Lilacs

What is it about fading/faded blossoms that fascinates me so?    I'm sure a therapist would have a field day analyzing my damaged psyche, but I think they have a melancholic beauty.
 Maybe they appeal to my inner Sylvia Plath.

Lilacs, a photo by lovestotravel:) on Flickr.

Just so you don't think I'm a truly distubed individual and possibly a danger to society, I should point out that I also love them when they're fresh and alive.

p.s.  Don't worry re: Sylvia Plath reference.  Our oven is electric.  :-)

My new Spanish tutor

Me gusto me instructor nuevo.  Nosotros hemos tenido uno leccion solamente y comprendo mucho mas que antes.  Yo he faltado a aprender el tiempo pasado muchas veces, pero Kenn ha abierto la puerta a la pasado.  Por ahora, olvidare el preterito.  En lugar del preterito, voy a concentrar a aprender el presente perfecto.  Lo es mas facil y mas flexible tambien.

See?  I couldn't have done that last week, because it contains past tense references.  So, how many times have I taken Spanish lessons only to give up when I hit the wall of past tense?  Sure, I can do the exercises and I can even pass the tests, but I just can't seem to get a solid grip on it.  There are just too many variables and they slither and slide around in my brain until they become just a pile of mush.   Take a boo at this chart and see just how many tenses the Spanish language has.  C'mon, my brain is 56 years old and already full of stuff like the lyrics to Gilligan's Island theme song, there's just not that much free RAM left.

And why in all this time has nobody ever told me that I don't have to master the preterite in order to communicate things that happened in the past?  Sheesh!  I've been bashing my head against the past tense for so long that I just figured I would never be able to have a normal conversation.  Ever.  Period.  Because I'm stupid and I just don't get it!

So Kenn (yes, nn) comes over on Monday morning and within ½ an hour he showed me an easier way to do it.  Sure, I've studied the "present perfect" tense in classes before, but nobody has ever explained just how versatile it is.  I thought it had limited applications and wouldn't quite cut it as a sure fire way to convey past actions, so I discounted it.  Wrong!  It's much more versatile than the others and WAY easier too. 

There will come a point when I'll be needing the nuances of the preterito, the pluscuamperfecto, the preterito anterior and the seventeen other ways to speak in the past tense, but for now, I'm happy to be able to communicate simple concepts like " I have already eaten, thank you."

The fence project

The metal fence at the bottom of our garden has been there forever.  It's lasted 25 years that we know of  (probably longer) and I'm sure it would've lasted another 100, easily.  I can't remember how long ago we planted the cotoneaster hedge in front of it, but I'm thinking it's gotta be 20 years, at least.  Within a couple of years the hedge grew to cover up the ugly fence, then it continued growing until it was about about 8'  high giving us optimum privacy in our yard.  I loved it!  It was lush and thick and completely blocked out the view of the neighbours across the alley.  Well, more specifically, their junky cars and rusted garage door.  It was like having a thick green wall. 

Unfortunately, as you can see in this photo, it started to get spindly and kind of sickly and there were more bare patches than greenery. 

So it's time for a change. 

For reasons unknown, the metal fence was about 2½ feet inside our property line, so by removing the fence (and the cotoneaster) and building the new fence ON the property line, we're gonna gain a bit more space in the garden.

So the old fence is now down.  That was no easy matter - it was definitely meant to last a lifetime!  Now we just have to figure out how to get rid of it.  It weighs a bloody ton!

Dan has had trouble finding somebody with a bobcat to come in and remove the bushes and dig some post-holes.  I guess there's a lot of work out there at this time of year, and nobody is interested in a piddly little job like ours.

He thinks he has somebody from work lined up to come out on Friday.   Hopefully it doesn't rain and they actually show up...

Meanwhile, I'm feeling more than a little exposed here.  Not only do we have a pile of dirt and another pile of clippings in the yard, we also have a lovely view of Bill's rusty garage door and Doug's old beater.   AND we can also see our compost bins.  Nice!

 

The Tulip Dance

So much enjoyment from 2 unexpected tulips. 

