I have already set the alarm for 5:45am tomorrow. I’m going to drive to Bert and Peg’s, and Bert will take me to the plane as he has so kindly done many times before. Mela and Don will pick me up in Ottawa, and I will begin my eagerly anticipated visit with friends and attendance at Blake and Tracy’s wedding. In anticipation of a two week’s absence from the newly planted cedars, I bought a nylon soaker hose and timer system at the Swan Lake Nursery this week and spent an embarrassing amount of time trying to program the latter. I managed to set the clock and the ‘on’ and ‘off’ functions quite easily, but for the last part you are offered options. I’m hopeless with those; just making the choice took a while. I opted for choosing the days of operation myself instead of setting it for every 2 or 3 days. That was the easy part. I won’t bore either of us with an attempt to recount all the mistakes my ignorance and unagile fingers got me into after that. It’s ready to go now, I think. At 9:00pm tonight it should turn itself on and at 10:00pm it should shut itself off, another act of faith for the 21st century neo-medieval techno-peasant. Fortunately, I have real human backup. Bill’s friends, Karen and Pat are going to drop by a couple of times to see if the cedars have been watered, and my neighbor, Donna, is also going to check when she picks up the mail and newspaper. Again I depend on the kindness of relatives, friends and strangers.
I also lean heavily on the willingness of Canadian Tire to take back purchases. Yesterday a couple of things happened in quick succession that left me no alternative but laughter. In the heat of the afternoon as I ran back and forth as quickly as I could pushing the lawn mower and sweating profusely, my nostrils were overwhelmed by the odor of dog droppings. I had no sooner registered this assault on the senses then the mower stopped dead, the handle banging into my sternum. My second mower had crashed. I had no hesitation about taking it back to CT, but as I would have been embarrassed by the stench of dog do, I endured the humiliation of washing that off the roller. The woman at the customer service desk recognized me and was even more pleasant than she’s paid to be but had to call the manager this time. A man about Jay’s age arrived; my fate was in his hands. He likely is paid more than she is and was consequently even more accommodating. He agreed with me that it was unlikely the problem had anything to do with my assembling of the thing, as she had suggested, since the only assembly required was of the handle. He said that nobody else had returned one of these mowers but it was possible that I had received the only 2 duds. I happily agreed, and he carried out the last of them in its box to my car for me. I now have 3 boxes and 3 sets of instructions for the assembling of the handle. I finished the lawn without incident and am keeping a vigilant eye out the living room window as people walk their dogs past my lawn.
I’ve been working outside all week: mowing, weeding, planting, watering and washing and staining the back deck. I am often in the back yard in the late afternoon, under the shade of the 2 big trees, and around 5:00 I smell, my nose seems to be doing yeoman’s service these days, roasted garlic. There’s no restaurant near by. The smell seems to come from the house next door where a team of psychiatrists has their offices. The other day it crossed my mind that just as the guidance counselors at Philoman Wright High School used microwave popcorn as a comfort food for the troubled students who visited them, these people might be whipping up garlic snacks for their late afternoon patients, most of whom seem to come either early in the morning or in the late afternoon and evening. At any rate, the aroma soon drives me inside, and although I cook little these days, I eat a lot of garlic.
I went on a good hike early this week with Barb and Rod’s friends who live nearby, at Predator Ridge. We went directly from their house to a trail that begins on the cart paths of the golf club and continues up to a summit that has a wonderful view of hills, valleys and Lake Okanagan. Looking down from the top, I was reminded of when Jim and I were in the area 3 years ago. Then it was around the middle of April, and the white blossoms on the Saskatoon bushes were so spectacular that we asked about them and were told that that’s what they were but that in this area few people make pies with them as they do in Thunder Bay and Winnipeg because it gets so hot by the time the berries appear that they shrivel before they can be picked. Again, I was overwhelmed by the delicate white clouds of Saskatoon blossoms below me, but this year everything is about a month later than it was when Jim and I were here.
The Law Court's Garden/ Fountain without water. Two aging hippies who were sharing a joint on a bench just off to the left told me that the water only flows in tourist season.
They seem to have allowed absolutely anyone to make a building block for this structure. Here is what looks to be 'the finger' surrounded by the traditional aura of the Virgin of Guadaloupe in Mexico. And this in a city that is close to Kelowna, the only place in the world where signs paid for by atheists, telling people that god probably doesn't exist so they might as well enjoy life, were carefully removed from public buses.
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