BLOGG #--THE LURE OF AN OLD ABANDONED ORCHARD

For the past few years I have been watching  the crumbling and dying of an old orchard. The fruit trees-apple and  plum -are wizened, twisted and bent almost double and covered in lichen and moss. Each time I visit them more deterioration has occurred. The process is gentle but steady and fascinating.  I notice that every time I enter the sensations I feel are different.-sometimes sadness as I see these old weakened trees bending  over and  struggling to stay upright. I imagine them young - firm, vibrant and upright in their youth-virile and proudly bearing their fruit. At this time as I walk around I feel sorrow for their lost youth. It also, naturally, gives me the opportunity to examine mine. The melancholy that rises at this time is like a miasma covering the whole dying orchard -especially if it is raining -we all are bent over and seem to bond together in this sorrow. Trees have always been the kings of influence in creating atmosphere and we humans feel it.
Fortunately these are not the only sensations I feel.  Other times I enter and feel their strength as they battle with their illnesses- for they are ill. Then I feel their pride in their strength and their refusal to give up in spite of overwhelming age. I love that and I too am proud of my strength. For these trees are still productive. Every spring a few blossoms appear and in the height of summer,bravely,small overly- sweet plums and hard little deformed apples appear. We pick some and make apple pie or plum upside down cake or cobbler. Also the deer eat them- for the fruit is easy to reach [they are not as careful as we are but rather wasteful as they bite into each fruit once and discard it leaving a trail of spoil ed fruit. But what a joy for these old sick wizened trees. To be useful still.  I, of course, bond with them again and am proud that I still am useful and proud to be alive.
The best time is when I take my sketch book and try to put them on paper.  This is slow work as they are so contorted. It is difficult to get their essence. During this very quiet time as I struggle, there is real communication. We talk about our long lives. We talk about how we have changed. We talk about what we have learned about life what we have seen and what lessons we have painfully  learned.

Walking through an abandoned orchard is very different and can be very exciting. I remember an abandoned apple orchard on a Gulf Island. I came upon it suddenly- a lush group of trees bearing apples. What questions stimulated my overactive mind as I imagined it's history. It was romantic to walk through the silent trees and picturing it,


Another abandoned orchard I want to talk about was one my girlfriend and I stumbled on when we were young in  the Okanagan valley near Kelowna where I grew up. It was a hot lazy Sunday afternoon -believe me, there is nothing lazier than a hot Kelowna Sunday afternoon- We decided to explore the mountain at the back of their orchard. We rambled up and over until we reached the Okanagan lake. There in the shimmering light was an abandoned peach orchard.  There were no buildings, no roads, just mountain and lake. The orchard was on the top of a high cliff. The trees were laden with overripe golden and red fruit. Of course we feasted until gorged, Then we put as many as we could carry folded in our full skirts-yes in those days girls wore skirts on Sundays-and walked home, On the way we did meet a rattler but fortunately not a grizzly bear. This is one of my favourite  memories.


My favourite book as a child was "The Secret Garden" a book about an English girl born in India who was forced to move to her uncle's castle in Yorkshire England  after her parents died in India of cholera. The story revolves around her attempt to find and then restore an abandoned hidden walled garden, The idea of a hidden secret garden was magical to me-a little girl growing up in Alberta where there were no secrets, everything was out in the open in the vast prairies. I passed  many magical hours in this forbidden hidden walled garden. Everyone should have a hidden secret garden. Of course that is not possible except in our imagination. There we too can spend many happy hours nurturing and bringing to life our own abandoned hidden garden. Aren't we lucky.

BLOGG # - 2018--THE YEAR OF COMPLICITY

A few days ago,while I was having coffee with a friend, she told me  that "Complicit" is the official
word for 2018. I said I was not aware this term existed. She said it did and this year this particular word was chosen because of a question a reporter asked the wife of the current President of the United States. She was asked if she was complicit with the ideas and decisions of the president- her husband. She replied that she was complicit with the good ones but not complicit with the bad ones.
A  red light went on in my head. Can one be "complicit" with something "good?" I thought "complicit" had a negative feeling. I was right.  I looked it up on Google and sure enough the definition in both the Webster and Oxford dictionaries state that to be complicit with something does  usually mean it is  illegal or at least shady.
I decided to check with the internet to see if "complicit" really is the official word of 2018. It is. It did not tell me why we need an official "word for the year".

