Bits and pieces

Today I am home for lunch - Wednesday's appointment with the audiologist culminated in lunch in Penticton, and afterwards an ice cream cone of mammoth proportions, even though it was a senior-size.   I can remember my Father giving me a nickel  (five cents) to run around in the evening to the local grocer for a cone, - top price at the ice cream emporium Wednesday was $9.65!!!!

Yesterday I had a lovely prawn stir-fry with a good friend, - the restaurant was packed with residents from Orchard Haven, the local senior's care facility, so we had lots of time to chat while we waited for our order.

Today, as soon as the Apricot Pies are out of the oven I am off to shop, and who knows what the local Deli might have on special!  Whatever it is I will probably bring it home for a quick, cool lunch

Yesterday it was 105 degrees F in the shade - I am not complaining about blue skies and sunshine, but it does call for a judicious use of the air conditioner and a little conservation of energy during the hot afternoon.  The sunflowers are reaching, but not yet in bloom.  Below the yellow daisies raise great paeans to the sun, and in contrast the purity of the white phlox.

 

 

 

 

Callie and I stretch out in one of the reclining chairs.  She sleeps and I read.  Well, sometimes I sleep too, - cat naps I think they are called.  At bed time I have been reading  Joyce Carol Oates 'Memoirs of a Widow'.  Is this a good idea?  Well, I'm not sure.  I have great sympathy for her in her lack of family to offer love and support and our circumstances are somewhat different, but at the core of the matter isn't it the same loss for all widows, the depth of which can only be realized when you must embrace it bravely yourself.

In the afternoon I have been reading, amongst other books I pick up and put down,  more of Chris Arthur's essays.  I am entranced with his vocabulary, his imagination and his interpretation of the most ordinary things of life.

I read for a while.  Perhaps I nod off, - usually I rise long before 6 o'clock and am in the garden shortly after to tend to the water and the weeds.  Today I investigated with dismay the number of stops the Chinese Lantern Underground Railway is making through the raised bed . A cup of coffee, the early morning coolness and the birds greeting the new day (which I now can hear) waken my spirits, but the early hour lends itself to a sleepy afternoon.

Sometime during the afternoon I will wander down to the loom room and do a few inches of threading, - it is not a wide warp I am putting on the loom but the speed with which I used to thread the heddles is interrupted by my back whining, quietly but persistently.

Here is a picture I snapped out of the side window as we made our way home from Penticton Wednesday, - this is how a great majority of the visitors to the Okanagan spend their lovely warm holiday afternoons - under a plethora of colourful umbrellas.  And I remember it as being just lovely, with the children building sandcastles, in and out of the water, splashing and so pleased to be spending a day at the beach.  Unfortunately all the pictures from those days were taken with a movie camera, and so they aren't available to post without a lot of messing around, but they are bright in my mind!