Category Archives: Blog

H is for Hula Hoop

Posted on April 10, 2014 | 9 comments

There has been a lot of coming and going around here over the past few days and this has made me think about the odd things we take, leave behind, and bring back when we travel. Dad has just spent three weeks in Provence and England and the coolest thing he brought back was several jars of pigments. He plans to add these warm, earthy tones to linseed oil and paint a series of landscapes (he travelled from hill town to hill town, collecting a gazillion images and ideas…) using the actual colours of the place. I can’t wait to see what he comes up with. He has only been back a couple of days and is already at work in his studio. It shouldn’t be long before I can post something inspired by his recent travels.

Provence

Dad returned hugely inspired (and a bit out of breath from all the hiking he did).

Several of the Germans will be leaving by car tomorrow, heading for the USA. They will be leaving behind all manner of fruits and vegetables, which is rather bizarre when you consider most of the produce one buys around here these days originated south of the border. How is it logical that you can’t take an apple fifty miles south of here?? Because MC arrived during a snowstorm and is now heading for California, he is also leaving behind his winter coat and mucky farm clothes. Later this summer he will return to reclaim his [temporarily] abandoned clothing and help out again on the farm. Perhaps he will enjoy himself enough that he will stay through another change of season and will need his heavy coat once again… [H is also for hope… and I am hopeful this might come to pass…]

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[Photo by Rob Campbell Photography]

Yesterday I had a quick chat with my friend Sylvia Olsen, the author of quite a few books and an expert knitter (among her books are Working with Wool: A Coast Salish Legacy and the Cowichan Sweater and Yetsa’s Sweater). She is heading off to a writing retreat in Ireland and we were chatting about how she will divide her time writing, knitting, and hula hooping. Hula hooping? Yep. Sylvia has a collapsible hula hoop with which she travels. Which is way more interesting than the fact I always travel with my personal pillow (it’s thin and all the hotels insist on HUGE fluffy pillows that make my neck ache).

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My daughter never leaves home without her Rescue Remedy (she travels a lot but hates to fly and swears by putting a few drops under her tongue to get her through takeoffs and landings). When I mentioned Sylvia’s hula hoop, Dani reminded me that she used to travel with her juggling sticks and this, in turn, made me think of several trips I took years ago with a pink ballet tutu stuffed in my backpack. This was long after I stopped dancing, but I had this idea that I would write a collection of travel essays called Travels with Tutu. I did wind up with a handful of odd photos of a pink tutu placed artfully in unusual places (atop a mountain in Japan, on a huge log on a beach somewhere along the West Coast Trail), but somehow the concept failed to hold my attention long enough to collect enough essays to make a book. Part of the problem, I think, was that the pink tutu on its own was not that photogenic (or, I was not a good enough photographer to make the images work well enough to warrant inclusion in a book). This was long before the selfie became a thing, so it never even occurred to me to wear the tutu myself.

The idea of Sylvia hula hooping on the edge of some windblown Irish cliff makes me smile. I really hope she has someone take a photo of her and her hoop in some cool Irish locale so I can vicariously enjoy her trip!

All this made me wonder, what is the essential item you cannot leave home without when you travel? Have you ever left something behind on a journey, intentionally or not? What’s the most unusual thing you’ve ever brought back with you after a trip?

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Posted in Blog, Books, Travel, Uncategorized

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G is for … Sorry… I Have to Say It: Great German Guests

Posted on April 9, 2014 | 7 comments

After the past number of weeks of glowing, gushing, grateful posts about my Great German Guests, it seems like there can be no other theme for today’s post. Indeed, this evening the house is overflowing with Germans – AB is back for her third stay – MC is here for another couple of days and MC’s two friends – also from Bavaria – dropped in for a quick visit as well. NEVER have the dinner dishes disappeared so fast! Imagine a whole team of Germans scurrying around your kitchen figuring out a better system for putting everything away! And the efficiency with which that dishwasher is loaded! Ach du meine Güte!

german flag

What a shame my German mother was not still here to enjoy the company of our young visitors. In an odd twist, just about everyone who has come to stay has been from Bavaria, which was my mother’s adopted home after her family fled from East Germany as the Russians invaded. I grew up with stories of Bavaria and of the war (Mom was born in 1939) and it’s very odd to hear many familiar place names and some distinctive phrases from the region popping up in conversation.

