Addendum to "Jaunting..."

The row of houses where our friends live; their property is 19' wide.

Comment on travelling separately: boring.
Comment on airlines: Air Canada is hands-down the best one we've been on (including Swiss Air, BA, Iberia, United, American, Delta, KLM) for quite a few years even though we used to love-to-hate AC when Canadian was absorbed.
Comment on expedia.com: not nearly as helpful and doesn't have as good deals as expedia.ca.
Which brings me to our recent travels east. My trip was uneventful but Jim got stuck in Calgary because his ticket didn't allow enough time to clear the backlog at US Immigration. (American readers - at our major Canadian airports we clear US Immigration & Customs in Canada before we embark). This happened about 10:30 in the morning. By 6:00 in the afternoon Jim had been back and forth to the US and Canada without leaving the airport, had a premium room at the Delta hotel, and a ticket into Windsor (instead of Detroit and WAY more expensive) for the next day, plus a dinner and breakfast voucher at the hotel. He says he had a fabulous steak dinner and all the whole deal cost him was for the Graham Beck Shiraz that he purchased to go with the steak. If it had been me who was stuck I would have ended up paying $500.00 for a new ticket routed by way of Nowheresville and would have slept on the floor in the airport, so I have to say I was mighty glad my trip was only boring. If you know Jim at all you know he could sell coal to Newcastle (Is Newcastle still famous for coal or is that reference completely out of date. I was going to say "ice to Eskimos" but thought that might be considered rude nowadays. Aging is fraught in so many different ways not the least of which is communication!)

Once he fnally arrived on Wednesday Jim & Alan began labouring away on the deck, which wasn't completely co-operative so progress was slow.
One of the many bumps was that the only place that carries 2x12 stair stringers, Rona, had sold out because everyone else in town was also building decks. Alan had purchased 2x10 stringers (from Lowe's and amazingly cheaply made!) but they make for skimpy treads which just aren't as safe.
Did I mention that it was hot? And that the men were working on the sunny side of the house? Yikes, it must have been 120F out there (despite being Canadian, Windsorites speak in Farenheit.
Meanwhile Sally & I saw some of the sights and enjoyed ourselves in air-conditioned comfort.
The view of Detroit along the river walk in Windsor!

Sunday we went to the Detroit Institute of Art where Sally introduced me to some amazing murals by Diego Rivera http://www.dia.org/art/rivera-court.aspx and we saw a special exhibit on the central west Africans view of Europeans in the 1850's, "Through African Eyes" 

That night Sally dug out the picnic gear and we grabbed a bench near the river to eat and watch the world go by. It was a perfect evening. 

Monday we had drinks on the deck, even though it wasn't as finished as everyone hoped. The building inspector arrived, while we were taking our group photo on Tuesday morning, and pooped on our parade leaving Alan with an ugly job of digging 2 new post holes by himself and Jim feeling that he was abandoning ship.

 

And then we came home, separately and smoothly, to cold gray weather and the wish that Sally & Alan will have many happy times on the new deck and memories of its construction. And also the wish that all of our 'dear ones' lived nearby.

Jaunting off again

The trouble with starting things, like blogs, is that if you don't keep them up-to-date it's a bit hard to get going again; too much has happened in the interim. I suppose that’s that ‘inertia’ concept that Mr Boyer tried to teach me in grade 8 science. It was something about it taking less energy to keep something moving than to start from a standing position. Whatever…which was probably my reaction to the concept at the time but I do understand how it extrapolates to the non-physics world. If you get tired of not hearing from me and want to follow a blog that is fun and interesting and well written take a look at http://muckybootsfarm.blogspot.com/ the creation of a very good friend who, with her partner, quit her teaching job, bought a small-holding and is living the dream. There isn't anything they don't tackle.


So here I am back in touch after about 5 weeks of silence. Yikes.

We are on the eve of going to Windsor, Ontario to visit some dear friends, Sally & Alan, who used to live here. I know, why would anyone leave Victoria to go to Windsor, not known as a hotbed of migration. Well you would be surprised. First of all Windsor is way south of anywhere Canadian, in fact it is south of Detroit, Michigan, its very close neighbour (about ½ mile away), which is kind of disorienting when our entire culture is built around being north of everything. And being south of anywhere the climate is not too bad. Sure they get a few weeks of winter and some brutal heat in summer but lots of the time it’s kind of nice. And they have the Detroit skyline, spectacular, and all the cultural diversions of the big city without the hassles: opera, art centre, shopping, Red Wings, Tigers (do they still exist?) etc. On the Windsor side there is a fabulous park/garden/walkway along the Detroit River with interesting sculptures, and there is Hiram Walker’s distillery, and the Big Three car factories, and wineries, and farmland, and a nice university, and I could go on… I have to admit it is a titch FLAT, but nevertheless it’s a good place so we are glad to be going.

