Simply Swimming

The new Duncan pool has it all. Slides, floating river, waves, squirt guns, music, trees... It also has all the people, the noise, the stress and over-stimulation that leaves our whole family exhausted afterwards.

Today we chose the little hotel pool in Cowichan Bay. Little as in 10-front-crawl-strokes end-to-end. No games, no balls, no nothing except water, edges to jump off, and a papa ready to play with his boys.

And play we did. In the big fancy pool I'm trying to keep up with the kids as they bounce from attraction to attraction like Disneyland first-timers. Today was pure quality family time: cheering as they showed off their strokes and tricks, holding Zekiah as he learned to paddle, catching crazy divers, marvelling as Galen learned to swim underwater between my legs, fixing goggle straps.

Why are we so excited about a big pool that distracts us from being together? Why do we want to pay twice as much for half the family value and twice the overload?

This was the simple, basic pool of my childhood, and I was my frolicking playful dad. The boys have announced that it's now their favourite pool. Mine too.

a Barry Manilow new year

Started this new year with two smashing lessons about attitude and openness. The first came at 7:04 when Galen burst into the bedroom and said "There's broken glass." Emerged bleary-eyed to find an impressive round hole in our heritage-glass front window, and a sad Zekiah explaining that his home-made tinkertoy catapult invention had shot backwards instead of forwards. Too tired to be angry, I found the bright red tucktape to cover it up, then the beautiful origami star from our neighbour to beautify it. So we start the new decade with a bright red star sparkling in the middle of our living room window.

The second came when I took our friends 10km up the mountain to the historic Kinsol Trestle (highest wooden train bridge in the British Commonwealth), the only mud-splashed car in the little parking lot, then out of nowhere a man appeared on the path. A man with a speech impediment, cognitive/social challenges, and a medical marijuana card he proudly showed me. I understood about half his talk about Vietnam and hippies, but tried to respectfully connect then disconnect with him so I could focus on my children and friends.

But walking on the same narrow mountain path makes it difficult to politely ignore a man who desperately wants to talk to his "bro", so I had to let go and try to enjoy what I could of him, and let my friends at least enjoy their walk in Peace.

Then as we neared the bridge the sun poked through the rain. I exclaimed something thankful, and he broke into an operatic cover of Barry Manilow's "I made it through the rain." Being one of very few people ever to hike that trail who knows all the words, I instantly joined in. We finally connected, laughed, and saluted brother sun who'd miraculously come out to greet us for the first time in 2010.

Then just as miraculously, when we reached the bridge he said, "Happy New Year" and turned back up the path. All that time I'd been afraid to engage because he wouldn't ever detach, and really he was the one who knew just how to connect and when to end it. He walks that path every day, and as I said, "I'm sure I'll see you up here again," I meant it.

Will this be a year of being open to what life and accidents and strange mountain men have to teach me?

Naked New Year

The year ended in a hot tub with three beautiful women, under a full "blue" moon and a meteor shower. It's a good life.

Well, almost. At 11:45 the reaction to walking in the cold rain across the garden to the tub was mixed. After a minute in front of the mirror literally mouthing the words "Let Go", I did indeed let go of the need to push friends beyond their limits as my last act of the decade. Instead, we four dear friends gathered in front of the fire and blew out the candle on the tree of life, kissed our partners, and drank in another year of beauty and growth and - at least once in a while - knowing when to just accept and be thankful.

Climate Denial

Yet again, the major media reported all sorts of extreme weather conditions without even mentioning climate change. Extreme colds, record wet, forest fires, lack of sun - the CBC report laments and wails about the "summer of our discontent" - yet even the CBC doesn't see how this is a manifestation of climate change.

It's here. Climate chaos. Unpredictability. It's not something that's going to happen; it's already happened and will just continue to get worse. My friends in Africa talk about how they used to be able to predict the weather months in advance, now they take huge risks when they plant early or late, betting with longer and longer odds on when/if the rains will come. The effect on us priviledged Canadians is that we have a wetter camping trip - boo hoo. The effect on much of the world, the effect we have caused, is starvation, economic chaos, hardship.

In the wake of "Brokenhagen", the miserably failed talks in Copenhagen in which world "leaders" once again failed to unite on any kind of meaningful commitment to change, an article like this from a generally trustable source like CBC is particularly annoying and irresponsible. Instead of a cute title about the sunless summer, a better title would have been "Canadians drive the sun away in their SUV's."

Reality check

Frozen cow poo is much more pleasant to pick up than the warm mushed variety.

