we can go!

And, the pinnacle of garden satisfaction?  What we’ve been waiting for since I picked those baby tomato plants up at the greenhouse?  The reason bacon exists?  Today, finally, there were tomatoes ripe enough for toasted bacon and tomato sandwiches for lunch. 

I wish I could say “My work here is now done” but of course we are only about to start the everything-to-do-with-tomatoes soup/salsa/sauce season.  They’ve been so slow to get going it will likely be mid October before I see the end of them.  Before I can really tap out for 2025.

Meanwhile, I’m going to have a very stern talk with that lady who looks a lot like me about next spring.

 

                                                         THE BEGINNING AND THE END

       Way back in the early days of my farm wife life I would be asked out on ‘dates’ to go crop checking.  Please note that the quotation marks are around the word ‘dates’ and not around the phrase ‘crop checking’.  We were farmers genuinely going out to check our crops and truly it was as close we ever got to a date.

       Depending on what we were checking for, these dates took place at different times of the day; Wheat Midge was an early evening thing, Bertha Army Worm have an all-day-long window, Canola’s readiness check for swathing could happen any time, but a hot dry afternoon was best to grind heads of wheat out in our hands to see how far off harvest would be.

       My favourite times, though, were the crop emergence checks.  These were always done at either sunrise or sunset – my farmer explaining to me that this was when the light was just right to see the bright new green shoots against the rich, dark earth.  He was so right.  What was crystal clear in that first hour after dawn was nearly invisible at high noon but would show right back up just before night fall.  A trick in the intensity of the light and the angle of the shadow made the colours stand out, the landscape unforgettable and quite beautiful.

       It was this image of exquisite clarity that sprang to my mind while listening to the homily at a funeral I once attended.  The speaker compared a human life span to the duration of a day.  “Sunrise, sunset.” he offered, “Birth and death.”  His point wasn’t about the amount of time measured with clocks or calendars that either a single day or a lifetime took, but rather the intensity of focus we devote to the beginning and end of them.  How it was these singular moments at each end of a lifetime that humans seemed to devote the most attention to.

       “Just as when a baby is born, something comes to be that was never here before, and at death something is gone that will never be again” he pointed out, “just so no one dawn or dusk is exactly the same as another.”  He felt that it seemed irrelevant how long a person lived or what they accomplished in that life; it was at their birth we rejoiced most loudly and at their death that we mourned so deeply. 

       He went on speaking but by this time the memory of those early morning crop checks had filled my mind and I found myself wondering if this is why we examine life in much the same way.  At our dawn is the light just right to envision how much this tiny human might do in their lifetime?  And at our sunset do we not naturally take a look back along their row to see how well it grew?  I remembered how those brilliant green rows would fade with the high sun light and yet in the evening how they would be visible again.  Is that what happens to us in the middle of our lives?  Does what we do - how we live – disappear in our daily busy-ness?  A photographer once told me that there was no bad time to take a picture with our amazing prairie light, that the trick was just about taking the time to capture it properly.

       I love how serendipity works.  Within a day or two of this funeral I happened to read an essay written by a mother whose sons had grown and gone away.  She wrote her thoughts of their growing up years.  She had been diligent throughout their childhood building photo albums of all their milestones – birthday parties and sports events, Christmas mornings and Hallowe’en costumes – but now that they were gone she realized the things that she missed most, the memories that stood out, were the moments no one would ever think to take a camera out for.  Her list was very long and included things like lost teddy bear hunts, failed tooth fairy mornings, skinned knees and grass stains, having to share the last ice cream sandwich, homework woes, rained out holidays, a first brush with heartache, the didn’t-make-the-team milkshakes, the fine line of giving them space and still watching over them.  She now lived in a house where the fridge was full, the rooms were empty, and her photo albums didn’t begin to tell the story.

       My brain has sifted through this new perspective; I feel there’s a piece of wisdom in all of this to be learned and lived.  Maybe it’s this:  that no matter how beautiful or poignant the extreme ends of our days and lives are, the stretch in between – whether it be minutes, days, or years – needs to be captured and treasured in its own light.  Don’t think that each moment we have isn’t significant just because it’s hard to focus when the sun is high in the sky.