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. 

A Christmassy end to a bad year

 

How could anything bad have happened in a world this beautiful? Our terrible 2021 is coming to a close in a blaze of glory. Photo by John Denniston.

Last night's snowfall transformed our front garden into a portrait of green and white. Photo by John Denniston.

In this hellish year of floods, fire, heat and plague, we weren’t sure what might be in store for the last week of 2021. It was unusually cold for Vancouver, for sure, with stories of hummingbirds falling frozen from their perches, and Omicron numbers so high that authorities gave up counting.

But it was also a white Christmas and a truly Christmassy week.  We added to that by treating ourselves to new books and a chocolate run to Beta5 bakery, but the big gift came today. We woke to a cloud of fluffy snow that turned our garden into a white forest. The sun shone, the temperature rose, and my back-porch hummingbird stopped hunching and started soaring. A hint of a better year to come?  

Some photos from our unexpectedly pleasant end to a terrible year:

On Wednesday, we extended our Christmas gluttony by a day and picked up some more treats at Beta5 Bakery. Because gluttony should be shared, we dropped some off for Linda. Here's she reacting to a boxed chocolate called, "Lump of Coal." Photo by John Denniston.

Oh, and a cream puff. She chose the Chai version, shown at the left in the photo below. Photo by John Denniston. 

Linda's elaborate cream puff with what looks like a copper hat, and her lump of coal, split.

Our cream puffs were coffee and vanilla. Each have their own distinctive little hats. Photo by John Denniston.

Here are their innards. I got a good look at them for the first time; usually we don't stop to look, we just inhale. Photo by John Denniston.

The lump of coal, close up. Photo by John Denniston.

The lump of coal, dissected. Once again, it was fun to see how those things are actually built. Photo by John Denniston.

Back to the snowfall, this was what we saw when we opened the front door this morning. Photo by John Denniston.

The back yard, before shovelling. Photo by John Denniston.

Carol in a cloud of snow. I brush snow off the hedges and trees to prevent it getting too heavy as it melts and refreezes. Photo by John Denniston.

The front-steps clean-off. They don't look as beautiful as with snow, but they're better to walk on. Photo by John Denniston. 

By the time I'd finished shaking the snow off the back-yard trees and hedges, I was a little snowy myself. Photo by John Denniston.

The bird bath wore a fluffy cap of white. Photo by John Denniston.

The bird-seed holder had one too. Photo by John Denniston.

This strange object is my effort to supply birds with unfrozen water. The black thing is a dish of water. It's sitting in a plastic basin filled with an unloved, discarded pair of pajamas for insulation. The basin is sitting on an old sweater draped over the little bird bath. As far as I know, no bird went near this all day. Photo by John Denniston.

My deal with a hummer

 

This little ball of fluff has been sitting in a bush by my back steps for two days. Photo by John Denniston

I’ve heard about people developing relationships with wild critters before – crows that welcome them home, squirrels that eat out of their hands, blue jays that arrive promptly at 9 a.m. for peanuts. Now, thanks to the cold weather, I seem to have acquired my own connection to the wild.

John first spotted my new friend yesterday: “What’s that kind of turquoisey bird out there?” he asked, pointing to a bump on the lilac bush by the back porch.  It was a hummingbird, hunched into a fluffy ball, head withdrawn, barely moving. I thought it was sick, maybe dying, as it sat there through the cold afternoon. But every so often, it flew to the hummingbird feeder a couple of yards away, drank heartily, then returned to its perch.

It vanished that night, but this morning it was back in the same spot. By then, I had two feeders going to ensure there was always a thawed one to replace a frozen one. I did some research and discovered that in very cold weather, hummingbirds go into a state of torpor – much like they do at night – where their metabolism slows to preserve their energy. They fluff their feathers, withdraw their heads and don’t move much.

So my bird sat on, livening up for a few flights when the temperature rose, and making periodic trips to the always-ready feeder. Just like the people who have developed an understanding with their crows, squirrels or blue jays, I now have a deal with my hummingbird. I feed him and he doesn’t die.

A few yards away from the bird's perch is a feeder of nectar, changed out when it freezes. Besides eating there, he seems to keep an eye on it, occasionally fighting off sparrows that land to drink water out of the central moat. 

Beside the back porch railing is the lilac bush where the hummingbird seems to have made a temporary home.

Cold

 

This is me on Monday, discovering that -11 degrees means wearing a scarf over your face if you have spent the last five decades in Vancouver's temperate winters. Unaccustomed to the bite, my cheeks and nose went into shock. Photo by John Denniston.

How cold was it on Monday? So cold that the hummingbird feeder froze in half an hour. So cold that the hummingbirds zoomed at the thawed-out feeder the moment it came out the door.  So cold that I bought a second feeder so I can quickly switch liquid for solid, without worrying that a tiny hunched turquoise bit of feathers might die if it doesn’t get dinner.

Wild Birds Unlimited, where I buy my bird-feeding supplies, said warmers for hummingbird feeders wouldn't be available for a few days, so I bought a second feeder to spell off the first when it freezes.

Foodie Christmas

 

Christmas 2021 seemed to be mostly about food – a good place to turn when socializing had to be kept to the minimum. It started last fall, when Lee Valley’s Christmas Gift Catalogue featured an elaborately decorated “house,” surrounded by similarly decorated mini-houses, courtesy of two incredibly detailed cake pans.

The cover of the Lee Valley catalogue made me just want to bake these cakes myself. 

A whole village of little cake houses to bake and decorate! If I was six, a dream come true. Luckily, I have a six-year-old in my life with a creative bent, and I could indulge us both. On Christmas Day, my grandniece Emi, plus her mom Aya, dad Etienne and little sister Mia became the proud owners of two elaborate Christmas bundt pans plus a bag of decorating accoutrements.  

The pans make a nice little village themselves. Decorated with some greenery and lights, they'd make a good table centrepiece. Photo by John Denniston.

I had to try out one of the pans myself to see how it worked. After a few scary moments, the cake popped out virtually intact, with only a crack in the chimney. I'm sure Aya will do better. Photo by John Denniston.

The end result: Emi and the decorated cake house with a very jolly jellybean roof!

Emi and Mia and the finished cake. 

Whether they’ll be as intrigued by cakes in the shape of cute little houses as I am, I don’t know, but food was certainly on all our minds this year. Etienne and Aya sent us home with a bag full  of their delicious home cooking, as well as a cornucopia of chocolates and desserts from the unmatchable Beta 5 bakery. We’ll all be plumper in the New Year.

These Beta 5 chocolates look -- and taste -- like jewels. Photo by John Denniston.

More of our chocolate gifts; we haven't launched into this yet. Photo by John Denniston.

Ah yes, our "lump of coal," which appears to be a very large, very dark ball of excellent chocolate. To be savoured in the next while. Photo by John Denniston. 

Here's where we really had fun. "Shall we split one before dinner?" we asked when we got home from Etienne and Aya's on Christmas Day. Photo by John Denniston. 

"That was excellent. How about the white one? Shall we indulge?" Photo by John Denniston.

"Well, this looks kind of lonely. We've gone this far. Might as well polish it off." Photo by John Denniston.

"I don't think we're going to need dinner now!" Photo by John Denniston.