BLOGG # 82 "THERE ARE NO MEADOWLARKS THERE"

"There are no meadowlarks there"
-I borrowed this phrase -a version of the famous quote of Gertrude Stein's "There is no there there" to express my deep disappointment at not hearing one note of my favourite bird during the entire trip to Alberta and Saskatchewan.
There is no doubt ,my faithful readers , that you will have to often read  my indulgent reminiscing of my nostalgic trip to the Prairies and I beg your patience as I  rhapsodize now  about  one of my  favourite prairie sounds- the warbling of the meadowlark.
As soon as we decided on this anticipated prairie trip,my thoughts flew to the precious memory of the yellow and black meadowlark and his glorious song. My traveling companion went on  the internet and found several recordings of this elusive bird. There were examples of the warbling of the Eastern meadowlark and the western and also the mid western one. We voted on the mid western one as the most similar to the meadowlark sounds we remembered from childhood.
The minute we drove into the prairies we started looking for the distinctive markings of the meadowlark and strained our ears to hear it's song. I also looked for the fence post or low bush where it usually perched-there were no fence posts-and few bushes.
We weren't discouraged and expected to hear it while we rambled through our childhood places. We did not hear it at my isolated schoolhouse, nor around the abandoned house where I grew up,and surprisingly, not down in the coulee by the creek that ran through our pasture where I spent hours playing on it's bank and remembered vividly the sound of the meadowlark's lonely song piercing the hot summer mornings. We did not hear it either at the derilect grain elevator  by the small village of Bruce or even in the "ideallic in my eyes- village of  Innisfree where I was born.
We did not fare much better in Saskatchewan. We did not hear it as we walked around the lot where my traveling companion's house used to be,nor in the fields stretching on either side of the road  where he skied down the hill in the winter. We visited his favourite quiet charming coulee where there were lots of bushes, a little slough and even fence posts, where he used to look for robin's eggs and collect gopher tails for money [I will not inflict on your sensitive ears his method of catching gopher tails- a common prairie pastime for boys in the depression.] We did not hear the meadowlark in this idyllic spot either nor in the old local grave yard going back more than a hundred years. While I was reading the grave stones I did hear the red wing black blackbird's song cutting the silence and I did hear the rustling of the sage as the wind gently caressed it. We also did not hear  meadowlarks at his abandoned school house or the schoolhouse where his mother taught in 1915, even though we picnicked there amongst the lilac bushes.We didn't even hear it at "Buffalo Jump" in Alberta  where I spent a long quiet hour painting on the edge of the bluff.
As we continued down stretches of secondary roads we talked about the inability to describe the meadowlark song and decided one could describe a lovely coulee, an Alberta rose,a Saskatchewan wheat field resembling for all the world a vast green ocean as the wind blew over it, but we could not describe a sound. And then I found the perfect description of the meadowlark song. My constant reading companion on the trip was O. W. Mitchell's "Who has seen the wind" the great classic prairie novel and there,at the beginning of a chapter near the end of this enchanting book, I read the description of the meadowlark song and as I read it out loud, we heard it's song. "the soaring lilt of his song rising up high until it pierces the hot,still vast prairie sky and then an abrupt silence." Yes ! that was it! That was the wonderful sound I heard years ago while playing alone and  lonely  by the river. 
As we came to the end of our journey and rolled towards the foothills of the Rockies,  I suddenly realized we hadn't worn our hearing aides the whole vacation, so of course  we didn't hear the meadowlarks!  There may have been hundreds of meadowlark songs that we missed. It wasn't because there were no fence posts, too much pollution from oil rigs or pesticides. They were there after all!  We just didn't hear them and my heart lifted- I am after all an incurable optimist.
. 

BLOGG#81--PRAIRIE GIRL -PRAIRIE SKIES

Prairie Sky- Prairie Girl
I have just returned from one of my best vacations ever-- a long dreamed of vacation- a car trip to the prairies. The trip was a nostalgic one to my childhood places-the places deep in my heart. As everyone born in the prairies knows, you can be taken out of the prairies but the prairies can’t be taken out of your heart and I have certainly proved this.

