epic knitting

Last week, during the long weekend, I finished all of the squares for the patchwork blanket.


I seamed them all together — I had decided to knit individual large squares, rather than knit every little square on, so that I could get a specific grain on the pattern, which in retrospect was extraordinarily prissy and stupid and I don't want to talk about it any more — remember how I said the ends would be epic?


I wasn't kidding.

I finished off one or two of the large squares — which is something — but then I got extraordinarily bored and needed pre-bedtime knitting, so I decided to pick up the stitches for the edging instead and knit on that.


It's going a little slowly. Each side has around 145 stitches in it — I wasn't terribly fussy about how many I picked up — so it's not fast knitting by means. Also, the longest circular needle I had was 80cm, so the blanket is all bunched up and I can't spread it out to show you what it looks like. Nor is it commute-friendly knitting because, while it is sufficiently brainless, I generally don't want to haul 144 teeny mitred squares on the streetcar with me. So it's at-home knitting, exclusively, which is slowing it down even more.

And by the time I finish, I will still need to weave in the ends.

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I also finished the Aeolian shawl, which Ravelry tells me I've been working on since July 12, 2010. Granted, it was never meant to be a fast knit; I had wanted a challenge and Estonian lace shawls don't tend to be transit knitting (although I made an exception last week), but still. It's a well-travelled shawl, too: I brought it to Las Vegas and Iceland (where I did not knit on it once. I may have knit a row on the plane — but really, only one).


It wasn't just the knitting that was epic, though. I finished it on Saturday — in the end, it took me over an hour to cast off. We were at a friend's house, and the only thing big enough and flat enough for blocking in my house right now is the bed, so I decided to block it on Sunday morning.

However, I slept in a little, and by the time I had soaked the shawl and had had breakfast, a friend had come over to help with the renovations. I didn't want to leave him to work while I fiddled with a shawl, so I left it soaking in the Eucalan and went to paint, planning to block it later. But then Pd pointed out that it wasn't going to have a chance to dry properly before bed if I did it after work, so I woke up early this morning, and:


It took me an hour. I was kind of late for work. It's not like I could just stop. I even ran out of T-pins, and had to dig into my sewing kit for the dressmakers' pins. Each point had five pin points:


... which I didn't even stretch out properly; some of them overlap each other. You see how the nice rounded bays between the main points are bunched up instead of laying flat, as they're supposed to. I couldn't stretch it out any more, though; the thing has taken over the whole bed.


The yarn is Fleece Artist Saldanha, a limited edition yarn I got at the Frolic and, as always with Fleece Artist, I have no clue what the colourway is. Whatever it is, I don't think they make it any more; none of their 2011 colourways have this much pink in them. I have no idea how big it is, exactly; just that it's gigantic (obviously). I think I love it. Everything hinges on the blocking at this point.

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And now, I have no knitting. This is so weird. I underestimated how long it would take me to finish all the squares for the blanket — or maybe I just didn't think it through. But I am supposed to be knitting from stash, exclusively, and it's been put away because of the renovations. Also, I don't have a pattern lined up, and the needles are underneath a drop sheet right now. I had been knitting on a laceweight Whispy Cardigan (Rav link) until recently, but that's been finished, too. Actually, I'm wearing it right now — I finally got around to blocking it last night, but it didn't dry completely, so for the first part of the day I've been walking around smelling like eucalyptus-scented wet wool. Nice.

gardening for food, take two

Argh. It turns out that I am either sensitive or mildly allergic to something in the garden; we don't know what. I did a lot of work in the garden this weekend — not just the flowers, but the herbs as well, and more to the point, there was a lot of weeding and pruning — so it could conceivably be anything. (Except tulips. Or, actually, herbs, because I touch those on a regular basis.) I noticed that I had been spouting random little red bits on my arms since Sunday, which I dismissed because I'd been pricked by several rose thorns, so I thought they were just scratches, like small cat scratches. But no. We realised last night that it had escalated to a minor rash. It's mostly on my right arm, so it is probably from something that I brushed against while pruning — I had been wearing gloves, but no sleeves — which means it could be the roses. Or the forsythia. Or the spirea. Or the weird unnamed shrub thing under the roses. Or the rhubarb leaves. Or even the lavender.

Seriously. There was a lot of gardening there.


