It's one of our favourite things: an afternoon drive in the country, me with coffee in hand and the littlest Yorkie asleep in my arms, and Gerry at the wheel. We haven't done it for ages. We missed the spectacular colours of fall, and it's mostly stick season now, but there's beauty out there in
It's the kind of day that was the norm at this time of year when we lived in the Pacific Northwest, but that we rarely experience here in arid Kamloops. The sky is gray, clouds are low, and raindrops dance in puddles on the sidewalk. The rain washes away memories of the endless smoky skies,
We spend a beautiful afternoon together at the Adams River salmon run. Every school kid in Kamloops visits the salmon run and learns about the incredible life cycle of salmon. The first time I took Laurinda, she was ten days old and tucked in a Snugli on my chest. For Makiya, this is something new.
Friday morning. Before my first sip of soy milky frothy coffee, I watch in wonder as the first golden rays of the sun rising kiss the world where we live. I stand at the window transfixed by the grace of a deer wandering in our front yard. My eyes are drawn up as two Canada
Well, we slogged our way through another week (That’s how if feels. Just keeping it real.). Friday arrives fat with promise and intention to spend a day puttering at home. Seems like another good opportunity to look back at the week that was, because despite the weight that feels so heavy it was rich with
It’s hot. Kamloops summer hot. Oh, how we love it! I head to the garden early to harvest beautiful tri-colour beans. Back home I wash, snap, blanch, and tuck them in freezer bags. I sit on the deck and read what was once my favourite book (The Velvet Room by Zilpha Keatley Snyder). I lost
We take a walk in my favourite park—the one where ghosts of boys playing baseball and girls wrapped in pink toddle in and out of a building that’s no longer there. Gerry’s been sick and to combat cabin fever we drive across town to the park rather than down the hill to church. Worship looks
A buzzing sound—what is that buzz, anyway?—is the only distraction in the den where I sit cozy under a Sherpa blanket sipping coffee in the company of words. It’s there every morning, that sound. I’m used to it by now and tune it out most of the time. It’s the light, or the cable box—something
This summer’s fits and starts sputter into motion again this morning. We are home after a weekend away in which we watched our granddaughter perform in a play (and witnessed the pure joy on her face during the curtain call), enjoyed an afternoon rock hunting on a remote beach with our daughter and granddaughter (something
The week does not unfold as expected, but it falls in a pleasant way, nonetheless. I spend mornings writing, and after lunch and a chess game, we go out and do something together. One afternoon we pack our camera gear and go on a quest to photograph the Arrowleaf Balsamroot—a bright harbinger of spring in
I spend a silent and solitary day at home: writing, reading, potting flowers, staking tomatoes, and watering plants. But it is that moment when I’m standing barefoot on the grass in the backyard watering the tea garden and breathing in the gentle scent of lilacs that is, perhaps, the sweetest. I drop the hose, walk