Another sunny 6 o’clock wakening this morning. It’s a good reason to sing Hallelujah! It looks like it could be another hot day and I don’t know what else. We had a very loud thunderstorm last night. It rumbled, rolled and echoed above the gunfire of the Dillinger movie we were watching. I did not check until it and the movie were over. By then, everything looked wet, peaceful and fresh. No damage in the garden that I could see.
Thunderstorms are unpredictable. The one that missed us a few days ago caused quite a bit of damage at our allotment garden. Hope that the storm missed it last night.
sign at entrance to the allotment gardencornpeaspotatoesonionsbeets
Dear reader, I’ve often arrive here late and not tending to your comments. So sorry. Know that I appreciate you. I’ve been experiencing my own personal thunderstorms since my mother passed almost 2 years ago. I’ve been feeling somewhat overwhelmed by all of life. Now, I have turned the corner. I am finding life very challenging. Peace is hard to come by. But at the same time life is very interesting and beautiful. There’s still so much to learn. It is like the garden, always changing, always growing. I will do the same – change and grow with it.
Lovage, goji berry, egyptian walking onions, winter garlic on right hand side
I woke up to sun at 6 am this July 5th. The first sunny morning all summber. I smiled and the garden smiled. My artic rose is in bloom and so is a peony. In the greenhouse the bitter melons are coming into fruit. I have 3 little ones nodding their little heads. I’ve tagged them so I can readily find them.
It is heating up and I am sweating from trimming the grass and weeds. I am not finished. I’m taking a break as the string trimmer ran out of string. I will have to wind another spool. I am learning to love this tool as it saves me from labourous digging of all those creeping bellflowers. No matter how deep you dig, they keep coming back. Now I am whacking them out at dirt level.
Yesterday, I went to tackle our community garden plot. I was happy to see that my sister was already there and did the weeding and was ready to water it. Two less jobs for me! I staked the two rows of snow peas with bamboo. That was plenty enough work in the heat. Our plot looks pretty good. So does my brother’s right next to ours. We take turns doing the watering.
my sister’s and mine plotmy brother’s plot
It is summer time. I haven’t found it easy living like the song suggests. But then I haven’t found easy living in other seasons either. There’s always work, work and more work. But would I have it any other way? I best mosey along before I talk myself into the blues. The battery is charged up and the spool is threaded for more whipping up grass and weeds. I am also charged up.
On this 4th of July and the 250th birthday of the United States, I wonder how my American friends and relatives are celebrating this Independence Day. I read the words spoken by Donald J. Trump on this day.
“Yet, as we approach this magnificent anniversary,” he said, “we see our American identity under a renewed attack a generation after we fought and won the Cold War against the menace of communism. There is now a resurgence of the communist menace in our land, including from newcomers to our country who embrace ideas totally opposed to our way of life and our great success.”
It is hard to feel that all lives matter in the States, no matter how many people echo that sentiment. I wonder why this fear of communism by the West here. Where is this fear coming from and for what purpose. Truth and morality are hard to find. So much false news everywhere. I found this definition of communism.
“Communism is a political and economic ideology that advocates for a classless, stateless society based on the public or communal ownership of all property and major industries. It aims to eliminate private ownership entirely, ensuring wealth is distributed among citizens equally or strictly based on individual need. “
To me it sounds like a good thing. By definition, I don’t think there’s any country that has achieved that state. The wealth is certainly not equally distributed in any country. So much poverty and homelessness. I wonder how many shelters and mouths could be fed by the cost of the Iran war.
Enough of wondering the whys and wherefores. I am having a busy day in the garden growing food. I spent a good hour, checking, cleaning and pruning my cabbages and broccoli. I found a few more white cabbage butterfly eggs and two caterpillars. The plants are looking much better with a haircut. There was too much foliage and the leaves were so big. I went on to trim the bed of tomatoes. Now everybody has room to breathe.
