Category: musings

Happy Anniversary, to me.

It was a year ago to the day while consuming a couple tasty Steam Works IPAs in a Richmond Irish Pub en route to a family vacation in Mexico that I took the plunge and joined the Traced Elements family. Maybe it was liquid courage that egged me on because at the time I was scared to dive into a world I knew nothing about: writing. The only constant I had to offer was my deep love for gardening. As luck would have it I learned I also loved to write – or maybe this whole endeavor came into my life when I needed a new outlet more then I realized at the time.

Regardless: it’s one of my favourite decisions to date.

The winter’s sun, as of late, has been flooding my living space with a warming heat reminiscent of sandy beaches and margaritas while the arctic air swirls around outside. My cheeks are constantly blushed in colour having been kissed by the cold. Overall, I welcome this false warmth; it’s a perfect excuse to devour a bowl of spicy miso ramen, everyday.

As the days get longer I look forward to my garden springing to life, even if they are currently blanketed in more snow then I can recall in the valley in years, my thoughts are hopeful, green and full of blooms. Many days I get lost and overwhelmed by the potential of things to grow as I browse numerous websites. Basically, my urge to propagate as many cool things as possible usually wins. You already know if you’ve read my other blogs that I’m a firm believer in the, “there is no harm in trying” experimental method.

Seeds; they fuel everything. (A little bit of love doesn’t hurt either.)

Plant anything and something good is bound to come from it. Sometimes there is growth and sometimes there are failures; either way you’ll learn something.

I have been carrying the following quote with me for years but it is only now that I finally feel like I am acting on it (after all spring ushers in rebirth). So, in the words of Byron Pulsifer I leave you with this,

“Passion creates the desire for more and action fuelled by passion creates a future.”

…get ready to see some really cool things from me.

#summerofmeesh

February 19, 2019
Courting Wonder

On my desk right now is a gorgeous little collection of essays called Wonder and Other Survival Skills, put together by the editors of Orion magazine. On its cover, a young girl presses her hand against the surface of a lake: skin of girl meeting skin of lake. From this meeting, a ripple moves.

“Is wonder a survival skill?” H. Emerson Blake asks in the foreword. “The din of modern life pulls our attention away from anything that is slight, or subtle, or ephemeral. We might look briefly at a slant of light in the sky while walking through a parking lot, but then we’re on to the next thing: the next appointment, the next flickering headline, the next task…Maybe it’s just for that reason—how busy we are and distracted and disconnected we are—that wonder really is a survival skill. It might be the thing that reminds us of what really matters, and of the greater systems that our lives are completely dependant on. It might be the thing that helps us build an emotional connection—an intimacy—with our surroundings that, in turn, would make us want to do anything we can to protect them.”

By my own definition, wonder is the ability to travel beyond attention, beyond mindfulness–to truly make an encounter with the world in a way that, for the slenderest of moments, lifts us out of ourselves and returns us back with something more. Something of the ‘other’ we’ve encountered travels with us. A little of the world comes into the interiority of us and lodges there. Permeates.

Winter is a season of rest for most of us land-based folks. A season of living in a place of dreams and visioning (literally, as we get caught up on sleep, and plan for the year ahead.) This is the first season I’ve stopped teaching completely. I felt the need to let the work do a deep dive into silence, and (beyond the day-to-day chores of keeping animals, which never go away), to truly let myself drop out of time. I sleep when I’m tired. I wake up when I wake up. I have breakfast and a cup of coffee, before I go out to do chores. Which sometimes makes me feel like a slacker, but it also feels… luxurious. Luxurious in a simple way I haven’t allowed into my life before. A spaciousness that holds its own kind of wonder.

The other reason I decided to stop teaching completely once the snow hit in December, was I wanted my horses to feel like they belonged to me again. 2018 was our busiest year teaching together (THANK YOU, PEMBERTON!) but I wanted a chance to ride when I wanted to again, instead of working a horse so they would be ready to say ‘yes’ to a student. I wanted to WANT to ride again. To wander about aimlessly bareback with nothing but a lead rope joining me to my horse’s mind. I wanted the horses to be able to choose who came out to play with me, whenever I showed up at the gate with a halter or a bridle.