But we aren’t going together.

A few months ago I suggested that Jim go for a week to help Alan build a deck. They live in a 100 year old row house, and that long ago people didn’t build decks. There is a concrete stair and stoop and the space is narrow and there are other issues and it just seemed like Jim would enjoy having coffee with Alan again, something they used to do regularly. After some hemming and hawing and fussing with flights Jim found a reasonably inexpensive one and booked it. A couple of weeks later I decided I was wasting too much time being tied to my studio and announced that I wanted to go too. Which is why we aren’t travelling together. We could have, at great expense, but thought it made more sense to save $500.00 and go our separate ways, both flying into Detroit, on different airlines, leaving and arriving an hour apart. Crazy.

We are back in a week and are amazed at how simple it is to go away for that short a period. It seems our travels are often long and complicated. And did I mention how glad I am that we aren’t trying to go to or through Europe this spring? What a mess that continues to be and it’s not like you can just put a cork in a volcano.

Meanwhile is is spring, and beautiful in Victoria!
Lots more to catch up on and I'll get back to posting somewhat regularly on our return...

Lucky in love

We’ve been living the high life for the last 6 weeks, not that we don’t always live high and happy, but we’ve been on a bit of a whirl. I am disappointed that I wasn’t doing a good job taking photos as we’ve had ‘visitations’ and not much record of them. For instance my sister, Betsy, was in town for the first time in a year and we had a lot of good times and laughter with her. Of course she inspected my head and did her ‘older wiser sister’ thing. And our good friend Alan Bull, who lives in Windsor, Ontario, was working here for 3 weeks so we got to catch up with him too.

And then Jim’s sister and her husband, Pat and Ed Lawlor came to town and we did finally get the camera out. A photo that should have been and wasn’t was of Pat & Ed, and Arthur & Jessica Vickers www.arthurvickers.com at Arthur’s gallery in Cowichan Bay because the Lawlors bought one of Arthur’s fabulous Orca Family sets. Arthur is hardly ever in the gallery but he was that day 3 times as we came and went. We decided he was lurking outside somewhere and as soon as we went through the gallery door he followed us in! He is a wonderful story teller and a very spiritual person so it was an amazing day, again with a lot of laughter but also powerful images and emotions.

We were supposed to meet Pat & Ed in Las Vegas and tour around southern Utah and Nevada for a couple of weeks but Jim and Pat decided they might as well come here instead. Of course we had a fabulous winter weather-wise until that decision was taken and then the weather pretty much collapsed. Sure it was in the low teens and pleasant enough but not as nice as it had been in February. And good grief, when we went to Seattle it was a howling winter storm and freezing. Luckily we ‘did’ mostly indoor things ‘cuz it was bitter. When the Lawlors returned to PEI for Easter weekend they had summer weather, 20C for heaven’s sake, and we had another storm. Today Jim  I went to Costco, (remember I said I would need to buy plants!) and I wore my down jacket knowing we would be outside in the garden centre. Actually many of my seedlings are doing okay but Costco's garden centre is a spring ritual.

Speaking of friends and family, Randy Mains is back from Abu Dhabi for 6 weeks, Joan & Rob Tweedie have returned from South Africa, and we had a very happy time at my cousin Barb’s on Easter Sunday with the extended family of 15. BTW, if you get an opportunity to have bacalhau, the traditional fish stew that Portuguese/Brasilians eat on high days and holy days, I think you’ll love it. I don’t eat fish but I do eat that.

A sidebar referring back to hair related things, specifically sodium laurel sulphate: I recently read in a newpaper medical column that anyone who gets mouth sores or cankers should find a toothpaste without SLS in it (the stuff is everywhere). We are using a Jason product, Seafresh which we like well enough to continue with. My hair is starting to grow back, btw, after 4 rounds of cortisone shots in the scalp, and yes they hurt.

And that’s it really. We have just been having the best time with so many really fine people and being reminded every day how lucky we are in our friends and family. And there is still a little bit of wine left on the store shelves but you better hurry if you want any…

Another sidebar is that this post didn't want to cooperate so I haven't labeled the photos most of which are obvious anyway. The ones that aren't obvious are in Seattle, Pike Market, Pioneer Square, and the Underground Tour.

