Category Archives: Weather, Seasons, & Celebrations

Holiday Weekend Roundup

Victoria Day Weekend is generally planting weekend around here. We’re more concerned with getting things into the ground than being able to wear white again without offending traditional fashion rules. It’s generally planting weekend because (a) it’s a long weekend, (b) theoretically it’s warm enough that night frosts are over, and (c) because we say so. And so of course, Saturday it poured rain, and Sunday was rainshowery and overcast and downright cold; both days saw really high winds. And the temperature, flouting Victoria Day decree, went within four degrees of freezing at night and only barely made it to 10 C during the day.

So our original plans for all-out gardening were put on hold and we did small dashes when we could. Saturday morning we went out and picked up fourteen bags of black earth to add to the beds, and four double flats of cosmos for the front garden. The boys put the cosmos in while I hid in a dark bedroom, trying to deal with a migraine. On Sunday HRH went out and got four double flats of pansies to line the front garden and scatter through the back garden. On Monday afternoon we went out and picked up twenty-four tomato seedlings, lots of mixed lettuce greens, and seed packets of green onions, carrots, cucumber, peas, and poppies. The boys planted all of that (except the poppies) while I made dinner. Monday afternoon was really the nicest weather of the entire long weekend, sunny and warm enough to leave off one’s jacket and garden in just a long-sleeved jersey.

That was the gardening component of the weekend. There was, of course, more. Saturday was dubbed the Day Of Baking. I made my first ever batch of homemade ice cream, from the recipe in the most recent issue of Fine Cooking, and froze it in a pan, beating it with a hand-held mixer once an hour. I did that three times, and it ended up beautifully creamy. (The original plan was to finally buy an ice-cream maker, but the only one I found was too expensive. Bah; who needs a machine?) I also baked the most incredibly brownie-like cookies to use in making ice cream sandwiches. The first tray didn’t spread as much as I’d hoped, so I pressed the second batch down to be thinner, and those worked better. I had five egg whites left over, so I made meringues, and if I haven’t said it enough, I love my stand mixer: I set it up to beat the egg whites and sugar and walked away for ten minutes. When I came back it was so think I could spoon some up and throw it on the pan, and it would keep its shape. Incredible! I had to bake them twice, though, because it was so damp on Saturday they kept going sticky. I left them in the cool oven overnight instead of a container, then baked them the second time for three hours at 100 F, to thoroughly dry them. It worked, too; they were light and crunchy all the way through.

Victoria Day itself was a beautiful, sunny day, most welcome after the rainy overcast days of Saturday and Sunday. We visited Ceri and Scott for lunch, and ate delicious gourmet burgers and grilled veggies done on the barbecue. Dessert was sandwiches made from my ice cream and chocolate cookies, with meringues to follow. It was absolutely wonderful. Ceri and Scott also sent us home with a small slide they’d found behind their shed, which fits perfectly within the space on the swingset that used to house the odd glider/seesaw thing we took down. Liam is over the moon.

For those who want to know the outcome of the dramatically bad manuscript evaluation I had to do, I kept slogging and handed something in with a note explaining the drastic shortcomings and the lack of examples that are usually required to demonstrate problems that need to be addressed. (Hard to prove a negative regarding plot or characterization when you can’t find any.) The department got back to me with kudos for handling a hopeless case and said they understood how hard it must have been, and thanked me for sticking to it and for being as encouraging as I had been. Result: warm fuzzy feeling. Go me.

I really had a tough time dealing with this. As an author, I know what it’s like to get an editorial letter. Even though these evaluations are anonymous, I felt like I was slaughtering this author’s hopes and dreams. A couple of writer friends, one of whom also copyedits, pointed out that part of a writer’s job is receiving criticism and applying it to improve the product, just as part of the editor’s responsibility is to critique in order to elicit a stronger product. Neither are enjoyable one hundred percent of the time, but we both have to perform our duties to the best of our abilities. We owe it to ourselves, to one another, and to the product. While I wasn’t functioning as a traditional editor in this instance, I was responsible to pointing out weaknesses and errors in order to ascertain what level of editing was required to bring it to publishable standard. And when I have to say that the writing is of such a low quality that I can’t find the story the author is trying to tell, well, I get downright miserable, because that’s not news I ever want to have to tell someone.

Let’s see, what else? I finished reading Catherynne Valente’s Palimpsest; a most beautifully written book. And I finally began The Children’s Book, the new book by A.S. Byatt. I hadn’t known a new one was out until I saw it on the new release shelf at the library two weeks ago. It’s gorgeous; I will own it. Possibly even in hardcover. And HRH and I finally saw the fourth Indiana Jones movie, which was not as abysmal as the world said it was when it came out. Yes, it was flawed, and yes, there were things I would have changed about it, but it wasn’t the travesty we’d been led to believe it was.

