Tres Fatigué

I am prepping 300 little bitty signs for a Canada day gig with preschoolers. It is exhausting. Our good friends left on an airplane this morning to go live in Ontario. I thought of them as I looked at the skies and wondered what adventures they will have. I thought of B as I sanded and painted because this was a gig she kindly passed on to me and she's much better at this kind of thing. I hope they have a good journey and that Stella and Winnie make it all right. (The cat and the dog will be heavily drugged.) Bon voyage. We miss you already.

I am so sick of soccer. Will someone please make it stop?

Swallowtails and Watering Cans

Yesterday was the first day I spotted an anise swallowtail butterfly this year. It was bright and fresh, looking newly hatched. Then about five hours later, I saw a second one. Double blessings. Today I gave our garden a good soaking for the first time this year. I like the evening ritual of watering the thirsty soil. I picked a couple dozen strawberries too, and I'm finally getting the wood sorrel in the strawberry patch under control. I also got some bamboo and lavender ready for an event I'm participating in on Sunday at Colony Farm.

I was invited to a meeting with Tricia at World in a Garden at 57th and East Boulevard. What a lovely community garden. Tricia is a real firecracker full of fabulous ideas about community engagement and we are definitely on the same wavelength. What a joy it is to find a kindred spirit. (This is the point at which I start singing that song from the Anne of Green Gables musical.) Once again, I found myself heading to Kits where I bought a fabulous tote bag at a weird "pop up" charity store called "Scoop" (or was it "Poop", I forget). Some of the proceeds went to Arts Umbrella, so I felt justified spending the money! I had a rip snorting headache, which was cured by three Advil, and I devoured a veggie nut burger at Sophie's Cosmic Cafe. I defy anyone to be depressed in that place. I am really pissed off because the new formula for the Aveeno suntan lotion I buy is now heavily perfumed. Damned and blast it!

Peace and love to all.

Renovating

Survey says the only thing more stressful than renovating is death. I say how do they know? The printer is buried, due to our studio reno, so I have some luscious photos waiting to post. In the mean time I'll just babble about the fabulous morning I had out at UBC helping to capture a swarm and giving bee tours. Sunshine and loveliness. Curious toddlers with their noses pressed up to the glass in the visible hive, and the sound of roosters asserting their masculinity in the background. Eagles circling, blessing the circles of conversation. I am so filled to the brim with love for that place--the familiar fresh earthy and forest smell overlaid with the aromas of warm bannock and coffee. The students change from year to year, but the spirit remains hopeful and restorative.

I headed for City Farmer and the surrounding community gardens to take photos of bees, picked up a Zotter bar at Xoxolat and then headed home. That's one of my favorite walks of Vancouver.

J came by with our new queen, which we put into the hive, but with a wooden plug that we'll remove after about four days so that the hive will be used to her pheramones.

Another Shrinking Woman

I feel I'm getting further and further away from my body, like I am seeing myself get smaller and smaller as I float up and drift away from myself. Even as I feel my waist thicken and my clothes get tight, that thing called “body” becomes as tiny as an aphid feeding on a hops leaf. My rational self says I must exercise, diet, get fit, but there's a part of me that over time has just given in to fatigue, laziness, and heredity. I counted five ladybugs on the hops vine just on the railing to our front stairs. One of them, the littlest, is very horny and keeps humping all the big luscious lady bugs, mounting them from behind and putting a real jiggle into it.

We've just had a brief flash of a thunderstorm and now the sirens are blaring. I wonder if lightening has struck.

Today I spent the day tending to my son's bodily needs. The crutches are gone and now he needs physiotherapy and the physiotherapist says orthotics would be a good idea. I think he's right. I love how the Germans are so concerned with healthy feet. We went to the new library at number one Kingsway--good to know it's open on Mondays. We noshed at the on-site cafe, which is quite pleasant. I had a mushroom crepe which contained some fresh mushrooms (I believe) and some that were pickled, wilted spinach and bechamel sauce. Ules had the chocolate mousse. (No surprise there.) The physiotherapist was very good with Ules and I think gave him an important sense of kinetic awareness. J tried to impress him by letting kinder hold his tai chi sword, but I think he'd have got more mileage out of telling him where all his scars came from.