What’s emerged out of this unravelling is that I was finally able to back Besa, my big paint/Friesian mare. When she came to me 18 months ago, she was an untrained 6-year-old, freshly weaned from being a mamma to a feisty filly. She made it very clear to me- in her lack of desire to be caught and her extreme reactivity, power and athleticism- that I’d have to take my time with her. Given space and the permission to approach me (instead of me expecting to approach her and do what I wanted), she decided that humans were worth being curious about. Her curiosity flowered into full-blown affection. She’s the first horse to come to anyone out of the field now, and she sometimes chooses to pull me (or whoever I’m accompanying into the field) in against her chest with her muzzle, the closest a horse can come to giving a hug.

Besa’s been asking me to do things with her for months (Proper things! With a bridle and tack like all the other horses!) and all summer and fall I just didn’t have the capacity. But these last few weeks I’ve slipped onto her back and let her carry me around our little maze of snow paths in a mutual exchange of trust: I will trust you with my body, if you will trust me with your body. The ‘training’ part of it can come later. For now, all I want is her to turn her head to me, so she can look at me fully out of her huge dark eye: Oh. So now you’re up there now. So that she can yawn and snort and let all the tension go out of her nervous system, and get used to this strange new way that horses and humans can be together.

Perhaps it’s me she’s been waiting for all along. Perhaps I needed to drop into this spaciousness for us to find this way to trust each other.

There’s one essay that stands out for me in this slim little collection that sits on my desk. It’s Chris Dombrowski’s Kana: a father grasps at the nature of wonder. In it, he defines Kana as “a word or figure the Japanese haiku poets used as a kind of wonder-inducing syllable (it translates loosely into English as an exclamation point.)… that heart-stutter we receive when an image of the world takes root in us…”

His essay shares the spell of a day spent morel hunting with his twenty month old son. The way the boy wanders across the face of the burn, trailing a whitetail’s antler behind him, carelessly decapitating the very mushrooms he’s hunting for:

…he is either in a daze of boredom or he is walking kana, penetrated each step by the world, not penetrating it. It’s tempting to call this spirit naïveté, but it’s not: it’s wisdom we lose along the way.”

Perhaps that’s what I’ve been courting this winter: wisdom I’ve lost along the way as I’ve been coerced into ascribing to linear time, to capitalism, to the many demands the constructs of being human impose upon us. There is gentleness here, in this wonder, that doesn’t feel rushed or imposed. A hand resting against the surface of a lake.

I’ve wanted to broaden the scope of my horse and nature based teaching practice to include workshops for adults since I started Mountain Horse School in 2012, but I’ve shied away for a long time. I’ve always felt comfortable with kids because they’re so immediate, so open still to this touch of the world upon them. Grown-ups’ responses are layered. More conditioned. We need more language to access understanding, and experiences that can operate like keys opening the locks of ways of perceiving we’ve long put away. Grown-ups want reasons to pacify our rational, linear ways of thinking, and we want to know if playing with opening the doors to wonder, if walking Kana is ‘worth the investment’ of our time. We’ve become used to being sold meditation through a list of its benefits. A walk in the woods has become a thing we could pay for. Forest bathing, it’s called in the brochures.

What if wonder is the gateway to possibility? What if it’s the only skill that will give us the tools, insight, and power we need to move into (here I am, throwing another book title at you!) The More Beautiful World That our Hearts Know is Possible? What if the benefits of wonder—similar to its more lauded cousin, gratitude—might be the resurrection of a life woven into belonging with the wider world that sustains us?

Small watercolour of a whale’s ear bone from the intergalactic spaceship that is my desk. Because of the complexity of their hearing, whales’ inner ear bones are contained within a separate chamber, not encased inside the skull as ours are. It amazes me how much this bone looks like a shell. If I held it to my ear, would I hear the sound of the sea?

