Hot, hot, hot

 

John is more adventurous than I am in the record-breaking heat, but for awhile on Monday, he agreed to wear a towel-wrapped icepack and take a break in my semi-cool basement lair. He wouldn't snooze on the futon I lay on the floor, though, preferring the 40-degree living room for his nap.

I’m skeptical about weather-scare stories – too many heavy-rainfall alerts and polar vortexes have blunted their impact – but I have to admit somebody was right about the heat wave. When the back-porch thermometer reads 30 C at 7 a.m. and is still stuck at 40 by 7 p.m., yup, it’s extreme weather alright.

John and I react differently to scenarios like this. I hunker down in the basement, the only semi-cool space in the house, working at my computer or reading. I make only necessary forays into the swirling heat of the upstairs rooms, where open windows and fans only push the furnace-temperature air around. I don’t go outside; even our shady back yard is a sauna.

For John, it’s an adventure, a challenge. He walks from room to room with the thermometer, reading out doom. He walked up to Dunbar street, where the heat was bouncing from sidewalk to store and pedestrians were only there to scurry into air-conditioned stores. He concedes to wearing a cold, wet towel or icepack around his neck, but I caught him sleeping on the living-room couch this afternoon with the sweat trickling down his face. The temperature was nearly 40.

It’s racing weather, he says, and it’s true he raced motorcycles in California at temperatures like these. But I remind him that was 30 years ago, and he admits I may have a point.

After three days of extreme heat – just like the forecasters predicted – we’re supposed to get some relief soon. I really hope they’re right. Again.

I wouldn't swear on the accuracy of our back-porch thermometer, but this is the first time I've ever seen it register 40 C. Canada's hot spot Lytton had us beat, though. It was 46.6 Sunday, and 47.9 on Monday, the highest temperatures ever recorded in the country.

Muffin birthday

What's this? John looks askance at the unique version of birthday cake that's part of his family history.

When my partner John let it slip that the date of an upcoming block party was also his 76th birthday, scheming ensued.  Should there be a cake? A recording of “76 Trombones”? Seventy-six somethings? Party organizers wanted to know.

No cake, I told them.  John would prefer a laugh any day. Why not just have someone tell the story of the birthday muffin?

It’s a family story from harder times, when kids would scrabble under the sofa cushions for nickels to fund an ice-cream outing. A time when John’s grandfather, living with unlocked doors in the West Vancouver house he built himself (there was a sawmill in the basement), reportedly once said: “If anyone breaks in, I’ll offer to go halves if he finds anything.”

Kids’ birthdays weren’t necessarily highlights of the year in that era – parties were not a given, and bouncy castles and gift bags were phenomena of the future. But John’s aunt, an irascible soul given to laying down the law rather sharply, went a step too far when she let it be known that her son, John’s cousin, shouldn’t expect a cake on one of his birthdays.

He moaned and complained so incessantly that his mother finally lost patience. She grabbed a muffin – remember that 1950s’ muffins were austere little things, likely bran  – and stuck a candle in it. “Here’s your birthday cake, kid,” she said. “Now stop whining!”

John didn’t get a cake this year either. But he got something better –  a celebration of his birthday from neighbours gathered under the shade of the boulevard trees. And best of all, their laughter when one of them, coached by me, told the muffin story once more.

The grand finale was the presentation of a single bran muffin, candle blazing in the afternoon heat. John blew it out.

John makes a good show of pretending to enjoy his birthday muffin. A few bites was enough, but as a photographer, he understands the importance of making use of props. 

Alas, the muffin was from a grocery-store six-pack and too sweet for John's tastes. I couldn't face baking a batch myself in the summer heat. 

Seven months later. . .

 

After more than half a year away from Saltspring due to pandemic travel restrictions, we wondered what we'd come back to. There were changes, but as this view  of our swimming beach from the Vesuvius ferry  terminal shows, the basics remain. Photo by John Denniston.

In To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf describes what happens when a house, the summer getaway for the large and lively Ramsay family, is abandoned for 10 years due to the Second World War and its aftermath. Woolf’s images returned to me this past winter when I wondered how our Saltspring house, deserted for months due to Covid, was doing without us.

 Were windows cracking, the roof leaking? Had ants and mice founded colonies? Had it, as the Ramsays’ house had, “gone to rack and ruin”? I imagined the moonlight glancing into the empty bedrooms, my version of Woolf’s: “Only the Lighthouse beam entered the rooms for a moment, sent its sudden stare over bed and wall in the darkness of winter. . . .”

 With travel restrictions lifting, we got back to Saltspring this week after seven months away. The passage of time, one of the themes of Woolf’s novel, was marked by the wall calendar, frozen at November 2020 on this bright June day of 2021. Otherwise, the house seemed to have scarcely marked our absence – no leaks, breaks, mice or ant colonies. The only casualty was a toaster that decided its carriage-control lever would depress -- and toast -- no more.

