Garden Therapy

Almost every time I spent a couple of hours in the garden I am reminded of how much I love it. This winter I will be recording people's garden memories, particularly focusing on gardens at night. I am looking at moths and moon gardens and will create an installation with performance and sound. I'm looking forward to capturing a variety of voices, so if you or someone you know has some good garden memory stories, please let me know.

I'm also interested in the question "What have you lost?" in terms of garden memories and plants that are no longer in your life that you miss.

Home is the Bug Hunter

Yes, we are home and it was very good to sleep in a bed and not wake up in the middle of the night worrying about bed bugs. As soon as I came home I alarmed my partner by stripping naked in the porch and ordering him to help me put my clothes in bags and send them immediately to the laundry room. Everything else has either been soaked in disinfectant or stuffed into the freezer for two weeks. Even my artist fee cheque is on ice. Strewth.

We walked to school today in the overcast muggy weather only to find it was a Pro D day and there is no school. I could have stayed in bed! Argh. Today will be a day filled with cleaning up the domestic space and puttering in the garden. I also want to write more in depth about some of the performances we saw this past weekend.

Plagued by phantom itching, I am.

Do You Like Dark Chocolate or Light Chocolate?

My long lost friend cooked a veggie and egg scramble and we had a lovely morning in her sunny home on the edge of a bird sanctuary. She is a choreographer and dancer who is beginning to be interested in performance art. She showed me the dance studio in a big old church where she is teaching contemporary dance.

I bought a book for Ullie and chocolate for Peter and now I'm just about ready to go home. There are bed bugs in our hotel so I am having a bit of a meltdown over this. Luckily we have not had bites but other performers have. So we're bagging up all our stuff and taking home to be frozen and or put in the wash and a hot dryer. Just so you know, they are out there and you have to be very careful. Always check the mattresses in a hotel room before you decide to sleep there. We are hoping and praying our room was not infected at any point.

Anyway I am really looking forward to the performances tonight and I am eating a lovely mole square from the chocolate shop up the road made with spices, chocolate and ground almonds. I also found coconut water at a health store, so I'm drinking it to deal with that mid afternoon lull. I'm going to chill out in our room until we go out for dinner.

Oyster Bloat

Well, the performance is over and it feels great to have accomplished many of the goals we set out to meet in our collaboration. The audience was terrific and folks were very kind with their feedback and comments. We packed a lot of stuff into one piece because we were just so excited to have the opportunity to perform. One of the other performers said it was very demanding of the audience, which I think is a good thing.

Many of the audience had never seen a performance art piece at Open Space before and quite a few, I suspect were seeing performance for the first time. Victoria is a real student town and I think we had many young students out to the show tonight.

I enjoyed watching the other two performers and I will have photos and thoughts to share on their work. It was a feminist triple bill and I'm so pleased to have been a part of the evening. We went out for oysters afterward and talked some more about the evening. I'm stuffed to the gills. Tonight I met a friend who is a performer I haven't seen for at least 17 years and tomorrow we will meet and catch up. This is just too much fun. I love it.

Here We Go

Well, we're just having a bit of down time after two very intense days getting ready for the show tonight. Thanks for all the good wishes, I seem to be having trouble sending e-mails back to you.
I am very happy to have my Nezza Naturals muscle balm sinking into my aching muscles right now and soothing my stressed nerves. I wish I had coconut water as that is my new grounding liquid of choice and it is not to be found anywhere near us. Anakana is having a nap after running our lines for the last time.

Our technician is fantastic and he has been impressing us with his displays of martial arts. We were very privileged to see the three Irish artists speak on their work and we are inspired to bring them all to Vancouver to perform. They are all very different and gently respectful of their differences which is very inspiring. I will write more about them tomorrow when we are relaxing.

I am very excited to perform with Anakana. She is an amazing woman and I feel we really complement each other's input into this project. She has been a very hardworking and trusting partner, willing to go into the unknown, explore taboos, push boundaries and have a good time along the way. Big Mamas Riding High. That's us.

It's good to be away from home to be taken away from the distractions of daily responsibilities and focus on creating a piece of art. No guilt, just hard graft. We have literally been wined and dined by the curators and they have been very attentive and generous. I hope they still speak to us after the show. Ha!

So pray for us sinners and especially for our technology. I have already broken one ghetto blaster. Let's hope there's not more of that in the cards for tonight. Yikes.

We have cable tv and I have been initiated into the joys of Law and Order UK. Wow. I didn't even know it existed. It's odd to see the American style lighting and writing imposed on the Brits.

So it's just about time for us to head back to the gallery. To quote that MILFy pop star, "Let's get physical." I've got to bring some tea cups to the gallery. My shoes have holes in them and it's been raining so I've been wearing bare feet in my shoes. I need some duct tape or something to seal them up. Tim bits, tea cups, dry socks. Okay, let's go.

On the Nature of Performance

As we get ready to head off tomorrow I must say I am really looking forward to getting away from the daily duties of motherhood. I guess I've begun to realize how narcissistic performing can be. One has to really focus a lot of energy and attention inward. It takes up space and time in one's life and that's a big reason I haven't been doing much of it since I became a mother. On the one hand it feels like an indulgence, but on the other hand, it's a hell of a lot of work. However, it's the kind of work I love.

