Hard labor

Saturday, April 1, 5:10pm.  I’m sitting at the laptop peacefully listening to my audio fountain and sipping a tequila drink that I’ve just invented.  I thought of the fountain and bought and found most of the components, a small cheap cd player, 2 cds of water sounds and drift logs from the beaches I walked along in Victoria, last fall, but I’m enjoying it for the first time this evening.  I was inspired to put all this together by the noise that often emanates from the outdoor smoking, drinking and talking area built last summer by people who live nearby.  By the time I got it all together, the weather had turned cold and they had moved indoors.  Last night they were enjoying the fresh air again, and as I also wanted to do that, I thought of putting the fountain together.  But I didn’t have an extension cord, so I moved inside and shut the window.  Today I bought the cord and arranged the driftwood.  I now have 2 locations where I can place the fountain, one indoors and one outdoors.  The revelers are not around at the moment, but I’m surrounded by the sound of flowing water and the odd Buddhist bell, not that Buddhists are odd, but the bells’ chiming is erratic.  I also have the sound of rain and the sea.  When I take my glasses off, as I do when I’m at the laptop, I’m so blind I think there must be water around me but just beyond my vision.

Another reason why I’m so happily enjoying the drink and soothing sounds is that I have been doing extreme landscaping the last 2 days.  Ever since the spring of 1979 when Jim and I started preparing the land for our first house I have enjoyed yearly periods of hard labor.  I certainly don’t want to imply that I wish I had been born in the mid nineteenth century so that I could have worked 12 hours a day, 6 days a week bent double in a coal mine in Wales, but I do enjoy exertion in moderation. By now these times have dwindled down from the whole summer holidays to one day in May and one in June, but the exhilaration of it is the same.  That’s one of the mixed blessings of old age; it requires much less work to be exhausted, liquor and food to be satisfied, sleep to be rested, play to be pooped, etc.  I still imagine more drinking, eating and staying up late, but I only get partway there and I’ve had enough.  At the rate I’m injuring myself, that’s probably a good thing.  I’ve spent the last 2 days working in the yard until I’m covered in dirt and dripping in sweat from making a walkway on the north side of the house.  That’s enough for this year.  Fortunately my hanging right arm was no problem because it lifts well up to the waist, and then I could rest the 14” squares of cement on my wheat belly and carry them to the channel I had dug along the side of the house.  The new path is not perfect; I think I made the trench for the cement squares too deep, but I adjusted it until it satisfied me.  I was easily satisfied at that point because by the end of the second day, I was getting tired.  It looks good enough to celebrate with a wee tequila.

It’s getting dark early tonight, so I think we’ll get more rain.  Fortunately it’s rained mostly at night lately, and Barb and I had some fine days for walking, hiking and visiting wineries.  Of course chatting for hours with a good friend was wonderful.   The smokers are silent, so I think I’ll turn off the fountain and make dinner.  The cd is at the sound of rain now.

Barbara at Rattle Snake Point ( now called Turtle Point so as not to scare tourists away from Kal. Park) on Kalamalka Lake

Barb at the BX Falls which were going full tilt with the run off and the recent rains

Some of the hundreds of iris that have come out in the garden this year.  It has taken me 2 summers to remove all the weeds, etc. from their corms, but this year they are splendid.