A Deer In Headlights

Posted on July 9, 2026 by hafong

Most days I feel like I am treading water, getting nowheres. I vow every night I would do different. When morning comes I fall back into my old self. Later, later, always later. I should vow not to vow no more and just do. I am making good by starting right now, right here in this moment. I made a list last night on things I will do today. They are:

I will clear the dining room table.
Walk to the community garden to water our plot.
Write a post for UBC.
Make doctor’s appointment for August.

I’ve done number 4 and tackling number 3. My mind is not in a great space. We had a thunderstorm and some rain overnight. The good news is that I won’t have to water the gardens. The not so good is that there is a severe weather alert out for a long duration heat event starting tomorrow and lasting well into next week. These heat events are not so good for us older folks. I worry for my father. But we got lucky and have an appointment for him with his respirologist Monday morning.

Meanwhile there’s other storms in the world. The war in Iran continues. President Donald Trump is clearly showing he is not of sound mind at the Nato summit in Turkey, confusing Japan with Iran and Putin for Zelensky. The scariest part is not Trump, but the people who are still allowing him to be president. We are all in danger. I feel as if the whole world is a deer caught in headlights. My apologies for being negative and alarming.

Next on my list is my walk. As you can see, I am leaving the hardest for the last.

Sticking To It

Posted on July 8, 2026 by hafong

It is almost noon on this 8th day of the Ultimate Blog Challenge. I am happy and pleased that I am still here tapping out another post. I did not have time for a morning walk but perhaps later this afternoon. I can walk to the Asian Market for some dried Shiitake mushrooms and then stop in to check on my father. The mushrooms are one of the must ingredients in making sticky rice. I’ve developed a yen for making it with lotus and bamboo leaves.

I’ve gathered all my ingredients – lotus and bamboo leaves, split mung beans, peanuts, Chinese sausage, dried shrimps, glutinous rice. I’m running low on the mushrooms. It is a labour intensive endeavour. It sounds so much fun in theory. I got rather cranky after making the lotus leaf sticky rice. The dry leaves are huge. You have to soak them for at least 2 hours before they are pliable to work with. Then you have to clean them because you don’t know what kind of pond they came from and what kind of things are attached to them. Here’s my photo gallery of the process.

soaking lotus leaves in water for 2 hours

For the hours of struggle, it added to only 6 lotus leaf sticky rice. Enough time has passed since I made them. In my mind it is fun again. It will be easier the second time around. My leaves are prepped. They just have to be thawed.

Thunderstorms

Posted on July 6, 2026 by hafong

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
garden

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

The 4th of July and Communism

Posted on July 4, 2026 by hafong

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.

I Could Just Scream

Posted on July 2, 2026 by hafong

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.

On Words and Challenges

Posted on July 1, 2026 by hafong

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 Good Day

Posted on May 19, 2026 by hafong

A sun shiny May 19th. It’s 11:30 and 11℃ out. The greenhouse is 26.6℃ with vents and door opened. It goes to show how powerful the sun is. It has powered me to trim the grass in the back and part of the front yard by 10:00. The battery on the trimmer ran out so I must wait for it to recharge before I can finish. It might be tomorrow. I hope to plant the kohlrabi in the front raised bed later on in the day.

I could not bear to read the two Heathers posts this morning. The corruption that is coming from Trump and his merry men are too horrifying. You may wonder why I am so taken up with all this since the U.S. is not my country. I wonder myself. It took awhile for me to recognize that it reminds me of the times I’ve felt completely, devastatingly helpless. And this is not just a U.S. problem. It touches us all. We are all connected.

Helplessness does not serve me. Neither does anger. And so I tap on the keyboard, plant my kohlrabi and take my father out for coffee. Neither of those things are easy but I flex my fingers and move them across the keyboard. I dig 14 holes in the raised bed and plop a kohlrabi in each one and fill with dirt. Then collar each with a bottom cut out yogurt container. After that I loaded my father and his wheelchair in the car and headed out to the mall for our coffee. A friend joined us after and we shared a meaningful conversation.

It is a good day. There’s dark clouds overhead. Heaven is trying to rain again.

Crossing the Finish Line

Posted on April 30, 2026 by hafong

April 30th and the last day of the Ultimate Blog Challenge. I am disappointed with the low participation. It is always more fun with more people. I haven’t shown up every day myself but I am proud that I have pulled up my socks for the last half. When I did a count, I missed 4 days. That is not bad, 4 days out of 30.

What I’ve learned on this round is not to get distracted by the low attendance. I focused on just writing my best each day on something that is important to me. I am inspired to show up by my fellow bloggers who showed up daily to cross the finish line. It is great satisfaction to finish what I’ve started. I was tempted daily to just drop out because of lack of interest. But then I had a second thought. I am interested. That’s all that is needed. The surprising thing is I have had lots of traffic on my site these last few months. Not that I am getting lots of comments or likes. It could be just a computer glitch. Even so, it is still very satisfying.

I am not sure what I will do here after April. I still have my love of words. I still love to see how the letters, words and sentences marach across the screen. I still need to complain and bitch about my lot. This is still a meditation exercise for me. So in all probability, you will still hear from me.

Wordless Wednesday – Japan and Comfort Women

Posted on April 29, 2026 by hafong

My second last post for the Ultimate Blog Challenge. I’m taking advantage of Wordless Wednesday for a quick short post. The photo is of a Japanese restaurant in my neighbourhood. I love Japanese food and many things Japanese. I’ve painted many geishas. You would know that if you follow me on Instagram. The YouTube link is of a documentary made by The National Film Board. I found the documentary on Prime while searching for the movie E. T. In these days of the Epstein Files, I thought it was appropriate. For some things, apologies and compensations cannot wholly heal the damage.

“The Apology follows the personal journeys of three former “comfort women” who were among the 200,000 girls and young women kidnapped and forced into military sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II. Some 70 years after their imprisonment in so-called “comfort stations”, the three “grandmothers—Grandma Gil in South Korea, Grandma Cao in China, and Grandma Adela in the Philippines—face their twilight years in fading health. After decades of living in silence and shame about their past, they know that time is running out to give a first-hand account of the truth and ensure that this horrific chapter of history is not forgotten. Whether they are seeking a formal apology from the Japanese government or summoning the courage to finally share their secret with loved ones, their resolve moves them forward as they seize this last chance to set future generations on a course for reconciliation, healing, and justice.“

Sunshine and Stirrings

Posted on April 28, 2026 by hafong

It’s a sunshine and lollypops kind of a morning. I feel faint stirrings of wanting to clean the yard of last year’s old growth and debris. I thought better of it. There’s snow on the ground. It’s early and a bit cool for that kind of undertaking. But faint stirring are good. It means I’m still alive and feeling. I saw that my snowdrops are up. They’re a little crushed by the snow but still beautiful to see.

I put in a bit of time in the greenhouse yesterday. I weeded and propped up the snow peas with bamboo sticks. They’re getting gangly and sprawly. It’s not my favourite thing to do. To be honest, I can’t really say I love gardening. It is hard and dirty work. I guess I do get some satisfaction at the end of the chore/season. It is nice to see a neat weed-free bed of greens. In a few weeks, I hope to harvest some lettuce and spinach for a salad or two.

It’s April 28th. Just a couple more days of the Ultimate Blog Challenge. At this moment, I can’t say that I really love writing either. But it is satisfying to see the letters and words march across the screen, forming a sentence and a post. That is the thing, isn’t it? Getting a little satisfaction is worth a little effort.

onethousandandtwo

Looking at Infinity

Tag Archives: the Ultimate Blog Challenge