I also looked up to see if there was an  official word for the year 2017. Yes there was. The word for 2017 was"Youthquake"
I understood that of course. If I am clear on one thing it is the impact of the youth on Culture today.
I admire their awareness and cool assessment of the world they live in. I also saw how the youth of  America woke up last year to the fact that Democracy in the U.S. is not the perfect democracy they were taught to believe and I like their reaction to this. It is even better this year as they bravely hold the Adult world accountable for the gun laws and protest the blatant  murdering of themselves  in the schools and on the streets. So yes, last year was their wakening to their flawed world in 2017 and the impact was great. The word Youthquake was appropriate.  On a less serious subject-their impact on the world of fashion is huge. The major designers go out on the streets to see what the youth is wearing then go into their Ateliers, copy their ideas and the "Fashionable" at great expense walk around trying to look like them.

The word for 2018 on the other hand is disconcerting to say the least. Is it appropriate?  Does it mean we will all be involved in complicity this year? I fear we may well be. It will be very difficult to untangle ourselves from the webs our present leaders are weaving. We will be involved whether we want to or not. Being complicit in shadiness, illegality and dishonesty seem to be the key words this year. That is why it was chosen I guess.
I also found out you can participate in the choosing of the "word of  the year." You can send in your choice and the most frequently chosen word will be chosen.  You can be part of it all. I decided not to do this as I can never fill out a form on line without making a mistake.

 However I know I do not want to waste this year on such a negative word and I do not want to be involved in complicity-good or bad so I have decided to choose my own word for 2018. The word I have chosen is  "Bliss!"
I am delighted with this word and immediately decided to celebrate it by blissfully painting a sketch of a bouquet of tulips I bought to cheer me up. The tulips,blissfully, were a rhapsody of riotous orange, red, yellow and mauve Easter colours- You can see the result above.
So my advice to you -again- is choose your own 2018 Word Of The Year-choose carefully and beautifully and then choose to live it abundantly all year.  Definitely forget the official word "Complicit."
Happy Easter from your blissfully happy Blogger.


 

BLOGG # BEDS OF CROCUSES

Last year at this time I wrote about the time when I was walking my favourite walk to find spring flowers especially the crocuses on the mossy bank by the kindergarten adjacent to St.Mary's church. To my horror the school was gone, the mossy bank was gone and in it's place were huge construction machines taking massive bites out of the yard. The crocuses where gone except for one lone one. I mourned the loss of this lovely bed of crocuses.  A year has passed.  Yesterday I did the same walk. To my surprise I saw a mass of crocuses spreading over the construction site. They were scattered from the crumbled mossy wall to the new houses springing up.

  I had to paint them-these shimmering blossoms shivering in the cold wind- bravely defiantly spreading themselves over the whole area. What moxy!  Previously they just were confined to the mossy bank but not any more. Now they are luxuriantly stretching their wings-or rather roots covering the lot.
What a lesson for me I thought as I sketched. What a confirmation of positive survival in the face of catastrophe! What resilience and adaptability to an adverse action. These little insignificant blooms can be our teacher. They did not throw up their heels and die as expected. No- they survived and multiplied. What a smack in our eye.
Then I thought about myself in this past year. It too was difficult and changes were necessary and I sometimes felt despair. Also others I know felt the same in their individual lives but more importantly in the affairs of the troubled world also. This had been a difficult year.
We all feel despair at the upheaval of the planet. The uprooting of peoples from their homes and now homeless. The thoughtlessness of ongoing chaos. Will it ever stop- will we survive as good human beings?  Everyone everywhere has these thoughts now and it is easy to lose hope but I decided to take the crocus as example. I  have a  choice after all and instead of despairing I will look to the lowly crocus which always gave me joy especially in the drab spring of the prairies when I was a little girl and thought that spring would never come.
I decided I would use these crocuses which all my life have been the harbingers of joy and light to remind me that life is a privilege not just a right and I must not despair but like them fight to survive and grow in spite of misfortunes happening around us and be harbingers of light and joy too.
Yes this is a tall order but necessary if we want to survive as a species. Remember despair is an assault on the human spirit. Do not give it power.