More herbs! I picked up a bunch of seedlings for the herb pot and garden before the weekend. Front row: Greek oregano from the big box store, "Dark Opal" basil and chocolate mint from Urban Harvest — the mint was an impulse buy; I don't usually use mint but it smells exactly like my favourite kind of fundraising chocolate, so how could I not? Second row: rosemary and lemon thyme, again from a box store, and Genovese basil, again from Urban Harvest. And the strawberry pot, of course, with its giant garden sage.

There should also be a small-leaf basil hiding in there somewhere.


The chocolate mint and some of the small-leaf basil went into the herb pot, which will remain outdoors for the summer. Hopefully it will last. I learned recently that basil is an annual in pretty much all of Canada, so I feel less bad about its ignominious demise, but I'd still like to make an effort. I don't think the thyme is coming back, though. Ever.

The rest of the herbs went into the garden. I'm hoping that the lemon thyme and oregano will establish themselves as ground cover (enough, maybe, that I'll be able to steal some and propagate them back into the herb pot for winter). The weather has obliged by dumping a lot of rain on us since Saturday, so at least I know the roots are nice and wet.


I also transplanted the two tomato seedlings that sprouted. They don't look nearly as good as this right now. The cooler weather and lack of sun this week is probably not doing them any favours.

And finally, this is why I've been trying to be diligent about harvesting the rhubarb: its giant leaves were stealing sunlight from these:


Strawberries! With blossoms! A lot of them, even! Well, it seems like a lot to us, anyway — last year we didn't even get one. (We got maybe half. It wasn't really fully formed.) They were planted right in front of the rhubarb patch — it's the sunniest place in the whole back yard — and now some of the bigger rhubarb leaves have started to shade the plants (you can sort of see it in the picture), so I've been picking them off. I'm not fond of rhubarb, but I do like strawberries. I know my priorities.

Pd and I aren't counting our berries before they're berries, though. We have some rapacious squirrels in the neighbourhood, and it's conceivable that they might beat us to them. One of them chewed through our window screen in two places this weekend, trying to get in to the kitchen. (We think it was lured by the scent of the banana loaf I was baking.) Walking into the kitchen to find a rat-with-a-bushy-tail hanging upside down on your window screen, with bared teeth and crazed eyes, is kind of terrifying, let me tell you. And the cats were useless; completely uninterested. Which is probably a good thing, in hindsight — they probably would have gotten beaten up.

flower garden update

Even though it's sunny today (at least, it is right now; that might change), it's still much too cold, so here: have another tulip picture:


These are definitely the last, but also, I think, the best. They're called "Carnival de Rio," and are my favourite so far — of course, I've said that about each and every cultivar this spring. What can I say; I'm fickle. But these are lovely. (And I particularly love the tiny, dwarf tulips that sometimes appear, like a conjoined twin. So cute!) They're even taller than the Banja Luka tulips, and have less of a that garish, plastic sheen. And they keep closed a bit better; their shape is more tulip-y.


Sadly, the (brief) heavy rainstorms that came through on Monday pretty much destroyed their petals, so even though they're still around in my garden, there will be no more pictures. I don't expect them to last more than another week.

But! This means that all of the bulbs I planted last October bloomed (!), and bodes very well for next year, when I shall be able to execute my plan for a tulip-filled strip on the side of the yard. It makes next year's plan reasonably easy — essentially, we just need to do more of the same.
...
I don't talk much about the flowers in the garden because I'm not always sure of what's there — for example, there are some odd spikey things that Pd and I think are lilies, but could also be weeds. (When we went for a walk, we kept looking at other people's gardens for similar plants, and then trying to evaluate whether or not they were placed deliberately — does this particular gardener look like he knew what he was doing? Or is that a random weed growing there? It turned out to be about 50/50, which honestly was less than helpful. But we think the odds are tipping towards proper lilies.) Anyway, though, I can report that the trillium are growing again, which makes me very happy:


They were a little later this year, because of the cooler weather, but it's always such a lovely surprise when I find them — an unexpected gift. (Although really, I don't know what could happen to them, in the interim — they are so wedged in the fence that they are pretty much protected from me, wild animals, elements — everything.)

The calla lily, too, is doing amazingly well:


Here is what it looked like two weeks ago, when I transplanted it outside (it was started indoors). There's a rough size comparison if you look at the wooden ID stake at the back.


(It was bent that way because I was negligent about constantly turning it while starting it inside, and it tilted, naturally, towards the sun. It straightened up fairly quickly, though.)