Right; on to the day. I have a new freelance assignment, and there is cello in my future, both practise and a duet lesson tonight. Recital on Sunday! Five days!

Trees, People, Cello

Or, What My Weekend Was Like, By Me.

Saturday we trekked out to the wilds of North Stormont/Maxville to help t! and Jan dig and plant their orchard. A dozen heritage apples and other fruit trees were planted, each assigned to a different pagan friend. Everyone was invited to bless the tree they planted in whatever way they felt drawn to do so. Some blessings were elaborate; some were quiet; all were blessed with sweat and laughter. Despite assurances otherwise (and here absolutely NO ONE looks at HRH, no) it, well, it poured rain. (Except when HRH planted his tree. Ahem.) I’m a fan of rain, and it wasn’t even cold, but having trekked around after a wiggly four year old for a couple of hours and trying to keep him focused during the cumulatively long first half of the orchard, eventually agreeing to hold him on my hip while he snuggled his very wet head into my neck, took its toll on me. My blessing ended up being rushed because the boy decided he needed to use the bathroom again and we got back right when it was my turn. In the end I did nothing like what I’d prepared and pretty much just shoved the tree in the ground and told those with spades to fill the hole in. I had prepared a charged pebble that I tossed into the hole, though, and I’d brought a bottle of water blended from some Chalice Well water a friend had brought back from Glastonbury for me and a small vial of water blessed and charged at the last BFC Clan Camping I’d attended in 2004, which I poured on the ground once it was planted.

The boy’s tree was next, and he tossed his pebble into the hole. We reminded him that there was something he wanted to sing, so he announced that he had a special song to sing for his tree. “It’s a song we sing at school, and it is my favourite, and it’s about something that is under the water, and yellow,” he informed those gathered. HRH and I tried hard not to laugh as people realized what he meant, and I reminded him that no, he hadn’t planned to sing ‘Yellow Submarine,’ there was another song he’d been singing at home. So we chanted “Up and down, and sky and ground” together while those with spades filled the hole and covered the roots. It was pretty special. Then he stood looking at the base of the tree for a while as everyone collected themselves to move on to the next hole. I’m not sure if he was a bit sad that he hadn’t been able to sing ‘Yellow Submarine’ to his tree, or if he was thinking about how he’d just planted a real tree. He didn’t seem upset, just thoughtful.

As Janice planted her rowan, the first in the orchard, she named the tree Rowan Tree Farm, which feels entirely appropriate.

That night, while the boy ate a late dinner of a grilled cheese sandwich, he said, “Mama, what was your favourite part of the day?” I thought about it and said, “After we had planted all the trees and went back inside, and we’d all changed into our dry clothes, and we all had drinks and pie, and looked around and enjoyed being with our dear friends after sharing something special.” He then asked his father the same question. When I asked him what his favourite part of the day was, he said thoughtfully, “I loved meeting the dog named Carter and petting him and not hurting his leg.” (Carter, the resident year-old collie/husky/shepherd mix, has had a bad run of luck with his right foreleg, and it is splinted.) Carter’s a big dog, loves people, and is currently sporting the latest in Elizabethan collars so he doesn’t gnaw at the leg, but none of this bothered Liam; he was completely in love with the dog and very careful not to knock the splint. As I was useless with the digging part of the day (thanks, fibro) I spent some time with Carter on a leash along the edge of the field so t! could get some work done, and the dog is definitely personable. I quite enjoyed his company.

Also at dinner, Liam said, “I like Amanda.” (Amanda, whom I have known since I was about eleven, had been a passenger in our car there and back.) And then, completely out of the blue, he said something I’d never heard him say before: “When I’m bigger, I’m going to marry her.” We suspect that her admiration of Blackie and her willingness to get down on the floor and play trucks with him led him to this momentous decision.

Sunday morning I was in a lot of pain, as I’d expected; one doesn’t walk around in an uneven field holding a drenched preschooler and expect to escape unscathed. By the time my in-laws arrived for the Mother’s Day brunch we hosted I was at least functional, though. Savoury quiche, waffles, sausages, piles of fruit, salad, and mimosas. Mmm. The boy began crashing just before noon, so both he and I had a lie-down. He slept for two and a half hours (not surprising given the expected lack of nap the day before) but a rude interruption by an arrogant Hydro rep at our door ruined my chance for rest. I then went off to our monthly group cello lesson after picking a dozen of the tulips from along the side of the house for my cello teacher. Great lesson prepping for the recital in two weeks, but alas, it seems as if we will be cutting my beloved “Ave Verum Corpus,” a hesitant announcement that made all three of us doing the top melody very sad. It’s being bumped to the Christmas recital, and I fully understand why; it needs more work so that all four voices move confidently at the same time, and as the lower voices don’t feel the melody the way we do they’re not as sure about where to move, or even how they’re supposed to sound like against the other parts. But I am sad indeed.