grandparents day cover

Some of my fondest childhood memories are of when my Omi would come to stay (or, when we would go to visit her in Bavaria). I used to love Omi’s stories, one of which was eventually woven into the picture book, Grandparents’ Day. Omi’s family spent some time in Brazil where, as a child, she was bitten by a poisonous snake. The result of that encounter left a spectacular scar on her leg and hearing her tell the story of what happened next (which involved a blacksmith and an impromptu cauterization of the oozing wound with a super-heated poker) was so awful and so cool I loved/hated it when she would say, “Have I told you the story about the snake?” The process of taking such a grim tale from its original state to the final, more-or-less appropriate-for-young-children format was quite the journey…

Hearing all this German being spoken around the dinner table recently has awakened some corner of my brain where, apparently, quite a bit of German has been sleeping. How is this possible that a language can lie dormant for decades only to be activated by endless conversations about how crazy it is we have all these nice big roads and such ridiculously low speed limits? What’s really strange is that I understand the most when I’m not really trying to listen… kind of like the way you see better at night when you don’t look directly at whatever it is you are trying to see.

Speaking of night… time to sign off: Guten Nacht!

 

 

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F is for Fancy and Farewell

Posted on April 8, 2014 | 4 comments

For the last year or so the passenger side door handle in the truck has been missing in action. Someone who shall remain nameless but who might be my only child snapped it in her haste to exit the vehicle… The result is that for more than a year every time I’ve had a passenger aboard we’ve repeated a rather silly ritual that unfolds something like this:

Passenger swipes at the door and looks puzzled.

Me: Oh. Sorry (I am Canadian after all – the apology comes first.) The door handle is broken – hang on a sec.

I leap out of the truck, run around the vehicle, and open the door from the outside.

There follows a few standard quips about chauffeurs and how some jobs get on the to-do list and never get off again…

Regular passengers who are quick and motivated learn to crank down the window (hard labour) and can sometimes reach out to get the door open before I can sprint around the truck. This race elicits another standard exchange that begins with “sorry – I’m not quite fast enough,” as I reach the passenger door just as an arm is reaching out the window.

This is better than the times when I am distracted, leap out, and race off into the feed store or hardware store or wherever completely forgetting my poor passenger is trapped.

When I realize I’m alone inside I usually realize what I’ve done and race back out to rescue the prisoner. The apologies are profuse in cases like this.

When MC was first trapped in the truck on Day 2 of his visit he declared he would fix the handle. We got busy and lots of other projects got in the way and I began to fear he might slip away and escape without having a chance to design a solution… I needn’t have worried. A couple of days ago he came up with this utterly ingenious and elegant solution:

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Voila!! A fancy new door handle! Functional and cool and made using stuff found lying around.

Sigh. I am going to miss MC and SP. Their departures loom and it will be with a heavy heart that I bid the boys farewell…

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Posted in Blog, DIY and Projects, workaway

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E is for Excellent Expeditions

Posted on April 6, 2014 | 12 comments

Funny how sometimes it takes having a visitor to get you out and about and exploring the neighbourhood! That’s exactly what has been happening since we started hosting our lovely volunteers – we’ve been tootling around southern Vancouver Island, showing them the sights and falling in love with our amazing home all over again.

The Kinsol Trestle on Vancouver Island is the largest remaining wooden trestle in the Commonwealth - the recently rebuilt and refurbished structure contains 60 percent of the timbers from the original completed in 1920.

The Kinsol Trestle on Vancouver Island is the largest remaining wooden trestle in the Commonwealth – the recently rebuilt and refurbished structure contains 60 percent of the timbers from the original completed in 1920.

I’ve lived here for many years and our family visited the island a number of times before that, but today was the first time I’d ever been to the trestle. D and T made sure to document our visitors’ experience of the day:

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Everyone was a little soggy, but the rain softened as the afternoon wore on and despite the weather we all enjoyed our outing.

Everyone was a little soggy, but the rain softened as the afternoon wore on and despite the weather we all enjoyed our outing.

A couple of weeks ago we all trekked out to East Sooke Park, another glorious destination not so far from here. IMG_8891[1]

It would have been hard to have picked a nicer day! The sun came out and between the hiking, the dogs romping, and the tasty picnic, we all came home happy and relaxed.

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Volunteers from our place and from Maypenny Farm enjoying a day at the beach at East Sooke Park.