My preparation for this trip was detailed –nothing of importance left out. First of all was the importance of what to wear. As all my fashion conscious readers know, and I hope that includes all of you, a trip can be enhanced or totally ruined by wearing the wrong clothes and what looks wonderful in Victoria does not go over so hotly in –let’s say- Paris. I carefully purchased a peasant skirt in light cotton which, thank goodness, is the hot item of this season and as brief as is possibly appropriate to my age, skimpy tops. I also packed my biggest warm black sweater which can wrap around all of me if needed, socks to wear with my sandals and my tough waterproof jacket.  No! jeans and sneakers were not packed, and of course, the inevitable scarf in the current fashionable yellow pink hot colours was included.  All these items were well used in this predictably extreme prairie climate and I was pleased with my choices.  As you can imagine, I made a great fashion statement. Unfortunately there were no peasant skirts in sight in Alberta or even in Saskatchewan and every woman I saw looked excessively sophisticated in the current understated yoga wear or fashionable tights and tops and of course the inevitable uniform -jeans and sneakers Nary a sock and sandal combination or peasant skirt could be seen. You may be assured that this did not bother me a bit- I felt very prairie appropriate despite the stares.

The next preparation was to go to the library to take out CDs to play as we drove through mile  after mile of delicious prairie countryside. The ones I chose were favourites of my older brother, and constituted my first introduction to music- Wilf Carter, the Carter family, Sons of the Pioneers and lots of fiddle and cowboy music complete with yodeling. This was my contribution to the trip. My travelling companion who was also doing the same nostalgic trip did all the rest of the unimportant stuff such as map planning and car maintenance and driving.
  My plan was to play these CDs the minute we rolled out of the Rockies and hit the prairie road and I did just that as soon as we rolled out of Hinton, Alberta.  As we cruised at a fast speed down into the flat prairies with the wind blowing through  our hair -that glorious prairie wind- I turned up the CD to full volume and listened to Wilf Carter singing “Always Look on the sunny Side” and laughed out loud and gazed raptly at the highest, bluest sky in the universe and was filled with joy and amazement and I was content. The sky, the wind, the vast prairies had not  diminished a whit since I was a child. I am so glad I am a prairie girl.

BLOGG # 80 A BROODING HEN

A brooding Hen

 “I am so sorry my love that I have had to put you into isolation in this wire cage. I don’t want to but I have to. I know you want to be a mama very much and I understand, but you have to believe I can’t afford your babies just now so I have to isolate you in this cage. I love you but I have to do this. Here I have brought you some treats-some yoghurt, some cherries and raspberries you love. You have fresh water and it is cool in here, so it isn’t so bad. I have to go now to town and won’t see you today but know that I love you”

  This tender conversation,heavily accented with French overtones I overheard as my friend comforted her “brooding hen.  I was visiting her on her isolated farm on Thetis-a west coast island and I  was helping her in the hen house at the time.  The brooding hen as all you farm girls are aware of-and it certainly brought back vivid memories of my mother as she struggled with her broody hens- is a hen who suddenly has an overwhelming desire to have babies and refuses to get off her eggs until they hatch. As anyone raised on a farm knows, you are in danger of having your fingers badly pecked if you try to take the eggs away and the hen will literally starve herself to death sitting on her eggs refusing to get up until the urge to breed subsides and she returns to normality. This urge unfortunately is due to bad timing and we of the female sex understand all about bad timing. My friend explained that if she allowed the hen to naturally breed her eggs, the majority of the eggs would be male and the cockerel would systematically peck them to death as there can only be one male in a brood and she doesn’t want that, so the hen had to be isolated from the rest of the brood in a cage and her eggs taken away. She is especially separated from the cockerel-in this case a handsome cocky Banting  with wonderful blue black feathers and deep burnt orange plumage which he strutted effectively as he ruled his small brood with iron control. His brood consisted of three Banting hens,one grey speckled unknown breed-known for her pale blue eggs, and a huge “Buff Orpington” an exotic and plump breed famous for being bred by the “Duchess of Devonshire in England who, I believe, prized them highly - another example of my store of useless knowledge. Anyway this Buff Orpington was not well loved, especially by the little  Banting hens who were very jealous of her and pecked her remorsefully if she tried to feed with them and of course she rarely laid eggs as the cockerel was not fond of her either.

