Author Archives: hafong

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About hafong

Hello! My name is (Leung) Hafong alias Lily Leung. You always say the last name first….that is the Chinese way. That is my partner lurking behind me. Since this is my blog, I won’t mention his name. But this is a rather cool picture. You see me and yet you don’t…sort of the way I feel about myself most of my life. So this blog is a self-exploration, an archeology dig of some sort. My tools…..words of a thousand or so at a sitting. I will try for that.

A Plan and an Early Start

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When the going gets tough, it’s best to have a plan and get at it early. That’s what I did. Knowing that the day gets away on me if I dawdle, I planned to have my morning cup of tea and head off to the community garden before breakfast. It was 8 o’clock when I left. It was a good thing. I was early enough to have a parking spot. There’s a baseball field across the street. A baseball game was starting up. Cars were lining up.

Our little plot is doing quite well after a poor start. I harvested a good number of snowpeas and can now harvest every 2nd day till they give out. The patching Swedish bean patch is filling out. The carrots are looking good. The 2 bottle gourds and purple beans are doing well, climbing up the towers. Hope they will create a show. That’s my main purpose for them. They are also edible. I weeded our plot and my brother’s before watering. When you have the right tool from Lee Valley, weeding is almost effortless.

I was home in an hour. It was only 9 am. I had a leisurely breakfast. It felt like a treat. I felt good enough to wander out to the garden and water my tomato and squash patch. The cherry tree was close at hand so I picked some sour cherries. They’re washed and in the freezer. There’s a never ending list of things to do. The best thing is to do them if I can and not think about it. After I filled all the greenhouse pails with water from the rain catchment tbehind he garage, the sky clouded over. It was eery. It was dark in the house. I felt my heart catch in my throat. I tell myself I’m ok. There is nothing to be scare of. The world is not ending – yet.

I am happy I had a plan today and made an early start. Tomorrow I shall head out to our city allotment garden early to check on the potato beetles and see if there’s peas to harvest. If I do that, I will really enjoy my tea and breakfast after. The clouds have passed. We had a few drops of rain and the sun came out. This is our new norm now almost every day.

Home Alone

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I am in danger of falling off the wagon. I’ll try not to just sit and stare at my screen. I’ll just pretend I’m writing morning pages and just keep tapping, hoping to find words and ideas, hoping to make sense and a post for the 12th day of the Ultimate Blog Challenge. I’m home alone. The guy has gone for a week of sailing with his brother and other like minded guys. He started this sailing venture with another fellow. Then it morphed into a few more boats each time. It’s yearly thing now with ‘regulars’ for over 10 years. They call it the Elbow Run, sailing on Lake Diefenbaker. The village of Elbow is right on the lake. He gets t-shirts made every year with a different design and the logo The Elbow Run.

I do enjoy a short sailing trip but not exactly keen on sailing and not bathing for a week. So I look forward to my yearly week alone. Before, I had Sheba for company but I’ve been winging it by myself for 5 years now. I always thought I could be more free and get more done while he was away. It just dawned on me last year that it wasn’t so. It was an illusion. It was more work since I have to do it all by myself – the gardens, cooking, cleaning and everything else.

I still value this week alone. It’s good to know I can stand on my own two feet. It builds confidence and a backbone. I’m not truly all by myself. There’s time spent with friends and my father. We do our daily coffee. Today I helped him figure out how to work his toaster oven. Tomorrow he’s going to use it to bake some basa fillet for supper. It’s really a pleasure to watch him bounce back from grieving mom and blossom these last while. I feel blest to have this time with him.

I’m about done here. I am a wee bit tired and getting towards bedtime. It’s a day well spent. I baked 6 loaves of bread this morning. It was cool and there was no more bread left in the freezer.

Giving a Damn

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This is a very difficult summer. Am I repeating myself? Should I stop now? It is so true though. No two days are the same. It’s rare to have a stretch of nice steady weather. After a couple hot scorching days, today the sky is grey and heavy. I am waiting for the clouds to drop their load. I am heavy and slow with their weight. It is hard to move and feel upbeat. I am working hard to string the words together for a post for day 10 of the Ultimate Blog Challenge.

I wonder how everyone else is feeling and doing. Does anyone else feel that this is a very strange year? The world seemed to have changed overnight. It does not feel safe or sane. I don’t know what or how to do. I just carry on as best as I know how. I hope I am not just going with the flow but making some difference for the better, no matter how small. It is easy to be complacent, not give a damn. But we really should give a damn.

That’s a good reason to keep showing up and tapping out the words. Many times it is just to make myself feel better. Some times I do glean some wisdom for my efforts. It makes me happy then. Right now I am just talking, trying to ease myself out of this heaviness. I feel like a ton of bricks, like a pregnant elephant. I hope I don’t look like I feel. I changed into an oversized black top just to be sure. We’re going out for supper.