The day after Christmas, whilst others joyfully join their comrades in electronic store line-ups, Rick remembers that he has animals in his care. An hour later, he has:
- fed 3 cats, 25 chickens and 2 cows
- shoveled 4 buckets of manure out of the cow shed
- broke the ice on the cows' water and added 2 buckets of hot water

Then inside to join Sarah in feeding 2 hungry boys and 1 visiting uncle, then clean the house for a beautiful afternoon open house with friends from different parts of our lives, splendidly mixing like multi-coloured speckles in warm oil.

Christmas is feeding the masses, caring for the animals, and rolling about lavishly in community. Come to think of it, life is pretty much like that.

Christmas magic is alive and well

Twas the day after Christmas, and all through the house
Not a battery was turned on... can't think of a clever rhyme with 'house', but the point is that our children are sitting contentedly by the fire, deeply engaged making origami balloons (Galen) and necklaces (Zekiah), while listening to a home-made CD by their creative uncles and aunts.

They are technically old enough to count, but no questions about who got more, which present was biggest, or why their parents barely got them anything at all. On wrapping night, Sarah and I gathered all the treasures in front of us and wondered if it would work:
Galen - origami paper; hard-cover book of Secret Garden/Little Princess/Little Lord Fauntleroy; yarn to make dishrags
Zekiah - a jar of beads from thrift store necklaces and hemp necklace string; paintbrush
Shared - a $2 wicker treasure chest from the thrift store, filled with thermal socks and a set of 2,000-year-old Chinese terracotta figurines (that Thrift store was amazing!)

At ages 8 and almost 6, they still are wide open to the magic of Christmas. When Santa came to the Young Naturalist Club a few weeks ago, they were a bit perplexed to see him get back in his car to drive away. When we explained that he was just getting back to his sleigh parked out front, they were much relieved, and convinced that they saw the sleigh flying away as we drove home.

They even forsook a final cup of eggnog to be sure there was enough for Santa, and were thrilled to find the next morning the plate of goodies reduced to crumbs, and the eggnog mug emptied with chocolate fingerprints around it. "Santa's a messy eater!"

When the Lewis clan called from Chicago, Uncle Matt pretended to be one of Santa's elves. Putting aside the little knowledge that Uncle Matt does voices, they decided to believe it, and excitedly asked if he knew why Grandma's door was unlocked when they awoke - did Santa come in the door? "That was my cousin Tuk-Tuk who unlocked it" was the satisfying answer.

So as I'm being called for a french toast breakfast, we celebrate the preservation of innocence, of wide-eyed belief, and the thrill of a simple bead-making kit and bamboo puzzle kit. The magic of Christmas has not been buried under a mountain of Taiwanese gadgets. Virginia, Santa is alive and well in the beautiful imaginations of our children.

Goodnight, Garden

She's gone. My late night lover and early morning snuggler all summer, my slow, drowsy, rich and earthy, fertile and bounteous companion is six feet under.

Under tarps, our garden is, for a well-deserved rest. Free tarps from RONA - one of the best kept secrets in the recycling world is that lumber yards get all their wood in huge bunches wrapped in huge tarps, which then just get thrown away. Just ask, and you've got garden cover, tree-fort roofs, random outside junk cover, firewood protectors...

These tarps will be keeping the weeds down on our hard-won garden, and killing the grass on the next section (more than doubling our garden size and tripling its output next year).

With just a few beets, cabbages and winter greens to continue picking through the winter, here's what we have to live on.

In the freezer:
Fruit: Apple Pulp (6 bags), Black currants (3), Blackberries (24), Blueberries (4 boxes), Cherries (38), Dried blueberries (2), Figs (2), Rhubarb (15), Saskatoon berries (1), Shredded apple (3), Strawberries (19)
Veggies: Corn (79), Green beans (2), Nettles (7), Peas (2), Pickles (8), Pumpkin (2), Red Pepper (1), Summer squash (8), Tomato (2), Zucchini (24), Spot prawns (6)

In our pantry:
Juice: apple (30), plum (19), cherry 10), grape (11)
Jam/jelly: grape (15), cherry (3), plum-cherry (9), "plumple" (plum-apple - 14), apple (8), blackberry (12), strawberry (6), crab-apple (3)
Tomato: stewed (8), pieces (3), puree (5), pasta sauce (12), green tomato chutney (10)
Syrup: Crab-apple (2), maple (2), cherry (4), quince syrup (15)
Misc: Grape butter (4), apple butter (24), apple sauce (28), dried apple (3), dried kale (10), sauerkraut (2), candied apple (2), chutney (8)

In the root cellar:
garlic (108), apples (8 boxes), onions, potatoes

It's gonna be a good winter.