It is occupying the spot by the door that formerly housed one of the peonies — did I mention that I lost one? The other is doing reasonably well, I think, even though it's very small so I'm not sure if there will be any flowers this year. The other, though, never got much further than the bud stage, which was disappointing as it had been the first of the two to bud. It became reasonably clear that it wasn't viable when the other started leafing and this one just ... lay there, so I pulled it out for the calla lily. (it was in a nice, sunny spot — prime real estate. You can see that the lily loves it.) It looks like the root may have rotted. I don't know what I could have done to prevent that — I didn't water it any more than Mother Nature did — but, considering how late I left it and how little I know of what I'm doing, one out of two isn't bad.

There are also two other calla lilies — another started indoors, which was transplanted out at the same time, and a bulb planted three or four weeks ago. The bulb has not broken ground yet, which is not entirely surprising considering the weather, but I'm keeping an eye out. The other transplant is also doing well, if not gangbusters like this one; it's in a slightly shadier and wetter spot.

I really do feel like this year I have a better grasp of what I'm doing — but it's still early days yet. Plenty of time to flail.

photoblog: victoria day weekend

Our long weekend: rebuilding a room; stopping to play with flowers; knitting for the future; long walks on the beach; and relaxing with my love.










How was yours?

weekend, part 2

What's sillier, do you think — having a standalone post labelled "weekend, part 1," or posting about the past weekend just over 24 hours before the next one?

Oh well. Here's the next instalment of tulips to brighten up the day (although these particular ones have raindrops on them — unavoidable, this week):


This may be the last of them, I'm afraid. The white and crimson one at the back is a "Carnival de Rio," which blooms in late spring (check!) and is the last of the tulips in the garden. They've been blooming but not opening since the weekend. The "Banja Luca" tulips were completely decimated by the rain — I think they opened and the heavy raindrops started weighing down the petals, so they've been dropping left, right and centre. No other flowers have come up yet, but I have high hopes for the gladiolas and calla lilies in a month or so. That is, if they haven't drowned.

And that's it for the gardening. I did no work last weekend — too cold and too drizzly. But the lawn does look green thanks to all of the rain. Now if we could get some sun before my herbs die of chill, that would be lovely.

The rest of the weekend, we finished the teardown and started building the sunroom back up. Pd and his brother laid the subfloor:


It now looks like this:


I know it looks kind of the same, but it feels more solid, somehow. We've bought the new flooring (laminate) already, but we're going to finish putting up the drywall before laying it.

I helped by using prying all of the nails from the old vapour barrier out of the frame. (This is both more and less strenuous than it sounds.) I wasn't allowed to stay for the actual flooring, though, because of the dust. Still, it's more physical labour than I was allowed last time, so that's something.

Here's something cool, that we unearthed during the teardown:


I don't know if I've ever mentioned it before, but the sunroom is actually a second-floor addition. There's nothing but air below it (in fact, it is right over the barbecue in the backyard). This is where the addition joins up with the original house, which apparently was once white brick. (It still is, at the front.)

I love seeing the original bits of the house peek through. It's an old house, built around the 1920s, and while I think the hardwood and some of the walls are original, a lot of it has been "updated" (in particular, the kitchen and bathroom — typical, isn't it? — and the former ceilings, also known as the DEATHTRAP!.). There aren't a lot of interesting or quirky architectural features, but it's still nice to see a bit of what used to be — kind of a sneak peek behind the curtain, as it were.

weekend, part 1

It was our anniversary this weekend, so Pd and I decided to treat ourselves and bought some nice, fat lobster tails to experiment with. Or rather, I wanted to experiment and he kindly indulged me.


I wanted to make a lobster risotto. (Actually, I wanted to make that or learn how to butter poach a lobster; I gave Pd the choice and he chose the risotto.) I've made my go-to mushroom cauliflower risotto a lot this winter, and I've gotten very comfortable with the ins-and-outs of it, so I thought it was time to vary it a little.

It was the first time I'd ever made lobster (or pieces thereof), actually. I've never been entirely comfortable with cooking live lobsters — not so much the slow death bit (I figure they're somewhat like frogs; there's a vague awareness of is it getting hotter in here?, and then merciful coma and death), but — what if they crawl out of the sink — or the pot, for that matter — and get away? And someone told me once that you're supposed to pierce the head or the bladder or something before you put it into the pot, but — how do you tell where that is? (Granted: it would probably help to remember the specific organ in question, as I'm fairly sure the head and the bladder are not in the same place.) And anyway, I'm not comfortable with that, either; killing via water is one thing, but sticking a sharp object lengthwise through a still-living thing is something else.

