Gratitude & Glimmers #108

Making gratitude your default emotion will single-handedly alter the course of your life.

—Topher Pike

1. A couple of evenings ago I noticed the half moon against rose-lit clouds, so I stepped outside for a better look, and was rewarded with a rose-lit contrail and a couple of swallows flitting around catching bugs. A glimmer indeed!

Welcome to my post of glimmers (of joy and wonder) and gratitude for the month of March. You can find links to more posts like this one at LeeAnna's blog, Not Afraid of Color. 

2.  It was pretty cool to fly over my town, Kingsville, when I came back from Alberta. We had to circle for 45 minutes (four or maybe five times over Kingsville and Lake Erie!) waiting for a slow-moving thunderstorm to pass so we could safely land. 

You can see Point Pelee National Park in this shot, protruding out into Lake Erie. 

Lots and lots of greenhouses...

Point Pelee is the southernmost point of land in Canada, on the same latitude as Rome, Italy! It’s a very important point on the migration path of birds and monarch butterflies. You can also see how flat this area is, the result of several advancing and retreating glaciers, and subsequent post-glacial lakes which were larger than today’s Great Lakes. (source - some cool reading there!)

3. I love that yet another of our animals is attracted to my yoga/library room.

4. These little fruit/vegetable stands are ubiquitous throughout Essex County. Farmers put out produce, label it and you leave the money in a little lockbox attached to the stand (theirs has a yellow top). Totally on your honour system. I love that, that in this hard, cruel, vicious world, there is such trust. The white plastic bag attached at the front? It contains more plastic bags (which are clearly reused from the produce department of our grocery stores) so that if you didn’t bring your own bag, you empty out the carton into one of theirs, leave the carton behind, and off you go.

5. My cousin posted this earlier this month on Instagram. It’s worth reading. And then re-reading. And then coming back to it, time and again. I think of those in Gaza, and now in Lebanon, in Cuba. Sudan. Ukraine too, and I feel such sadness that many of these have been taken away from them by greedy, cruel, and downright evil governments of certain countries. I found this site that is sobering.

6.  I like how Zora almost always has to be touching Rufus or me (or using a part of his or my body for a pillow) when she’s napping. She’s a really cuddly girl.

7. I love my wisteria! I was ecstatic when I learned it would happily grow here, and so we bought one, I think three years ago. It first climbed along a wooden trellis MacGyver built, which you see on the right where a hanging basket is, but then when we moved the pergola off the upper deck to the lower deck area, he got the idea to train it to twine around the bars so we’d have a natural shade above our lounge set. The bees are loving it too, especially this year, as it has been the best for blooms yet.

8. I love the colours in this tomato sauce I made for a favourite zucchini boat lasagne recipe. My own basil, grown from a cutting from last year’s plant, and over-wintered (so fresh basil all winter long) and now thriving outside, and has birthed two more cuttings, one of which a squirrel dug up, so it’s survival is questionable).

9. This cat!

her tongue 💖

and this dog,

and this one,

Since her foster mum had her, she’s been insistent on being a couch dog, which is something we’ve restricted, and only allowed after supper, and even then not every day…so out came some older sheets and morning and evening, she and Rufus can hop up and relax with us.

give me glimmers every day. Zora turned eight months on June 23, and July 10 will be her 3-month ‘Gotcha’ anniversary. She’s settling into our household so well. Yes, there are a couple of issues, but most of it is puppy stuff, and she’s heading in the right direction: over-exuberance upon seeing other dogs on her walks, Bella…over-exuberance there still.

10. Watching Canada and Qatar was a thrill! I also do love my little TV-watching nook in the dormer end of my sewing room.

Books and TV

A quick note about a couple of good books and TV shows this past month: The Birds that Stay by Ann Lambert was quite good, a good mystery, A True Account - Hannah Masury’s Sojourn Amongst the Pyrates, Written by Herself by Katherine Howe was really good, based on a true story, and Slammerkin by Emma Donoghue was excellent. I was part way through The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson but then I had to stop it to read one that came in for which I’d been in line, Theo of Golden by Allen Levi. It’s okay, feels like an allegory; I’ve got a hundred pages of the ~400 left and it has to be back tomorrow. It’s very popular apparently, so I’m only allowed to have it for a week. The first four are all from my 75-odd-long list ‘Want to Read’ in my library account, so it feels good to knock some off without adding four or fourteen more! Two of the three below are more from that list, with the Dogs, Boys, etc one a book I requested my library buy. It’s a #1 NYT bestseller, and Isabel’s Instagram site, simonsits, which I believe I’ve mentioned before, is an excellent follow. I’ll be reading it next, as it’s got a time limit on it too!

I watched The Outlaws on CBC Gem this month and highly recommend it. Good fun with plenty of twists and surprises! I re-watched Must Love Dogs also on Gem, with Brady, who loved it, and Brianne, who "wasn’t watching it” but surprisingly/not surprisingly, she kind of did, looking up all sorts of further info online about Brady, yep another Brady, Oliveira, and Alex Blumberg, and commenting at various incidents, so clearly she’d been looking up from her scrolling. They’re currently filming the second season, so for those of you in the US, check them out on Instagram for some good clips from season 1. 

LeeAnna’s question of the week. 

I don’t usually remember to answer these, but this one was asking if you went to the beach as a child, along with a few other questions.

We went regularly throughout the summer to lakes around Edmonton, Cooking Lake, funnily emough, a few kilometres north of which would be where we ended up building our much-loved home many years later. We also frequented Wabamun Lake, which is where many family reunions took place, Half Moon Lake to name a few. In the summer of 1970 I think, we drove out to Vancouver, my dad and mum, four kids, pulling a 16-foot little trailer. That was my first dip in the ocean. I don’t recall a favourite bathing suit, and I don’t recall collecting shells on that trip, though I do recall collecting a few from the beach in Blackpool, England, where we went at Christmas in 1972. When we stayed out at the farm (my aunt and my grandma’s where my Dad grew up) my aunt would sometimes take us to the Pembina River in Sangudo to swim when it was hot. I remember hating the horseflies, and diving underwater to get away from them. To this date, I absolutely love water, love the beach, and now live a mere few minutes’ walk from the shore of Lake Erie.