June 25 marks the end of the asparagus season and the beginning of strawberry time in Vernon. In Ottawa, I always associated strawberry birthdays with Tillie Pollock and Don MacMillan whose dates, June 19 and July 3 bookend the season. So that makes Vernon a bit behind Ottawa. But then everybody says that this area is 3 to 4 weeks behind normal this spring. So I’m back to the cliché about the ‘new normal.’ Is 65 the new 55 and are cloudy wet springs the new dry heat of the Okanagan? I strongly suspect the former is a pipe dream conjured up by boomers, but the latter might well be the case. I’m not prepared to join the Tea Partiers and deny the scientific data, and everything I’ve experienced in my travels in the last year seems to point to serious climate change.
Last Sunday we hiked up behind Lake Okanagan Resort and down along the shore of Lake Okanagan. It’s hard to escape the weather. All the locals said that the water was the highest they’d ever seen it, and the forecasters predict it is going to rise more and that people with property close to the lake should be prepared for flooding. This outdoors club is a fund of information as well as a workout. I talked with a woman, a recently retired Vernon doctor, as we ended the hike. She told me that the doctor I thought I had been lucky to get an appointment with for Wed. is probably the worst quack in the Okanagan. I went on line and found out she’s not alone in that opinion. I cancelled the appointment on Monday morning and will carry on looking for a doctor. Monday was also plumbing day. Owen rented a scoping device which he inserted into the main sewage line after cutting out a section of the original 1934 cast iron pipe and replacing it with ABS pipe. As he had never done this before and wanted to learn, he charged me much less than he usually does per hour. It’s hard to say who had the most fun, him or me. As it penetrated the sewer, we watched on a screen that was clearer than Skype. There were 2 huge dead rats close to the house and a root about ½ way to the main city sewer that blocked about 2/3 of the pipe at that point. He came back the next day and ground them all to bits. He replaced a big part of the works in the toilet tank, so it now flushes better than it did. The installation of the backwash valve will wait until fall. I went on the Tuesday ramble, where I met a woman who bikes with a small group on Wednesdays; so, as I had cancelled the appointment with the quack, I joined them. I’d been hesitant about biking because it’s hilly around here and I know that the Thursday bikers are tougher than I am. But this gang was fine. I was in about the middle of the pack and there was only one hill. The countryside was beautiful, and we ate lunch on a pier on Shuswap Lake. Thursday I went to the Vernon Family Clinic to see a doctor and get a referral to a physiotherapist to finally have a professional look at my rotator cuff. Today the electricity went off at 8:00am and I went to a birthday breakfast for the woman who got me into the library volunteers. That’s enough about me. As the joke goes, “What do you think about me?”
