May 16, 2015

I haven’t sat down to write in a while because I’ve been listless and sad.  The former feeling comes from the uncertainty I have about my mom’s situation.  She’s doing her best but sounds either overwhelmed or in pain or bored most of the time when I phone her.  She’s too old to adjust to a new life, alone, and I don’t know what to do to help her.   I don’t want to devote my whole life to her, so I encourage her every attempt at independence, but I don’t think she is buoyed by being able to do things on her own, as I was.   And I am saddened by the death of my high school friend, Liz White.  Mom often says that she wishes she had died when dad did.  Liz, like Jim, died too young.  

 It’s the Saturday before Victoria Day, and all’s quiet on the Vernon front.  Tomorrow I lead the hike up Sugarloaf.  We scouted it on Wednesday, and I went biking and helped a friend clean the outside of her mobile home on Thursday, so I am now enjoying two days of reading, restful housework and fixing up the yard.  Yesterday I bought and planted a Spartan Juniper.  I think it’s the name that attracted me.  I’m determined to plant only hardy, drought-resistant things because it sounds as if, after a winter of less snow than usual and a spring with little rain, we are facing a dry summer in the Okanagan.  What could be tougher than a ‘Spartan’?  I have planted 3 other small junipers as ground cover and a dwarf Alberta spruce.  That’s the end of my Spring-planting madness, I hope.   

The VOC on East Vernon Hill, with Kalamalka Lake in the background

Mo at the Brown Derby in Armstrong, where we had breakfast in the middle of our bike ride last Saturday.  The sign says it all; it's a great breakfast. 

Wild flowers on Camel's Hump