Stella!!!!

It's rainy dreary days like this that make me want to stand outside my door and bellow "June!!!!" the way Stanley Kowalski hollers for his wife outside their apartment. "Stella!!!!!" Only it doesn't work as well because June is only one syllable and I am a woman and therefore would be immediately diagnosed as loony. Junie!!!!??

I have been staying up late watching episodes of The Supersizers from the BBC on UTube. Highly reccomended. A food critic and a broascaster/entertainer eat the food from a period in history for one week. They are silly, highly irreverent and sometimes downright funny when the humor is not contrived /over-produced. It would have been interesting to see a bit more from the chefs who struggle to make the food from each period, sometimes without the help of recipes, as in the Roman period where they seemed to put a condiment from rotting fish guts on just about everything.

telephone traffic

I wrote a whole performance on my fear of the telephone and today my life was all about the phone. I can go for weeks avoiding the phone and then suddenly I'll have two really important phone intensive days. I'm not one of these people who are tangled up in their cell phones. I see the Other as needy and high maintenance. But it is a relief to sort out all this stuff with that human element of the voice and the humor it can express and ping pong back and forth. I am terrified most of talking to doctors and dentists on the phone, but I did that too this week so I took myself out for chai and gulab jaman as my BIG reward.

Getting it sorted, getting it sorted.

There was a really obnoxious mother in the shop today with a phone gadget glued to her ear. She blathered on about how amazing her children while being totally unaware of how she was blocking me from paying for my groceries. What a twat.

Tiny Bees

This morning I saw two tiny turquoise native bees on a sunflower leaf. It was magical. I am also seeing and hearing a lot of one particular kind of fly that looks a lot like a bit like a rusty-colored bumble bee with black legs. What a difference in scale and perspective from tiny sweat bee to large busty human. I was reading about how the little forget-me-not flowers we usually pull up at this time of the year are important to the tiny bees, so I am letting them go on as long as possible. Meanwhile the bumble bees are scrambling over the lacy climbing hydrangeas in front of our house. The pollen grains are huge. I don't even see the honey bees go near them.

I find it amazing how bees can negotiate us, these lumbering apartment-sized humans hulking around their food sources, creating havoc and casting giant shadows. How would we fare?

I arrived at school to see the mobile dairy education van pulled up in front of the building. When the kids went inside they let out a new black and white calf on its still ungainly legs. It's blinking those soulful black eyes at me and I am in love. Oh sweet little newborn, you are so lovely. It felt cruel to take this wee one off of his farm, but they usually only use a calf once, so that's okay.

Lust 1.0

There are days when I think I must be ovulating because I become fixated on a detail that leads me to consider a man in my proximity and whether or not he'd be a good shag. The other day it was the loop on a man's pants for holding a hammer. You know the kind---painter's pants, with the pockets for brushes that became a fashion hit in the 80's. Then I noticed the man walking beside the painter was wearing exactly the same pants in that same golden rugged canvas fabric from Mark's WW. Hmmm, two painters are better than one.

I once saw a man with wild hair and a completely paint-spattered set of overalls at the Glasgow School of Art which declared, "I am Painting Man, hear me roar," which would have been lovely if he wouldn't have appeared seriously pretentious. About a quarter of my wardrobe is spattered with paint and oddly enough I don't feel particularly sexy when wearing those clothes because I usually am in work mode. When someone like Daniel Craig wears builder's clothes (see The Mother), that's something else entirely. (Even better when he's in worker disabille.) There's something about the costumes of physical labor that triggers pheramone-driven fantasies, perhaps literally because work clothes contain sweat, the smell of sex, as long as it's not layers of stale perspiration from bad hygiene. No, it must be soap, a bit of sweat, and those funny little textural details.

