Yesterday Husband and I went to Penticton, - he to speak at a Remembrance Day event, resplendant, with medals all shined and his mind attuned to the points he wanted to talk about. He is a man of passion, and when he speaks of those things which he values greatly he sometimes walks on the edge of a political precipice. One never knows when he might lose his footing a little and digress to another point carrying political overtones that excite him to express deeply felt opinions! It's a risk we must all take when he is asked to speak!!!! Ask anyone who has ever interviewed him.....

I went along for the ride, and what a splendid drive it was over the pass into the Okanagan Valley. The skies were dour, but the hills glowed with a wonderful luminence.



The fall grasses dotted the hillsides with gorgeous patches of naples yellow, covering the small benches. Along the roadside the grasses were longer and more varied, - shades of orange and gold, with hidden spears of green. The small red shrubs that hug the rocks are indescribably soft and range in shades from pinks to wines. Words fail to express the wonderful feeling of quiet mystery that shrouds the mountain with these suble earthy colours. Unfortunately we were late getting away, which made picture taking impossible, and when we returned the sky was pouring buckets of rain. Perhaps we will be lucky enough to meet that same combination of sky and hill and colour the next time we go, but for now it is a picture in my mind that I remember as being wonderfully relaxing as we hurried to make up time and not be too late.



On Sunday a "Chicken Little" Lady bemoaned the lack of water in the riverbed, foreseeing this as a sign of the climate change that threatens to devastate us. On Tuesday the river was brim full with all those wonderful buckets of rain that come in the fall to feed the thirsty trees and plants as they go into dormancy.

I think you have to live long enough to experience earth's cycles of drought and heat and rain and heavy snows, before you can view climate change as natural, and not the fearful disaster that is forecast. Occasionally we are blessed with the perfect June, the most glorious fall, or the most benign of picturesque winters and I do pray that the doom and gloomers take them into account and are thankful for them.