BOGG # FINDING YOUR PASSION

Christmas is coming up again and this month means Christmas movies. All month long especially on Netflix, Christmas movies are being streamed. These are not first rate movies-more like "B" or maybe "C" movies. The plots are simple,unvaried and always feature snow, Christmas lights, Christmas music, angels,a jolly Santa and an obliging elf.  Of course huge department stores, decorations and toys are there to remind us what Christmas is all about.
The most important of all though is the theme which is romance and passion.  In every movie there is a pretty  heroine-usually blond, and a handsome clean cut hero with dazzling white teeth.  Sometimes the girl is an ambitious boss and the man is a lowly clerk. Sometimes the man is rich and the girl is a single mom struggling to survive. The best movies have royals. Either there is a prince from Duldavia who falls in love with a common girl from Idaho, or there is a princess from Andovia who falls in love with the local handyman. The movies always have happy endings with romance and passion and we are happy because this is what we all want.
There are other kinds of passion of course besides romantic love and parenthood is one of them. This passion is intense and time consuming. The first ten years of my life as a mother was like this,but when the children reached young adulthood it was time for me to step back and find something else to be passionate about.  I remember thinking of picking up bird watching, butterfly collecting or stamp collecting. None of these "grabbed" me.
At this point I discovered Art. Art is a hard master and can even kill you but it is a passion that can be sustained for years.  My home is filled with the results of this passion.
 Another passion is reading which has been my passion for years.  I was considered a bookworm by my long suffering Mom. She believed books were fantasy- lies and of course, being mom she was right for my favourite reading materials were romance and adventure novels. I loved  Jane Austin, all the Bronte novels, all adventures written for boys and girl and science fiction.

However lately -probably because I am sated with Netflix and Romantic movies, I seem to have lost my passion. I read, listlessly, several books at a time without finishing any of them-including the one from my book club. My paint brushes have been soaking for days, the paints drying and the canvases dulling. Worst of all when I turn on the television I find myself doing what men do-flicking from station to station and rejecting most of the movies on Netflex. I had become listless and and without passion. But no more!

Last week, we were Christmas shopping in the Bolen Book store when my daughter  mentioned  she had been in the Science Fiction section and was tempted to buy a Ursala Quinn novel one of my favourite science fiction authors."O yes!" do!" I said." OH! also what about Anne McCaffrey! remember Dragon flight?" and suddenly desire overwhelmed me. The dragon series by Anne McCaffery were a favourite and I had to have one right now.  I rushed to buy one.

Passion was back . O the delight of not being able to wait til one gets home to open the desired book.
What fun to delve deeply into high adventure again instead of crawling painfully through the serious modern books dealing with momentous issues and thoughtful analysis or the painfully tragic novels that I had recently been reading. Here I was as I had been years ago as a young woman when I last read her series, flying through the sky perched on the golden dragon queen, soaring up into the distant stratosphere and plunging recklessly down to earth on the lovely planet of Pern trying to save it from disaster.  I was not alone I was with all the other handsome male riders on their bronze, brown, green and blue dragons throwing flames at the enemy.  I gobbled the book up in a few hours and found myself driving to the shop to buy the next one. I am in luck.  She has written at least twenty in the Pern series. This will carry me through the trying festive season. Passion in my life has been restored.
 Take my advice dear readers and search for your passion -don't let the mundane and serious take over your life. Look for your passion where-ever it resides even if it is in a rather fantasy place like mine perched on a dragon fighting enemies. It does not matter the form it takes. Just find it and wallow in it and enjoy Christmas.

BLOGG # "SLEEPLESS IN VICTORIA"

Several years ago I wrote a blogg that dealt with the subject of our parents being right after all and how, with hard earned experience and chastened by failures we finally bow down to their wisdom. By parents of course I mean anyone in authority and this includes the medical profession.

In that last blogg I talked about caving in to the fact that porridge is good for you. I spent some time trying  to like it and had it every morning for several months. I finally gave up trying  and now eat my favourite breakfast instead -fried tomato slice  and cheese on gluten free bread.  I decided that pleasure in life is worth more than high fiber. I am now content-though not necessarily regular.

This  blogg ,thank goodness, isn't about porridge. It is about  not sleeping.
 For the past few years I have  been struggling with the lack of sleep and trying to cope with three to four hours sleep.
 Every night I approached my bed with dread in my heart anticipating the nightly battle.  My first reaction on entering the bedroom at bedtime was always "Oh no- it is that time already"-it seems that I just left it". The bed became my enemy.  It's ability to tie itself into uncomfortable knots with blankets, pillows and sheets seemed purposely designed to frustrate me.  In the following long hours I battled with these -throwing pillows and  blankets about and eventually tossing them on the floor. Sheets were like reptiles wrapping around me until I was unable to move. I eventually solved the sheet problem by investing in sleeping bags. This did not help much but at least I could move. Move I did, tossing from side to side, continually checking the clock as it slowly crawled around to morning. Waiting and watching for a pot to boil is nothing compared to watching a clock inching snail like to dawn-blessed dawn. But that too has mixed blessings because then one knows the day will drag just as slowly with foggy brain, tired muscles and joints exhausted because of lack of  sleep.