Farmer Jean

Jim has taken to calling me Farmer Jean; he’s never happier than when he can just slightly and ever so kindly mock whatever bee-of-the-moment I have in my bonnet. For a few years I’ve been growing a very few vegetables, in a exceedingly desultory way, mixed in amongst the perennials and shrubs. My current bee is that being able to grow a few edibles is an important skill that shouldn’t be lost by the masses, or at least not by me. Not that I ever had any skill at growing food nor has that probably changed suddenly. But one tries! And we are bombarded with dire warnings of earthquakes and the consequences thereof. Of course if we ever have ‘the big one’ in my lifetime it will be in January and my farming skill won’t do any good. On the other hand if we have the quake that is predicted for Vancouver Island, Calgary will be ocean front so it won’t matter.

So Jim, who humours me in most things thereby earning the right to mock built me, even though I like to think it’s for us, a tiny kitchen garden. And then he hauled in all the soil and spread it for me while I swanned off on a social engagement. Giving myself some credit I did buy the seeds and do the grid for the “square foot garden”. I’m not sure what the premise is but making a grid is somehow supposed to make for more efficient use of space so I’m trying it. I also decided to ignore the package instructions and directly sowed some bush beans, beets, and lettuce. What the heck they are only seeds and Costco’s garden centre opens in ten days which is about when I’ll know the seeds didn’t germinate. And in our teensy plastic greenhouse, thank you Betsy, I’ve started some other seeds and if they are as successful as other years it’ll be another trip to Costco for plants. Oh yeah, you have to water the seedlings don’t you. That’s the part that I seem to forget.

Otherwise the garden is looking not too bad for March with tulips and pieris japonica doing their thing. It was a sunny warm day until about an hour ago when the clouds and cool wind blew in. It probably has a direct relationship to Pat & Ed (Jim’s sister and husband) being somewhere over the prairies on their way here for 10 days. Last time they were here, in late April 2 years ago, it snowed. You know what I’m saying…. it’s like having the winter Olympics at Whistler/Cypress.

Much ado about much: Jim & Jean go to the Olympics

The Flame!

Well we didn’t really go to the Olympics, just to Vancouver to see the sights. Inspired by a local columnist, Jack Knox, we and half of Victoria decided to do the patriotic thing and make the supreme sacrifice by going to Vancouver to wave the flag. And also like everyone else from Vancouver Island we forsook our car and took public transit. You’ve probably picked up the implication that there were a lot of us. Over the weekend (we are WAY too smart to have gone on a weekend) the foot-passenger traffic on the ferries was overwhelming, at one point leaving 600!!!! passengers behind. The ferry terminal is not an airport, no lounges, and the expectation is that most folk will have a car to sit in, which of course these people didn’t have. Some have complained that BC Ferries should have done better planning but how were they to anticipate that a) Victorians would break down and go to Vancouver and b) they would go on foot? I/we think they’ve been pretty good about putting on extra “flights” and keeping us moving. But the numbers have been staggering; keep in mind that our ferries carry upwards of 2000 passengers.

Early ferry rider

Building wraps everywhere

That was an aside, the main story being that we went yesterday, Monday Feb 22, and had a fabulous day despite the hesitation when the alarm went off at 5:00am. Thanks to the ferry website we figured out where and how to park at Swartz Bay and joined about 500 red-mittened and like minded folk for the 7:00 ferry which got us to Tsawwassen at 8:40am. We bought seats on the PCL bus which drove us off the ferry and deposited us outside the Art Gallery 45 minutes later but we also got day passes for Translink which we used all day and to get back to Tsawwassen. Another aside is that PCL and Translink send extra buses to the ferry when their agents let them know they’ve sold more than the usual number of tickets so there isn’t a wait for a bus and that all this organizing takes place on the ferry.

We spent the day just wandering and being part of the crowds and hype that has marked these games as unique and un-Canadian. We may have to redefine ourselves from reserved to über unreserved. Our first stop was to the torch at the waterfront and we can’t figure out what the complaints were about. Sure the sightlines from street level were improved by the time we got there, but it didn’t seem like the chain link fence would have been much of a problem. We thought we might go to the Mint but the line-up to see/touch the medals was two blocks long and I figure they’ll probably keep a set for their archives so we can see them later.

Outside the Mint

On TV the medals look huge! Another super long line-up was to get into The Bay (open 24 hrs till the end of the Games) for Olympic paraphernalia. Has ever a retail store/chain made such hay over an event? The marketing has been brilliant; as soon as Oprah said she wanted a pair of mittens The Bay sent her 300 for the studio audience. I really want one of the red and black checked scarves but doubt I’ll get a special delivery from HBC. And the knit sweater that I didn’t buy three weeks ago thinking they might go on sale? Forget that pipe dream.