I know that there's a philosophy that one shouldn't eat what one isn't comfortable killing. I say hogwash. I have no illusions that the animals we eat have the same cute-puppy eyes as the animals we don't — someone ate my adopted pet bunny when I was five years old; when this happens and the adults treat it as an unfortunate oversight, you tend to lose that particular illusion rather quickly — but I'm kind of a klutz and I think it would be best for both me and the animal that I not be involved in its demise.

All that being said, the risotto was very good, and I did not have to kill anything that wasn't already dead — except the chives, and they had it coming.


Next: more renovations! Yay!

gardening for me (and also maybe some other people)

And ... as promised, the first harvest of the season:


It seems a bit early to be harvesting anything (especially since my brain, for some reason, still insists on thinking that it's April), but the rhubarb that we pulled was undeniably ready: thick and very bright red. I got a good half-dozen last night, and I'm going to pull a few more later this weekend for another friend.

I'm glad that I have friends who like rhubarb. I don't, actually, and it seems such a waste to not harvest it.

I cut the yellow tulips last night, too. It's always hard for me to do that — I know that other gardeners grow flowers specifically to be cut, but I just can't get away from the thought that, if I cut them, they won't be growing any more. (I am hoping a plethora of gladiolas and peonies will help with this.) It's especially hard with tulips, because there's only one per stem and they only last for so long.

But the thing is, I realised that the ones I cut — from the backyard — were half-hidden behind other plants (like the raging daylilies), and anyway, I couldn't enjoy them most of the time — we don't go out into our backyard very often, and even though our kitchen sink overlooks it, it's usually dark when I'm doing dishes or glancing idly out. Their being outside was not contributing much, if anything, to my enjoyment of the garden — whereas I do believe they look absolutely adorable on my dining table:


I've just got the stems, leaving the foliage to gather nutrients for the bulb so that they'll recur next year. (The previous owner planted these, so I've got good reason to believe them to be annuals.) I think it's a good compromise. After all, what's the point of gardening if I don't enjoy the flowers?
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I need to make a decision as to how I'm going to map out the garden soon. I need to figure out a way to keep track of where the tulips are, and which cultivars, so that I don't accidentally dig naturalizing bulbs up as I'm planting more in October. (And I will definitely be planting more.) There's two possibilities: one, I draw a map in my little gardening notebook. Or, I stick little wooden tags in the ground — the downside to that, of course, is that they will be terribly obvious (especially after the foliage dies back). On the other hand, it's much more precise — the map would only give me a vague-ish sort of idea.

(Of course, the two are not mutually exclusive, and I would be paranoid in any case about losing the tags, so really I suppose it's either the map and the tags, or just the map alone.)

Thoughts, anyone?

another hit of spring, and an anticipated harvest

It looks like it's overcast outside again, even though it's so nice and warm, so here's another tulip-y pick-me-up:


These are the "Banja Luka" tulips, which really do look this vibrant and plastic-like (especially in the sun). They tower a good five or six inches over the "Giuseppe Verdi" tulips which, alas, are done for the year. I will have to deadhead them this weekend. What I like most about the "Banja Luka," besides their happy colour, is the fact that they open almost like teacup roses in the bright sun (as in this picture).

This morning it was cooler and overcast, and they had closed up into the proper tulip shape.


This is the side of the laneway that I am hoping to fill with naturalized tulips over the course of the next few years. The tulips in the background, the plain red ones, are remnants from the previous owner. (I had thought we had yellow ones, but those seem to be in the backyard only.) The green is not grass; it's chives. Of course it is.

After the "Banja Luka" there's just one more wave of tulip cultivar to go — I forget the name, but I think they have pale edges, and are slightly ruffled like parrot tulips. They've started to bud, but none have opened yet. Hopefully, by the time they're done, the rest of the garden will have caught up — things are coming back, and we've got some lovely violets and periwinkle (I especially adore the latter), but there's nothing tall and the tulips kind of stick out like a sore thumb. I'm thinking of removing them from the main yard entirely next year, actually. They looks kind of weird and out of place.

