I haven’t visited Simply Biscotti every week as I’d planned when I left full-time work just over a year ago.  It’s a matter of only so many hours in a day and so many other things that can fill those hours.  It’s a matter of expansion too.  Visits that are frequent and always accompanied by eating would mean expansion to my waist line no doubt.  It seems I didn’t factor calorie count realities into my post-work dreams.  

No Fears of Expansion

We visited Simply Biscotti on a recent Saturday morning, we had a late breakfast and a little visit with Rosa, the owner.  Rosa is expanding.  There will be a second location in Westboro in Ottawa soon.  As Rosa put it “a bit of Little Italy will be moving into Westboro”.  Westboro is a bustling community west of downtown Ottawa.  There are many independent shops, outdoor stores and eateries in the area.  That doesn’t seem to faze Rosa.  She’s settling into the midst of Starbucks locations, Bridgehead (local independent coffee/bistro) locations and several restaurants.  Rosa has no fears of expansion by the looks of it-she’s ready to take it on!  It’s refreshing to see and I wish her all the best.

Saturday Breakfast

We enjoyed a late (which for me is any time longer than 30 minutes after you get up) breakfast on Saturday.  I dug into my Simply Biscotti dish with gusto and then thought “Ah, should have taken a picture”.  Here it is then-partially eaten.  It was a spinach-feta frittata.  And it quashed a good appetite.

And a question for you.  Have you seen/heard enough about Simply Biscotti?  Should I wind up the project and the goal of eating my way through the dessert counter at Simply Biscotti?  Or are you interested in what happens next…with waistline and location expansions?

Spinach feta frittata

If you are fortunate, you are able to experience many transitions in life.  Infancy to childhood, childhood to the teenage years from there to young adulthood and so on.  In addition to the transition from one age to another, we have many other life transitions.  We start out totally dependent on others, move to complete independence and for some of us we may end up towards the end of our lives being totally dependent on others once again.

I have known some people who have had very clear ideas about their lives.  As  a child they knew they wanted to grow up to be a (fill in the blank), they wanted to buy a house, have 2 children, travel and so on.  Lots of things to do, lots of things to accomplish and not a lot of time to do it, it seems.  

Purpose

My mother had many sayings.  They are all indelibly burned into my memory.  They should be burned in for we heard them over and over again!  One of them is “everyone has to have a purpose”.  It’s true and it’s plain speak for a life with meaning.  We may feel  we have more than one purpose but it or they are there somewhere swimming around in our conscious or unconscious selves.  That purpose may be re-focussed as we go through life.  While very young, perhaps our play was our work and purpose, then school, adult relationships, a family of our own and a career.   Then comes a time when full-time work ends-for some they choose to say goodbye and for some the end is decided for them.  There will be quite a bit of that in our city over the next few years as there will be downsizing in the federal public service.

So How’s Retirement, They Ask

I stepped aside from full-time, flat-out work just over a year ago. Here’s my take on this transition:

• Rewirement is the word. We need to use a new word for this stage in life.  The word is rewirement.  Retirement might have started out as good term but now sounds too lethargic, too flat, too, well, too retired.  I’m not retiring, I’m rewiring.
• Everything takes longer than you expect.  I thought I’d be a lot more organized than I am one year out.  Boy it takes a lot of time
• You notice more things. Not flying out the door to work early in the morning and returning many hours later day after day you have a bit more time to look at things with new eyes.  How long has that bit of the house needed painting?  Have I ever cleaned that closet?  
• Photos do not organize themselves.  If you avoided tasks before you left full-time work, you will avoid them afterward.
• Time and freedom of choice.  Whether you take up some part-time work, immerse yourself in old or new hobbies, connect or re-connect with family and friends, the choice is yours.
• The day in, day out routine.  Don’t miss it one bit.  The people yes, the routine of up and out the door day after day, no.  I am fortunate to be doing some part-time consulting and find the variety and flexibility to be wonderful.
• Connections are the key.  Life is rich and purposeful when we are connected.  Connected to our loved ones, our friends, a community.  Connections can take many forms and they are what give us purpose.  If you think others care a great deal about what you do or that it makes you something special, another of my mother’s sayings ring true.  ”The higher the monkey climbs, the more you can see his ass.”
  