I contemplated this colony of chickens sadly. It seems we are not the only species that discriminate against beings that are different. These females were very vicious in their attack and it was interesting and frustrating to their owner that the Buff Orpington did not fight back though she was three times their size. I came to the uncomfortable conclusion that perhaps these traits of discrimination in all species runs very deep and how will we ever overcome them if even these five chickens with abundant love and care couldn’t.

I came to the easy assumption that chickens are stupid anyway and was corrected by my friend. They are exceptionally  intelligent I was told and was told to observe the cockerel  who seemed to be making a lot of noise and appeared to be hogging all the scattered food. Not at all I was told. Cockerels eat very little. He is not eating. He is pecking at the choicest selection of the food and cackling to his brood to follow his example to choose the most nutritious-  but he himself was eating very little.  In fact this fancy strutting egoist was very busy making sure all his females-with the exception of the Buff Orpington- were well looked after and thriving and it goes without saying that he was also- the conceited egoist. But  the broody hen remained silent ii her cage and I ,too,remained broody all afternoon thinking of the inexplicable actions of chickens and of all living creatures on this planet including my own actions. All this came from a broody hen who wanted to be a mama more than life itself.

BLOGG # 79 A VERY PROFOUND HOME ECONOMICS LESSON

The other day my friend was commenting on the joys of cooking breakfasts while camping-especially whipping up baking powder biscuits. I was surprised and said I never make them as they are too difficult and always fail as I well remember from my hated home economics lessons in grade nine. My friend made his usual comment about “Academia complicating the most straightforward subjects” and that this was a typical example. This started me reminiscing on that hated course.

Mrs. G.-the home Ec teacher was pretty, refined with elegantly coiffured white hair and with piercing blue eyes which ruthlessly sharpened as she ripped out my basting over and over again on the ugly white apron that took me four months of sewing classes to finish . She represented to me the typical pretty mother that I did not have –my idol being the mother of Dick and Jane from the grade one book- a pretty curly haired woman in high heels, hat and gloves who was always going out shopping and a father who always wore a suit and tie and was forever coming and going in a nice car. My mother, on the other hand, was a sturdy woman in a house dress, a homemade voluminous apron, Lyle stockings and sensible shoes. She presented a dour face to the puzzling “English world, wore an uncompromising tight bun on the nape of her head and was even known to wear a peasant scarf on her head when she had a headache. My father wore flannel shirts, braces and  long underwear summer and winter.  We did not have roast beef for dinner but instead had “halupsti, kneuffel and cottage cheese kuchen” for dessert.

The chasm broadened as the home Ec class continued. It seemed that “keeping house” was a complicated and disciplined task. Monday was washing day, Tuesday was ironing day, Wednesday was baking day and so on.  We learned to set a many forked table and how to iron and correctly fold a white linen table cloth as big as a bed sheet. I was appalled at all this and decided then and there to never marry and concentrate on getting good marks and choose carefully a good career to sustain me in my future life.

The cultural chasm deepened and bottomed out when the teacher told us we had to invite our mothers to lunch. My consternation was great as I tried to picture my mother in the same room as this pink and white teacher. The dreaded day came and true to life, my mother came in her house dress and Lyle stockings and bun pulled severely back at the nape of her neck. She sat dourly and never uttered a word as my partner and I struggled with our meal-her mother of course being young and pretty.