It’s hard to stop once I got started in the garden. I went on to harvest some snow peas and haspkap berries. Seeing how big the rhubarb and sprawly the goji berry bush were, I harvested them, too. Now I am sipping on tea made from the goji berry leaves.
There’s more work yet. I better end this post. My next stop is at the community garden to weed, stake up the snow peas and water. I had thought the thunderstorm missed us. I was wrong. No storm right here but our allotment garden got hit. The news is good. It looks recoverable.
It’s July the third and the third day of the Ultimate Blog Challenge. I am still here. We are having more sunshine today though I still woke up in darkness this morning. Yesterday’s thunderstorm warning came to naught. There’s a 50% of rain for this evening. For now I can bask a little in the sun.
It was hard work this morning washing out white cabbage butterfly eggs off my broccoli and cabbage plants. The whole bed was heavily infested with them though they are under heavy netting. Perhaps we did not do it soon enough. Researching, I found that soapy water can kill the eggs. I will do a daily morning and evening check for them. I did find 2 caterpillars. I feel a bit discouraged with this year’s strange weather, white cabbage butterflies, eggs and caterpillars. My bed of peppers have survived the leafroller caterpillars. But with our cloudy cool weather, they are not big nor robust. Whether they will come to fruit is questionable. Oh the joy of growing food.
It’s 6 pm and no rain yet. There’s a severe thunderstorm warning. We did reached a high of 25℃ today. Anything is possible. Tomorrow is the fourth of July. I wonder what fireworks are coming from our southern U.S. neighbour. This morning I read that a Catholic nun was arrested by ICE while she was walking to attend mass at a church in Texas. Yesterday Major Watson was arrested for calling for Trump’s impeachment. I am heartened that courage and morality are still here. As Heather Delaney says, This is why I still have hope. And you should, too. See you tomorrow.
I woke up to another cloudy day with promises of more rain. No rain has manifested yet but there is a warning of a severe thunderstorm. I feel like screaming in the moment but I will reserve it for later. I am bushed from the activities of daily living. I need to reserve my energy to take my father out for an afternoon coffee with our friends at the mall. First breathe and a few minutes of rest. I will come back later and let loose.
So I am back from coffee. Now I can natter about there’s no end of things to do when you decide to grow most of your own food. There’s the planning, the ordering of seeds, the starting of them and nuturing of them into healthy seedlings and planting them into the soil wherever that might be. For us there’s the small greenhouse, 6 raised wicking beds outside plus the conventional garden. Then there’s our city allotment garden which is 25 x 40 feet. We can grow a year’s supply of potatoes, beans, peas, beets and carrots. We haven’t been too successful with corn but we do get a small crop. Then I have a small community garden plot which I share with my sister.
It’s alot of garden. It’s alot of work. There’s the maintenance of watering, weeding, harvesting, and storing. Not only that, you have to cook and eat them. I get tired and cranky. We’ve had weeks and weeks of clouds of rain. I haven’t seen the sun for many a days. I am getting very moody. Today I could just scream and scream. But I didn’t.
I am still grateful for many things. With the rains, I haven’t had to water the gardens. Our rain catchments are all full. We won’t get a large water bill. The electric bill is $0 this month due to our solar panels. And there is a $54 surplus despite all the cloudy days. I had a nice coffee with my father and friends at the mall this afternoon. And this post is written for day 2 of the Ultimate Blog Challenge. No scream needed this day.
July 1, Canada Day and the first day of the Ultimate Blog Challenge. My goal is to show up every day in July with a new post. I’m not a new comer to this challenge. As usual I have no planned theme for my writing. I have no business or service to promote. I write because I love words. They are powerful and magical. They can make or break you. So I am careful with my words. Once said, you cannot unsay them. Say the wrong word(s), good will and friendships can be severed, sometimes permanently.
I will try to tread lightly and carefully through July. These are scary and unbelievable times in the USA and the world. I’ve been reading Heather Cox Richardson and Heather Delaney Reese on the political scenes every morning for awhile now. I am surprised at how I am captured by politics as I was never that interested before. I am appalled at how out right corrupt our world is. I am ashamed that I haven’t been paying attention. We should all be paying attention. What happens to one, happens to all. We are all interconnected.