A Moment in Time

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July is a difficult month to show up for a challenge every day. On a hot afternoon, I feel lazy and move like a sloth. It’s tempting to curl up with a book or curl up and snooze. Knowing that a little slothing can start an avalanche of napping, I’m putting an extreme effort here for the 9th day of the Ultimate Blog Challenge.

This morning, knowing that it was going to be a hot day, I took the opportunity to sit with tea on my newly cleaned deck. I let everything fall away and lost myself in my new book from the library. All That Life Can Afford is a easy light read. It’s just the ticket for me. And I was in a perfect moment, in a perfect spot. It was early morning, in morning sunshine, still cool with a slight breeze. I could hear the birds and traffic from our busy street. All was right with me.

One Thing at a Time

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Summertime and the living certainly isn’t easy. That is what I am finding. Everywhere I look, there’s work to be done. Everything needs attention. I was immobilized by overwhelmed. I took a deep breath. I can only do one thing at a time. I focus my attention on the greenhouse. It performed well in the spring gifting us with greens and snowpeas. I was looking forward to a big crop of bitter melons this year. But alas, I got an infestation of aphids that got into the peppers and bitter melons. I rescued the peppers and they are thriving in the raised beds outside. I did not have any luck with the bitter melons with 2 different plantings. I’m waiting for a third set of seeds to germinate.

In the meantime I set to work clearing away the chickweed that was thriving in the beds. I planted the 2 basil seedlings and some of my too many celery seedlings to fill the gaps. The cucumbers are doing well as well as 2 bottle gourds.I have a few tomatoes that are now starting to thrive. The greenhouse will be a full house eventually.

After the Storm

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Our evening of watching the Doctor Blake Mysteries on britbox came to an abrupt end last night around 10:10. With a huge rumble of thunder and the sound of heavy rain, the power went off. There was nothing to do except prepare for bed. The power came back within half an hour but we were ready for bed. It’s good to get a good night’s sleep.

This is what the garden looks like in the morning. The lovage, weighed down with rain is worse than the leaning Tower of Pisa. The rhubarb is loving all the moisture. The borage and cilantro are just growing crazy. I am weighing heavy and feeling limp with the humidity. I’m moving slow but steady. I still went to the gym, though talked more than worked out. I was exercising my social muscles. They’re a bit weak.

In the afternoon, I whisked my father off to the mall for our daily walk and coffee. I was worried about him last night with the power outage. But he was already in bed and asleep. He did not know it was out except in the morning, the clocks were all wrong or flashing. He was able to fix them all. Some were harder than others. Those had to wait till he had breakfast to figure out. Yes, he knows how to use the flashlight on his iPhone and he has regular flashlights. He still has it together. I didn’t need to worry.

My days seem busy. There’s always something to do. I was never Miss Efficient. This past year has been especially difficult. I’ve had a few storms to weathered through. When you are not a spring chicken any more, everything is harder. It has taken alot out of me. But there are more days now that I feel I’m almost ‘normal’ and up to speed. I am grateful and surprised that I’ve been able to put in the gardens. My only disappointment is that the bitter melons are a bust. So the greenhouse is relatively empty except for some cucumbers, a few tomatoes and 2 bottle gourds. It’s still early July. I’m still trying for some bitter melons. And I’m still on the keyboard, tapping away for this 7th day of the Ultimate Blog Challenge.

Summer Time When Living not so Easy

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It’s the 5th day of the UBC and July. I’m counting the days. I used to hate July when I was a child. July meant no school, nothing to do. In small town Saskatchewan, everyone seems to go away to the lake for the summer. Everyone, except us, the Chinese families who have a cafe. Now, in the big city of Saskatoon, everyone still seems to be away at the lake. That is except me and the guy. It’s by choice though.

We did the lake thing for a few years. It was new to me. It’s not that I didn’t like it BUT. We even had our own lake lot and trailer. Though I didn’t hate it, I was not enamoured with lake life. For one thing, it was a bit lonely. I didn’t fit in with the lake community, being a newbie to the scene. There was not a lot outdoor activity. You can only walk so much a day. Besides, the only people walking was me and my dog, Sheba. I didn’t see anyone biking. In fact, I didn’t see many people out and about. Where were they – in their powerful boats and big 4 season cabins?

I guess I’m a city girl even though I was born in a village in China. I remember a time of no electricity, no running water and outdoor toilets. How time flies and how we change. And how I digress. This is not at all what I mean to talk about! I meander and now it is July the 6th. I ran out of energy and failed to finish and post.