But time hadn’t stopped in the little village around us. Beloved neighbours have moved away and promising new ones have arrived. One little waterfront cottage has been bulldozed into an empty lot, while two others have been renovated into better shape than ever. Trees have been cut, hedges uprooted, and fences built. Some gardens have been enhanced, others abandoned.

 Our house may seem to have escaped unscathed, but it’s seven months older, just as we are, along with all our neighbours and their houses. There’s no escaping the changes wrought by time, as Woolf knew.

 Here are a couple of her lovely paragraphs from the “Time Passes” section of her novel, followed by some of John’s photographs showing what’s happening in the neighbourhood:

 The house was left; the house was deserted. It was left like a shell

on a sandhill to fill with dry salt grains now that life had left it.

The long night seemed to have set in; the trifling airs, nibbling, the

clammy breaths, fumbling, seemed to have triumphed. The saucepan had

rusted and the mat decayed. Toads had nosed their way in. Idly,

aimlessly, the swaying shawl swung to and fro. A thistle thrust itself

between the tiles in the larder. The swallows nested in the drawing-

room; the floor was strewn with straw; the plaster fell in shovelfuls;

rafters were laid bare; rats carried off this and that to gnaw behind

the wainscots. Tortoise-shell butterflies burst from the chrysalis and

pattered their life out on the window-pane. Poppies sowed themselves

among the dahlias; the lawn waved with long grass; giant artichokes

towered among roses; a fringed carnation flowered among the cabbages;

while the gentle tapping of a weed at the window had become, on

winters' nights, a drumming from sturdy trees and thorned briars which

made the whole room green in summer.

 

. . . . The place was gone to rack and ruin. Only

the Lighthouse beam entered the rooms for a moment, sent its sudden

stare over bed and wall in the darkness of winter, looked with

equanimity at the thistle and the swallow, the rat and the straw.

Nothing now withstood them; nothing said no to them. Let the wind

blow; let the poppy seed itself and the carnation mate with the

cabbage. Let the swallow build in the drawing-room, and the thistle

thrust aside the tiles, and the butterfly sun itself on the faded

chintz of the arm-chairs. Let the broken glass and the china lie out

on the lawn and be tangled over with grass and wild berries.

During our absence, a terrific winter windstorm and high tides  pushed logs and a massive amount of ocean debris onto our local beach. Beach-lovers cleaned it up, and months later, just in time for summer swimming, the beach looks just like it always has. Photo by John Denniston.

Ever since we bought our Vesuvius house in 1999,  the walk to the ferry terminal has included passing by a little whitewashed cottage with a Mexican flavour. Now it's gone and work has begun on its replacement. It will have a lovely view. Photo by John Denniston. 

The plantings for this tiny beachfront cottage change year by year, but are always a work of art. Photo by John Denniston. 

This cottage, across the road from the beach, always looks good, but this year, the explosion of pink roses against the yellow siding has made it a head-turner. Photo by John Denniston.

This house has seen a lot of work, upgrading and painting in the last few years, but the flower-filled rowboat is new. Photo by John Denniston.

Across the road and down a hill from us is a farm that has been taken over recently by a hard-working couples who tend fruit trees, herbs and vegetables, as well as bees and a family of sheep. Photo by John Denniston.

 

Yes, there is a distressing amount of garden work to be done after so many months away from our place.  I began snipping away at blackberry brambles Sunday night. To the right is a huge bay tree that I planted as a twig about 20 years ago. I'll leave that alone. Photo by John Denniston.

The sunset, seen through the trees from our deck, marks the passage of another day. Photo by John Denniston.

Gardening (lazily) for the birds and bees

A forest of foxgloves in a Dunbar side garden made me think about today's changing attitudes toward weeds, flowers, and bird and bee habitat. How important is tidiness in a garden anyway?

Red and yellow poppies front foxgloves and wild roses at the front of this West Vancouver garden. There seem to be more and more wild spots like this these days.  Photo by John Denniston.

Another tangled display of wild and planted flowers in West Vancouver provides an insect feast. Photo by John Denniston. 

 

The lawn of a little nearby bungalow is a solid sheet of tight-packed blooming clover. Along a sidewalk just down the street from us is a forest of pink, purple and white foxgloves. An area in front of another house is a blaze of red and yellow poppies, with foxgloves and wild roses poking up behind.

Is it just me, or are Vancouverites letting up a little on tidy gardens? I’m suspecting several years’ worth of publicity about pollinator-friendly gardens that cater to bees, birds and butterflies is beginning to have an effect. “Butterfly Ways,” pock the boulevards now – little plots of two or three often-struggling plants meant to attract butterflies. And there are “pollinating gardens” with brilliant swaths of insect-friendly plantings in some Vancouver parks.