I was born in China during the times of Mao. I don’t know too much about the politics of my birth country except that it is communist and it is considered very bad and dreaded here in the West. I left when I was 6 years old. I don’t remember much but I do have some memories. I remember standing in line with my mother at the market with pieces of paper to buy meat, sugar, etc. Everything was rationed. You were allowed so much and you give so much to the government. I remember hearing the sound of the firing squad. People get killed speaking ill of the government. My mother had to be a witness at one. She said she couldn’t look, pretended and looked at the ground.
With what’s happening in the world today, I am reminded that we are back in those times again. I cannot help but feel sad and bad at all the corruption, injustices and killings. I am remembering my maternal grandmother thrown in jail by Mao and his gang. They took her in place of my grandfather who escaped to Hong Kong. She said heaven saved her and she learned to write her name in jail. Seems ironic now that she didn’t know how to write her name. My grandfather was the principal and mayor of their village. But they were not land owners.
I am, in essence, writing these words for my grandmother and mother in heaven. Hallowed be their names.
A cool rainy Sunday, June 21. The moisture is always a welcome. There’s too much cool and clouds this spring and summer. This is the year like no other in so many ways. First, in the unpredictable weather patterns. Second, in world events, mostly in the United States and the Middle East. I feel slightly unhinged. Real life and age are catching up with me. There are no safe harbours and there is no escape. I must face the music. There is no one I want to talk to about this. So here I am, tapping for my health and sanity.
Once upon a time, there was my mother. Her being there was enough. My world now feels a little wobbly without her. It shows that everyone and everything makes a difference in our lives. It’s only after they’re gone that we notice how and what a big difference they make. I am now living in that awareness. It is not an easy thing. Sometimes I like to close my eyes and just drift away. Everything is a huge effort but I do it and not say I will try. Trying is like hoping. It’s like the saying on a hope and a prayer. It conveys a slight chance of succeeding. I don’t like that.
Once upon a time, not too many years ago, I was full of optimism and energy. I was looking forward to the morning the night before so that I could start doing. I was excited about cross country skiing. I was going out every morning all winter, no matter the temperature. It was so invigorating and so much fun even though I wasn’t very good at it. Now my skis are gathering dust. I am not so excited about mornings. This summer they are mostly cool and cloudy. There is no sun rising at 5ish to wake me up.
Once upon a time, I felt young and robust. Now I feel that those times are past. Though my head doesn’t feel ancient, my body begs to be different. My hands are painful, not just stiff, from morning to night. My hips are grumbling, too. I’m not a cry baby, a complainer. Really, I’m not. I’m just remembering how things used to be, mourning loss youth, opportunities and missing my mother. I am working on how to make this life easier and better. It’s a challenge, I know. That makes it interesting and worthwhile. I am not without hope and prayers. I still dream.
After a couple of sunny days, it’s back to clouds again. I am wary that I won’t get swept under them also. Sometimes it is hard to stand your ground. It’s hard to put on a brave face, never mind pasting on a smile. I’m a born melancholy baby. Maybe I don’t need to pretend but I won’t let it all hang out either.
I’m learning to live with my creeping bellflowers. I just did some minor maintenance in the front yard this morning. Keeping up and on top of things can kill you. I’m looking at the big picture and trying not to focus on every little thing. The leaf rollers are a different matter. Last year it was aphids. I don’t know which is worse. These caterpillars are attacking my pepper plants, chewing them up. I’ve been picking them off and squishing them daily. If I don’t, I might have any pepper plants left. This morning I threw a crop cover over them to see if that would help.
I do have some good news. Two of my bitter melons have a bloom each. The garden is doing well despite our strange weather this year. The lettuce is finished in the greenhouse but I am harvesting the new crop in the raised bed outside. The French Breakfast radishes are a beautiful and delicious addition for our salads. Things are not growing as they used to but they’re still growing and providing food for the table. It’s a reminder for myself to adjust and adapt to what is here as best as I can. And never lose hope and belief that everything still matters.
