The Touristy Bits

I will try—I really will—not to be too touristy, but don't you want to know about sage brush? 

I'd never seen it before, but there it is, growing all over the badlands of Alberta and the dry, arid hills of the Okanagan. It is silver and fragrant....

....it smells like heat and rosemary and sage and wood.

And in Drumheller (where we didn't end up discovering dinosaur bones....though not for lack of trying....)

...we found cactus! In Canada! Who knew?

Tasted alright.

But our favourite place was the giant cedars in the Eastern Rockies near Revelstoke, B.C.

The smell was like nothing else this side of heaven. When we stopped for one of our little hikes, the wind coming off the mountainside was so beautiful, so rainy, so renewing, so growing! Like the secret source that renews the whole world.

rocks!

roots!

Stopping for some mandatory nature journaling...

 Aren't they tree-mendous?

Road Trippin'

 I received a gentle reminder that it's been a month and half since my last post. (Has it really? Indeed, it has!)

it was minus five degrees (celsius) on the north shore of Lake Superior, plus wind chill

We hit the road on April 28 to attend my little brother's wedding in British Columbia.

Four kids, a tent, a sizeable cooler, and lots of audio books. It was awesome. A bit chilly, but awesome.

 No hotels or restaurants for us. We're much too poor cool for that!

Rafe getting his crawl-time on a crawl break

I made three or four loaves of sourdough, a gallon of home-made yogurt, and a gallon of granola. We bought our beloved smoked kolbassa and a bushel of apples at the farmer's market on the way out.

We couldn't seem to get enough of rocks!

or water....

Paddington Bear and some truly awesome 1970's melmac. Why did they stop making it?

Will and I are in awe of this country. The size of it. The glory and majesty and variety. From cacti in the badlands to snow peaks in the Rockies to the endless skies of Saskatchewan to the barren, thundering shores of Lake Superior. We just couldn't top marveling.

And as if that weren't enough, we were not eaten by grizzly bears, and our car did not break down. And we kept our hands clean of fast food (with the exception of twice), so that was a relief.  

Best of all, seeing my littlest brother, my baby brother, so happy....what I saw, that is, through rivers of hormonal tears—I don't do well at weddings, nor do any of the females in my family, we're a sappy lot—was worth the whole trip.

Dancing is a good outlet. They should have dancing at funerals too. I'm going to request a DJ and a strobe light and beer and a disco ball for my funeral.

But back to weddings. There were many happy meetings at this wedding: the surprise arrival of my brother from Sweden, meeting my new sister-in-law's sweet home-schooling family on their ranch in the Caribou, seeing old friends, and perhaps best of all, meeting all my young cousins grown-up into such fine, beautiful men and women. Happy meetings.

I'm a bit shy about sharing family photos here. You'll understand. (And in the end, most of my pictures were of rocks.) But I'll probably share a few more moments from the trip, as I sift and sort through pictures and stories.

Lumpy Bikes

Lumpy Bikes

Wilbur of Lumpy Bikes

Julian the vintage road bike

Ever since Cousin Anna's short but historic visit, I've come to realize that mountain bikes are not for me. It's not just that she's strong and gorgeous and totally ripped (in a feminine way, of course) but she has a good bike. The kind of bike that intuits where you wish to go, and goes there. A bike that transfers thought into SPEED. A bike that says, "it's GO TIME!"

So I went to Lumpy Bikes, our local hole-in-the-wall bike repair shop, to see what I could get for my (enormous, horrid) hand-me-down mountain bike. Peterborough people—go check out Lumpy Bikes. It's awesome. A cross between Aladdin's cave, grandpa's garage, and buddhist garden.

Wilbur is the bike man at Lumpy Bikes. He takes them apart and puts them together. He cunningly sells them. He has all the skills of a used-car salesman, such as flattery, quick life-style appraisal—is this customer likely to want quality vintage? A student who just wants to get around? A collector? A mad woman who craves speed (in the Newtonian sense), likes old things, and hauls kids around with her? How much is she willing to pay?