• A lifestyle to be highly recommended.  Yes work is important and yes we get tied up in careers and things, however I would recommend life beyond full-time work for anyone who is able.  It seems a bit backwards that when we are younger, perhaps raising young children and busy with so many things that we also may have full-time work in our day. It’s upside down, really.  I believe many people would like to work part-time but circumstances don’t allow it.  

Life can pass in what seems like the blink of an eye.  Make the most of it. 

Have you found your life stages unfolded as you anticipated?  Do you have words of wisdom to share?

Since I visited both within the past three weeks, thought I’d do a bit of an account of each the two days-mostly done through photos.  This post is the Simply Biscotti visit last week. 

Physical activity and spending time in friendly company

A friend and I enjoyed a lovely bike ride through the Dominion Arboretum on the Central Experimental Farm in Ottawa. The sun was shining, people were out enjoying a stroll and the sights of Canada’s Tulip Festival.  

The Experimental Farm is a jewel in the midst of a city.  There are five such research stations across Canada.  The farm I grew up on in Saskatchewan was about 50km from the Indian Head station.  Trees from that Experimental Farm stand on our now abandoned farmstead.  

The Dominion Aboretum is in its spring glory.  The collection comprises approximately 4,000 individual tree and shrub specimens from 56 families.

The Tulip Festival draws 500,000 visitors annually.  It is estimated that are one million tulips in bloom during the festival.   The colours and different varieties of tulips are amazing.

 

Since I visited both within the past three weeks, thought I’d do a bit of an account of each the two days-mostly done through photos.  This post is the Betty’s Tea Room visit in York, England

 Physical activity and spending time in friendly company

A good walk from the Bed & Breakfast to and around the York City Walls that are mostly still standing and surrounding the old city of York.  York has more intact city walls than any other city in England.  The walls date back to Roman times.

Below is York Minster as seen from the wall walk.  The cathedral is being repaired as you can see.  A message inside the cathedral spoke to the daily cost of maintaining the cathedral-some huge number that (a) I can’t remember accurately and (b) made me happy I wasn’t in charge of fundraising for the parish.

As for Betty’s Tea Room, it is an institution apparently.  It has been around for almost 100 years (first opened in 1919).  Six of us met at Betty’s for tea one afternoon.  I enjoyed a Fat Rascal scone with preserves and clotted cream (of course).  I can see why they have named the Fat Rascal as they have-eat enough of them and you become one.

And finally thought you might enjoy seeing how the Queen’s Jubilee is being celebrated in baking.  We never did eat a Jubilee item.  They look as if they are more for show than eating.

Have you been to York?  What were the highlights of your visit?  The Jorvik (Viking) Centre?  The British Railway Museum?  A Fat Rascal with clotted cream?

An afternoon treat

The reason things have been a bit quiet on this blog is the past 2 weeks I was hiking in England.  Four of us (women friends) teamed up and after a few months of planning off we went!  We hiked in Cumbrian counties (the Lake District)northwest England generally.  

On, not off, the wall. City of York

Two people in the group had hiked before and they gave the remaining two some great advice on what to pack and what not to pack.  If I was going to sum it up it would be: pack  light, take lots of things that can be layered, waterproof gear is essential and be prepared to wear the same things over and over again.  There were no fashion forward sightings on this trip. And as the lyrics state in the song above, we did have knapsacks on our back.

We stayed in and visited the city of York, the village and surrounds of Kirkby Stephen (pronounced Kirby Stephen), the city of Carlisle the town of Windermere and the city of Manchester.

We did our own booking and basically followed the motto:

I thought I’d do a few blogs on the trip.  

