All the young Thai soccer players and their coach are safe. Milagro!Only one rescuer died. In the last picture I saw of the boys their heads were shaven and they were offering prayers of thanks to those who had saved their lives. The last bit of fine tuning of my new ebike was that Jay tightened everything that an Allen Key can turn. It has run smoothly ever since. Two stories that occupied my life for a while have both ended well.

Now we are into the real heat of summer. I've been staying inside between 1 and 5 most days, rising around 7 to bike, hike or work in the yard early. I water two evenings a week but that barely keeps things growing. Everything is getting crisp and fires are now banned everywhere. The sunflowers did much better than I had expected, but this morning I chopped most of them down and cut off their heads, which I set out in the garage to dry for next winter's birdseed. Then I leaned the long parched stalks against the back fence to wait for Jay's next dump run. The back yard is drab without them. Then Jay and I had a big, late bacon and egg breakfast after which he drove to Enderby with a friend to float down the river. He worked last week building a carport with Everett, the carpenter he finished the basement with. He will probably continue working with him for the next few weeks, maybe until he leaves for Korea. That is still the plan, but there's a lot more preparation to do in Manila, Vernon and Seoul. Vernon is certainly the the skimpy filling in that city sandwich.

I'm getting to be quite a small town old lady, sitting in the afternoon in my favourite chair by the window in the living room. When I first sat down to read today, I was distracted by movement in the church parking lot across the street. I put on my glasses, which I take off to read, and watched a thin, drugged or drunken man with wildly dishevelled hair who was staggering around the lot, pulling things out of a green garbage bag and stomping on them. I took my glasses off again to continue reading and writing. The next time I put them on he had disappeared and there was a young mother in a bright summer dress in the same parking lot practicing riding her bicycle with her daughter who was wearing a pink bike helmet sitting on a special seat behind her. I don't have a grand view of Lake Okanagan, but the church across the street entertains me with the gamut of humanity that comes to its services, weddings, funerals, concerts, soup kitchen lunches and day care programs.

When I finish this I'm going to make iced tea and continue reading, If I Die In A Combat Zone, Box Me Up And Ship Me Home by Tim O'Brien. I taught his collection of short stories, The Things They Carried, when I was at the lycee but had forgotten about him. He writes very well.






Terry Keough sent me these pictures this week. He took them when we were having lunch together in Victoria. It was surprisingly moving to open his email and see mom and dad again.





I proudly present the biggest garlic in my crop. I only had seven in total and two of them were really small.

Well, the ebike odyssey continued. On my inaugural ride last Monday the bike made a scraping sound and erratic clicks even when it was not in assist mode. Then on Tuesday when I went for a ride with Miriam the electric assist screen showed a series of letters and numbers that the manual said meant trouble, so we canceled the ride. Miriam volunteered to go with me to Kamloops the next day. We arrived at Cycle Logic at 9:00am, David was ready to go and we went walking around Kamloops. Among other things, we found a thrift shop with bargains for both of us. When we returned to the shop, I took the bike for a test run. Perfect.

I now have a name for my bike. When I was in the Rec. Centre sauna last week a man who's there regularly and whose banter I usually ignore because I dislike his attitude made me laugh. He got an ebike recently and said that when he took it out to ride for the first time his neighbour came out and yelled, "So now you're driving a Hardly Davidson." My bike is now called Hardly.

Jay is on call on this his last week of work for Okanagan Restoration. He left early but sent me a message soon after to tell me the good news that four of the twelve Thai boys trapped in the cave have been rescued. What a moving story that is. It's an inspiring example of youth, the will to live and the readiness of skilled people to do whatever they can to help, no matter the danger to themselves. We are so flooded with self interest these days that this is a deep breath of fresh air. May they all get out alive.

My new bike kit includes a gift Caroline gave me when she returned from Thailand last year.









Caroline's Thai purse carries the valuables








More news from the back yard.