But unlike a used-car salesman, Wilbur is his own mechanic. He shows passion for a job that doesn't bring much money. He takes pride in finding the right bike for the right customer. He's more like Yente the Matchmaker than a car salesman.

And he introduced me to Julian. Julian is a lime-green racer, about forty years old. No markings on him, but his gears and main mechanics were milled in Japan, according to Wilbur. (Wilbur knows bikes. I asked if my bike looked Italian to him? It looked Italian to me. Wilbur didn't really think so—darn. I was hoping that a bike from Tour de France 1979 had mysteriously shown up at Lumpy bikes, unrecognizable under it's lime-green spray paint....never mind. Julian is perfect the way he is.)

We've always given our cars a name. Our current vehicle is Jill. I can't remember the corolla's name—it was functional and boring, never gave us cause to address it. The mercedes was Hildegarde and she was definitely a temperamental hausfrau.

Ships and vehicles are always female. But what about bikes? Opinion is divided at the Pemberton house. It seems obvious to me—I mean, you drive a car, but you ride a bike. I'll let you come to your own conclusions about the sexist double-entendres, but my main argument is a personality one. To me, bikes are blokes.

 Anyway, my bike is a bloke. A good-looking limey. And I've kind of fallen in love with him. (Will, this shouldn't cause any real alarm—it's the only affair I'll ever have. Unless a really sweet old Bianchi shows up at Lumpy Bikes....but not before the student loans come in.)

But back to Wilbur. Wilbur also has a heart of gold. He fixes up old bikes "just to run" and gives them away to homeless men and women downtown. Peterborough people, if you have any broken bikes, please consider donating them to Lumpy Bikes. In the past couple years he's fixed up and given away more than a hundred. Wilbur is also a photographer. He takes pictures of our town's poor and needy (I know there's a socially correct expression, but it's escaping me right now) and is having his first exhibit at our local art museum this year. He's a good sort. Our community needs more Wilburs.

A cute baby and some questions

Working on his James Dean expression. My brother and his wife were sweet enough to send me this picture, showing that the sling fits Baby Isaac and is actually useful for the baby's genetic aversion to sleep.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the Canadian cousin is an exclusively back-hugging marsupial. This mirror is about a thousand years old and my camera lens needs cleaning and it's hard to get a clean picture when you're jiggling up and down singing "Rafe-a-Rafe-a-Roo"

   So on to my questions. I think it's time to paint that ceiling. My really hip, artsy friends love this ceiling—one even spoke of "patina," whereas I'm not really into the Third World look. Or should I say "emerging country" look? Suggestions? Should I spray some machine gun holes into the walls? Perhaps some political graffiti? A gecko?

And sisters, I have a really urgent hair question. Can someone with dry, frazzled, curly hair, like myself, have stylish bangs? Or would I have a pouff? I don't want a pouff.

Eastertide

I hope you had a lovely Easter!

Ours was full of hikes, aunties and uncles, green budding branches, the first little tulips, bonfires and chocolate(—oh boy, have we had chocolate!) With my sisters departing for the West Coast and leaving to finish school, with the cousins newly arrived from Australia, it was delicious just to gather... 

and remember that the light of Christ has come into the world...

 Willie and his new home schooling friends dug an enormous fire pit in the back yard.

 

We heard a lot of good music from papa and the uncles—heavy on the Leonard Cohen, light on the Irish.

We ate and drank. We woke up and did it all over again!

On the Feast of the Annunciation

I think that hanging anything from the ceiling is a pretty mod way to decorate. We have a chandelier  over the table—actually not quite over the table. More in the walking path of the six foot five man who  bumbles in the dark between the front door and the coat rack.  

The chandelier was here when we bought the house. It's sort of girly and uncool, but it earns its keep by hanging paper snowflakes, twigs, branches, etc.. 

For the Feast of the Annunciation I made a little mobile for the boys to look at while we learn the next part of the Angelus. 