It's a challenge to fit performing into a mothering life. It's not a sustainable way to make a living. You'd have to have an incredible support system to do it full time, ie child care. I hope I can squeeze more of it into my life again as my son becomes more independent. He shot some of the video we'll use in the piece. Yes, we are so narcissistic we even get our children to work for us! I'm glad he gets to see me as a DIY kind of gal. Hopefully he'll be comfortable with creating his own projects from scratch. He often sketches and writes ideas down on paper. I love when he writes dialogue for video games.

My long-suffering partner is conscripted to burn sound CD's because he's so good at it and I can't be arsed to do it myself. I have lines to learn! I have costumes to wash and pack! I have to wash my hair! It's diva time.

Getting Ready

We're getting ready to go to the Island next week and perform a bit of mischief. Yeehaw! I can't wait to meet the other artists and have lunch at Daidoco. While pondering things Irish I notice David Lebowitz has posted on visiting the butter museum in Cork. Man, what I wouldn't give for a nice pat of that butter on a fresh scone.

Gotta Lotta Tomatoes

I decided to take a look at the school garden and harvest the zucchini before the thief could take them. Yes, it's a problem. I guess we need a carnivorous plant to stand guard. Wouldn't that be awesome? Actually I should do that as a performance. I could have fun scaring the bejesus out of people. In fact, I think I spotted a would-be nick today. This willowy female person came by, poking around in the soil in a garden I know is not hers. I've got my eye on you, missus.

I saw that the tomatoes were splitting because of the rain so I harvested many pounds of them to ripen on school window sills. I hope we get a spell of dry weather again. I got three small zukes and another seven lemon cukes. I've got to hand it to that cucumber plant, it is prolific.

It is a stellar afternoon. I've just been out communing with the bees. They are in a frenzy, robbing a bit of honey from a frame J took out. At this time of the year we put back the honey we've taken off and consolidate the hive so they can get ready for winter. I'm going to pop a pollen patty in there tomorrow because I think they need more protein. I'm looking at gardens and seeing the signs of fall--drying plants and lack of blossoms. There is still sedum, rudbeckia, tree mallow, marigold, sunflower, and a few asters, but the food sources are really drying up. We don't want them to eat all the food stores before winter sets in.

Just Fritter It

Don't fritter your time away. I mean yes, if life gives you zucchini or corn, or any other vegetable matter, fritter it! I have been using the batter below and chucking in corn and grated zucchini and now I do fritter my day away, making fritters for all. Put tuna in too! Dip it in soya sauce or make a zucchini raita! Just fritter it.

In the meantime, a song for today from The Mamas and Papas:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dN3GbF9Bx6E&feature=more_related

Fried Zucchini Blossoms and Sympathy

I've had a rough couple of days. I'm trying to balance recalcitrant budgets. Yesterday I woke up with a headache that turned into a raging migraine. I should not have left the house, but ended up getting off a bus, stumbling to White Spot and trying to hold back nausea as I tried to eat something to fight the nausea. I had to get some papers copied so I went up to the Mail Boxes Etc. where I have gone for fourteen years and found it's been sold to new owners. I almost cried. Phil and Bob and I have been through so much. They were always good for a laugh. I will miss them.

Then I went shopping as I was carrying my bags around the corner at Starbucks an old man in a tank top and shorts woofed at me. I guess because he thought I was a dog? I don't know what the hell he was thinking. I gave him a dirty look and he smiled at me like a naughty school boy. What a wanker. I don't know if he meant to insult me, but he did leave me puzzled and angry.

Then I managed to make it home to crash and the door to my bedroom was blocked by a mattress. My son came home and bawled his eyes out because P had destroyed the box spring on his bed and put it out for trash. Meanwhile my migraine raged on, even after taking my pills. I somehow managed to fall asleep, only to wake up, peck away at budgets and then fall asleep again.

This morning I fought one more wave of the migraine cluster and by late afternoon I had just about wrapped up my budgets so I went over to Catherine's place where she gave me a hug and taught me how to make deep fried zucchini blossoms. We picked the blossoms from her garden and with permission, from her neighbor's raised bed.

The recipe is a kind of tempura:

2/3 cup flour (we used whole wheat)
1 tsp. baking powder
3 leaves basil, chopped
2 T grated Parmesan
2 T cold water
3 eggs, beaten
about 3 cups of oil for frying

The batter ends up quite thick and Catherine gently tosses the blossoms in to coat them. Then she heats up the oil in a cast iron pan and fries one side of the blossom and then the other. Drain and eat. And we did, dipped in tamari. They are so delicious. The blossoms are tender and mildly flavored, and the batter is light and crisp. My host graciously lends me a mystery to read and them I am off to balance those gdamned budgets!

Toasty

I am craving the toasty sandwiches of fall. Today I had a Croque Monsieur at Shaktea for lunch and then I made BLT's for dinner with four kinds of heritage tomatoes and bacon from Choices crisped in the oven. As I made dinner I listened to a story about a man wrestling a cougar to save a little boy's life. He literally had his hands around the cougar's neck and was choking it and even gave it a concussion. Strewth! That dude is strong... and brave. I want to take him camping with me. He'd be a great body guard. Cougars frighten me, also bed bugs.