This past week we unexpectedly had to say goodbye to one of our flat-coated retrievers. The American Kennel Club website notes that “Flat-Coats were first bred in the mid-1800s…(they) were once Britain’s most popular retriever, before being overtaken by Labs and Goldens, and (were) once called the “Gamekeeper’s Dog” because of their widespread use on the sprawling estates of the English gentry.” They are descended from Newfoundland dogs, setters, sheepdogs, and water spaniels. They’re considered…

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Recently I read Lara Prior-Palmer’s Rough Magic, about the Mongolian horse derby she entered on a whim and ended up winning. It was interesting to see how she wrote a book where readers already knew the ending (that she won), but didn’t know how she got there. I’ve never been one of those horsey girls, who mooned over horses as a child and wanted horse lessons and played with My Little Pony. In fact, I’m…

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If you asked me what I would describe myself as, I would say I’m a writer. But that label seems disingenuous these days, as I am hardly able to write. I write emails, I write notes about my garden, I write weekly blogs. But I have been struggling with writing for months now, and I’m definitely not feeling like a writer. There are a few culprits that are sucking the writing life out of me.…

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Ben Ehrenreich’s Desert Notebooks: A Road Map for the End of Time, reminds me of the Desert Fathers, early Christian monks who lived in Egypt’s Scetes desert around the 3rd century AD. Their spare life in the desert was considered ideal for attaining insights about life and connecting with God. Like the Desert Fathers, Ehrenreich is a desert dweller, having lived in the Mojave desert of Joshua Tree, Landers, and Las Vegas. His insights in…

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On Sunday night we had a rare sight for southern Vancouver Island: a lightning show after a day with record-breaking high temperatures. It started out with just intermittent flashes, which I first thought were from the TV show I was watching, then realized they were coming from outside. An hour later the thunder arrived, sounding like massive rocks rolling in the bottom of a large river. In between I heard a screech owl, hoo-hoo-ing from…

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My husband ran across this yesterday and I just about busted my bladder laughing: Nicole Tersigni illustrates mansplaining with the help of 17th century art. "there probably just weren't any qualified women for the job" pic.twitter.com/RwHIEDbc7u— nicole tersigni (@nicsigni) May 7, 2019 "let me explain your lived experience to you" pic.twitter.com/SFekR3M5jB— nicole tersigni (@nicsigni) May 9, 2019 This is a great story of how something from Twitter goes viral enough to turn into a deal…

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Last year we had planned on putting in a stone patio in our front yard, next to the woodland garden and a few steps from the house. We changed our mind at the last minute and decided to put in a garden instead, which we named the patio garden. It was the best choice we could have made. We planted a variety of flowers: Shasta daisies, Russian sage, salvia (blue spires), dianthus, two types of…

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It has been a hard week of saying goodbye. I miss my dad so much and am devastated that I couldn’t make it out in person due to the COVID and my own illness. I am glad that my sister was able to be there with my mum to help and support her through this time. I’m also glad that we’ve been able to keep in touch via email, Skype, and text so that we…

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When I was a child, our family would take summer road trips west: four hours to the Rockies, three days to the west Coast. As we drove, my dad would entertain me with stories about the gnomes and other creatures who lived in the forest. With the consequence that, once we got to our campsite, I was afraid to go into the forest for fear of meeting one of these creatures. I also recall being…

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Lately I’ve been reading about the history of exploration in Western Canada. I’ve read about David Thompson’s travels from 1787 onward in Jack Nisbet’s Sources of the River, and about the late-1800s travels in the Rockies of British mountaineers H.E.M. Stuttfield and Norman Collie, in Climbs and Explorations in the Canadian Rockies. One thing that struck me is the difference in the descriptions of the landscape between the two time periods. In 1807, David Thompson…

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