It’s not up to me to answer these questions. I can only speak from the lens of my own experience, my own perceptions. In lieu of that, I can say with certainty that this winter’s dreaming I’ve been luxuriating in, this kana I’ve been walking in my own life, feels absolutely essential to the future that comes next. I can say—if I may speak with authority based on the way things feel from the intergalactic spaceship that is my writing desk this afternoon—that it HAS been absolutely necessary. That nothing is currently more important. Oh, the great irony that ‘doing the work’ this winter has actually meant ‘doing less work—!’ (Is that an exclamation mark or is it kana? You decide.)

So, in the spirit of wonder being the gateway to possibility, I’m issuing a little dare to myself. Actually, it’s not little at all. On Feb 17, I’m offering a one day workshop called Lightning Seeds: Opening the Gateway of what’s Possible, in collaboration with my dear friend, animal listener and translator Guliz Unlu. Come play with us as we walk kana in the company of the horses and other animals at Mountain Horse School, and court wonder through a combination of equine guided learning, animal communication, intuitive herbalism, earth wisdom, and soul craft. Curious to know more? Please visit our website or facebook page for all the juicy details!

January 29, 2019
AW NUTS: Nancy Lee finds out just why Nuts are so Expensive

I’ve been involved with the Fruit Tree Project the past two years. This awesome endeavour connects local fruit tree owners, volunteer pickers and community groups, such as the Food Bank, who share the bounty and reduce conflict with bears. I have enjoyed learning how to make crabapple juice and jelly, as well as eating delicious apples, pears, grapes and plums, so when the email came in looking for volunteers to pick black walnuts, I was in!

My dear old Mom’s version of swearing is “gosh dangit” or “darg narbit” or “aw nuts”. With the first two, one can imagine the true meaning, but I never understood how a delicious nut could be used as a cuss word. Until now.

Harvesting the nuts was quick and easy; you just pick up the nuts from the ground under the tree – who knew? In no time, the 5 of us had collected 90 lbs! I was very excited with my share, a large bucketful, and imagined impressing my family at Christmas with something not tomato-based. (I grow too many tomatoes!)

Hulling the walnuts was also easy. I had been warned to wear gloves as walnuts stain but because the fruit was soft, removing the outer husks was quick work. Inside, a black glistening prune-like thing remained, hence the name “black” walnut. The black slime wasn’t easy to remove, so I went looking on YouTube and found a delightful video hosted by Farmer Drawl and his Long-Sufferin’ Wife from the Heartland (not really, but you get the idea). Drawl’s technique of husking the walnuts was a sledge hammer so I wasn’t convinced of his methods, but I kept watching. Once hulled, he “power-warshed” the walnuts in a large bin, “but that ain’t the end of the story”. He then put them into a smaller bucket, used a shovel to agitate them, changed the water, repeated this 4 times, and then and only then did they turn up looking like walnuts. Ha, I thought. I have a power-washer and a much smaller amount, so no problem.

The darg narbit power-washer did a bit but Drawl was right; it didn’t finish the job. For the next two hours I tried methods like individual hand-scrubbing (that didn’t last very long), the shovel/bucket/agitate trick (didn’t work) and finally, the hand-pluck/fingernail scrape/rinse and rinse again/put in a large plastic mesh potato bag and roll it around on the grass on your hands and knees trick. I ended up soaking wet with black fingernails, but the result was a basket of things that finally resembled walnuts. Next week’s carrot cake will be worth it, I thought. Then Drawl says, “store ‘em for at least 6-7 weeks, then use a hammer to open ‘em up to git at the fruit”. Aw nuts.