The Bay: the building wrap and the line-up

We went to Canada House and were there when the Stanley Cup made a guest appearance, and we went to Robson Square and Robson Street where the crowd was thick and happy. There lots of police in evidence, but having fun and chatting with the throng.
Belgium has loaned Vancouver a tram that runs back and forth from the Canada Line to Granville Island for free but sadly will terminate after the Paralympics. We lined up for it and everything else but it was all good and the day was perfect.

Granville Island

Does this even look like Vancouver?

At 3:30, standing on Robson Street, we decided we were tired enough to head home (how do people stay until midnight?) figuring there wasn’t much chance of making the 5:00 ferry but we’d give it a shot. So we elbowed our way the 4 blocks to the Canada Line station, got off at Bridgeport 20 minutes later and directly onto a 620 express bus to the ferry which pulled into the terminal at 4:30. All of this detail is tedious if you don’t live in Victoria but for us it is something of a Miracle Tale because it worked! We learned this morning that, in keeping with our blissful good fortune, the decision to come home at that point was the right one. The foot traffic was huge for the next two ferries with people left behind again and that despite it being a foot crowd like we had never seen before on our ferry.

To cap off our perfect day we were in front of the TV drinking a very nice bottle of wine, thank you Mary & Sydney, in time to watch Virtue and Moir in their exquisite gold medal ice dance, which if you missed you really missed out.
And yes, I am stiff and sore after only 6 hours of walking and standing.

Robson Street

Magnolia Tree on Robson Square

Another crisis of our own making

Well ‘crisis’ might be just a titch inaccurate. It’s more like “The Little Shop of Horrors” but not musical and not all that amusing. This one is called bamboo or rather Bamboo because it demands attention and a capital letter. When we moved to this house, 8 years ago, I decreed that I did not want the typical pyramidalis hedge between our front balcony and what sometimes is a busy street. Pyramidalis is like a black hole in space, sucking the life and love out of everything in sight. We have some in the back garden and they are much bigger than I ever wanted them to be and they are BORING. It’s a functional enough tree and ubiquitous in our part of the planet, but really drab and unimaginative.

We wanted something evergreen and relatively quick growing as well as hardy enough to withstand our occasional snow events. We’d ‘done’ photinia and I was feeling a bit jaded about it despite its very good qualities because it tends to attract tent caterpillars which is a big ugh for me and it is also rather dark. “Let’s have bamboo!” says I to long-suffering Jim who has to execute my many plans. We’d had bamboo before and thought we knew the pitfalls; we love it but being of the itchy feet clan we’ve never had it for as long as eight years in one location. BTW, there are two categories of bamboo, running and clumping. “Running” bamboo does just that, rampantly romping through entire neighbourhoods and making enemies of the perfectly nice people who live in adjacent postal codes. We had learned all about running bamboo, the hard way.

year one of the hedge, circa 2003

So, we planted 7 biggish “clumping” bamboos in a contained garden bed between our driveway and the street. The variety was pretty much guaranteed to develop slowly and to top out at 16 feet in about 10 years. You would think we’d know better by now than to walk down the path of believing what the nursery tag says. There was the Miss Kim lilac, a dwarf variety that would be 4-6 feet high in 10 years (they always say 10 years). Well that little gem grew to 10 feet in about 5 minutes and eventually committed suicide when we tried to move it. Did I say ‘we’ tried to move it? That would be Jim again, not we, after I whined and snivelled for 2 years about the space the lilac was wasting. If he had only listened to me when I first wanted it taken out it would have been quite a bit smaller and oh so much less work. But I digress. 
 From the balcony, 2010

So picture this gorgeous chartreuse green hedge rustling in any breeze and looking very light and lively for the first 6 years. One of the many good features of bamboo besides that they look great, have no bugs, and self mulch, is that they only grow once a year. They are evergreen but it is only in June/July that they put up new canes so you can really see what is happening because it is all at once. I am getting to the crisis! About two years ago I began to get a bit worried watching the canes grow 12 inches a day and noticed that some of them were approaching timber size rather than the light and airy of which I am so fond. Last year, Jim’s brow began to get quite furrowed as he fought the roots shooting out one end of the ‘contained’ area, and we found shoots poking up through the concrete seams in the driveway.  Recently I asked him if the sprig of bamboo I could see sticking out of our sprinkler system shut-off box was left over from the annual pruning (I forgot to say that we have to have 3-4 feet taken off the top of the bamboo every year now to keep it below our view and our gardener told me the other day he has to bring in help and bigger equipment for next year because it has outpaced his capability!) or if it could possibly be attached to a root. Well I know you know the answer to that question!