HAPPY CANADA 🇨🇦 DAY

Saturday, June 30th has been productive. Jay and I were at work well before 7:00am. I cooked and gardened while he replaced the really old door on the equally ancient back garage. He was using a slightly newer door that he'd got from our neighbour a few years ago when he helped him tear down his portion of Jim's Eccentricity. My job was easy compared with that. I was trying a new recipe for salmon croquettes, but at least all the ingredients were fresh. He, on the other hand, was struggling with old doors and a frame that time and weather had been warping since the '30s. It's not perfect but it's over 80 years old and it swings freely now. It was a good day for working, not too hot, cloudy and the threatened rain didn't come. Although there's a strong wind now. As I look out the window I see only the backs of the leaves on the grape vines. I remember Ron Noginosh passed on a bit of First Nations lore to me once, in his educating whitey way. "When you see the backs of the leaves, it's going to rain." So perhaps it will. I wouldn't mind and neither would the yard, in spite of the fact that it's been cooler and wetter than usual in the Okanagan lately. I heard on the radio that it's going to be really hot in Ottawa tomorrow.

I finally have an ebike. Thus ends the most serious shopping I've ever undertaken. And in spite of the fact that I did countless google searches, visited six or eight bike shops in Vernon, Kelowna and Kamloops and test rode quite a few bikes, I bought one yesterday in Kamloops that I had never heard of until about two hours before I bought it. I had gone there ten days earlier with my friend Jane. We had bought identical bikes, but there was only one in the shop. We were in Jane's car and she had a rack, so she got it and one was ordered for me. NOT. It's a long story, but I ended up back in Kamloops yesterday to pick up a loaner to ride until mine came in. BUT the dealer called while I was there to say that there was no hope of getting the bike I had ordered, not even for ready money. Ebikes are as popular as pizza these days, and not as quickly made. I had reached my limit. Shopping rattles me the way banks rattle the character in the Stephen Leacock story I can't remember the title of. David, the man I'd been dealing with at Cycle Logic could see that I was getting psychologically shattered. He said I could keep the loaner as long as I needed to. But I couldn't bear the thought of dragging out the agony of shopping. So a couple of hours later I was headed for home with a new ebike, a bit of a deal because of the inconvenience but still a bit more expensive than the one Jane and I had originally chosen. Now I have to study how to make it work. You don't just jump on the thing and ride. I still haven't set the clock on the control panel, and that's the easiest of its functions. Yikes. I'm not going to really appreciate it until Monday when I get to the first hill and engage the battery.



The new door and ebike


The new bike in front of the sunflowers in the back yard.

Going with the flow

Jay and I have become good at going with the flow. In fact, if it weren't for the flow we mightn't get anywhere. This served me well on Sunday. We had nothing specific planned. We slept until almost 8:00am, Jay made coffee and we took it outside to drink in the shade of the horse chestnut. This seemed to be the right moment to ask him about something I'd been considering for a while. Would he be interested in joining me for a walk on ranch land just outside of Vernon to look for a place to scatter Jim's ashes. I hadn't thought until we began discussing this that it was Father's Day as well as my birthday. He said it was my decision but he would join me if that's what I wanted. So we went back inside for more coffee and cinnamon toast, removed Jim's ashes from the urn, put them in two bags in a backpack and drove to the ranch. It was a warm morning, perfect for roaming the grassy hills, which we did, with only fleeting fear that there might be ticks. We found a hill overlooking Swan Lake with a clear view of the valley of Vernon to the right and on the left fields spreading to more rolling hills and eventually the Monashees. There was still a bit of snow on the tops of them. We each scattered some of Jim's ashes in this place. I think he would have approved; it's a part of the Okanagan he loved.
We drifted back to town. Jay treated me to lunch at Eatology, a restaurant that makes unique and delicious food. Only Albert Pollock can poach an egg as well as they do.
Back at home we settled down to doing things. Jay washed his quad, truck and my car while I revealed myself to be more moved than I had thought by the experience of finally settling Jim's ashes. Or else I was just my usual distracted self. At any rate, part way through making the pizza dough for our birthday dinner I realized I was following the recipe I got years ago from Jim's mom for 'Flaky French Croissants'. I haven't made them since before Jim died but I carried on and made pizza crust too. We had TV dinner watching Idris Elba, a favourite of mine, in a very good but unsettling movie about child soldiers, 'Beasts of No Nation'.
I couldn't have had a better birthday if I had carefully mapped it out in advance.

