Now we are into the real heat of summer. I've been staying inside between 1 and 5 most days, rising around 7 to bike, hike or work in the yard early. I water two evenings a week but that barely keeps things growing. Everything is getting crisp and fires are now banned everywhere. The sunflowers did much better than I had expected, but this morning I chopped most of them down and cut off their heads, which I set out in the garage to dry for next winter's birdseed. Then I leaned the long parched stalks against the back fence to wait for Jay's next dump run. The back yard is drab without them. Then Jay and I had a big, late bacon and egg breakfast after which he drove to Enderby with a friend to float down the river. He worked last week building a carport with Everett, the carpenter he finished the basement with. He will probably continue working with him for the next few weeks, maybe until he leaves for Korea. That is still the plan, but there's a lot more preparation to do in Manila, Vernon and Seoul. Vernon is certainly the the skimpy filling in that city sandwich.
I'm getting to be quite a small town old lady, sitting in the afternoon in my favourite chair by the window in the living room. When I first sat down to read today, I was distracted by movement in the church parking lot across the street. I put on my glasses, which I take off to read, and watched a thin, drugged or drunken man with wildly dishevelled hair who was staggering around the lot, pulling things out of a green garbage bag and stomping on them. I took my glasses off again to continue reading and writing. The next time I put them on he had disappeared and there was a young mother in a bright summer dress in the same parking lot practicing riding her bicycle with her daughter who was wearing a pink bike helmet sitting on a special seat behind her. I don't have a grand view of Lake Okanagan, but the church across the street entertains me with the gamut of humanity that comes to its services, weddings, funerals, concerts, soup kitchen lunches and day care programs.
When I finish this I'm going to make iced tea and continue reading, If I Die In A Combat Zone, Box Me Up And Ship Me Home by Tim O'Brien. I taught his collection of short stories, The Things They Carried, when I was at the lycee but had forgotten about him. He writes very well.
Terry Keough sent me these pictures this week. He took them when we were having lunch together in Victoria. It was surprisingly moving to open his email and see mom and dad again.
I proudly present the biggest garlic in my crop. I only had seven in total and two of them were really small.
