This Morning's Harvest

Raspberries for my morning porridge and broccoli for my dinner.

Growth Hormones

I think my plants are sneaking growth hormones behind my back. This fireweed is up to my nose (normally it doesn't grow much more than about two feet in this part of the world) and the nasturtiums have grown to the point where they are now creeping along the ground.

The Case of the Vibrating Photo

Some months back, one of my brothers gave me a photograph of Dad with his WW2 battalion. I'm guessing the photo was taken in 1942 or 1943. Dad is in the front row, second from the left. Our long time family friend Garth (no long living) is in the second row from the back, fifth from the left.

This week I finally got around to having the photo framed; I picked it up from the frame shop at lunch time. My vehicle was about a five minute walk away, and as I walked I carried the photo in my hands. All of a sudden it started vibrating. I can't explain it exactly, but it almost felt like a cell phone on vibrate. I stopped in my tracks, adjusted it in my hands, and started walking again. Less than a minute later, it began vibrating again. It did this two more times before I reached the car.

I have no explanation for what happened, but I know Garth loved that old photo, and I wondered if he was hanging around, excited that I had a copy of the picture.

Rising Waters

Waters in the Southern Yukon are the highest on record. People continue to sandbag, but roads and properties are flooding nonetheless. Here are a couple of photos sent to me at work this morning. The first is at Marsh Lake; the second on the Yukon River.

Managing Violence

My blood started to boil this morning as I listened to CBC's World Report. There was a story about Canada's Chief of Defence Staff, General Rick Hillier. He was talking about how Afghanistan has drawn his troops out of complacency and made the Canadian military remember its roots as a force of war. A FORCE OF WAR?! What happened to us being a force of peace?

Hillier's words for describing Canada's current role in Afghanistan are, "We manage violence on behalf of the Government of Canada." I guess that's code for the fact that we're over there killing and being killed.

Hidden Treasures

I am in the midst of painting my bedroom. I'm doing it in stages....first the closets, and then the main part of the room. I tackled the biggest job - Joe's closet - first.

Poor Joe....I really do tend to bug him about getting rid of some of his 'stuff'. His closet is bulging to the point where you can barely close the door. However, I am feeling a bit sheepish about my nagging at the moment, because among the dozens of pairs of jeans that go back 20 years, and the boxes and boxes of hunting paraphernalia, there are some choice treasures. I've found two of his old high school year books, a document written by one of his cousins that details his Nanna's life (only the good bits though - Nanna was never one to rake up all the bad stuff from her past: what would be the point?) and a Father's Day note from a three-year old Jamie. It was in my handwriting but I well remember him dictating it to me. It read:

To Daddy,

I like your nose. I like you because you go golfing. You and I like to do burps.

Love, Jamie

Hidden treasures indeed!

Pizza for Two

It was just us girls for dinner tonight. Alan had left earlier in the day for the Dawson City Music Festival, Jamie was at work and Joe is still in Ontario. I made pizza - but of course I had to make two of them. Iris and I have very different tastes when it comes to such things.

She likes lots of tomato sauce, lots of cheese and little if anything else. My idea of a perfect pizza is to first drizzle the dough with a bit of garlic infused olive oil, then put just a hint of tomato sauce on top. Next comes sun dried tomatoes, red peppers sliced paper thin, caramelized onions, black olives (the best quality ones I can afford) and some feta cheese - goat feta if it's available.

On another topic, I haven't bored you lately with pictures of my garden. We can't have that, can we? Here are a couple I quickly snapped just now.

And look here. The raspberries are starting to ripen!

Rising Waters

Lots of snow this past winter, higher than normal temperatures (although it hasn't felt like it!), and lots of rain are combining to create the 'perfect storm' in the southern Yukon. Lake levels are reaching all time highs, and people are sandbagging like crazy to try to protect their properties. Unfortunately, more rain is in the forecast for the end of this week. Here are some images a colleague took yesterday at Marsh Lake.

On Being Six

Last night we had friends over for dinner. They have three children, the youngest being a six year old girl.

As a way of keeping her amused, I pointed her to a big box of things that Iris was disposing of, as she goes about the rather daunting task of cleaning out her room before going off to school. The box had all kinds of goodies in it: stuffed toys, jewelry, trinkets, etc. But what this little girl latched on to were the various creams and lotions, half used bottles of nail polish, and leftover make-up. She had to try all the perfumes (reminds me of a time at university when I did the same in Holt Renfrew), and by the time she left our place she was looking and feeling very fashionable and grown up with her blush and done up nails.

I had forgotten how much fun kids are at that age. Not that I want grand kids any time soon, but I think when (if) I do eventually have them, I'm going to have a ball.

Bounty

It took a while, but finally, some spoils from the garden.

The Catch of the (Yester)day - pan fried lake trout. This was my lunch today.

Living the Good Life

Yesterday Joe and I went fishing at Kusuwa Lake with friends of ours. It was overcast with a few showers in Whitehorse, but the further west we went, the better the weather got. By the time we got in the boat at around 1o o'clock, the blue sky was starting to show itself, and it turned out to be a glorious day.