Jim hard at it, and mountains of cut bamboo canes. Notice how I am safely indoors taking photos from the kitchen window?

Jim spent the better part of two days hacking out the compacted roots at the other end of the ‘container’, and trimming out about 1/10th of the standing canes to re-expose a row of heathers.

For $3000.00 and a year of empty dirt we can have the whole hedge removed, (the process involves backhoes and hard labour and is NOT guaranteed) but what would we plant? The canes make the absolute best trellises for sweet peas, an idea I stole from Butchart Gardens, small birds love the refuge, and our hedge is a landmark. My nephew was coming by bus from the ferry and the driver knew exactly where “the house with the bamboo” was. For free I can send Jim out on “shoot patrol” every summer to try to keep it under control (you can tell I should have been a Brigadier General or Admiral I’m so good at delegating). So for the time being the bamboo stays and as I keep saying to Jim, “we can always move”. If we find any shoots coming up inside the house, just kidding I hope, you can bet I’ll be letting you know all about it. Actually you’ll hear me screaming from here to wherever you are!

And on a completely different note, we think Chelsea Grey, Benjamin Moore, is a very nice change from the navy blue walls, not that we actually have many walls when it comes down to it.

More "much ado"

Briefly, on the hair front, now there are 6 patches and a receding hairline to keep me wound up. I still have lots of hair so I don’t look like a freak, yet, but it is causing me a certain amount of grief. I keep reminding myself that we could have been vacationing in Haiti and bald patches aren’t much to get fussed over so enough of that.

a beautiful orchid to lift my spirits

It’s been a busy couple of weeks as aren’t they all. Right after New Year and the packing away of the Christmas gear it was time to deconstruct our perfectly nice TV and dining rooms. In my wisdom I had decreed that the TV room carpet had to go as it was 20 years old and had acquired a couple of burns from the fireplace. Of course we couldn’t match the wood flooring so opted to lay tile to tie the floor into the kitchen and were able to get an almost-the same-and-only-someone-picky would-notice option. It is the same tile that went into the laundry room re-do before Christmas if you are following along. It’s a personal peeve not to have some flooring coherence in a house. Does anyone but me remember the 70’s when every room in a house had a different carpet colour? Blue, red, pink, green, ghastly! And on that note, Jim decided he would rather have the same flooring in the TV and dining rooms as they are really one space so out went the hardwood that was there.

The deconstruction process

'wackers'

It took a couple of days to empty the rooms and reorganize ourselves so we would still be functional and comfortable for approximately two weeks. Then up came the old flooring and down went a 5/8” subfloor over the existing plywood. The same knight in shining armour, Gary Wilson, who rescued us on the front door, (we are a serial saga) did hard labour with Jim laying the subfloor. How level are your floors do you think? Not, I bet. This space I am talking about is 17’x28’, almost 500 sq. ft. and it was amazingly good except for one high spot where the house had settled away from a supporting wall. That little wrinkle got left to our tile people, Tenor Tile if any of you Victoria people want to know about a good tile company.

Progress!

It took three tilers two long days and they did a great job including putting spiffy 12”x24” charcoal gray tile on the fireplace surround. And then the cleanup and moving furniture ensued. Thank you again Gary. Did I mention that while the house was in a mess I decided to paint our foyer, walls and ceiling, and in the midst of scraping down the ceiling texture I “put my back out” Where does that expression come from for heaven’s sake? It’s not like putting out the trash or putting out a light… Anyway, the result of the whole event is, I think, spectacular. The rooms look way more spacious, not that they weren’t big enough already, and the colours flow really well. No, we didn’t put heat under the tile: it would have cost another $2000.00 to heat our very heavy Persian carpet – no point.

And now, because I haven’t settled the living room since Christmas and because it hasn’t been painted for about 6 years, guess what? The navy blue is becoming “Chelsea Gray”, and then we are going to quit the house work and enjoy ourselves. There’s a concept!

Winter jasmine and crocus

In case you are trying not to read it, it says 15C, in the shade.

Which brings me to the weather. It has been an amazing couple of weeks with El Niño in full swing. We’ve had some rainy days (not like the mid-Island who had floods) but it has been WARM! Saty tuned to see what happens to the Olympic Alpine events. Cypress, site of the snowboarding competition, is almost bare. We are supposed to cool down in a couple of weeks so it will probably be fine in the end but you can bet it is adding a bit of excitement to the organizers lives.

BTW, Jim scored 79 and 80 on his last two golf games!