8 o’clock Sunday morning and the sun is shining bright. I look up and out the window. Two little birds are perched on the deck railing and one in the hanging basket – a lovely and cheery sight to start the day. My deck is another sight to behold. That was my big project yesterday. I was tired of the dust and dirt, all my seeding trays, containers, potting soil and what have you on it. Then there are our shoes that we never put away/rid off. I set my mind to at least cleaning it. So by gosh and darn, I did it. It is not perfect. I haven’t thrown out anything and it’s not all put away. But it is ordered enough there’s room to sit and to walk around. The big carpet is hosed off and drying a covered raised bed. The sky just clouded over. Oh, summer time when the living is not so easy.

energy

Ain’t No time for the Blues

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July the 4th, the height of summer. The flowers are blooming, the grass is growing and so are the weeds. There aint no time for the blues. They’ll have to come back some other day. The house is a mess. I am also. The gardens are also crying for some attention. I have to pull myself up by the bootstraps and get to work.

It’s not easy though. I was tempted to skip the gym this morning thinking of all the weeding and watering. The temperature gets brutally hot by midmorning. But I thought it best to stick to my routine of going to the gym Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings. It’s good for my body and soul. We had an early start this morning and was done by 9. I set to work watering and weeding the back garden beds. It’s gets the sun all day but early morning it is relatively cool. Next I took the whipper snipper to the grass in front of the raised beds. It was a good effort for the morning. I need to do this more often regularly.

My day is gone. The afternoon was spent with my father. My brother has taken over the care of our father’s yard and garden. Since he’s away for a week, it is my job. So after harvesting some Chinese greens, I gave the garden a few drops of water. Then I whisked dad off to the mall for coffee. We ran into our friends so coffee was longer than usual. We were a bit slow getting to my sister’s for a barbecue. It was a busy day for us all.

Now it is almost bedtime. I need to bring this post to a close. I thought about another day off but 2 days in a row might lead to many more. So by gosh and darn I got here to say good night. Till tomorrow then.

Day 4 of the Ultimate Blog Challenge.

Working on Living

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Yesterday was a hard day. I finished reading What My Father and I Don’t Talk About. It was a great read of 16 writers’ essays on their fathers. However, it left me feeling more melancholic than usual. I would still like to read What My Mother and I Don’t Talk About though we had talked plenty. I am sure that she had not told me everything. Now, I can’t ask her. I am still travelling in the landscape of the bereaved. Some days are harder than others. The heat and humidity made it harder yesterday. I know that life goes on no matter how I feel. The world still spins on its axis. The sun still rise and set each day. And so must I – rise to the challenges of living and then rest when tired.

I took my father out for lunch yesterday. I didn’t realize it was Canada Day but it worked out well. At least I can say that’s how I celebrated our country’s birthday when people ask. I’m not big on celebrations. I am a true humbug. I think that came from being an immigrate child of immigrants. We were poor starting out in this country. We didn’t celebrate birthdays, Christmas, New Year, Easter, and Thanksgiving like everybody else. On Canada Day, we didn’t join in the town’s festivities. So I do think that as a child, I must have felt left out, odd, not belonging, etc. etc.

I tried hard yesterday not to languish in my melancholia. I tackled 2 bags of my mother’s clothes laying dormant on the basement floor. It wasn’t too bad, not worsening my mood. The clothes stirred up some good and happy memories of mom in her younger years. Now, I see her vibrant and happy in my mind’s eye. For me, sorting the 2 bags was a big accomplishment and enough for one day.

Today, I am feeling better. The heat is still on but there’s not the humidity/heaviness weighing me down. There is a breeze. I am okay. I went to the gym this morning. Worked the weights. Worked on skipping techniques. Worked on hula hooping. I can talk and hula at the same time. Now to hula while walking. That’s another thing. So meanwhile I am working on feeling social and feeling good. I’m going to sock it to life.

PS. I am also working on the Ultimate Blog Challenge.

July Writing Challenges

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July 1, another new day, another new month. The morning is getting on and I’ve been tarrying with my morning tea and reading What My Father and I Don’t Talk About. 16 writers talk about their relationships with their father. It’s so speaks to me right now as I navigate my own journey with my father after the passing of my mother in October of last year. It’s been a difficult journey. Perhaps I will write about some of that during this July’s Ultimate Blog Challenge.

I’ve lost track of time and if not reminded of it by a UBC friend, I would have been late coming to the UBC party. I thought June has 31 days. I hope to show up here every day for July with a new post. I’ve participated for quite a few years. I’ve never planned on what I am writing. I just show up at the keyboard and hope for the best. Mostly it is just about my mundane every day life- moans and groans, gardening, arting and what I’ve been reading.

Perhaps I can make some changes, gives some thoughts and do a bit of planning. I am going to keep it easy and simple. There’s more likelihood of me succeeding if I do. I am happy to be in this writing community to learn and share. Happy writing everyone.