And then last night I finished reading Dan Simmons’ very excellent Drood.

That was my weekend. The end.

A Happy Friday

Well, I’ve done as much as I can on the ms.; I’m waiting for answers and edits back from two of the four people I queried, due back next Monday, and then it’s back to the publisher. In celebration, I poured myself one of the new Alexander Keith Premium Whites that Ceri and Scott sent home with HRH after he helped set up their new dining table and chairs, and sat down to play half an hour of Metallica. Let me tell you, the #cello 4 line of the Apocalyptica arrangement of “Nothing Else Matters” is what it’s all about. Seriously. Celebrate those ringing tones! Sure, it’s shades of “this is all I do” and the stereotypical arpeggios played by basslines… but in 3/4 time, when you know it’s what drives the song that you’re hearing in your head at the same time, and those ringing tones echoing and lingering even when you’re playing two notes later? Beautiful.

Hmm. This beer is much… milder than I expected. Very light. Possibly too light for my mood. Oh well.

The cello lesson yesterday was all right. I suspect that I jinxed things by pointing out to the online cello community that I’d had a streak of really terrific lessons and theorizing that I’d passed the plateau I’d been struggling to move beyond. My bow hand is creeping back into bad habits and my bow arm is creeping back into wrist-led territory. Well, ten years of bad habits aren’t going to vanish overnight. I think I really prefer Saturday morning lessons; I’m much more relaxed, I’m not rushed because I have to go somewhere else next, and I’m not tired from working. I take what I can get, though. Anyway, by the time I picked the boy up and got home, I had a really bad stomachache for some reason and ended up not eating dinner, which was annoying because I’d been craving spaghetti for two weeks and had finally picked up the ingredients that morning.

I remedied the no-food thing by making a poached then shredded lemon-herb chicken breast with baby lettuces and freshly-grated Parmesan in a wrap for brunch today. Dear gods, so good.

And now, I am decamping to the living room to read, and taking the vase of tulips I cut from the side garden with me. I hope everyone’s having a wonderful Beltane.

Of Course

Trust my son to have a breakdown because the ribbons aren’t covering the entire Maypole. “But there’s still wood at the bottom!” he wailed.

Other than that, awesome Pagan playgroup meeting this morning. Nothing like having six under-nines learning how to do a Maypole for the first time. I think the parents had even more fun coaching and watching and laughing.

Yesterday was an excellent Day One of the local Beltane Fair, where I met Judika Illes for the first time and saw other friends whom I don’t get to see often as well. My workshop went decently well, as did the authors panel afterwards. Gorgeous day, too; twenty-six degrees Celsius, brilliantly sunny with a good wind. Lovely. Brought the boy back home, had dinner, crashed; the boy woke up at three, as he’s been doing lately, and ghosted into our room to ask for cuddles. I took him back to his bed but he didn’t sleep, so forty-five minutes later, after a glass of water, he looked at me with soulful eyes and said, “Mama, may I please cuddle with you and Dada in your bed?” And to do him justice, he did sleep properly once there. I did not, but they gave me an two hours of sleep on my own after they got up at seven.

Today’s Day Two of the fair, and we’re going back again after the boy’s nap for Tal’s book launch and to mingle with new and old friends for a while longer. I’m glad the original plan to be out of town today was cancelled so we could go back one more time.

And since this looks like the weekend roundup, I will mention that I had a most excellent cello lesson first thing Saturday morning, too. It was the kind of lesson where there were a couple of breakthroughs, and I felt suspiciously like a Real Cellist at the end. I also cast on my Picovoli sleeveless sweater Friday afternoon, using a lovely Pima cotton on the new Harmony circulars I ordered from KnitPicks. And it’s my dad’s birthday today, so happy birthday, Dad!

Today’s List

1. There are fifteen crocuses in the front garden.

2. There are ants in the laundry room. (Items one plus two = spring.)

3. Cautiously working my way through a few pieces of a Lindt Petits Desserts Chocolate Mousse bar. No adverse reaction as of yet, and it’s been half an hour. Encouraging, as the dark chocolate reaction was immediate burning on the tongue.

4. The boy waved vigorously to the metro drivers on our trip downtown and received surprised and delighted waves in return.

