That time of year again

My column, published in airdrielife magazine (http://airdrielife.com/), Spring 2011.

Gardening, like learning a foreign language, comes easier to some than to others. I am one of the others. I don’t like gardening. There, I’ve said it. Admitting to not enjoying gardening comes close to supporting non-breast feeders on the scale of societal abominations, but let’s be clear. I like gardens and I like planting things and watching them grow. However, I have no aptitude for picking the right plants for the right spaces, I don’t like mucking about in the soil, and I don’t like watering the little sprouts while being eaten alive by mosquitoes. However, a certain amount of gardening is necessary if I want to enjoy my yard.

I usually start out with a burst of energy in February. With lengthening days, my tiny sprouts, carefully planted in milk cartons and little peat pots, are primed to burst forth in time to transplant to planters and beds. But this is optimistic. Year after year, I start plants only to have them wither, possibly from lack of water, light or both. I prepare the soil and plant bedding out plants from the nursery with only slightly more success and when tender, delicate perennials poke through in other people’s gardens, my hardy ones remain dormant. Not a crocus to be found. Sometimes a rare tulip pushes through, only to be frozen by a late frost that somehow doesn’t hit the tulips in the yard across the street.

Years ago, I gave up on anything fancy. In my yard, I have peonies, daisies, a few day lilies, a couple of hardy rose bushes, a poppy (yes, just one) and several lovely plants whose names I can’t remember. I have low-growing snow-in-summer planted behind towering day lilies, ground hugging campanula ensconced near the roots of a seven foot rose bush, a Virginia creeper that, rather than cling to brick as my neighbour’s does, flops lamely along the fence. I dig and poke, but not with much enthusiasm. There seems to be more weeds than plants and mostly, I can’t tell the difference.

People tell me I have a lovely yard, due mostly to the lawn, kept manicured by my husband. At least that part is tidy. When I visit other gardens, with flowers blooming in rows, dancing like well-dressed maidens in the breeze, I am in awe. I make plans – next year my garden will be like this. But when I return home, to my lawn swing, my cup of tea and my book, and see the unorganized wildness of determined perennials, violas thriving in sidewalk cracks and under the swing, surprise plants – gifts that have arrived in bird dropping, and the disorder growing around me, I am not tempted to change it. Somehow there is comfort in the confusion.

Reform School

I am looking for a good reform school a.k.a. puppy class. Lily has graduated from ripping my nylons and eating the keys on my laptop to chewing cupboard doors, chair legs and shoes, not coming when she’s called, and fastidiously keeping the outdoors tidy by coming inside to poop.

Her manners are lacking, could be because she’s spoiled rotten, but nevertheless, she must be taught that “down” means down, “come” means come, "outside" means outside, and “stop chewing that” means stop chewing that.

It’s been a long time since we’ve had a puppy, about fifteen years to be exact. Maybe I don’t remember, but the four Pekingese that preceded Lily weren’t chewers or jumpers, nor, until their twilight years, inside poopers. But there is a huge difference in dogs here.

I’ve come to realize that, on the whole, Pekinese, although cute, fluffy, lion-hearted and affectionate, are dumb as a bag of hammers. Lily, on the other hand, is very quick to learn, smart to the point of being manipulative and definitely sure of what she wants. Unfortunately she wants to chew my shoes and jump up on anyone standing.

Apparently, according to the sales clerk at Pet Smart, Lily needs to be “socialized”, whatever that means. I’m sure she was advocating for the puppy classes held there where I observed teeny Yorkies and Chihuahuas strutting their stuff, but I’d rather find something closer to home, somewhere away from the big city where big dogs are the norm, where there might be a rowdier bunch, a group of peer puppies that could intimidate a very teeny dog with a big attitude, into submission.

Salad time again

Last year, about this time, I decided I would blog the “salad days of summer” based on a previous summer’s experience that I wanted to duplicate. That summer, I ate a salad a day – sometimes very healthy fare, sometimes not so much.

Green salads ranged from lettuce, celery, cucumber and a lite dressing to the other green salad, the one my grown children asked for at Christmas, which includes lime Jello, pear juice and cream cheese. Fruit salads varied too, from strawberries and blueberries in a bowl to a selection of various melon balls, pineapple, strawberries, and assorted other fruits and berries, soaked overnight in a lime/rum mixture. Once, after taking this salad to a staff meeting, I came upon one young lady holding back the fruit with the serving spoon while pouring the “dressing” into a cup!

Some salads were complete meals, some just tasty sides. Some combinations were delicious; some didn’t bear repeating, but all in all, it was fun, tasty and I came up with some new and interesting salad recipes that I thought might be nice to share. So, last year I started out all ready to blog a similar experience. However, a repeat performance was not to be. After about two weeks of occasional blogging about lettuce salads with different dressings, I gave up. Salads just were not happening.

So, this summer I’m not going to be fanatical about it, but if the odd salad recipe shows up, don’t be surprised. Tonight we’re having a favourite, original invention. It evolved from a fridge-emptying experience several years ago. The original was macaroni, grated cheddar, ham, celery and onion with a light mayo dressing. Now, I use shell pasta, grated cheddar, a large chicken breast chopped into small pieces (still warm), celery, purple onion and sometimes sweet red pepper. The dressing is a generous amount of light mayo mixed with a tablespoon of Dijon, salt and pepper and thinned with milk. Easy and tasty. Never quite turns out the same twice – maybe I should measure?