Fast forward to the week before Christmas and the big bag of walnuts sat ready to be divided amongst my siblings. Of course I kept a share for myself, and pulled out the nutcracker. I tried and tried and ended up with a broken nutcracker and a strained wrist, but no open walnuts. If I had this much trouble, I figured I would have to shell the nuts before I gifted them. Back to YouTube. Turns out black walnuts are notoriously difficult to open. Many different ideas were presented: microwave ‘em, roast ‘em, soak ‘em. Nope. Lightly tap the pointy end with a hammer. Nope. Nothing and I mean nothing opened the gosh-derned things. Then I remembered Farmer Drawl and pulled out the sledgehammer. I put half the nuts into the same mesh potato bag I’d used to clean them and smashed away on the concrete floor of the cold garage. I then spent the next hour picking pieces of fruit (the ones that weren’t dust) from the walnut shell shards, until I lost patience.

End result: one lousy cup of small walnut pieces.

Yes, they were sweet and tasty, but after all those hours of effort?! I threw the rest of the unshelled nuts into the woods for the squirrels and birds. Family got tomato sauce for Christmas. Aw nuts!!

~ by Nancy Lee

January 14, 2019
Food and Feelings: Intentions for 2019

Oh hello, 2019! I’m not someone who’s all about the “new year, new me” mantra but I do like to use the new year as a time to remind myself about the things that I love. I also use this time to set achievable intentions. To be honest, I celebrate my actual new year on my birthday (August 8^th) and that is when I set bigger BHAG-ish goals. For 2019, I’ve set some intentions that will help inspire my happiness and that may require guidance from the community. I don’t have a very green thumb, I’m a creature of habit and I love being outside.

If you have any suggestions or tips on any of the below intentions, please comment below this post or email. #help

Intention one: Try something other than Pad Thai at Barn Nork

I’m a frequent diner at Barn Nork (and also a frequent eater of their take out). I always switch up the starters but I can’t seem to deviate from their delicious Pad Thai. HELP! My goal for 2019 is to provide my taste buds a new experience via the Barn Nork train.

Intention two: Always have local farm fresh eggs

My name is Blair and I’m an egg-aholic. I start off every single day with a delicious breakfast that 99.9% of the time includes eggs. Since moving to Pemberton in 2012, I discovered how delicious farm fresh eggs are. Sometimes they are easy to buy and sometimes I feel like Sherlock Holmes trying to hunt down someone who will sell me at least a dozen. Over the years I’ve collected a few different resources for farm fresh eggs and I’ve learned to buy two dozen at a time. When I can’t find the eggs I desire, I buy them from the store and they just don’t have the same taste (in my opinion). Why should I let my eggs dip below my taste bud’s standards? I shouldn’t and I won’t! So, 2019, bring on the farm freshies!

Intention three: Grow my own flowers (to cut)

I’ve always been a sucker for fresh cut flowers. They are pretty and smell divine. I realized that during 2018 I spent a lot of money on purchasing flowers. Because I enjoy flowers so much, and I have the space to grow them, why try growing them? My husband has a greener thumb than I do and he’s agreed to help me out with this intention. I’m looking to grow flowers that are cat-friendly AND that are low maintenance. What do you think I should grow?

One thing to note is that this past summer was the first summer (ever) that I managed to keep my lavender plant alive. GO ME!

Intention four: Pick my raspberries, every day

When I moved to town I shared with Shayne my love for raspberries and that I’ve always wanted my own raspberry bush. So, we planted a raspberry bush and we seemed to plant them in the right spot because they love to grow! Usually, halfway through the season, I seem to slip away from picking them daily and eventually forget about them. I usually have a moment where I remember (when I’m no where near Pemberton) and call a neighbour to send their kids to pick the berries. I have NO REASON to not pick the raspberries on a daily basis (unless I’m out of town, which, I guess, is a reason). I should also freeze them if I have too many. So, backyard bush, bring it on!

Because it’s now January 10, 2019, and I’ve shared my intentions publicly with you, please hold me accountable. Also, if you have any words of encouragement or advice, please send them my way. Cheers to an awesome 2019 full of new menu choices, fresh cut flowers, raspberries galore and eggies from my neighbours.