Stats and facts from our trip

• Weather-wettest April on record (we did have many nice days too)
  
• There is never enough room for luggage on the trains
• Personal losses-one pedometer, one tip from a walking pole (in some awful muck going up a ‘fell’), one camera battery and no weight
• Personal gains-getting to know people better, a new appreciation of waterproof gear, enjoying the hospitality and friendly manner of the Brits (speaking of hospitality, when I lost my pedometer Mary, proprietor of the Warwick Guest Lodge in Carlisle gave me hers to keep as she said she didn’t use it!), varied and beautiful scenery
• We hiked a total of 157 km in 14 days-an average of 11.2 km/day.
• Total steps 250,000!

And another thing that is important when traveling in a wet cool April/May in northern England is a hat that you can tie on!  One that will remain down and locked when the weather forecast calls for “gale force” winds.

Over and over again we see the impact of Internet and social media exposure (good and bad).  This one is good (we trust).  Take a look at the sidebar and note how much money has been donated towards Caine’s college education and towards a trust fund to foster creativity and enterpreneurship in young children.  

Among many creative children (I think of a nephew of ours in particular) who have built many things from scratch, it is the luck of the draw in this day and age to have an independent film maker show up and shine a light on one special young boy.  

What do you think of social media and its ability to instantly shine a light on everything from heartwarming human interest stories, to singing babies, to a father shooting his daughter’s laptop for what he saw as her ungratefulness and on and on.  Are we better off for it?

During our first year, 2011, we decided not to invest too heavily in inputs (ah, the farming language is wonderful) in case we decided not to garden beyond year one.  After last year, a year of mixed success, we decided to invest in more inputs or soil amendments as Caroline calls them.  Late last fall that took the shape of 10 cubic yards of mushroom compost delivered by a dual axle dump truck that beeped when it backed up and then spewed out a great mass of steaming smelly compost onto our plot.  I was speaking with Bonnie (from Bonnie’s Lavender Farm) about gardening this coming season.  When I told her we’d purchased mushroom compost, she said “that’s just horse shit”.  I thought at first she was dissing our investment but then realized she was calling a spade a spade or in this case, calling mushroom compost horse….well you get it.

No matter what we call the inputs, we are hoping it will turn our 2012 farming season into a smashing success.  We feel very good about trying to grow our own food.  We are hoping this year our bounty will increase and that the compost will make a world of difference.  

Some things that would make us very happy this year:

• to have more than one resident, migrant earthworm in the whole plot
• to produce carrots that don’t look as if they were grown in a nuclear waste site
• to have fewer than 4, 427 potato bugs to squash throughout the season
• to really sit down, once in a while, in the lawn chairs we take out and store in the little shed

 We do get teased about how you can buy 20 lb bags of carrots in the fall for $3.50 a bag.  No matter, those are not our carrots, that were started by our hands and our attention to water and our monitoring and our great discussions about thinning the plants and on and on.    In a way we may be living the old joke about the farmer who won a million dollars and was asked about his plans. “Oh, I dunno”, he said, “probably keep farming till it’s all gone”. 

Do you have some gardening experience to send our way?  All guidance and advice is most welcome.

Eight years ago today my dear friend Ella died.

Over twenty years ago, in another city and another time, we had new neighbours move in next door.  Our daughter, a single child, was standing on her bed watching the activity next door.  ”Mom” she squealed with delight “They’ve got kids!!”.   Ella and husband Al had arrived with their four children.  Our families became close friends over the years.  We shared meals, we talked and laughed and experienced a great deal of life together as neighbours.  We coached a softball team together and naively hosted a shared garage sale thinking it would be fun.  We had keys for each others homes and often “shopped” in each other pantries if a trip to the store was inconvenient.    Two of the girls who are close in age to our daughter became sisters in everything but blood to her.  While the three of them are now separated by time and substantial distances, they remain close.

Ella and I became close friends.  I admired her strength, her humour, her energy and her capacity to love.  I marvelled at her blue eyes which burned brilliantly particularly when she was passionate about something-right through you I thought.  (based on those brilliant eyes and the sharp intellect I thought it wise to always stay on her team…not the opposing one.) 