Even I, not the tidiest of gardeners at the best of times, am changing my ways. In the fall, I rake dead leaves onto the flower beds to give insects something to burrow under. I leave seed-heads for the birds and let dry plant stalks stand as potential egg-laying sites for insects. I even quell my automatic dandelion-murdering instincts to give the earliest bees a food source in the spring. My garden is not as neat as it used to be, but it's a lot less work.

My messier winter garden is spilling over into the summer now, as I rethink the annuals I once used to buy automatically to “colour up” the summer greenery. The pansies I planted last fall are still blooming, but they’re being taken over by the poppies, foxgloves, daisies and hollyhocks that arrive on their own and seem to want to thrive without any help from me.

At first I was a little horrified at the idea of letting things go. But as I see the beauty of other people’s tangled gardens, I realize they’re much more appealing to me than the order I once aspired to. Beauty, less work, and happy birds and bees. What could be wrong with that?

On the downside, here's what happens if you abandon your lawn completely. Buttercups take over in a solid mass, as has happened in the lawn of this soon-to-be-demolished house. I've never seen bees hovering over buttercups, but maybe they provide food for something. Photo by John Denniston.

My buttercups. I work away at them in patches to keep them under control. The white spots are rose petals. Photo by John Denniston. 

My front garden is a tangle of leftover winter pansies that I'll let bloom until they don't. Then poppies, daisies and hollyhocks  can take over for the summer.

The two Portuguese laurels in my back yard produce "cherries" in the fall that the robins flock to and fight over. In the spring, the climbing roses provide some high-up decoration.

The delphinium patch keeps the bees happy when the plants bloom in the summer.

There's something to be said about mixing order and disorder: The wildly blooming pink wiegelia is a nice contrast to the rest of this well-groomed West Vancouver garden.  Photo by John Denniston.

Order in the extreme. Perhaps because I'd been looking at wild gardens, I was amazed by this very large, perfectly round ball of orange and yellow begonias hanging in a back porch. At first I thought it had to be artificial, but when I got closer, it was real enough.  The other planter looks, well, more natural. I suspect neither provides much food for insects. 

Landscapes and moving things

After nearly 50 years with my camera-toting partner John, I have a pretty good sense of what will catch his eye. Two for-certains are anything transport-related, and particular types of landscapes. But he still surprises me sometimes by seeing things I miss completely. Here are some John-photos from recent walks:

Here's a scene I didn't notice: We stepped out of our car at Iona Beach Regional Park in Richmond on Thursday, and John hoisted his camera immediately. It was only when I saw the result that I understood what his photographer's eye had caught -- vast fields and clouds bisected midway by trees and mountains. All photos by John Denniston.

John was thinking of "greenways" as opposed to the city of Vancouver's "paveways" when he took this photo of me on a tree-lined path at the Iona park. 

A woman and her very large dog on the riverbank are part of this scene, but look what's also there -- a tugboat and a pleasure craft. Anything with an engine/motor/ wheels gets a second look from John. 

There's something about this stark row of piles stretching into the distance, intersecting with the mountains and skyline behind that to me is a trademark "John" photograph. He's taken the shot before when the tide was in, with the piles just poking out of the water -- equally arresting and haunting.

To me, just a guy and a bike. To John, an interesting new version of an e-bike and a chance to chat up the owner. Turns out this is a prototype of a foldable electric bike that the very affable helmeted young man is developing. He was at Iona to test how it behaves in the sand. 

Still with transport, the evening before in our Dunbar neighbourhood, we saw a boy whizzing along the sidewalk on what appeared to be a ball with a platform on each side. John may be retired, but his news photographer's instincts are intact, and he caught the kid mid-ride. We found out the  contraption is a Onewheel, a motorized kind of skateboard. With a white light in front and a red light behind, it's a strange sight coming at you in the twilight.

A row of Nissan Figaros, a Japanese right-hand-drive vehicle, is a common sight outside this particular house in Dunbar. They're used in the owner's restaurant business, according to one chat we had with him. The shape and colours of the cars turn them into a kind of street-side ornament. 

Another kind of beauty: Wildflowers and weeds. John would have walked right past this little display at Iona if I hadn't drawn his attention to it. Sometimes he misses things, too. 

A time for murder

 

This might look like an inconsequential little mystery novel. But look again. The author's name is a pseudonym for John Banville, the Irish writer who won the Man Booker Prize for The Sea in 2005. Talent like that raises a mystery to another level -- and this book is just what I needed to help me through the waning days of the pandemic. 