Meanwhile, in the back, the rhubarb is turning into the Plant That Ate Toronto:


I mean, good God. I had read that rhubarb doesn't like to be wet, and since we've had such a wet and cool spring, I thought that maybe it would be delayed a little. But, no. It's ready to be harvested now, and it's gigantic. (I am trying to be better this year. Last year I would look at the rhubarb, decide that it needed another week or two, and then forget to harvest altogether. Which might explain why I have a sudden explosion of rhubarb, as I think all the rhubarb I didn't harvest turned into new rhubarb plants.)

That's not the best bit, though. The best bit is — do you remember how, back in October, I transplanted the potted strawberry plants into the garden in a last-ditch effect to salvage something? Well, it seems like it may have even worked:


At least three of those plants are alive, have strong leaves and — astoundingly! — have proto-blossoms. There was even a nice, fat bumblebee hovering around them this morning. I have no idea if we will get any strawberries out of this; I'm still in awe of the fact that they survived.

demolition derby

handing over the harness

It is with great sadness and lingering nostalgia that I inform you that I cancelled my membership at Rock Oasis (i.e., the climbing gym) this past weekend.

There isn't actually anything wrong with Oasis; the fault, as they say, lies with me. I hadn't been climbing for a few weeks — the violent cough from April did a number on one of my intercostal muscles, which had to heal — and, upon my return on Saturday, we found that my harness no longer actually fits. It fit well enough to climb easy top-rope routes, but was close enough to my hips that it might have been dangerous if I ever flipped over. (Note: I have never flipped over. In my entire climbing experience I have only ever seen one person — maybe two — flip entirely over, and both of those were people who caught a foot on the rope while leading a route. Flipping over is not a huge concern.)

So I climbed, taking it easy, testing my muscles — 5.8s and under. I'd lost quite a bit of strength during my time off and, as Pd pointed out, I'm climbing a lot farther away from the wall right now, which is taxing my upper arms in ways I'm not necessarily used to. Anyway, there I was, on an incredibly easy climb, when the route asked me to reach out a foot or two above my head to the next hold.

And I couldn't.

Not because I lacked the strength, or the balance. Not because it was too high. No, it was because such a move requires one to almost shimmy against the wall — imagine: when you reach for something, you usually lean in as close as you can — and there was a very positive (read: sticky-outy) hold around my abdomen area ... and I couldn't get my baby belly over it. Seriously.

So I decided that that was a definite sign from the universe that maybe I shouldn't be climbing any more. (Although I maintain that harder climbs don't generally have sticky-outy holds, so really it would have been fine.)

We took a picture of me in my climbing gear, in which I look hilarious(ly humongous), and then I handed my harness over to a friend of ours, who has just recently started climbing and is about my size. I mean, I'm not going to be using it anyway, not for another four months plus, and she had been renting one of those awful and ludicrously oversized ones from the gym ... but still, it cost me something to do that. Couple that with the fact that I caved on Friday and went maternity-clothes shopping — I had hoped to be able to coast along on expandable sundresses for a little while, but this wretchedly cold and wet spring put paid to that — and I've kind of been feeling like a walrus. A walrus with a sense of humour, mind, but still.

We've also started demolishing the sunroom, and now it and the den are a big mess. (By "we," I really mean Pd. Technically, I napped.) So I couldn't find the USB cable for my camera this morning, and can't post that picture — although, honestly, in the sober light of day, I'm not sure if it's for public consumption, really. I think maybe I still want some public sense of plausible deniability: you know, I am big, but not that big.

shh. reading in progress.

I've been on a reading jag. If you average my reading over a year (or whatever), it's a reasonably decent but not excessive amount; the thing is, though, that my reading tends to be very sporadic. I will got for weeks or months being perfectly content to read the same thing over and over, or to read only magazines and not books, but then I will get on a kick when I read three or four different things at once. I don't mind this — I think I enjoy books more on these flights than when I'm simply plodding along — the problem is that this particular one was unanticipated. And started after I had already begun packing up the library in anticipation of the Reno 2.0.

The room used to look like this, more or less:




(I realised halfway through my packing that I should have taken a picture; these are from last year, when I was setting up the room, so the boxes you see are actually the result of unpacking. It's roughly accurate, though.)