P.S. Want to drop me a line? My email is blair@blairkaplan.ca.

January 10, 2019
Plant Porn and Botanical Deviants

Heres a shocker , especially for prudes — PLANTS HAVE SEX!

That’s right, just like all animals, a plant’s main purpose is to reproduce and they have a complex reproductive system to achieve that goal. If you admire flowers in full bloom (and who doesn’t), you are a voyeur checking out their genitalia, (botanically called gametes.) Nothing conveys love, lust and romance more than a bouquet of flowers with their voluptuous gametes for our viewing pleasure.

Males have stamens, complete with anthers and filaments. These produce pollen, the basis for fertilization. Females have a carpel with stigmas, styles and ovaries. These organs will eventually produce a fruit and seed to make more babies.

This is the birds-and-the-bees of plant sex, but there are more juicy details that involve said birds and bees. It often takes a threesome to fully get it on. Unlike animals, plants are immobile and have evolved to allow insects and other creatures (as well as wind) to transport pollen. These pollinators are also turned on and attracted to these beautiful colourful blooms, their scent and nectars. They will go from plant to plant doing the (not so) dirty work, and therefore conceiving more offspring in the process. Many animals are inadvertently involved in dispersing those seeds and their inherent genetic diversity.

Oddities are just as common as in the human world. Issues with sexual orientation and gender identity exist. Some plants are monoecious, meaning that both male and female systems appear on the plant. Stressed plants can have a sex change and become hermaphoditic – a last ditch effort to reproduce itself. Females that turn into males and fertilize themselves will produce all female seeds (- inspiration for women who want to do away with men and take over the world.) Pseudogamy is a term in which plants require pollination but does not involve male inheritance – kind of like female same-sex couples choosing to have children.

Stressed plants will often produce an abundance of blooms and fruit as a survival mechanism. This knowledge is used by orchardists to increase yields by heavy pruning, trimming roots and starving them of moisture and nitrogen at certain times. Some seeds need to be ingested and excreted by animals before they will viably sprout. Some plants are sadistic carnivores that eat insects, such as the venus fly trap.

Just as with pubescent teenagers and menopausal women, hormones are involved. There are 5 different hormones that affect plants growth. A particular hormone gibberellins, necessary for seed germination, can also, in high doses, force plants into changing sex. Also, if plant fertilization is suppressed by removing the male specimens, the horny females will desperately excrete more resins and nectars to get the pollen to stick. This technique is used in cannabis cultivation to produce the potent sinsemilla, translated from spanish to plant without seeds.

Light intensity and cycles also play a major role. Plants intuitively know when to flower by the photoperiod and spectrum of light. Horticulturists can trick plants into flowering by adjusting these cycles as well as their nutrient regimes. Too much nitrogen and the plant may not flower at all. Adding phosphorous will encourage it it bloom. Potassium will help the seeds to ripen. Once an annual plant is fertilized and goes to seed, its job is done and it will die. The cycle continues through its seeds.

Some plants are asexual and reproduce via cuttings, grafting or root division. This is often done by horticulturists to make clones of its parent. Since the beginning of agriculture, humans have cross-bred plants to produce better and better hybrids to suit our needs. Mutations have been selected and propagated to give us the millions of specimens we enjoy today. We created the sexual revolution of plants through millennia.

This is the time of year when gardeners are busy searching catalogs and surfing online for plants and seeds. I call that plant porn — magnificent specimens in seductive and photoshopped poses; erotic descriptions of their habits, wants and needs. They make it easy to pull out the credit card. After all, it’s the golden rule of marketing — sex sells.

January 2, 2019

I Traded Christmas and NYE for One Self-Indulgent Day

Early on December 28^th, I set up my “out of office” email. I had a plan.

Close my computer.
Pull out my new camera.
Cook.
Shoot.

You see, it was my birthday. Three days after Christmas. Three days before NYE.

