2022: Done!

 

Just resting after a trying year. Photo by John Denniston.

Apparently, I’m not the only one happy to see the end of 2022.

According to an early-December Leger poll, 31 percent of respondents thought 2022 was even worse than plague-fraught 2021; only 21 percent said it was better. The main reasons: inflation, soaring costs of living and the war in Ukraine.

Those aren’t quite my reasons, but count me among the Canadians happy to rip the 2022 calendar off my wall.

There were bright spots – a siblings’ get-together in the spring, the production of three community newsletters, several perfect summer weeks on Saltspring. But the downsides were many. I’m among the many Baby Boomers gaining a new understanding of why our aging parents talked so much about medical issues and dying: Now it’s our turn.

That sad reality was brought to the fore by the death of my youngest brother in June, just months before his 67^th birthday. The five “little” Volkart kids are now four senior citizens.

Add the continuing COVID crisis, which cuts down on activities and family connections; crazy weather that sounds the alarm on climate change, and a fall civic election that drew only one-third of voters to the ballot box despite the many crucial issues at stake. 

The Leger poll found  a hint of optimism among its respondents: 34 percent believe 2023 will be better than 2022, while only 22 percent think it will be worse.

My only prediction for the year ahead is that I will probably spend more time with my feet up.

One of the good times from 2022: My sister Betty from Quebec, me from Vancouver and my brother Brian from Alberta together in Victoria. Photo by John Denniston.

My younger brother Larry, who died this year, would have been about 16 when John photographed him on the family farm in Alberta.

Another photo of Larry, loading grain on the farm, in 1971. Photo by John Denniston.

Betty, Larry, Diane, me and Brian in 1995; the five siblings are now down to four. Photo by John Denniston. 

A little Christmas cheer to end this post on a happier note: John and me with our Christmas tree, made out of a garden obelisk wrapped in Christmas lights. Hopefully, it will be supporting sweet peas this  summer -- something to look forward to in 2023!

Branching out

Journalism in all its guises – in my retirement, I'm not only writing a newsletter but also delivering it. Photo by John Denniston.

 When I took on the editorship of the Dunbar Residents’ Association’s  thrice-yearly newsletter last fall, I was playing a familiar role. From my basement kingdom, I interviewed people, dealt with contributors, and edited and proof-read copy – versions of what I’ve done all my professional career. But now, with three editions under my belt, I’m expanding my horizons.

Tonight, I joined the crew that stuffs those little newsletters into 6,000 mail-slots all over Dunbar. Volunteers aren’t always as plentiful as needed, and daily journalism habits die hard: I wanted that hard work of mine out there sooner rather than later.

So I strapped on John’s old camera bag, stuffed as many newsletters into it as my aging back would allow, and launched my career as a newsletter delivery person. I admit I had concerns. Would people yell at me for venturing onto private property? Would dogs bark and nip?

Mostly, except for one very excitable dog who pounded his paws on the window in hopes of breaking through, I was ignored. The biggest challenge was negotiating an astounding variety of front steps – stately and scary – and mailboxes – rusty, dusty, impenetrable or non-existent. Obviously, people don’t get much mail these days.

I’ve never been at the delivery end of newspapering before. But there was something satisfying about seeing the stories I wrote sliding into the homes of the people I wrote them for. A gift from my basement kingdom.

For a PDF of the newsletter, go to http://dunbar-vancouver.org/dunbar-newsletters/

Cold, wet, and pretty

It’s been a long cold spring in Vancouver, with a recent trough of Arctic air keeping temperatures well below normal. Today, the wind blew and the rain poured down. I huddled inside, but at one point looked out the window to notice there’s a lot of beauty happening out there. Here's some of what I saw:

Our dining-room lamp reflected in the laurel hedge set me noticing that the golden chain tree is about to bloom, and that the neighbours' lit window was a cheerful break in the late-afternoon gloom.

The sun had decided to spotlight the weeping birch by then, making a nice contrast to the shadowy lilacs outside the back door. 

Lilacs and the about-to-bloom snowflake viburnum outside the back door.

The white bleeding hearts seem very happy in this miserable weather. 

Such a strange petunia. I saw it at Southlands nursery recently and plunked it in a planter at the base of the back door. 

Outside the front door, the late-afternoon light against a stormy sky accentuated our neighbour's huge evergreen tree and red-tip photinia. Our laurel hedge is in the foreground.

Our loyal red azalea, a fixture since we bought our house in the 1970s, is in full bloom outside the front door. Its partner on the other side of the walk gave up and died a couple of years ago; I'm grateful this one is hanging in.

Easter colours

Easter-stone chimney: Don't those rocks look like they belong in a basket of coloured eggs? They seem to be permanent rather than seasonal, as I've passed this Dunbar house all winter. Photo by John Denniston.

Every season has its colours, and when the tulip beds begin to turn pink, purple and yellow, I think Easter.

Those were the colours in the egg-dyeing kits that produced the most important aspect of my childhood Easters. For me and my siblings, what was the holiday without: 1) hard-boiling as many white-shelled eggs as we could beg from the hens and our mother? 2) dipping those eggs in glasses of dye until they were just the right shade of pretty, or our patience ran out? 3) transferring images from the kits onto the still-damp eggs (always messy, never successful)? And 4) hiding and hunting those eggs around the house and yard for days, until they cracked and began to smell?