Anyway, as you can see: the majority of my books were in this room. I'm not completely unknown to myself, though — I had put away several books so that I would have something to read during the next month or two. The problem is that I was still on the slow road when I did this, and so in the last two weeks I have gone through almost all of the books I had set aside: Dracula; The Library at Night by Alberto Manguel; At Large and At Small (several times) — Anne Fadiman's book of essays; Anna Pavord's book of gardening columns, The Curious Gardener, also several times; Buying In, by Rob Walker; Jane Eyre, and I've started on The Museum of the Missing, about art crimes — that one is going much more slowly because it's too big for me to commute with, or snuggle on the sofa with; it lives next to my bed right now. (I had also put aside Pride and Prejudice — of course — but I'd reread it too recently for it to be enticing.)

Of course there are two more bookshelves downstairs, with plenty of books in them — including my beloved European histories and books by Bill Bryson — but this pile was supposed to last me at least a month. I thought I was being so smart! And of course the books that I'm craving are the ones that are packed up.

This is why I will never be able to declutter my books. I mean, I do weed through them — Goodwill did a sweep of my neighbourhood in March or April, and I put out a whole box of books — but I can't get rid of books for which I don't have a scheduled rereading plan (in the next three months, or otherwise). I love rereading things, and it's enough for me to know that I will want to reread it, because as long as there's that, I know that I will, eventually. But man, these things take up a lot of space, so it's nice to have a partner who understands. (Pd is on a reading jag of his own: he's reading through Agatha Christie — all of Agatha Christie, alphabetically. But he has an e-Reader, so I can't even poach them after he's done.)

When we haven't been reading, we've been watching hockey, and while we've been watching hockey, I've been knitting this:


It will be a patchwork baby blanket made of mitered squares — nine squares to a big square (that's a stack of them above), and four such squares on each side — sixteen big squares in total, so 144 small squares, plus an eventual border. I've done the centre four, and five and a half of the edge squares, so I'm about halfway.

Looking at it now, all I can think is: working in the ends in on this thing is going to be epic.

on politics

One of the things I don't tend to write about is politics, even though I'm a bit of a political junkie. I have seen how divisive it is, how on the Internet "I disagree with you" instantly turns into "you're an idiot" and I don't like it. I have friends who thrive on that kind of confrontation, but I don't, so I try to stay out of the quagmire. I know what I think and believe, and I am not threatened by other people disagreeing with me — even if they seem to think that my unwillingness to engage in a written boxing match means otherwise. I do, however, find it aggravating, so I tend to disengage.

Last night, though. We lost the election. A wise person (many wise people) once said: the problem with democracy is that the people who don't agree with you get to vote, too. And it turned out that more people disagreed with me than precisely agreed. That happens. And you know ... the world goes on.

It's not that I am terribly happy about the Conservatives being in power. I was an environmentalist before I became a teenager, and I consider myself a radical feminist now. I became aware of politics while living in Mike Harris' Ontario. In university, I took part in demonstrations against NAFTA and the WTO. Throw in my strong belief in the idea that poverty is not a moral failing, and I'm pretty sure the Tories and I are fundamentally incompatible in every way.

I'm saying all this because I want to head off any accusations of secret Conservative sympathies after my next sentence. Which is: I don't think this election was a disaster of epic proportions, and I would like us to recover a sense of perspective. Would I much rather have had another outcome? Yes. Do I think that, as time goes on, I will be deeply unhappy about the road the Conservatives will take us down? Yes. In fact, I am sure that, sometime in the next four years, they will make me furiously angry time and time again, as life gets a little bit harder for the underprivileged, and a little easier for the privileged, and it becomes clear that lower taxes cannot compensate for the loss of services and human goodwill. And I think that it's a shame that Canada will lose a little more of its international lustre.

But on the other hand: will the seas rise and the locusts fall? Will there be famine, riots, "Canada for Canadians" and mass deportations? No. Will we still be lucky to live here after Harper's term? Yes. We might feel a little less lucky, perhaps. But even just a little bit of that kind of luck, the luck that made us citizens in a wealthy, developed country in the 21st century, goes a long way.

It's that luck, for instance, that gives us this window of time to figure out how to work harder, how to work better, so that, in the next election, more Canadian voters will agree with us, rather than disagree. Because that's how democracy works.

brightening up a dreary day

The radio told me this morning that it's been a horrendously wet spring, and that, in general, spring has been delayed for two weeks this year. And that it's raining again.

But Saturday was lovely, and the tulips are blooming. I think I'm going to look at this picture once for every time I look out at the rain outside, just to keep things even.

Also? I discovered this weekend that the giant shrubs that grow like weeds in our front yard is not rosemary. It's lavender.

This gardening thing, it's a learning process.