5. A quarter of the way through printing Orchestrated and all’s well. I had saved it to a USB key and taken it to the local print shop to get it done, but remembered while I was in line that I’d used comments. When you print a document with comments it shrinks the text and forces the page into the upper left corner to fit the comments in the right margin, which wastes a lot of paper and makes the text almost impossible to read. I bought more printer paper and came home to do it myself in twenty-page increments after stripping the comments out. Neither ink nor paper nor printer have caused issues so far. (Printing large documents usually causes problems of some kind for me.)

Aha, just as I expected; low ink. Argh. Had to happen at some point. Well, I have some in the cupboard, along with the syringe; I’ll refill it and that will be that.

In Which She Natters About Cello Stuff, With A Side Of Diary

It’s confirmed: we’re trying out a third conductor tonight! And I am very happy because there was a bit of kerfuffle about memberships dues not covering what this conductor requested as his fee, but the majority of members were okay with paying a supplement to obtain his services for this concert. If we decide he’s the one for us then membership fees will go up, and I’m perfectly fine with that; we pay a ridiculously low fee as it is, and more than doubling it only brings us to ten dollars per month the orchestra plays each year. If he’s as good as his reputation suggests he is, we’d be getting a real deal. Also, audiences would increase because of his affiliation with other musical events and organisations, and our recruiting of new members would also increase. There’s a lot of potential here.

Apparently we are playing Schubert’s third symphony as the main course for the July concert. So naturally, while looking for audio reference, I discovered that I own only the first, second, and fourth symphonies. I went away and thought about it for a while, then remembered that I’d bought a full six-symphony set the last time we did a Schubert symphony (the fifth?), because the set was less expensive than a single CD with the fifth on it. I had to hunt it out, though. It wasn’t with my other Schubert CDs. I blame the boy, who used to pull CDs out and then reshelve them in interesting new places. I checked my records and apparently I’ve played Schubert’s third before. I have no memory of it, but then, it was in 2003, which was six years ago. However I played it then, chances are rather good that I’ll play it much better now.

I am so very excited to be working with this conductor.

I dragged myself out of the maudlin cold-heavy apathy yesterday to go down town for a meeting about this meditation recording gig. I now have the equipment and some reference DVDs to inspire my delivery of the script. It was a beautiful sunny day, and I came home in a better mood than I’d left, and feeling much healthier, too. I practised not once but twice, the second time with a strict metronome set at ruthless performance speed. I uploaded vacation photos. I opened windows (HRH took the plastic off the front living room Wall of Glass, huzzah!). I made a delicious pot of chicken cacciatore (for some reason, there are never any leftovers). And I set up the breadmaker to start its thing at three in the morning so we’d all have fresh bread at breakfast (because I forgot to make it the regular way yesterday and there wasn’t enough time for me to make it last night before I passed out).

Today: Recording, laundry, celloing, doing something with the shoulder roast that’s defrosting. I can’t even remember if it’s beef or pork (it’s from the organic farmers, so doesn’t have a label beyond ‘shoulder roast’), although I suspect it is pork.

And shh, don’t make any sudden moves: I’ve actually been starting to think about Orchestrated with more interest again. The month away from it killed my momentum. I’m not sure whether to print the first draft out and read it while making notes longhand, or just go back to the beginning of the file and start work. I may just print out the first two chapters, as those are the ones that need the most rearranging.

Back

Lovely Easter weekend with my parents. I am now ill, of course. The boy left with what we thought were allergies on Friday and arrived there with a cold, so naturally I caught it, and have it worse than he did. Add to that the general malaise my body experiences after two six-hour car rides within four days, and you have a very unhappy me. We almost kept the boy home from school today but decided against it, and I’m so thankful. Not only do I have a work meeting downtown at 12:30, I’m wiped (see above re. sick and fibro-related backlash from the weekend) and suspect I wouldn’t be able to handle him on my own with much success.

The boy’s monthly post should have gone up on the weekend but it wasn’t finished, and I’m scrambling to handle more pressing stuff, so as much as I’d like to do that today it won’t happen.

A brief summary of the weekend: Much broken sleep for all three of us, successful clothes shopping on Saturday afternoon, coffee out with Fey of The Dark Side of Fey podcast and her husband on Saturday night (much excellent discussion of spirituality and community and such things, she’s a girl after my own heart and I adore her), taking a trip to see the local flock of trumpeter and mute swans Sunday morning, time with family and a lovely roast beef dinner on Sunday afternoon, taking the 407 toll highway home to avoid the 401 through Toronto (o 407 how we love thee, we shall never ever forsake thee despite thy toll).

I wish it was a day where I could get away with just lying on the chesterfield with a box of Kleenex, a book, and a cat, but the real world calls.