I haven’t dyed Easter eggs for years, let alone hunted them. But Vancouver’s springtime hues still sing of Easter to me. Here are some recent photos showing why:

Camellias with cherry blossoms behind -- oh for an egg these exact shades of pink!

A bed of tulips that reminded me of the old egg-dyeing kits we used as kids.

Cherry blossoms on tree, street and car -- a delicate puff of pink. Photo by John Denniston.

Hyacinths and tulips outside the Kerrisdale Community Centre. Close-up, the combination of pink, salmon and white was very Easter-ish. Photo by John Denniston.

John's version of spring daffodils: a few lonely strands of yellow surrounding a tree stump and a city works cone. Photo by John Denniston.

Doggie paradise

 

Oh happiness! Off-leash freedom with friends in Saltspring's Duck Creek Park. Photos by John Denniston.

If you want a glimpse of pure joy, head to Saltspring’s Duck Creek Park on any weekend afternoon.

There will be dogs.

 Romping, splashing, chasing, barking, tails aloft. The creek is a fine place to watch them muddy their paws, splash each other, then empty the water out of their fur on their owners.

But for the best look, head through the fields and up a hill, to a spreading tree at the park’s highest point. It’s the party place for dogs and people alike.  While the humans catch up on the week’s gossip, their charges swoop in circles, chasing and being chased, pummeling and being pummeled, jumping up on visitors, jumping down, then off again for another swoop.

The dogs know this is their place and time. There’s a water bowl, often a water jug left for refills, and a bench with a plaque memorializing the companions who have played here in the past. For humans – owners and visitors alike – it’s a reminder that the height of happiness can be just a romp in nature with friends.

Me and my new friends: Show up to the party uninvited, and the dogs will welcome you anyway. 

Another season, another dog. John took this photograph of a dog welcoming us to the same spot one dried-out day last summer. 

Skating

 

My first -- and only -- pair of figure skates were the stuff of fantasy when I got them as a teenager. They're battered now and too small for my ancient feet, but they link me to a lot of memories. Photo by John Denniston. 

Once, at a skating party at a schoolmate’s place, I ended up at the end of a “Crack the Whip” line – a long string of kids whipped around by a central figure, with the speed and force growing the farther out you got. The predictable happened, and I still can feel the scar from where my skull hit the ice, still remember the doctor not being impressed at kids who play Crack the Whip.

Then there were the figure skates, the fantasy of little girls who must make do with hand-me-down brown boys’ skates when that’s all that’s available. When I finally achieved the white version with the to-die-for little black heels, I lay them on the bed in the box and tissue paper they came in, and checked on them all evening. They looked magical in the moonlight.

Every day through the long, long prairie winter, the blare of the noon buzzer at Lougheed Elementary School unleashed a flood of kids to the outdoor skating rink kitty-corner across the street. A brief lace-up in the bare-bones warming hut, with its inadequate central stove and perimeter benches, and it was out on the ice for an hour, round and round, to and fro, backwards and forwards, avoiding the boys’ roughest games, and not playing Crack the Whip.

In Vancouver, where skating is mostly expensive and inaccessible, I haven’t skated for years. When I last tried, the ice was so very slippy, the danger so very high, my muscles so very unaccustomed, that I concluded it was something old people shouldn’t dabble with.

Which is why it was so surprising a couple of months ago to see my sister Betty – granted, a few years younger, but still a senior and with arthritis, for heaven’s sake – skating away like a teenager. Apparently the exercises she’s doing for her arthritis have strengthened just the right muscles, and her physio says skating is the best thing she can do.

Here is the video she sent me, taken on a lake near her Quebec home. The very obedient dog is Molly. I am jealous.

Low-lights of 2021

 It was a horrid year, best forgotten. But the evidence remains, which is what happens when you live with a photographer. Here are reminders of some low-lights from 2021:

The heat wave. Here I am, on Saltspring, trying to write with a bag of peas on my head. I don't know what was so urgent that I wasn't down at the beach instead, but it amused John. Photo by John Denniston.

The plague look: The photo was to show off two books we'd just bought at Saltspring's Black Sheep Books, but it also illustrates typical shopping apparel in the times of Covid. Reminds me of illustrations from a story that horrified me as a kid -- the Invisible Man dressed like this to make himself visible. Photo by John Denniston. 

Covid ferries are tricky. You have to avoid people, but sometimes that means you can't get facing seats for the essential feet-up-and-read posture. This is how I compromised. Photo by John Denniston.

Another Covid ferry trip, but by this time, rules had been relaxed so the inside areas were jammed. We were nervous enough about catching something that we went outside despite the cold. Under ferry rules, we weren't allowed to stay in the car. Can you tell from my posture that I am fuming? Photo by John Denniston. 

I don't have a photo of me in a flood or fire, which would cover the other miseries of 2021, but here I am, doused in snow from the post-Christmas snow dump. More is apparently on the way. Photo by John Denniston.