Red Cedar
More apocalypse, less angst
On my way to suffering
Today is DENTAL WORK DAY – all in capitals, because I’m getting two crowns and some gum shaping done this morning and I am not looking forward to it. On the plus side, now that B. and I are on each others insurance I’m getting about $3000 worth of dental work for $100 – so at least I don’t have to pay much to have two teeth ground down into nubs so they can attach porcelain falsies to them at a later date. Ugh.
I forgot to mention yesterday that on Sunday I went snowshoeing for the very first time. Of course being Vancouver, it was pouring rain on top of Mount Seymour due to the warm-up we’ve had lately… but since we had to take M. up there for skiing lessons anyway, it just seemed like time to try it out. At first I was feeling disgruntled about the weather, but once we got those contraptions strapped on and were heading down to the trails – I just stopped caring. After all, I always travel with a dry change of clothes in the car when I’m hitting the trail – just in case.
So, turns out I really enjoy snowshoeing almost as much as I dig hiking and the snowshoes weren’t nearly as cumbersome as I thought they would be. Not only that, but in colder weather Mt. Seymour has a nice little network of looping snowshoe trails (due to trail closures we ended up just doing the main loop twice which took an hour and a half). Snowshoeing is definitely more tiring than hiking though – where I can hike easily without a break for 2-3 hours, I was feeling pretty done at the 1.5 hour mark – and there is a lot more thigh muscle workout going on too.
I am hoping that when we take M. back to skiing lessons in two weeks that weather has gotten a bit colder again and the snow isn’t quite to sodden and dirty. Of course just last week was brilliant snow-shoeing weather! It’s only mid-January though and we’ve got at least three more months of potential good snow on the North Shore – so I think we’ll definitely be doing some more of that this winter – and maybe even some nighttime shoeing up at Cypress (the chocolate fondue tour looks like a good Saturday night outing to me….).
Oh, but before any of that goodness, I’ve got an appointment to keep. Yuck.
In this decade…..
A couple of weeks ago, I responded to the twitter hashtag #inthisdecade with the following: “#inthisdecade I will do my master’s degree, plant a community orchard, become a master beekeeper, publish a poem, and record another album.”
And it seems I might be well on my way to two of those things – what with my bees for spring delivery ordered and some interest in putting a community orchard in at Clinton Park (it seems to have gathered momentum without me doing anything and now I’m waiting to find out if the Parks Board is willing to donate some space to the venture.)
I didn’t think very long to come up with that short list of goals – maybe 30 seconds and those were the first things that came out – at the very least indicating what is top of mind at the start of 2011. I’m sure that many more things will come to mind in the intervening years. I’m hopeful, you know? And I’ve got some plans.
Anticipating….
There is just so much going on in my little bookshed/garden studio these days – and it’s still two months until spring officially starts. My seeds are inventoried and a few new ones ordered, my bees will arrive in the third week of February, and sometime this week I should receive my supplies to start working out my backyard irrigation system. Not to mention the books I’ve got in the stack to review for this blog.
Oh, and I should also mention that we’ve got a Village Vancouver – Hastings Sunrise Village introductory potluck coming up at our house on January 31st… Plus, I’m looking for people interested in working on a community orchard in Clinton Park (if we get Parks Board interest and approval for it) – hopefully as early as this spring. If you are interested in either of these projects, please email me at megan.e.adam@gmail.com.
For people thinking of beekeeping on the coast this spring – NOW IS THE TIME TO ORDER YOUR BEES. If you don’t get an order in by mid-February, you can be pretty much assured you won’t get anything unless you are lucky enough to receive a swarm. There is an excellent post over at the Village Vancouver beekeeping group about where to order bees from if you are in the lower mainland.
Oh – and also, the Urban Herb School has a website with a list of workshops and offerings available in Vancouver. One of these days when I’m not doing ten other things I’m going to take one of these!
3rd Quilt of 2011 – The Tree
The tree quilt – quilted and bound. There are lots of mistakes in this quilt, but it’s still going to someone as a gift. No one can really criticize a gift can they? Now to start on new things…..
Red Cedar 