We served undercooked baked potatoes, burnt pork chops and a runny desert called “lemon snow.” The ordeal finally ended and Mom and I walked home- my mother silent and I with a red face feeling shame because of my uncool mother.  At one point my mother stopped, turned to me broke her silence and said  “Do you mean to say  that this woman went to University and that is the best she could teach you?” The light bulb went on over my head! Of course  mother wasn’t uber-welmed with the teacher  she was underwhelmed. Mother was a very good cook who not only cooked well but everything she put on the table was raised, grown and slaughtered by her. Not only that but my snow white cotton underwear was sewn by her from bleached Robin Hood flour sacks! I understood at last the value of my mother, smiled and never was ashamed of her again.

BLOGG # 78 LAURIE YOU ARE DOING WELL- EVEN WHEN YOU ARE NOT.

“Laurie-you are doing fine –even when you are not.”

I have just stuck the above affirmation on my bathroom mirror-a throw back to the seventies- those of you who lived through that enlightening time will remember that practice of putting “affirmations” on the bathroom mirror - such as; “I  always have confidence in myself”-or-“My life always works out successfully” or even superficial ones such as “My hair is always perfect” or my personal one “My neck length is the perfect length for me” in the hopes that this will somehow become so. These affirmations mostly didn’t work much to our chagrin and the practice faded along with bell bottoms and yellow –brown–green T-shirts. This morning I was having a particularly difficult time with everything I attempted to do and managed to chalk up at least six major blunders and it was still only 10 am. I overshot the coffee maker and spilled coffee grounds all over the floor and you know how hard that is to clean up with a sleepy head; walked into the bedroom three times in succession  to fetch something and forgot each time what I came for -my bedroom is three seconds from my kitchen; lost my place in the book I am reading and couldn’t find it again because ,quite frankly, I couldn’t remember what it  was I was just  reading ,and worst of all I  forgot to put my paint brushes in to soak thereby ruining them and my painting. I was tearing my hair in frustration at this point when I heard my wise “Inner Voice” saying clear as a bell “Laurie you are doing fine- even when you are not.” Dear inner voice!  I happily wrote it down realizing it was a gem and a real keeper, and taped it to the one place I spend a lot of disconcerting time-my bathroom mirror. An affirmation that covers absolutely every possible negative thing in my life was before me to look at and reflect on every morning.  To show you, my dear readers, my great generosity, I will give it to you. Take down all the other “affirmations” such as “My perfect life partner is waiting for me and I will meet him soon” and put this little gem up instead.. Use it in peace.

BLOGG # 77 SAVE YOUR BREATH TO COOL YOUR PORRIDGE

Save your breath to cool your porridge.

Lately I have introduced a new food to my healthy menu-a food I have religiously avoided in spite of it’s high recommendations by health gurus-you know, those knowledgeable interfering experts who keep on about the dangers of your favourite foods and recommending unappetizing ones such as  the bountiful “oatmeal porridge.” I have hated this dish ever since I was a child and really felt no reason to alter my opinion as an adult but I realized, being a mature woman of a certain age, I needed to include it in my diet.  My path of learning to cook this in an edible, appetizing way without it turning into lumps, cement or runny messes is fraught with frustration and much failure and I won’t bore you with it.  I have solved the problem of making it palatable by the simple solution of adding a dab of butter and a dollop of cream. Watching the butter and cream melting into the steaming hot porridge satisfies me sensually and I now enjoy eating this dish. The interesting offshoot of all this is that while watching the butter disappear and merge with the cream, I was  vividly reminded of the same sensation while eating porridge in my childhood-  being a farm child with a lot of memories  and culinary experiences with these two dairy products. The other thing that triggered my memory were the long hours I reluctantly spent churning butter and watching my mother mold and wrap the pounds of butter which she sold. My mother, an early feminist entrepreneur, supported and fed her large family by selling cream, butter and eggs- any grain farming profits being churned back into the farm. I also remembered the rare occasions when I was allowed to accompany my mother to town where she sold these products to Mr. Klein at his store in exchange for supplies. These were for me excruciatingly embarrassing and I cringed as I listened to my mother in imperfect English barter with Mr. Klein. “Mrs. F” he would argue “I know you have the best butter in the county but I can’t pay more” and my mother with her “No” [my mother’s “no” was very vigorous as I knew from experience] would barter with great strength. At last these two antagonists would come to an agreement and my mother would leave with her purchases muttering under her breath how “typically cheap he was” much to my judgmental discomfort and I was sure he was thinking the same-“typical hard-nosed farmer.” It was only recently I realized these  two had great respect for each other- understood good quality and each others' haggling expertise very  well and enjoyed the whole experience-a sort of  nostalgic trip for each to their native country and the time honoured business of bartering.  So you see dear readers, because I did this great stretch in introducing this undesirable food experience to my life, I inadvertently came to a new insight. I would advise you to do the same. You never know where a big adventurous culinary “stretch” will take you. Never limit your life to new adventures and see what insights you will experience, just as it did me with this long blog about porridge.  I love the expression “Save your breath to cool your porridge” and was pleased to finally find a way to use it.

