HAPPY CANADA 🇨🇦 DAY

Saturday, June 30th has been productive. Jay and I were at work well before 7:00am. I cooked and gardened while he replaced the really old door on the equally ancient back garage. He was using a slightly newer door that he'd got from our neighbour a few years ago when he helped him tear down his portion of Jim's Eccentricity. My job was easy compared with that. I was trying a new recipe for salmon croquettes, but at least all the ingredients were fresh. He, on the other hand, was struggling with old doors and a frame that time and weather had been warping since the '30s. It's not perfect but it's over 80 years old and it swings freely now. It was a good day for working, not too hot, cloudy and the threatened rain didn't come. Although there's a strong wind now. As I look out the window I see only the backs of the leaves on the grape vines. I remember Ron Noginosh passed on a bit of First Nations lore to me once, in his educating whitey way. "When you see the backs of the leaves, it's going to rain." So perhaps it will. I wouldn't mind and neither would the yard, in spite of the fact that it's been cooler and wetter than usual in the Okanagan lately. I heard on the radio that it's going to be really hot in Ottawa tomorrow.

I finally have an ebike. Thus ends the most serious shopping I've ever undertaken. And in spite of the fact that I did countless google searches, visited six or eight bike shops in Vernon, Kelowna and Kamloops and test rode quite a few bikes, I bought one yesterday in Kamloops that I had never heard of until about two hours before I bought it. I had gone there ten days earlier with my friend Jane. We had bought identical bikes, but there was only one in the shop. We were in Jane's car and she had a rack, so she got it and one was ordered for me. NOT. It's a long story, but I ended up back in Kamloops yesterday to pick up a loaner to ride until mine came in. BUT the dealer called while I was there to say that there was no hope of getting the bike I had ordered, not even for ready money. Ebikes are as popular as pizza these days, and not as quickly made. I had reached my limit. Shopping rattles me the way banks rattle the character in the Stephen Leacock story I can't remember the title of. David, the man I'd been dealing with at Cycle Logic could see that I was getting psychologically shattered. He said I could keep the loaner as long as I needed to. But I couldn't bear the thought of dragging out the agony of shopping. So a couple of hours later I was headed for home with a new ebike, a bit of a deal because of the inconvenience but still a bit more expensive than the one Jane and I had originally chosen. Now I have to study how to make it work. You don't just jump on the thing and ride. I still haven't set the clock on the control panel, and that's the easiest of its functions. Yikes. I'm not going to really appreciate it until Monday when I get to the first hill and engage the battery.



The new door and ebike


The new bike in front of the sunflowers in the back yard.

Going with the flow

Jay and I have become good at going with the flow. In fact, if it weren't for the flow we mightn't get anywhere. This served me well on Sunday. We had nothing specific planned. We slept until almost 8:00am, Jay made coffee and we took it outside to drink in the shade of the horse chestnut. This seemed to be the right moment to ask him about something I'd been considering for a while. Would he be interested in joining me for a walk on ranch land just outside of Vernon to look for a place to scatter Jim's ashes. I hadn't thought until we began discussing this that it was Father's Day as well as my birthday. He said it was my decision but he would join me if that's what I wanted. So we went back inside for more coffee and cinnamon toast, removed Jim's ashes from the urn, put them in two bags in a backpack and drove to the ranch. It was a warm morning, perfect for roaming the grassy hills, which we did, with only fleeting fear that there might be ticks. We found a hill overlooking Swan Lake with a clear view of the valley of Vernon to the right and on the left fields spreading to more rolling hills and eventually the Monashees. There was still a bit of snow on the tops of them. We each scattered some of Jim's ashes in this place. I think he would have approved; it's a part of the Okanagan he loved.
We drifted back to town. Jay treated me to lunch at Eatology, a restaurant that makes unique and delicious food. Only Albert Pollock can poach an egg as well as they do.
Back at home we settled down to doing things. Jay washed his quad, truck and my car while I revealed myself to be more moved than I had thought by the experience of finally settling Jim's ashes. Or else I was just my usual distracted self. At any rate, part way through making the pizza dough for our birthday dinner I realized I was following the recipe I got years ago from Jim's mom for 'Flaky French Croissants'. I haven't made them since before Jim died but I carried on and made pizza crust too. We had TV dinner watching Idris Elba, a favourite of mine, in a very good but unsettling movie about child soldiers, 'Beasts of No Nation'.
I couldn't have had a better birthday if I had carefully mapped it out in advance.

Back yard and beyond

It's raining.
This morning I learned from the fount of all real news, CBC Radio, that June is generally the wettest month of the year in Vernon. And well it might be. We have had some real rain in the last few days, and the temperatures are quite a bit cooler than they were in the last two weeks of May. This is good for the yard. The back is ludicrous, a forest of sunflowers and maple branches. Jay described the pollarded maple as a bullet, a variation of the mullet. You know the once popular man's haircut that was short front and top and long at the back. Well a bullet is bald on top and long at the back. And that's what this huge tree is like. Very few new branches are sprouting at the top but the whole back, facing the house, is a thick train of leafy new branches. I've been enjoying working in the yard, going on a few hikes and bikes and watching a couple of good movies:

' The Insult,' directed by Ziad Doueiri is about Lebanon in the 80s. It's a wonderful treatment of a personal dispute within a national conflict.

'The Death of Stalin' directed by Armando Iannucci is a really good farce with some wonderful actors.




This shot is the best I could get of the 'bullet'



Two of the most beautiful roses in the yard




One of the ugliest faces in the world. This article written by the director of 'The Death of Stalin' just shortly after Trump's election is a good one.