Gratitude and Glimmers #97

Welcome to my post for the month of all things I like and for which I am grateful. You can find links to more posts like this one at LeeAnna's blog, Not Afraid of Color.

July has been a slow month for stitching and blogging. I have taken it off the past few years and, although I didn’t make it official this year, I did tend to step back a bit. Here we are though, the last Thursday in the month, so I thought I’d pop in with a few little glimmers that have brightened my day over the past month.

1. July 1, Canada Day, saw MacGyver and me at Seacliff amphitheatre for the first of the summer free concerts lineup put on by the town of Leamington and sponsored by a few businesses. This was Forever Seger, a Canadian tribute band out of Toronto who absolutely nailed the Bob Seger band’s sound; MacGyver commented that the female sax player was better than Bob’s! We saw the real Bob in Detroit a few years ago. 

Since that night we’ve seen another Canadian tribute band, Brass Transit, a tribute to the band Chicago. Excellent again. And the Windsor Symphony Orchestra gave an excellent concert this past weekend, playing so many of my favourites. What a venue. I love live music but getting this setting and this quality for free is incredible.

2. I waited to finish this post until this morning because I was watching the fly final at 7 am at the World Aquatics Championships in Singapore. It produced actually a couple of glimmers for me: Summer McIntosh, who I've followed for the past couple of years now, won the gold, which now makes three for three, (she's going for five golds) and I was watching it 'with' Brianne's boyfriend who's in Alberta, two hours behind me, so that was fun. She just missed beating the world record of 2:01:81, finishing in 2:01:99! The commentator said that was the most disappointed he's ever seen an athlete who's just won gold! But that was her second goal. However, a little perspective: that record, set in 2009, was by a Chinese athlete wearing a LZR Speedo Performance Enhancing swimsuit, which was banned three months later, and also Summer is just 18, so I am confident she will eventually crush that record.

3. My calla lilies survived yet another winter and a bouquet I made with a few stems gave such a pop of colour on our dining table. They last a long time!

4. New to our garden this year is one I first spotted in a neighbour's garden, crocosmia. They didn't know what it was, had just been given it by friends. I put it in PictureThis, my plant app, and found out what it was. As synchronicity would have it, Monty Don talked quite a bit about it on subsequent episodes of Gardeners' World! So we were on the hunt, and found that the greenhouse we love in Chatham, The Glasshouse, carries it. It's doing really well. This is not enhanced: the red is truly this intense.

5. We went for breakfast a couple of weeks ago to The Twisted Apron. I am grateful that we have the means to go out once in a while, a car that can get us there, and a restaurant that is so good, with a menu that has so many choices! This time I got the breakfast grilled  cheese which is scrambled eggs and bacon, three cheeses plus goat cheese, and pesto, yum! We love their covered patio, and the coffee is sooo good.

6. I like the two signs in the massage therapist's in Kingsville.

The moose and beaver are posing, "Elbows Up Canada" and the Canada geese are posing in front of the maple leaf with 'True North Strong' bordering them.

I do not think Americans realize just how fierce we have become and continue to be about buying Canadian (that's an article from today, July 31) and boycotting American. American liquor sales were down 66% in April and May, since our liquor stores removed all American booze off shelves (Alberta has put them back😡🙄 but none of the other nine provinces and three territories has). Travel is way down, both by car and air, as Canadians spend their vacations within our beautiful country (PM Mark Carney made good on his election promise to make Via Rail free for kids 18 and under all summer), and has cut the toll at Confederation Bridge from $50 to $20 (it connects Prince Edward Island to the mainland at New Brunswick). Having been a longtime proud Canadian (raised by a famous Canadian father😉) all this Elbows Up Canada stuff isn't new for me, but it is truly amazing to see it everywhere I go. And you bet, it gives me constant joy.

6.

Brady and I had tea 'together' this past week. The best glimmer! It was his idea to take a screenshot! Can you believe he turned 17 this week?! And, the best glimmer-out-to-space-and-beyond is that we just found out he is able to come here for his summer visit after all in August! Summer school took up July and he got a job at Boston Pizza, so we figured the summer vay-cay times were past, sniff. But when the BP where he works said they were closing for a couple of weeks to do renovations, Brianne said, "Well, what would you like to do with your time off?" and he said, "I'd like to go to Nana and Grampa's." Like be still my heart. 17! and he wants to spend his ten days off with us. 💓💓💞💞💝💝

7. Another off the charts glimmer this month is the pie below (minus its top), because it is filled with.... major drum roll....

SASKATOONS!!