(The Angelus is a prayer based on the angel's greeting to Mary, and celebrates the amazing event of the Word becoming flesh. We're learning it in parts so as not to be overwhelmed..)

I totally intended to involve the boys in this art project, but I didn't end up pulling out the art supplies until 11 at night. 

The mobile is double-sided, so there is a different angel and a different Mary on the back.

leader: The Angel of the Lord declared unto Mary

all: And she conceived by the Holy Spirit.

leader: Behold the handmaid of the Lord

all: be it done unto me according to thy word

leader: And the Word became flesh

all: and dwelt among us

Let us pray. Pour forth, we beseech thee, O God, thy grace into our hearts, that we to whom the Incarnation of Christ thy son was made known by the message of an angel, may be brought by his passion and death to the glory of his resurrection, through the same Christ our Lord. Amen.

On a completely unrelated note, our downstairs is now one, uniform colour. Nobody understands, except the insane woman who has been trying to paint it for seven months, the glow of contentment and serenity that follows a fresh coat of paint. Sometimes I walk into this room just to stare at the wall. (It's Benjamin Moore's Wedgewood Grey, for anyone who's curious. A good neutral.) Kudos to my lovely friend Maggie and her clever mother for all the education.

And as one who has obsessed over paint colour for over two years, I have lots of advice to give! Email me if you want to hear all about the glories of BM paints and how not to be taken in by cheap paint brands, no matter how cute their colour palette. I'll fill you in, you'll be so glad! And no, Benjamin Moore doesn't hire me to write these things. I wish they did. Or at least give me some free paint, because now I have to wait another 7 months to paint the rest of it.

Sourdough

The trouble with sourdough is that it's addictive. It's too easy to make: you mix it up at night, and bake it in the morning. It's chewy, fragrant, crusty, beautiful to look at, full of wild, subtle flavour.

The sourdough starter, I'm sorry to say, was a gift. I have no tips for establishing your own and in fact I've had nothing but bad luck trying to start one from scratch. The one I use now came from California, and has a long and illustrious history. That's my only secret to good sourdough—a good starter.

 Of course, if you stop by, I'll share it with you! Or maybe you'll have success establishing your own, which would be so awesome. Did you know that sourdough starters develop regional flavours? Like beers, they are affected by humidity, atmosphere, the local invisible flora and fauna in the air. The same starter can have totally different flavour in San Francisco than in Alaska.

Anyway, if you can get your hands on a starter, I guarantee you'll be hooked.

Mixing up the bread is crazy simple.

Sourdough Bread

dissolve 1/2 cup sourdough starter in 3 cups water

stir in  

6 cups flour mixed with 3 tsp seasalt

add more flour in scant handfuls 

and knead until smooth and elastic

cover and leave it to rise at room temperature for

12-24 hours

bake uncovered, 350 degrees

place a beaker of water in the oven to moisten atmosphere

(this helps produce the chewy crust)

a few dollops of olive oil

slashing the loaves

chewy, fragrant, and full of holes

Sourdough bread is super stretchy. This picture just doesn't do it justice, even though I was shouting at my son to "rip it slowly" (?) I needed to photograph the chewiness. Nevermind, you'll just have to take my word for it.

What else are we eating?

Pureed vegetable soup that has simmered all afternoon. I always add couple teaspoons of cumin and poultry seasoning. An unlikely combination, but so good! I got it from a split-pea soup recipe and there's no turning back.

I also try to sneak turmeric and garlic into all my soups, to counteract my children's beastly habit of eating off the floor. Turmeric is a vermifuge and anti-parasitic, so here's hoping.

Added to the daily fare is piles of homemade yogurt. I use a fairly primitive method, so there's no point in blogging about it. There are so many methods out there, all better than mine.

And now, feeling smug about all this homemade health food, I'm going confess that I bought my sons sour gummy worms today. We were in the dollar store at lunch time, and the toddler was whining, and we were buying candy for a friend's birthday party, and boys just didn't understand why the world is so unfair, and well, it was a low moment in parenting. I just gave in.