Remember the 2 tulips that tease me by coming up every year, and then refuse to flower?  Well, I  cut them and brought them into the house so I could have the pleasure of their company at breakfast, and I thoroughly enjoyed every stage of their last dance.

  

Unfortunately, Dan didn't know that I was waiting for the petals to completely drop off to take the final photo to finish the collage, and he cleaned them off the table before I got up one morning.  My fault;  I didn't say that I was photographing them.  He just saw dead flowers that needed to be removed.

Not invited

Not invited, a photo by lovestotravel:) on Flickr.

Grrrrr, these guys drive me crazy!

Oh, they're pink

Yaaay!  After almost a decade of teasing me every year, these tulips finally bloomed this year.
I have no idea how they got here. If I was going to plant bulbs, I'd would've planted a whole whack of them, not just 2.
These 2 show up every year and they get nice juicy looking buds on them, but then they mysteriously shrivel up and die.   I didn't even know what colour they were until this year.

Word games and cookies

I know, I know, it's been a long time between posts.  I'd like to say that I've been SO busy doing fun and interesting stuff that I just haven't had time, but sadly, that's not the case.

My life in a nutshell:

Play Scrabble on Facebook.  Yes, Dan & I were sitting in the same room playing Scrabble with eachother online.  And texting eachother to say "hurry up" because the game lets you do that.  Technology rocks!

Go to work.  Make cookies.  These ones are oatmeal/raisin/chocolate chip.

Go to work.  Play Lexulous on Facebook.  But look - I beat Melody!  It's fun playing a game with someone in Mexico.  (Or Canmore or Westlock - hi Cari-Ann and Marina)

Go to work.  Go to Spanish meetup.  Make cookies.  These ones are called Angel Pillows and I love 'em!  Apricot jam in the batter and in the icing gives them a nice fruity tang.  Some have hemp seeds sprinkled on top because somebody gave Dan a baggie of them and I didn't know what else to do with them.  Any ideas?  I mean besides rolling and smoking them...

Play Lexulous with Lex the computer robot.  He usually beats me by a margin of about 200 points, but sometimes I get lucky.  (Okay, so once I got lucky!)   Good way to broaden the vocabulary.  Zoons?  Did you know that a zoon is an animal developed from a fertized egg?  I didn't.

And because Mother's Day was a week or so ago, here's Mom.  This was taken in Playa del Carmen, Mexico when we were on vacation with Mom & Dad in 1998.  We were sitting in a tree-house bar over-looking the main drag obviously enjoying a frosty beverage.  Great vacation, great memories!

Cheers, Mom!

Skyping Nancy & Pedro

Okay, that was fun!

Thank you, thank you, thank you to Melody and Carl for making it possible.  C&M took a lap-top over to our house in Mexico and invited our neighbours Nancy & Pedro over to chat with us.  Remember, these people have no electricity or running water in their home, so Skyping is like something out of the Jetsons for them.  The Skype snapshots are kinda crappy, but that doesn't matter, the important thing is seeing those smiling faces again!

Making progress, but I'm stumped...

Making progress, but I'm stumped..., a photo by lovestotravel:) on Flickr.

I've posted this to a couple of Flickr knitting groups in the hopes that an experienced knitter will be able to help me to decipher the instructions.
I thought I was doing pretty good, until I came to the instructions that said to either knit 2 together, or purl 2 together, whichever is appropriate...Huh?? .I considered flipping a coin to determine which was appropriate, but there's probably a right answer and a wrong answer - and I think we know which one I would choose.

Easter in the mountains

Happy Easter!  We spent Easter Sunday with friends in Canmore. 

It was a perfect spring day in the mountains.

Took a nice walk along the river with Cari-Ann, Jonathon, Vi, Bill and of course, Muñeca.

Muñeca is the Mexi-mutt that Cari-Ann rescued from the streets of Puerto Peñasco.  She seems to be adapting quite well to life as a pampered indoor dog.  She's already been back-country skiing and she loves the snow!  She's also quite fascinated with the thousands of wild bunnies in Canmore.

Jon, Cari-Ann & Muñeca.

It doesn't hurt to daydream...

Ahhhh!

This piece of artwork by Pasquale Ouellet has sparked quite a lot of controversy in Canmore. 