We came home with four nice sized trout and some good memories: in particular of seeing two bears - one black and one grizzly - only about 50 metres from one another. I also found some great pieces of driftwood which, inspired by Ted's wife Kathryn, I'll use to try to make a chair for my deck.

View from the bow. This was taken early in the day, before the sun decided to show off.

Black bear on shore. The sun was shining directly into the lens and I couldn't see what I was taking a picture of, so it's not a great photo. The blond grizzly was just to the right of this picture, around a little bend.

Got a Minute? Find a Job.

Job-seeking sure isn't the angst-ridden exercise it used to be, at least not in this part of the world. Iris decided (with some gentle pressure from Mom and Dad) to get a second part time job. After all, she's going to need all the money she can get her hands on over the next few years. So she updated her resume, got some cover letters together, and planned to drop them off at several places around town today.

Since she and I were getting together for lunch anyway, I volunteered to drive her to the various restaurants and hotels at which she wanted to apply. First stop was a pizza/pasta place. She ran in and within a minute she was back in the car, telling me that she had a job, working cash, three afternoons a week, starting on Monday. The manager didn't even look at her resume.

Such is the job situation in Whitehorse....businesses are crying out for employees. The booming economy has meant lots of students go for high paying jobs with drilling, construction or mining companies. It's forced places that would normally pay not much more than minimum wage to increase their salaries - Tim Horton's for example is rumoured to pay $17 an hour to start. And, as Iris learned today, the only qualifications a person appears to need to find work are that he/she is warm and breathing.

Robbed

I'm feeling a bit robbed. In the rest of Canada, friends and family are experiencing warm summer weather...in some cases almost too warm. But here in Whitehorse, it's been cold and overcast with showers all week.

I realized yesterday with something akin to panic that we are already almost half way through July and there is likely very little of summer left to be had in the Yukon. I still haven't made it camping yet and based on commitments I have for the next two week-ends, I won't be going camping any time soon. My hope is that the weather will rebound and there'll still be some time to do that in early August....perhaps up on the Dempster Highway, when the cloudberries ripen.

Snow White Had the Right Idea

Of course it's no secret that yoga is never a smooth road in terms of development and personal improvement. I've done it enough to know that there are some days when my body protests, and some when it cries out with joy when I start my practice. Today however, after four days of my week-long session, my body wants to run as far away from me as possible. Every part of me aches, and I feel as though I could very happily take the place of Snow White and sleep for a hundred years. So....to pay homage to Ms White and to take my mind off things, I'm going back to my garden. Here, in a continuing series, are my garden 'whites'.

A Week of Yoga

It's Day Two of a six-day intensive yoga course that I'm taking. We start each morning at 7 and go until 8:45. The instructor is incredible: he's at a whole different level from my regular teacher. On the first day, we spent about a half hour just learning how to breathe; another 20 or so minutes learning how to stand.

The poses themselves are familiar to me. But there is so much more focus on tiny details that they are far more challenging for me, both mentally and physically, than ever before.

I notice that I leave his classes with heightened senses and a feeling that something inside of me is being changed. I don't think I've experienced anything quite like this before.

Little Bits of Summer

The first wild iris of the season in my garden

Summer around the world: a seashell and some heather from Scotland, a cone from Australia, stones from Nova Scotia, walnut shells from B.C., and pieces of wood from various places around the Yukon.


My week-end sewing project: my old napkins were looking pretty ratty so I decided some new summery-looking ones were in order. It only took me a couple of hours to make these.

Summer has arrived on our nature table too. Even though the kids are grown, I still maintain the nature table, which changes with the seasons and my mood. This is Mother Nature with her Flower Children. They're looking a bit worse for wear - I made these 15 years ago and they've had some hard use.

Garden 'Pinks'

Painted Daisies

Fireweed
Wild Rose
Vetch (what an ugly name for a pretty plant)

My Garden 'Purples'

Wild asters

These two pictures, of wild chives and wild delphiniums, were taken in the early morning (around 4:30 a.m.).

Back At It

The first day back at work after a hiatus is always a bit nuts. There are emails to tend to, phone calls to return, several days worth of newspapers and radio transcripts to read through, invoices to pay, and questions to answer as staff, having waited patiently while I've been away, all converge at my office door with issues that now need immediate attention.

In spite it all, it's good to be home. I must say I'm a bit jet lagged today, and I'm still on Eastern time. I was wide awake at 5 this morning, so I decided to get up and tend to my garden, which was feeling a bit miffed at having been virtually ignored for the last 10 days. I took a whole bucket of weeds from it, told the flowers how beautiful they were looking, and commiserated with some of my vegetable plants that still aren't doing as well as they should be. I think tonight I'm going to do some more soil testing to try to figure out what's going on.

In the meantime, back to my emails.

Heading Back Home

I just have a very few minutes before board the plane westward. My visit to N.S. was a good one. My Dad is doing as well as can be expected, the tenants are taking care of the old farmhouse, and it felt good to once again connect with family and friends.

I spent Canada Day in Halifax, first at the International Tattoo, and later watching the fireworks down by the Halifax Harbour. It was the first time ever that I've spent Canada Day in that city, and I really enjoyed myself.

I'd write more, but my flight has just been called.