I tried various recommendations. There was meditation-not helpful in my case. Then there was relaxation- one relaxes muscles starting from toes and working upwards. Very ineffective.  Relaxing baths are recommended. Dark curtains, peaceful surroundings, no distractions and  soft music were also suggested. None of these worked.  The use of computers, television and  other technical devises near bedtime is  apparently a  no-no which was emphatically endorsed by the medical community. If you really needed an activity that requires plugging an electric appliance into a socket- ironing is recommended, preferably men's dress shirts. That may tire you sufficiently for sleep but otherwise nothing exciting and pleasurable before entering the sleep chamber. There is one activity that is recommended. I will not go into it. We all know that one.
 I did argue passionately with my doctor  to give me sleeping pills-you know-the little blue half pill we all love-virtuously pleading that I do not have an addictive personality .  My charming handsome doctor was surprisingly adamant in his refusal.

The most consistent recommendation though by all those in  authority,especially by physicians  is to abstain from alcohol in the evening. For a long time I ignored this advice until due to illness it was necessary to forgo my favourite evening glasses of red.  O K-It worked.  I admit it. There were nights when I clocked in nine to ten hours sleep.  It is true. One feels better after a long healing sleep and I enjoyed the feeling of wellness.

The need to abstain from alcohol has lifted for me now and the question-the very big question is-do I decide that the feeling of wellness is more important than the pleasure of enjoying my glass of red? Or will that feeling of wellness due to eight hour sleep go the way of regularity from eating  high fiber porridge?  Will I choose bright bag less eyes, a happy disposition, long hours of healing sleep by abstaining from my glass of red  along with healthy regularity by eating the hated porridge or will I like so many of my fellow human beings make wrong minded choices - in my case- sleeplessness and irregularity??  Whatever I decide to do, I must not -and note this carefully my readers-ask those in authority to help me make the decision. I will make it all by myself. This is a free country, we are adults with free will and the right to choose-badly or not. The choice is ours-rather mine now -and no,I will not tell you my decision/

BLOGG # 110 ON MAKING QUICK ASSUMPTIONS

Three weeks ago as I was sipping wine with my new traveling companions in a bar on the Transcontinental train from Vancouver to Toronto one of them said :"The one thing I discovered about myself on this trip is that I make quick assumptions when I first  meet people and they are usually based on trivial things such as appearances and I am invariably wrong. They are always much nicer when I get to know them and not at all like I thought at first-so much for my assumptions." Yes- as you see I had finally realized my dream and was on my way from Vancouver to Toronto on the Transcontinental Train and was enjoying an after dinner glass of red wine in the train bar with my new friend. As she said this I paused and thought about myself and my own assumptions -was I usually wrong too?  I decided to study my assumptions as they came up.

My berth was located  in car  231 at the very end and  thankfully close to the toilet and shower. Four people shared this berth. I was in a lower one, a young woman was in the upper and across the aisle was an older American couple from Georgia. He was very tall, overweight and wore shorts, white knee socks, huge runners and a baseball cap. He had a loud voice with a drawl. I labelled him " right wing sheriff from Texas." His wife was diminutive,exquisitely dressed and spoke in a soft southern accent. I named her " delicate Southern Belle who sips mint juleps." The young woman was from San Diego California. She had just chucked her job, stored everything and was traveling via train from Vancouver  to Toronto, to Montreal and New York, then flying to Dubrovnik to sail the Adriatic coast for a week. She had no further future plans after that.  She was quiet voiced, athletic, wore understated sports clothes and carried a serious backpack. I dubbed her " The quiet American -clean living, friend of the outdoors and a vegetarian."  The next berth had a Canadian couple from Saskatoon. He was a retired train worker who spoke incessantly and she was his long suffering wife. We all called him  "Trainman".