It’s a day that gets completely lost in a ridiculously indulgent week (month?!). It wasn’t always lost for me. In fact, throughout my childhood, people would ask, “Doesn’t it bother you to have your birthday at Christmas?”

I was always excited to reply. I’d even shout. “NO WAY! It doesn’t bother me one bit.”

Life was good around our house at Christmas. School was out. I always had a birthday party full of kids. Especially if it fell on a weekday (free babysitting – I presume). My cousins could make it too.

Great Aunts and Uncles — only around for the holidays — would give me a fiver on Christmas Day, just because my birthday was in the same week as Jesus’. My Pa (Dad’s Dad) had 12 siblings, so I was making the big bucks back in the 70s.

My sister never got that kind of treatment in May. School was in. No one was hanging around our house near Mother’s Day. It was a holiday for the nuclear family.

My birthday parties were always at Grandma & Pa’s farm and included tobogganing, hot chocolate, a campfire, roasted hotdogs and toasted marshmallows (or if you were like Mom, you loved your marshmallows burnt).

We also had a snowmobile with a tow rope and special red fat skis with straps for your Sorels. It was like water skiing – but it hurt more when you crashed. Way more.

When I moved to Whistler, birthdays changed. We used to try to plan something.

But, we’ve learned. Going out for dinner is insane. Our family rarely ventures west. Friends are away or busy with family. @therocketnarcissist is always exhausted from battling the crowds at work.

So, that’s my reason for blocking off an entire day of work to wallow in self-indulgence.

I abandoned my complicated healthy & ethical algorithm when deciding what to make. I went shopping without an ounce of consideration to the planet or my waste line. And I promised myself I wouldn’t feel guilty about it. That’s what the rest of the year is for.

I queued recipes for pâte brisée and tourtière filling. And diligently organized my photography “studio”.

Tourtière is a dish that I learned about in primary school. Life at home was a bit turbulent then, but I had an amazing French teacher who kept me busy helping in her office. I organized her classroom props (like cartoon cats and dogs labeled chat and chien, respectively), but mostly we chatted. As a treat one Christmas, she invited me, plus a few kids and our moms, for lunch.

She served us in French on fancy dishes! We ate tourtière. I remember it well. I was an extremely picky eater then. But this dish, well, it seemed like she had scooped out apples from the pie crust and put my favourite savoury food back inside – ground meat.

Plus, it was served with ketchup. The best condiment.

It was heavenly.

It might have been 20+ years before I had my next slice of tourtière. And maybe 30 years before I made one myself.

One March, during @therocketnarcissist ‘s athletic career, we landed in Quebec City. I spent hours researching the best tourtière. I think internet was still pretty slow back then. We battled the freezing cold and snowy streets to then burrow into a tiny ancient cottage for a slice of authenticity.

It wasn’t quite as I had remembered. But this old recipe was made with just pork. Still good. But less earthy than the original.

Although I don’t believe I’ve ever tasted it, @therocketnarcissist always reminds me that his mother’s tourtière is the best. As any good French-Canadian boy would say. He claims it’s full of venison, buffalo, moose, veal and the kitchen sink – I think.

I should ask her one day.

Anyway, if you’ve read any of my stories before, you’ll know that I don’t follow recipes well. Hence a queue of recipes. I often read a bunch to find the techniques and ingredients that I want to use and make it up from there.

I’m not sure how I found this recipe for the perfect pâte brisée. It was likely that I googled “perfect pate brisee”.

It calls for chilled vodka to ensure the flakiest pie crust – ever! Or at least, the flakiest according to Kelsey’s Apple a Day blogspot and America’s Test Kitchen.

For a second, I wondered if gin from the Pemberton Distillery was too decadent for such a use – and then I remembered it was my birthday.

I went to the grocery store with a plan to buy small portions of as many varieties of ground meat (except bird) as I could. Lo and behold, Christmas struck again. There were plenty of turkeys left. No pork. No buffalo. I managed to get the last package of beef – and found frozen lamb.