Everything still matters and even more so than ever. I can’t afford to get distracted by all the corruption that is happening down south by Donald Trump and his merry crew. It bothers me so much because it reminds me of what helplessness feels like. I’ve been in that place a few times in this life. It feels very bad when you know things are not correct but you can’t do anything about it. It is the worst kind of helplessness. Even so, it is the best time and opportunity to put your best foot forward. I have to remember what Lao Tzu said. A journey of a thousand mile starts with a single step.
They weren’t kidding when they say that life is messy and hard. Please don’t ask me who the theyare. I do not know but I do trust them. It is the middle of June. It is sunny and warm after a couple of weeks of cool cloudy and rainy weather. It felt like so many rainy days but the gardens are still very dry. I was surprised by it when I went to water our community garden plot yesterday. I hadn’t planned on weeding since I did it the week before. I had on my good shoes. There were so many weeds. The soil was so dry that I needn’t worry about wrecking them. I charged in, weeded and then watered. The carrot rows were hard to weed as they and the weeds looked the same. I thought I better leave them alone for now.
This morning I tackled the home front and back with the whipper snipper. It took a couple of hours but both the front and back yards look pretty good now. I was merciless with the creeping bellflowers. It’s much easier to whip rather than dig them out.
My head is a bit clearer with the clearing of the yard. Now I need to do the same for inside of the house. I am once again, hopelessly, drowning in paper clutter. I have no will power and no discipline to deal with them in a timely manner. I’m always scrambling and searching for things I need at the last minute. But at least I did something right today. I didn’t panic or scramble. I phoned for help and got it. It was much better than darting off in person in my car. I wasn’t sure I would get help without making an appointment. I was reluctant to phone because of my hearing impairment. I did fine. I dealt with my issue. I’ve gained confidence in my hearing ability.
Now I’m relaxing with a cup of black decaf and some sourdough bread. I need to just breathe and slow down and empty my head. There’s no need to fill it with useless information. The world is a bit mad right now. I don’t have to make sense of what is going on. I don’t have to join the circus. Just sit and stay.
I feel as if I’ve lost a lot of my mojos the last couple of years. I remember my mother telling me that at a certain age, she felt a change in the way she felt. With me, the change came with the passing of my mother. So here I am now, a year and 7 months since she’s left. I don’t feel pleasure in the things I used to do. After many years I’ve abandoned #the100dayproject and the Daisy Yellow Index Card a Day challenges. There’s not much pleasure in sharing photos either like I used to. I wonder where it all went.
Looking through my photo library, I see that I used to cook and bake frequently. Now it feels like so much work. Stirfry lunches are a rarity. My baking has been only my usual 6 loaves of bread. No muffins or cookies. Lately I’ve made a rhubarb cake and a sourdough loaf. I’m trying to tease the baking pleasure back into me. I think it is working. I’ve started 2 sourdough loaves this morning. One is with raisins. The other is with chia seeds. It is and isn’t alot of work. The thing is once you start something, you have to finish. That’s how I tease myself into getting things done.
Another thing I have to remember is if something grabs me, just go for it if I can. Otherwise the opportunity might not come again. For instance, in 2020, we had lost our fur baby, Sheba in May. It was a huge loss. In our grief, we did what we could to keep busy. We got this idea of building a greenhouse and grabbed onto it. The two spruce trees came down quickly and the greenhouse got built by late fall. I was excited to start planting in March. Loss propelled me into an exciting and meaningful project.
Life is a circle. This spring I didn’t feel too much zest for planting. But because I’m a seasoned gardener, I did it out of habit anyways. It still works even when I’m not enthused. Things do not have to be perfect or as good as before. It’s ok just by putting in an effort. Now I will have to close up shop. It’s getting into evening. I will have to prep my sourdough to chill overnight for baking tomorrow.
onethousandandtwo 