Red Cedar
More apocalypse, less angst
On this and that state of being.
Having said that, I’m not *in* a depressive funk just yet…. and I’m pretty sure I know how to forestall one at this stage in my life (ah – the wisdom of age). It truly is about reading the signs and responding to them appropriately. For me that means a combination of doing good things for my body, spending time with people who nurture, and giving myself lots of time for rest and reading. It also means working on gratitude, appreciating myself and the people around me. Fortunately, I have a lot to be grateful for so all I have to do is bring my attention down to what really matters.
Last night, we had a wonderful dinner (two salads, three homemade pizzas, and fondue for dessert) at Sam and Caelie’s house. Not only was the food awesome, but the conversation was interesting and enjoyable too. I’ve got a couple blog post ideas related to those who profited from japanese internment, and separation through specialized language bouncing around in my head as a result. This is precisely why it’s so important to get out and hang with different folks…. it’s a whole show of different ideas all the time! Equally, I am looking forward to a dinner party on Friday at our house involving a whole different crew of writers and activists. These are some of the things (inspiring, interesting people) I am really very glad to have in my life.
I’m also really excited about the city’s proposed 10-year cycling master plan going to council for discussion tomorrow. Not only are they advancing trials on more separated bike lanes, but completing greenways started as far back as 1995 which will allow for more off-road cycling from the city way out to the burbs. It looks like at least one of the proposals will allow me to ride from home to work on either a bikeway or in a separated (hopefully buffered) lane. The report to council is available for reading online, and I plan to write a letter to at least one of the local newspapers in support of this proposal. It’s only a matter of time before the drivers start whining “what about me?” as though we don’t already invest millions of tax dollars into road infrastructure for drivers! Juding from some of the comments on the Vancouver Sun story last weekend, some people out there seem to be labouring under the delusion that their ICBC insurance payments and their driver’s licence fee somehow go to pay for roads in the city and elsewhere. Wrong, people. General revenue from taxation pays for those things, and cyclists and pedestrians pay the same taxers that drivers do. The only additional taxes paid by drivers is at the gas pump and that is a general-revenue tax that goes into the common pot. No fair? Well, if you think taxes on purchases are generally unfair I suppose you’ve got a point. But if you agree that cigarettes and alcohol be taxed at a higher rate because of their cost to society? Gasoline kinda fits that bill too. In any case, no amount of licensing cyclists, or having them buy insurance (which people seem to suggest everytime a new proposal for bike lanes is put down) is going to pay for cycling infrastructure. Those are programs which simply pay for themselves.
And for my third and final thing to get excited about – I think we might be putting together a guerilla gardening posse to tackle a fairly large site in Hastings-Sunrise – going tonight to scope out the site which is about twenty blocks from us but promises the potential to do an LA-Farm type thing in our general hood. I’m not sure about it yet, but it could present a wonderful opportunity to both engage with other people as well as gain some more growing space (and maybe even room for chickens in the future!). I’ll know after tonight if we’re going to start recruiting people to this crazy plan, and for sure I’ll post that here.
Dinner party experiments.
It’s another dinner party night tonight! This time at Sam and Caelie’s, last month at Jess and Trevor’s. Before that, we hosted. Not to mention the BBQ dinner-party experiment we hosted last weekend and the friends we are having over on Friday….. B & I are working on our social life through food gatherings with friends and near-strangers these days and it’s really taken over out social calendar!
I want to start writing about these little events as they happen – so this will suffice as the introductory post to our experiments which currently involve:
- A monthly east van dinner party collective involving four couples who rotate dinners between houses.
- A series of dinner parties at our house (monthly) where we invite a bunch of people who don’t know each other.
- Regular other gatherings involving friends we don’t see enough of otherwise. Or who we want to get to know better. And,
- Accepting invitations that we might normally turn down. As a result, we’re having lunch at the house of one of my former professors next weekend.
Food being the ultimate ice-breaker, we’re working the theme that community likes to eat together and eating together makes community….. not to mention, we’ve had some pretty interesting eating to date. Expect to see these meals documented from here on out as I expect tonight is grilled cheese sandwiches with fondue for dessert and I’m still working on the menu for Friday (turns out one of our guests is gluten and dairy-intolerant so I’m switching things around last minute). Lots of interesting eating, conversations and people promised!