Even when we are ostensibly ‘working’ we try to throw in a bit of fun… When I had to take a load of ducks to Salt Spring Island for processing (the nearest facility that will take ducks at the moment) we allowed a bit of extra time for sightseeing. No visit to SSI is complete without a trip up Mount Maxwell, a visit to Ruckle Park, something to eat in Ganges, and a round of frisbee golf.

DCF Marcel Saltspring Mount Maxwell

DCF Mount Maxwell Sunrise

 

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Lambs at Ruckle Park

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Frisbee golf is a lot harder than it looks. The course on Salt Spring Island is pretty cool – an easy stroll from downtown Ganges in a big park.

It was great visiting Salt Spring again and taking some time to poke around. If I ever leave the ‘big’ island, I could imagine myself living on Salt Spring once again.

For regular readers, there’s a connection to SSI in my books… I lived there in the early ’80’s and again a number of years later when my daughter was born at the Lady Minto Hospital. Those years on Salt Spring were great and when I was looking for a Gulf Island on which to model the fictitious Tarragon Island, I of course chose Salt Spring. Three books followed, two with Tarragon Island in the title, if you are curious and want to go searching. There is another planned and my recent trip reminded me why I set those books where I did. But, all that is the subject for another post… maybe T is for Tarragon Island?

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[p.s. Who knew? I just googled ‘Tarragon Island’ looking for a cover photo to add and discovered that the third book, Trouble on Tarragon Island has its very own wikipedia page.]

 

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D is for Dark Creek

Posted on April 5, 2014 | 11 comments

“So, you have a creek at your farm?”

It’s not an unreasonable question, really, given the name of my farm is Dark Creek Farm. In fact, there is no creek (though seasonal springs burble up each winter as soon as the water table rises and the ground is sufficiently saturated). The place isn’t really that dark, either (though, there are some pretty big trees on the south side of the property, beneath which it’s lovely and shady in the summer).

The name is a strange fusion of fiction and wishful thinking, life imitating art imitating life…

The original 1997 cover for Rebel of Dark Creek. The book went on to be reprinted several times with various new cover designs. It was also published in Sweden and Denmark, where the covers looked completely different to those that came out in North America.

The original 1997 cover for Rebel of Dark Creek. The book went on to be reprinted several times with various new cover designs. It was also published in Sweden and Denmark, where the covers looked completely different to those that came out in North America.

When I wrote my first novel for kids (about some horse-obsessed kids living on Vancouver Island) I needed a name for the farm where the main character boarded her horse. To keep my fictional world anchored in its own reality I based the made up barn and small farm on the place where my daughter and I were riding at the time. That farm didn’t have a creek running through it either, but was an otherwise perfect setting for my fake world. I shifted a nearby creek over a few hundred yards and gave it a new name, “Dark Creek.” I can’t even remember now why I chose that name, but it stuck and became part of the title in several of the books in the StableMates series. Rebel of Dark Creek was the first book to come out back in 1997 and six more books followed over the next several years.

 

 

 

Rebel of Dark Creek - the Swedish edition

Rebel of Dark Creek – the Swedish edition

It wasn’t until 2003, though, that I wound up moving two horses here to our place after the original farm on which Dark Creek Farm in the books was sold. At that point, I didn’t really think of our place having a farm name, per se, but not long after the horses arrived and fences and outbuildings were being built that other animals started materializing… a couple of goats, an ancient pony, some ducks, a few chickens, some bantams, then hogs, turkeys, and more chickens… and sheep. The garden expanded – and then expanded again – and again. More fruit trees were planted, we opened the farm stand, and started a CSA. We produce a whole lot of food now from a very small piece of land (and some fields I lease around the neighbourhood) and at some point in that snowballing process we needed a farm name.

Dark Creek Farm seemed appropriate. It had always been a dream of mine to farm – and since the original Dark Creek Farm didn’t exist except in my imagination, I thought it entirely appropriate I steal the name back and use it for my new farm reality. I’m not sure if I’ll write any more Dark Creek Farm books in the original StableMates series – probably not. That world was before cell phones. Before google. Before email and the internet and ipads and all that stuff that is impossible to ignore when writing contemporary fiction set in the here and now. There were more stories planned, but I got a bit distracted with other books and series and projects and, of course, the growing farm and I suspect that Jessa and Rebel and all the other kids and ponies in those books are stuck without a season finale. Though, if I wait long enough, I could add another couple of installments and those books would come out as quaint historical fiction from back in the day before all that Internet stuff took over the world.

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