Back yard and beyond

It's raining.
This morning I learned from the fount of all real news, CBC Radio, that June is generally the wettest month of the year in Vernon. And well it might be. We have had some real rain in the last few days, and the temperatures are quite a bit cooler than they were in the last two weeks of May. This is good for the yard. The back is ludicrous, a forest of sunflowers and maple branches. Jay described the pollarded maple as a bullet, a variation of the mullet. You know the once popular man's haircut that was short front and top and long at the back. Well a bullet is bald on top and long at the back. And that's what this huge tree is like. Very few new branches are sprouting at the top but the whole back, facing the house, is a thick train of leafy new branches. I've been enjoying working in the yard, going on a few hikes and bikes and watching a couple of good movies:

' The Insult,' directed by Ziad Doueiri is about Lebanon in the 80s. It's a wonderful treatment of a personal dispute within a national conflict.

'The Death of Stalin' directed by Armando Iannucci is a really good farce with some wonderful actors.




This shot is the best I could get of the 'bullet'



Two of the most beautiful roses in the yard




One of the ugliest faces in the world. This article written by the director of 'The Death of Stalin' just shortly after Trump's election is a good one.

Last views of Victoria

I met Liz and Ross for a walk and lunch today and in a few minutes I will go upstairs for dinner with Barbara and Terry. Tomorrow, if the ferries run and no accidents block the highways east, I will drive to Vernon, ready to return to Jay, friends and the patterns of daily life there after a good visit with friends I don't see often.






All that remains of what was the blue bridge beside the new bridge across the mouth of The Gorge.





The little gnome outside the suite who watches me every morning as I do stretches.





The beautiful sight of a yacht from the Swiftsure Race crossing the finish line off Ogden Point.





Barbara and Terry and their new fence and gate. It's a very pleasant sight to see as I walk out of the suite.

7:00pm Sunday and still sunny

I'm tired and my cheeks still feel warm after a long day of biking,at my very relaxed pace. But it was windy, and I walked quite a bit too. After getting up early on Saturday to bike to Clover Point to watch all the yachts in the Swiftsure regatta start, I wanted to at least see one of them finish. And I did. My first stop this morning was Ogden Point. I had to walk my bike out it to see one of the boats in the long part of the race, some boats did shorter courses and finished yesterday, cross the finish line which was just beyond the point. The rest of the day I just biked around; there was no construction on Dallas Road, so it was possible to go all along the shore. Of course I had to walk the bike up a couple of the hills.

On Friday I had coffee,as usual, with Barbara and Terry and then they took me to the exhibit, "Egypt, The Time of the Pharaohs", that just opened at the Victoria Museum. It was well worth visiting. The exhibits were mostly of real things, not reproductions, and, as I was once before at an exhibition of ancient Egyptian artifacts, I was impressed by the fineness of the work. Afterwards, we had a left over lunch of all the food we had brought home from lunch at a restaurant the day before. That day we drove to Sooke to pick up a book of Latin phrases translated into English that had been Terry's father's. Terry had had it rebound by a woman who is a real crafts person. She did a very good job. It was fun to see her workshop because some of her equipment is beautiful, hand made in wood by a craftsman like her.

Earlier in the week I met Ross and Elizabeth for a walk in Oak Bay. Ross had to go right home for a conference call, but Liz and I had a good old coffee and chat after. Last night I went to their place for a Thunder Bay dinner. There were seven of us, five from TB and even more precisely, Loon Lake. The food was delicious,we had a lot of laughs and I learned news about people I've hardly seen since high school.
























A mummified cat. Glad to see it's organic. Good enough to eat?





Two of my favourite exhibits, one from each of the places that contributed artifacts.






My favourite name of all the yachts that were moored in the Inner Harbour on Friday night before the Swiftsure race.





The 'Simpsons' banner near the top of one of the stays on Panic.





The start of the third set of yachts. I was surprised by all the black sails. I went on line when I got home and discovered by reading a wonderful article on a sailing sight that black is the new white in the world of sailing. The author, Bill Schanen, said that the reason is partly technical and partly sartorial. The best and most expensive sails now are made with carbon fibre but even some that are good but not made of carbon fibre are black. The visual effect is foreboding, more an armada than a fleet.





Number 1717, Blue, crossing the finish line off Ogden Point this morning.