Rhubarb love.
I was away for a few days last week, hoping to return to a garden bursting with new growth in my absence – but alas! The weather here has not been great – cold and rainy through most of April – so although I could see some marginal growth, it wasn’t what I had hoped for. On top of that, my one free day to garden this weekend (Sunday) was a wash of showers, winds and coldish temperatures, so I got very little of my front bed (in desperate need of some attention) done.
But despite it all, I harvested my first crop of the spring season – 4 and a half pounds of lovely red, Rhubarb from the sprawling plant at the foot of our compost bin out back. Best thing is, that’s just the first harvest of what will probably top out at around 14 pounds of rhubarb by the end of summer – this is one prodigious plant (that I do nothing for, really, it just grows and grows).
Growing up, the only way we ever had rhubarb was in pie form. Served warm with vanilla ice cream, my mother’s rhubarb pie was one of my favourite summer treats (rivaled only by the blackberry pies in early fall)…. and last summer I think that’s pretty much what we did with all our plant produced – pie filling and crisps. But really, we don’t make desserts that often, and I gave about half of what our plant produced to friends because I was at a loss with the surplus. Little did I know about the many websites devoted to rhubarb out there!
The Rhubarb Compendium and Savor the Rhubarb are two such sites dedicated to as many uses for rhubarb in cooking as you can think of. Chutneys, muffins, jams, drinks, candy, sidedishes – even craft projects! Oh yes, the many things you can do with rhubarb.
For my part, I made a batch of yummy muffins last night (rich, not too sweet) and cut the remaining four pounds into cubes for the freezer. Once I harvest another two pounds in a few weeks I am going to attempt a batch of wine which will be ready to drink by next summer. This will be my first foray into wine-making, so I’ll be impatient about it I’m sure!
The rest of this summer’s rhubarb? I’m thinking jam, chutney and assorted desserts. Whatever we do with it, I’ll be sure to write it down here. Recipes after the cut! Read More
Where and how to write.
I was away last week in Ottawa, which is part of the silence here for the last little while. But more than that, I haven’t been much up to blogging lately which I think is a byproduct of forcing myself to write everyday before work – most of which isn’t blog content. I’m finding the whole “writer” thing to be a bit depressing at the moment, whereas when I just blot I’m much happier about my writing. It’s not that the writing is better, but I have the instant gratification of being read – every day if I want – which just isn’t the case with the serious business of writing I’ve been attempting for the last year or so.
So I’ve decided to give it a break for a month or so – the writing first thing in the morning gig is up for the moment – because it’s burning me out and I have three blog projects I would rather give my time to. While it’s true that the dedicated writing every day produces better content, I feel limited by it, and quite frankly a little oppressed by the culture around getting published in a dwindling print-market. Why is it so important anyway? I have gone through periods of having more new readers per month on this blog than many journals have in their subscriber base. Oh, right, because my content here isn’t vetted by “those who know” and so I’ve deemed myself unworthy. One more reason to dislike myself is not something I need right now.
It’s just a break though I’m sure. I know the daily routine assists my output of more polished and well-thought-out material, but at the moment I’m not feeling competetive enough to get up every day and challenge everyone else for a spot on the page. I promise, though, I’ll be writing here and Amongtheweeds and Viaduct instead. Because I can’t not write, it’s just the where and how I write that shifts.
Finishing things.
I haven’t been posting too much this week because I’ve been crazy-busy both at and after work. I’ve managed only two posts at Among the Weeds and none here! I also didn’t manage to work out much this week, which is also a sign that my life is way overloaded.
What I did manage to do this week is finish two essays and one poem that I believe are close to ready for submission. I suppose that the article I wrote for Resistance magazine must also have been published this week since yesterday was Earth Day and the mag was timed to come out on the 40th anniversary of the event.
Since I don’t have a lot to say at the moment – I will leave you with the following before and after shot of our backyard in the year since we moved in (we’ve been there exactly one year this week). I wrote a long post about our studio project at Among the Weeds today and was looking at the various photos. Putting these two together – the transformation is pretty crazy! The before shot was taken at a more lush time of year (early fall), so this year’s shot is still a little barren looking…. but wait until summer! Then it’s going to really shine with all this hard work we’ve been doing!
Red Cedar 