While there are many things that could be said, the story I want to tell today is about Ella’s tree.  And something that happened after her death.  To this day when I tell the story I get goosebumps.

For a number of years before she died, Ella would travel to our family cottage at Crooked Lake in the Qu’Appelle Valley for a getaway.  She sometimes was with her family, sometimes with her dear friend Caroline and sometimes alone.  She loved the place-it was very special to her. When she died her family asked if they could plant a tree at the lake in her honour.

This is the story of the day we planted Ella’s tree.  I wrote and sent to Ella’s family shortly after the planting.

Crooked Lake from the top of the Qu’Appelle Valley

Ella’s Tree
On June 13, Al, Joanne (my sister) and I went to Lakeview Gardens to look at trees.  It was to be a tree in memory of Ella who so loved the lake and the times that she spent there over the years.  Al chose a crimson maple. It stood about 8 feet tall and the trunk was about 2 inches across. We planned to have the tree delivered to the lake the following weekend.

For those of us at the lake the week before the delivery, there was much discussion about where to plant the tree. On the left side of the lot, at the right side, at the front in the middle (no, that won’t do-Ella wouldn’t want the view spoiled). We acted like workers standing around a construction site waving our arms, pointing and doing everything but digging a hole.  Joanne didn’t stay the whole week but before she left to go back to the city, we said to her “Give us direction and we will dig the hole while you are gone.” She didn’t and so we waited for her return.

Joanne brought the tree out on the weekend of June 19. Saturday morning was a pleasant and sunny one and we retrieved the tree from the van. Then we started all over again. Should the tree be on the left side, should it be on the right, how far away from the current trees, how big will it grow (checking the tag and pacing off imaginary branches and leaves in all directions), what will it do to the neighbours’ view, what about the prevailing winds…..on and on. Finally Joanne said OK, this is the spot and away we went. Digging, digging, then putting root nutrient liquid in the hole, compost leaves from the back of the lot,a stake for stability and then the tree. We anchored the tree to the stake and stood back to survey our handiwork.

Kathy from the cottage next door came over and started to chat with Joanne. Kathy said she saw we had become arborists and Joanne said, yes, the tree was in memory of our dear friend Ella who had spent time at the cottage. Kathy knew Ella and was saddened by the news and she said:

“Oh, that lady…..that lady! I said to my husband, as you dug the hole…. where is that lady going to put her lawn chair for that’s where she always sat in the sun and read her book.”

And so, without realizing it, and with guidance that only Ella could give, we planted the tree where she did her reading on the lawn. I’m sure the rationale was that if she couldn’t sit in that spot then no one else could either. We will give the tree love and attention and we want to have you come to the lake to see it too.

It’s a lovely spot, a lovely tree and is a memory of a beautiful woman.

Joanne by Ella’s Tree June 2004

Epilogue
My sister Joanne died suddenly in September of that same year.  Two families and their friends devastated by the deaths of strong, loving and wonderful women.  Ella’s tree faired well for a number of years.  The cottage property was sold.  We didn’t leave the tree behind.  We couldn’t do that.

On a quiet weekday morning…ah, yes.

There are still a number of delectables to taste at Simply Biscotti.  A project not yet complete…ah, yes.

Being the inquisitive sort, I plugged in my numbers into the calculator:  rrasp-phirn.ca/risktools     They ask questions about your diet, exercise, alcohol consumption, etc in the past week.  I have had a pretty “healthy lifestyle”  past week.  It was a good time to take the test.  The number for me…..96 years old!  Are you kidding?  My parents died at 52 and 61 respectively  (I’m older than that now) but 96-that’s a ripe old age.

Some reflections on the whole thing.  First, if I had done the test that reflected my lifestyle choices when we were on vacation recently, my life expectancy would have fallen for sure.  Second, indeed, I may live for some 30+ years yet and yet it could be 3.0 years or .3 years or, or, or.   And third the answer to planning for what’s next is somewhere between scouting out long-term facilities and not buying green bananas.