BLOGG # 76 SPRING NEARLY PASSED ME BY.

Spring nearly passed me by.

Several weeks ago near the beginning of March, I was driving to one of my many health related appointments when I was jolted out of my foggy, cold infested brain by the sight of a mass of delicately pink-tinted blossoms on trees lining both sides of the street. “My god” I whispered “cherry blossom time and I almost missed it” Not only did I almost miss it but already they were just slightly past their first full bloom. Now we all know-especially us girls- about passing “first full bloom!” Don’t the poets warn us often enough of the speed of passing time, first bloom and beauty?—“gather ye rose buds while you may-“etc. Haven’t we all read the comment in Jane Austin’s “ Sense and Sensibility”  by Marianne Dashwood's stepbrother lamenting the loss of first bloom in her cheeks because of being heartbroken by that dastardly Mr. Willoughby, thereby losing her chance of catching a rich husband? I thought hard about all this and decided to ignore the misery of my lingering “Victoria Winter Cold” and venture out into the new spring and look up my favourite haunts with “full blooms”  Firstly, and thank goodness not too late, I found the mossy high bank by the old St Mary’s church next to the kindergarten where the shy crocuses bloom. There they were shimmering in the wind wrapped up in their fuzzy blankets. Next I ventured down the lane by the Elderly Gentleman’s perfect garden where I found nestled in the corner, two perfect beds of primroses in rainbow colours. I had, of course, seen snow drops in February but that seemed eons ago. Next I found the camellia tree in full lush blooms which were already turning into a death -like brown as decadent as only camellias can be. The heather in various rockeries around Oak Bay bloomed in their tweedy Scottish colours and a blanket of blue flowers covered a hillside along a rocky path I like to walk. The yellow daffodils were a month late this year and now they are waving bravely in the March wind. These are not my favourite spring flowers- unlike Wordsworth who “wandered through them lonely as a cloud”. The daffodil cannot replace my affection for the crocus which reminds me of the joy I felt as a little prairie girl discovering my first pale shivering purple one peeping through the melting snow-the harbinger of a delayed Alberta spring so looked forward to. Somehow I have overlooked the overblown rhododendron-thank god for spell-check- but I am still in the delicate state brought on by lingering winter illnesses and don’t think I can handle such passion. I have watched daily the wild apple trees in my back lane come to full bloom and yesterday I passed the elegant tulip tree-this gladdens and saddens me for this is the beginning of the end of early spring. Soon the tulips will open and then the blessed lilac- the Mother’s-day gift from nature will be here. This all sums up, for me, the spring that I nearly let pass me by. Let this be a lesson for me and you, dear reader, not to let the misery of physical discomfort such as the lowly cold for example, pass by the opportunity to enjoy life’s many gifts. Oh yes! My cold has disappeared. By the way,as a post script , "First blooms "are important but the poets have failed to write about the later ones which get better and more enjoyable and quite frankly, I am enjoying my latest "bloom" best of all.