Farmer's Market Bliss

This is the kind of thing you really want to see at a farmer's market. The tamale vendors were very cheerful and friendly and the market itself is very laid back and casual. Designer dogs seemed to be a real status symbol here, but they were all very well behaved and kept on short leashes.

The musical entertainment was also kept from misbehaving by keeping them in this little red trailer.

The smell of saurkraut on a hot dog was so tempting, but we were just about to head off to Comox to The Avenue for lunch, so I abstained.

I bought some fireweed honey from Big D's Bees. It's very delicate, almost clear in color and runny.

Back at the cabin, we dined on crepes with hazelnut chocolate spreads--one local one from BC and an organic one from Italy. I like the local spread because the nuts are not as finely ground, so it has a creamy/crunchy texture.

This is where we bought a live crab and some barely alive spot prawns. They were on ice, slightly twitchy. Ideally they would have been kept live in tanks but we couldn't find anywhere that sold them like that.

Chef Pierre sautés garlic with panko crumbs and then quickly pan fries the prawns just until they are cooked. They are really big and juicy this year. Notice the glasses of "Woo Pop" we buy from Hazelmere Farms at the market. (It's carbonated raspberry and sour cherry juice.)

Victoria Day Parade in Cumberland

We decided to attend the Cumberland Victoria Day celebration, which began with a spirited small-town parade. I love the fierce attitude in the gestures of these warrior dancers. Notice the pink crocs covering one girl's dancing shoes.

There were vintage vehicles, geriatric clowns, shriners on mini-bikes, doulas, environmentalists, boy scouts, and the men who were raising awareness about PSA tests for prostate cancer, sporting giant pointing gloves singing along to the BeeGee's hit "Stayin' Alive."


This is a pack goat, as opposed to a pack horse. I found her when I was seeking hot chocolate from the Darkside Chocolates shop on Main street. They used to sell their excellent chocolates at the Comox Valley Farmer's market and now they have set up a storefront in Cumberland. Sadly, the Great Escape Restaurant we loved is closed and for sale. There is a new coffee shop opened up called The Wandering Moose, which has nice big comfy chairs and seems quite popular.

After the parade we went to the park to get something to eat. Of course the lineups to the hamburgers, hot dogs and mini donuts were very long, but their was no wait for a veggie sandwich and kale chips at our friends' smoothie wagon. Those kale chips were so addictive. You can't eat just one. They are smothered in tahini and dried in a dehydrator. You can't eat just one. In the middle of the May pole dances it started to pour. Those brave girls in their strappy sundresses shivered and bravely marched through their paces while their parents clapped enthusiastically. Mom took shelter in the smoothie wagon and then we made a beeline for the car and headed back to a warm fire in the cabin.

Cakebread Bakery in Courtenay

The cabin we stay in is near Courtenay BC, and one of the reasons we love it is because of the local bakery called Cakebread, which is right next to a chocolate shop called Hot Chocolates. Their breads are really good and this trip we really indulged in the sweets. We picked up a chocolate hazelnut mousse cake to celebrate P's birthday (again).

Note the sticker that says to keep the cake out of the refrigerator two hours before serving. That's very smart and it makes a big difference in the taste and texture. Isn't the box beautiful?

This is a Carmello square, which is a little chocolate cake layered with ganache and caramel--kind of like dulce de leche--and the outside is studded with cinnamon meringue. It's very Mexican in its flavor combination and I loved it.

As did someone else ...!

Okay this is called Cakebread's Crack Pie and it is amazing. Styled after Momofuko's legendary custard pie in an oatmeal crust, this is a maple sugar pie with chocolate ganache on top in a soft oatmeal crust. It is so rich we cut it into tiny slivers.

This is a cake bite. A cherry-chocolate piece of cake enrobed in white chocolate--kind of like a big cakey truffle. Now you know why we love this bakery!