Perhaps? WTF? Or Why I Hate People…

Sometimes, like the shoelace that breaks at the end of the day, one teeny incident pushes me over the edge. I spend a lot of time trying to be honest, dependable, accurate and polite. Probably too much time. Anyway, life has been hectic but the daily ups and downs of my everyday existence are doable. It’s the continuous stream of ridiculous, non-committal, time-wasting glitches that makes my blood pressure rise and ugly words spew forth from my usually complacent mouth.

Like the conversations I’ve had at drive thru restaurants – specific, detailed orders that end up in the bag all wrong. How hard can it be to leave the pickles off the cheeseburger anyway? Or the junk mail in the mailbox, set carefully on the little sign that says “no junk mail please” placed there after filling out the post office form that said, in other words, “keep the crap out of my mailbox.” Or the no fat hazelnut latte that when first tasted ten minutes into a drive to the city, does not taste like hazelnut, does not taste like anything except milky coffee. Stuff like that.

Today, after a morning of running around, a relaxing coffee and some other stuff, I phoned the Epcor Centre to order tickets to the Allison Kraus and Union Station concert in July. Much anticipation – it promises to be good entertainment. However, I am not behind the 8-ball here – I should have been on the phone yesterday at 10 am when the tickets went on sale. Apparently this is a popular event and good tickets, especially 4 in a row, are becoming as scarce as hen’s teeth.

When the website doesn’t work, I call the box office number. A pleasant, female voice asks if she can help. “Yes,” I say. “I need 4 tickets to Allison Kraus – what are the best seats you have?” She asks for my name, address, phone number, email address, shoe size and if I’ve had a nose bleed lately (well not quite) and if I have tried ordering on line – general question to see how many people are using the website I guess. I tell her that a) it’s not working, and b) the handy little map that allowed me to choose seats in the past is gone.

No acknowledgement whatsoever. She tells me she has four seats quite a distance from where I was hoping but still good seats. I ask her if any of those seats are on the end of a row – she asks if I would like to check the map. “What map?” I ask when I should have said, “Can’t you check the map?” Whatever.

She directs me to the map and when I say I’ve got it, she says none of those seats are aisle seats. Arrgggghhh. So, because we are going with another couple, I ask her how long she can hold the seats, I need to make a call. Apparently she can’t hold the seats.

I hang up, call our friends, confirm that they still want to go, and redial the box office. “Can I help you?” says the same sweet voice. “Yes, yes you can,” I say. Those who know me will realize that I am getting a bit tense because I am talking like Phineous now. I ask her for four seats to Allison Kraus and by the way, are you the same person I was talking to about 3 minutes ago? “Perhaps,” she says. Perhaps???? Perhaps???? WTF?

The Elephant in the Room

Recently, my daughter separated from her husband. Specific details don’t need to come from me, but I’ve been asked a couple of times why I don’t blog about how I feel about this. I don’t because it’s not mine to blog about. The following is a list of ten casual observations on life in general.

1. Some animals actually do crap where they sleep.

2. Sometimes love isn't enough.

3. The nut doesn’t fall far from the tree.

4. Doesn’t matter how low you go, there’s someone for everyone.

5. Don’t expect anything and you won’t be disappointed.

6. Kids blame themselves for their parents’ problems no matter how much of a jerk their absent parent is.

7. Sometimes the best brings out the worst in people.

8. Getting over anger is easy; getting over betrayal is not.

9. When you stop banging your head on the wall, your head stops hurting.

10. In any major conflict, there are no winners, just survivors.

IMHO

“You wouldn’t let your grandparents choose who you date - then why let them choose your government.”

I’ve received this post yet again tonight on my Facebook feed and it has pushed me to the brink. Social media grandstanding by overly zealous political party supporters – it doesn’t matter which party – is getting on my nerves. Do they think that by posting every day, sometimes several times a day, about who deserves my vote, who does not, why someone does or does not deserve my vote and, as in the above quote, leading me to believe there is a snowballing trend toward the involvement of young people in the political process is going to influence how I vote? Think again.

I abhor age discrimination almost as much as I resent over zealous political supporters clogging the airwaves (or whatever you call the equivalent in cyberspace.) This may seem to be a change of topic but take a look at the quote above. Choosing a date is a personal thing – grandparents don’t expect to be involved in “choosing dates” nor would they want to. The thought is actually a little creepy.

Dates are personal, however choosing our government is not. This trend toward favouring the young by discrediting the old is blatant age discrimination. What wisdom is there in suggesting that the vote from the under 30 crowd is somehow more important than a vote by their grandparents? What makes this generation think that what they have to say is more informed, intelligent, and credible that what the over 60 crowd has to say. Does experience, understanding, and a sense of history have no significance?

One of the greatest problems among members of society is the trend toward creating divisions rather than pulling together. Certainly anyone over the age of 18 has the right to vote. It’s up to the individual whether or not they act on that right. And one vote is one vote – none more important than the rest. So why not encourage everyone to become involved, to get out and vote, rather than divide the voters by age. Welcome young voters, welcome middle aged voters, welcome senior voters. And let the most informed, the most involved, the most committed, come out on top regardless of age.

And puleeeze, if you want to tell me how to vote, infringe on my privacy by calling me in person. You'll get an ear-full.

Off they go

Check out http://sting-finland2011.blogspot.com . Our granddaughter and son are off to Finland with the ringette team that she plays on and he coaches. The whole team (and their parents) have been working and saving for two years in order to make this trip a reality. They promise to send back comments and pictures as they tour for the next ten days. I'm looking forward to following along.