Month: April 2012

Caine’s Arcade

by barbstruestories, posted in Arts and entertainment, Interesting things..who would have known?

There was a heartwarming story in the paper recently about Caine Monroy, a 9 year old who lives in East Los Angeles.  He is the subject of a short film that has become a recent Internet viral sensation.  The film is Caine’s Arcade.  

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?

 

Green Thumb 2012-Year 2

by barbstruestories, posted in Green (sometimes) thumb

Caroline, my dear friend and gardening partner, and I are embarking on our second year of “farming”.  The plot is the same 20 ft by 50 ft garden we rented from the city last gardening season. 

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.


Ella’s Tree

by barbstruestories, posted in Death, Friendship, Life's observations, Planting a tree in memory

Chance Made Us Neighbours-Hearts Made Us Friends

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.

I Am Going to Live…How Long?

by barbstruestories, posted in Life's observations, Observations in retirement

Yesterday the Globe and Mail sported an article titled “How long will you live?  Just crunch the numbers”   The calculator was created by Ontario scientists and is based on real data on factors contributing to deaths in Ontario, Canada. You have to think, though, it would have relevance in other places too. The crux of the matter for the data is the degree to which our lifestyle choices affect our health.  

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.