It’s a slow moving, rainy Sunday morning in Vernon, but at
1:00pm, Mo and John are going to pick me up to go cross-country skiing at
Silver Star. I don’t know if it
will be as thrilling as Friday afternoon was, when Miriam and I overcame our
urge to just go for coffee instead of driving up to ski at Sovereign, where we
discovered a wonderland of deep snow on the trails and had a great short ski,
but it might be. Sovereign opened
on Friday and Silver Star opens today.
It’s still hard for me to believe that on Oct. 31 I was biking and now
I’ve been skiing in spite of the fact that there are still leaves on many trees
in the valley and a couple of roses on the bushes in my yard.
A few years ago, the city of Vernon planted a tree in front
of my house on the area between the sidewalk and the road. It must be about 10 years old now. I’ve always liked it, but it wasn’t
until I saw the same trees when Jay and I were in a van driving to the Great
Wall that I decided to find out exactly what it is. Now I know. I’ve not only googled it, but also consulted with Miriam’s
husband, Bill, a gardening enthusiast.
It’s often called a ‘golden rain tree,’ but its real name is
‘Koelreuteria paniculata’. Now,in
the fall, it has hanging bunches of pods that look like tiny Chinese lanterns,
and in the spring it has pendulous clusters of brilliant yellow flowers. Meanwhile in the back yard, the leaves
on the giant maple are clinging tenaciously to their branches, so I haven’t
bothered yet to buy a long handled scraper to pull the fallen ones off the
porch roof and then clean the eaves troughs. I’ll do that next week before I leave for Mexico.
I’m looking
forward to going to Puerto Vallarta and La Penita, especially because I will
see Barb Steers and Dick and Ellen.
It will be the first time that Barb and I have been back without Jim and
Rod, so I’m sure there will be difficult moments, especially for her because
Rod died so recently, but I think/hope that seeing each other in Mexico again
will do us some good and bring back happy memories that will get us through
some sad moments and slowly into our new lives. I certainly haven’t had time to get sick of winter yet, but
the warm ocean water and hot sun are always welcome. Two or more dental appointments are less inviting but
necessary, and as I am justifying this trip largely by telling myself that it
will cost about as much as dental visits alone in Canada, I can’t complain.
I will end by saying that if you ever get a chance to see
the Alberta Ballet, take it. Last
Sunday I went to the Vernon Performing Arts Centre to see them dance to the
music of Sarah McLachlan. It was
wonderful. They’re a big, young
troupe, and the choreographer, Jean Grand-Maitre, is really creative. Their moves are sometimes those of
classical ballet and sometimes almost like a hoedown. Most of the time the stage is a changing pattern of movement
woven either sinuously slowly or buoyantly fast by the bodies of many young
dancers. I hope some day I will be
able to see them dance the works Grand-Maitre created for the music of Joni
Mitchell and k.d. lang. Before the
dance, the manager of the Arts Centre made her usual speech and thanked the
local sponsors, but this time she added that Alberta Ballet had asked her to
also thank their main sponsor, Enbridge Northern Gateway, not a well loved
company in BC. This is probably
cheap advertising for them, but it certainly is money well spent.
Fall colour in Vernon, larch among the spruce and pine
No comments:
Post a Comment