I quite like it, but then, I don't own property that has been "horribly de-valued by the enormity of the sheer ugliness...blah, blah, blah"

The hand-painted poem, in both French & English, is about the Chinook winds.

The wind which elates me without moving

Which makes the trees dance

And of the silence of the mountains

Makes a great noise

He is the chinook and his arc

Came as a friend

To warm up the souls numbed

By the snow, the rain and the cold

And when he cannot control his power

One should not be upset with him

Because he is a clumsy giant

With an immense heart

Okay, well I like the sculpture better than the poetry, but what do I know?

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Of course, no trip to Canmore is complete without a picture of the Three Sisters

In other news - it's gopher season. 

Taz would be content to sit on the hill at the end of our street watching them - all day!

Egg-stremely fragile

Just popped it in the mail box this morning - should be there soon.

Paste eggs

First of all, let me just say that I have no idea why they're called paste eggs, they just are okay?  They were always an Easter tradition in our house when I was growing up.  My mom would make a big batch of them to give to friends and family - kind of a goodwill gesture I suppose, because who really wants to get a hard-boiled egg as a gift?

Making the paste eggs was a laborious process that took hours and hours.  I wasn't allowed to actually help of course, due to the very real possibility that I'd find a way to screw it up, but my finger was always needed to hold the thread in place while Mom tied the knots.  Eventually I was made redundant when she switched to using tin foil to hold the onion skins in place instead of tying them with thread.  The tin foil versions were okay, but they were never as pretty as when they were done the old-fashioned way.

You have to start saving onion skins several months ahead of Easter.  Sure, you get some funny looks when you go to the market and buy one onion and then fill the bag with all of the loose skins from the onion bin, but that's part of the tradition...I just happened to have a bag full of skins on hand because I was going to make them last year and never got around to it.

So, I wrapped the raw eggs in onion skins and tied them up with thread. It didn't take me long to figure out  that that's easier to do if the skins are wet.  I don't remember my Mom ever soaking them - so it's no wonder it was such a chore.

  Pop 'em in a pan to boil.

And voila!  Beautiful paste eggs - just like Mom used to make.

Now as I recall, you pick out the prettiest one and give it to your best friend.  Then she gives you the prettiest one from her batch.  Then you roll them on the ground and smash them into eachother, then you eat them.  Or toss them into the nearest trash can when Mom isn't looking.  I mean really, as beautiful as they are, they're still just yucky hard-boiled eggs.

Books and baking

I have a lot of cookbooks, which I seldom look at because...

...they live on the top of the kitchen cupboard above the fridge. 

Even if I drag a chair over and stand on my tippy toes, I can't quite reach them.  Because not only are they high, but I also have to reach over the fridge!  Needless to say, I sometimes think I'd like to make something, then I look up at the books and go naaaahh, I can't be bothered.

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So I had this brilliant idea:  Why not put a shelf up at a height that I can actually reach?  (Duh!)  I chose a floating shelf  because I liked the look of a shelf without the ugly brackets underneath.  That seemed like a good idea until I looked at the load restrictions.  10 kg only. 

So how many cookbooks = 10kg?

Not many! 

4 books, 1 binder and a ½ dozen magazines to be exact.

I bought some stupid brackets today.

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This morning was  sunny & pleasant, but the afternoon was kinda crappy.  A good day for baking.  I had some apples that were past thier best, so I decided to use them up in this coffee cake.  I screwed it up though.  I was supposed to press the apples into the batter so that it would rise up and over them.  Oops, mine are just sitting on top and as as a result they're kind of dried out.  Oh well, I'll know better next time.

I still had 2 apples left, so they became apple streusel muffins.   Yeah, I know, they aren't very streusel-ly, but they taste pretty good.  (Better than the cake at least)

And some tofu "sausage" rolls.  Quit snickering - they're pretty good.  Dan even likes them!

Now I'm off to have tea with a bunch of Spanish speakers at a coffee shop in Marda Loop.  This'll be my 3rd meetup in the last couple of weeks.  I still can't contribute much to the conversations, but I'm starting to feel like less of an outsider.  They seem like a nice bunch of people - if only I could understand them...