For those who have no prairies experience, these are berries that are unique to the prairies. They grow in Alberta and Saskatchewan, maybe in Manitoba. Update: after Judy's comment wondering if they're related to huckleberries, I went down a little rabbit hole and found this entry at The Canadian Encyclopedia. So they are Amelanchier alnifolia whereas huckleberries are in the Gaylussacia and Vaccinium species. (Wikipedia). Who knew!

I found them at a local berry farm and winery, Black Bear Farms. In all the years we've lived here, I haven't stopped in; I'm not into fruit wines, which is their specialty. Little did I realize they sold berries until one of my yoga students (and a good friend) brought me a basket of field strawberries, yum, so much better than greenhouse-grown. So I stopped in. And fainted. They grow and sell Saskatoon berries! We had them all throughout our acreage in Alberta, just wild, and I'd pick every year, freeze them, and make pies, MacGyver's favourite. They are similar to blueberries, but more currants flavour, and quite a bit smaller, though if you'e ever picked wild blueberries, you'll realize the cultivated ones are unnaturally large... We have been savouring the pie this past week. There's one slice each left, and with a scoop of salted caramel Chapman's ice cream, glimmers of heaven indeed!

8. We have had several glimmers in the form of volunteers in our garden. Well, the one below is in our compost! See the green leaf?! It's an elephant ear! This is the third; the other two were in our vegetable raised beds, with the peas and beets, along with no less than six impatiens! No clue how they got there other than maybe seeds that got pooped out or scattered by the wind or squirrels. I also found a canna lily in with the potatoes raised bed!

9. The wasps in the photo below are quite taken with the cockscomb I've grown from seed gathered from a bouquet from a friend last summer. I'm pretty chuffed about that! I'm not sure though why the flowers are pretty small as compared to those that were in the bouquet. I looked up these wasps because they're quite unusual to me: gorgeous deep blue iridescent wings and mostly black with a couple of white stripes spaced wide apart. Well, it is a Mason wasp, and they are extremely beneficial in a garden! They are solitary and not aggressive. The Youtube video says that if you have them, "Congratulations; you have a good array of flowers for pollinators," so yay, that has been our mission for the past couple of years.

10. An extremely huge hole has happened this month, the loss of a poet I've mentioned here before, and one whose eloquent and resounding words I've used in my 'thought for the day' in my yoga classes. Andrea Gibson, poet laureate of Colorado, died on July 14, age 49. Cancer.

Let that last one really sink in.

TV/Books

I watched the first season of Outrageous on Britbox, very good. It sent me online fact-checking some of the yes, outrageous occurrences in the 1930s concerning the Mitford sisters. Whoa. Fascinating, also shocking, with a very sinister echo of what is going on in our world at this time regarding the rise of fascism.

I love reading about others' book recommendations in our 'I Like' group, and I always try to include a few of my good reads over the past month. I've read 30 books, I'm ¾ of the way through my 31st, so I'm on track for my yearly goal (not usually quite attained) of 50. First, however, I learned of the not-so-good side of Goodreads, (Amazon took it over, and it has not evolved with the times) and so I've gone over to The Storygraph, which is actually a more reader-friendly/oriented up-to-date app. Any-hoo... my favourite book was Etta and Otto and Russell and James by Canadian author Emma Hooper. It was one of this year's Canada Reads contenders. I've waited for a very long time on the holds list to get it and it was well-worth the wait. Australian author Kelly Rimmer's The Paris Agent was also just excellent, and I highly recommend it. American Britt Bennett's The Vanishing Half was another excellent read, and English author Ann Cleeves' Raven Black, the first in the Shetland series, was decent though I did have a couple of 'I don't think that's so plausible' moments, which surprised me, as she is one of Louise Penny's much-respected/loved authors she recommends, and I just love Shetland, the BBC series which is based upon her series. I'm currently reading German author Peter Wohlleben's The Power of Trees which is the sequel to his The Hidden Life of Trees which Dayna bought me after she heard how much I LOVED that book, that it spoke to my soul and long-held belief about the sentience of trees. This one is good, mostly about climate change and how ancient forests could adapt if left alone, the irreversible effects of clear-cutting and the unhelpful effects of tree farms and forestry organizations that refuse to see what science and longterm study of ancient untouched forest (of which there are few) can teach them.

Thanks for reading another longer-than-expected Gratitude post! I just have one final thing that I love and that is giving me a glimmer:

Tomorrow, finally!!! I can release the Tinker Toys pattern which was published two years ago in Love of Quilting

My new and improved pattern contains directions to make this baby quilt, but also a throw which I name Orinoco Flow:

and a cushion/pillow cover:

More tomorrow, and yes it will be on sale!