My first breakfast I shared with two older women who looked like sisters.  They both said good morning ,ordered their cornflakes then bowed their heads to give thanks. I thought "Aha !sisters from Abbotsford on their way to a religious conference- this may be hard going. I was wrong-they were not sisters but old friends with interesting stories of their terrifying experience as teenage refugees in Poland during the 2nd world war and they eventually landed up growing up in Saskatchewan-We all had enthusiastic things to say about our love of that province.In Fact anytime I saw them during the next few days we always had fun times together-they were in their quiet ways always involved in the social events giggling and talking and they were the first ones to turn up for the wine tasting.
My "Quiet clean living American" morphed into a constant attendant in the Bar drinking beer and proved to be an expert on wine -she was not vegetarian and was popular with the men.

My two new wine drinking women friends were Torontonians, vibrant and talented-one was an artist and decorator, the other was an aspiring photographer. We were all on adventures and  together with the quiet American spent happy times in the observation car in the evenings drinking wine. An English business man from Saritoga Florida often joined us calling us the four musketeers and flirting with us all.  We did not trust him a bit. That assumption was correct.

On the third day, Trainman and his disgruntled wife  got off in Saskatoon and I joined my comrades in our berth  just in time to hear this discussion. "Did you hear him?" said the American man "Can you believe it ? He is a supporter of Trump! How can anyone do that? He thinks what Saskatoon needs is someone like him! And what about that argument you had with him not believing  about climate change being a problem?" He turned to Ms Quiet American who shrugged and said that argument was pointless with someone like that and she should have not gotten involved.  The American wife drawled softly "I thought his wife was going to kill him." She smiled mischievously -her favourite reading material was real crime fiction novels. She loved describing  the more gruesome details to our horrified ears- especially her soft hearted husband's.  So as you see almost all of my assumptions eventually had to be thrown out of the window of the moving train. Chastised I realized I too was in the habit of making false assumptions  based on prejudices. As I embarked from the train in Toronto a thought struck me-"I wonder what the other passenger's assumptions about me were?"-a sobering thought.

BLOGG # INNER RESOURCES

 I was talking to my friend the other day about my  decision to live quietly for a time  and with tongue in cheek quoted my favourite author Jane Austin, describing  my ability to cope with solitude without difficulty because I appear to have many "inner resources. " As soon as I said this I got an "inner jolt" in my solar plexus. This quote is from one of my favourite least admired characters from "Emma"-in my estimate Jane's best novel. The character, Mrs. Elton, is  the vulgar ambitious social climber and new wife of John Elton the local young vicar.  She very arrogantly and at great length, talks to long suffering Emma about not fearing retirement now that she was married and living "village life." "Blessed with so many resources within myself, the world was not necessary to me." she states.  I loved the passage where she describes Mr. Elton's  proposal. She insists of  Mr.''E" er "Caro sposo" that there must be music available in their future life for her happiness-one of her "inner resources"
I felt great chagrin as I thought of Mrs. E's and my own inner resources and decided to see if mine measured up.
Well of course there is Music, there are also Books, Culture and Art to begin with and I decided to examine how I spent my day doing all this. First of all music-I have been trying to perfect Beethoven's "Fur Elise" on my piano for the past six years. I decided to read the 'Russians' again and took out Dostoevsky's " The Brothers Karamazov' from the library and planned a program of sketching and painting the summer flowers on my balcony-one painting per day.
My "Fur Elise" is still not perfect -I always get stuck on the same spot.  My "Brother Karamazov" was due in one month-it became overdue and I was still on page 18. I have done exactly five paintings in the past month and the flowers are now past bloom.
It is obviously time to see what happened to my "Inner resources" and what I do with my time so I re-examined my day. It looked like this: I spent fifteen minutes on the piano, I spent half an hour in the morning and exactly five minutes at bedtime before nodding off while reading my book. My Art did not fare better - I could only tolerate thirty minutes or so in the hot sun -also my ability to deeply concentrate- as is required to paint well -lasted about ten minutes. So what did I do the rest of my day? 
I spent quite a long time flipping through the latest fashions in Vogue; lingered over coffee in my local coffee shop; talked on the phone; re-organized my wardrobe and tried on new outfits and watched Netflix on my T.V.  When I totted up the time spent the list looked like this: fifteen minutes piano,thirty two minutes reading,thirty minutes on the balcony-fifteen minutes sketching, one hour at coffee shop, one hour trying on my clothes, one hour on phone and the rest of the time watching Netflix!! You do the math I am too ashamed.
Obviously dear Jane Austin, who is now celebrating her two hundredth year anniversary of her birth with many accolades throughout the world, would not be impressed with my "Inner Resources."