Even John Banville was slightly horrified at himself when he sat down one day in 2005 and pumped out 1,500 words of a new form of fiction for him – a mystery novel. “John Banville, you slut,” the Man-Booker-Prize-winning novelist told himself, according to a 2020 New York Times story  about his venture into popular fiction.

The thing is, neither writers nor readers are really supposed to be proud of stepping “down,” shall we say, into the world of fictional crime.

As someone who has set aside Dorothy Sayers’ entire oeuvre as a survival kit for difficult times, beaten back Covid isolation with all of P.D. James, and just finished Banville’s The Secret Guests, I’m here to say there’s a time and place for murder. When life is a puzzle and the bad news just keeps coming, who can be blamed for escaping into a world where there are….answers.

Readers all have their favourite mystery authors, and I sniff at none of them. But for my money, there’s much to be said for truly literary writers like Banville, who can’t not bring their talent with them. When they relax their efforts to create  “serious” literature, there’s still plenty left to bring to the game.

Here are some examples of what Banville—writing under the pseudonym Benjamin Black – brings to The Secret Guests, his fictional tale of two young British princesses holed up in a dilapidated Irish country house to escape the London blitz:

There’s the fat Irish politician in a voluminous overcoat looking like “a slightly compressed and elongated Guinness barrel.” His hand, when he greets our hero Detective Strafford, is “soft and warm and surprisingly small, almost dainty.” For a moment, Banville writes, “Strafford entertained the notion that within the folds of that enormous overcoat there was concealed a tiny woman, a female assistant, or even a wife or daughter, whom the minister bore along in front of him everywhere he went, to perform his handshakes.”

Strafford himself is the opposite of the sexy, ambitious, hard-minded detectives familiar to crime readers. He’s skeletal, “pale and spindly,” with a “concave chest and narrow head and mild, distracted manner.” Women, including the secret agent he’s working with, don’t find him attractive. He’s used to that: When he imagines an affair with her, he also immediately imagines the sharp words she’ll use to end it.  We gradually realize his secret is that he doesn’t take anyone, especially himself, too seriously. The politician, the secret agent, the duke of the country house, his own boss, are just interesting, often amusing objects of his disinterested gaze. As for his work, he forgets his gun, he’s felled by the flu as the action heats up and he fails to make an important phone call. But in the final crucial moments of a shootout with the IRA, he does what’s humane and necessary.

Banville plays with stereotypes, meaning I’ll never see the classic British diplomat – urbane, languid, world-travelled, public-school-educated -- in quite the same way again. When we first meet Richard Lascelles, he’s carrying his bowler hat balanced on the upturned underside of his wrist and making it do a somersault before catching it with his fingertips, “to what end it wasn’t clear, except perhaps the small pleasure of so deftly performing something at once trivial and difficult.” Lascelles does get the girl, but when the crunch comes, he falls suspiciously unconscious just before the gunplay. In the aftermath, there’s a fecal smell and a fast exit that make Strafford wonder whether the man of the world had soiled himself. Suave urbanity doesn’t necessarily equal courage.

Then there’s the local hardware-store owner who learns his lesson when reality smashes into his IRA fantasies. “Boss” Clancy leads what he likes to think is a revolutionary squad that will one day work with the IRA, but is actually a group of locals who talk a lot and do nothing. Behind his back, he’s a bit of a joke with townspeople, who think he’s too old to be playing “toy soldiers.” The arrival of the royals is a dream come true; at last Clancy has something to report to the IRA. But reality hits him in the face when two brutal, mocking thugs – one badly deformed – arrive on his doorstep with plans to kidnap the girls.

 Terrified by the thugs and horrified by what he’s set in motion, Clancy is shocked awake. “All that stuff about commanding a squad and itching for the next round of the revolution – had it ever been anything but a way of spicing up his life and looking important, to himself and to the town?” he wonders. Why couldn’t he have been content with running a useful business? Why doesn’t he have a wife, kids to carry on the business, not even a dog to greet him when he comes home? Clancy survives – just barely –but he’s a changed man: “After this night, he was to be forever more, for the town, plain Tom Clancy.” Clancy’s tale is dramatic, but I like it because it’s a reminder of the dangers of ignoring reality for fantasy in our more mundane lives. We might not end up in a gunfight with thugs, but we might miss the real things in front of our noses.

Banville, who is notoriously perfectionistic and critical of even his most serious work, told the Times that in rereading his mystery novels (he’s done about a dozen since his first in 2005) he realized they “might even be quite good.” With that, he decided to kill off the Benjamin Black pseudonym and allow both kinds of his work to bear his name.

I’m glad he’s come to peace with his detectives. For readers not up to his higher literary efforts at the moment – and I recall his prize-winning The Sea as a brilliant but long and grueling read -- it means his talents are still accessible. Even to those of us who just want a good murder solved.