I made the crust first. And let it rest for quite some time.

The filling took shape without any one recipe taking the lead. I used onion, all spice, dried thyme, sage (which appears to be still growing in a pot on my snowy porch – weird), cloves, cinnamon, black pepper and salt.

Garlic made it in. And the requisite shredded potato (or 2 depending on size) also made it in.

Hand pies look nice and are fun to eat. So, I cut out as many circles as I could without working the dough too much – nobody likes a tough crust. And put some of the scraps that were getting warm back in the fridge (for a tiny peach pie the next day).

I don’t like to use fake food when taking photos, so I googled best egg wash for pies. Here’s what I learned from this chart on finecooking.com, in the article “How to put colour and shine on pastry crust with egg wash”:

Content of egg wash	Effect on cooked pastry
whole egg with water	nicely browned, slightly glossy
whole egg with milk	nicely browned, more glossy
egg white only	evenly browned, slightly less brown than whole egg, very little shine
egg yolk only or egg yolk with water	browned and shiny, but less so than with cream or milk
egg yolk with cream	very browned and glossy, but a relatively thick egg wash that’s somewhat difficult to spread neatly
egg yolk with milk	the darkest brown crust and a touch less shiny than yolk with cream

I chose whole egg with milk.

Cooking and shooting this recipe was fun. My new camera’s quality is similar to the old one, but has more features. It was a pleasure to use. In fact, it was fun to have two cameras. One on the tripod and one in hand.

I certainly ate too many hand pies. I might have been too self-indulgent. Good thing we traded celebrating the ridiculously indulgent Christmas & NYE for my birthday.

Lisa Severn is a communication specialist who lives in Whistler and is now OH, SHIT! one year closer to 50.

P.s. My favourite Instagram post of 2018 is from @unicyclecreative

January 1, 2019

Growth

“Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re going to get.” Forrest Gump

Without a shadow of a doubt I can say this has been one of my most challenging years to date.

Thus, I’ve been quick to say, “Peace out 2018, thanks for nothing!” But really, deep down I’m actually saying, “Thanks for everything. “

Having suffered a bad concussion earlier this spring I was forced to slow down and smell the roses. My garden became my sanity through it all and I re-kindled my love affair with the soil under my nails. (If only the confidence I feel within those walls projected throughout all aspects of my life.)

But if kale can weather harsh conditions and continue to grow then so can I. My roots are strong; I’m just feeling bound. All I need to do is prune back some dead shit, be re-potted and I’ll bloom.

For years I’ve reached for the cheat sheet in a box of chocolates because I wanted to know what I was getting (otherwise known as the Comfort Zone). Bite into something “gross”: no thank you. But life for the most part doesn’t give us something to follow and you just have to be ready to ingest anything.

All of this being said; learning will nourish my new year as I deepen my love for all things horticulture. The second step is sharing it with those who need some inspiration or want to learn more or just need a little nudge.

Here are your first tips:

Grow your own food: it’s the best way to get what you want.

Experiment: maybe you’ll discover that something you thought you hated you actually love.

As we grow in the life we’ve been gifted we begin to learn we love some flavors more then others. Breaking away from the comfort of our favourite flavors is when we will be most rewarded but it’s key to keep some classics in your back pocket.

In the end if we keep sowing our own seeds, growth is inevitable.

December 31, 2018
Gifts for Soil Lovers
HOE HOE HOE: a gardener’s salute to the holidays!

The countdown is officially on to the day jolly ol’ Saint Nick gobbles up treats left by excited little people, adds a splash of rum to a glass of eggnog and leaves gifts for all. I thought it a perfect time to share a few thing that graze my wish list/need list throughout the year, in hopes it may inspire some of you stuck on stocking stuffers.

Promise me this — you will source locally as much as possible. For the love of sustainability and supporting our community, we need to tighten up our game.

So, here we go (in no particular order): fun ideas for the chef, gardener and wanna-be green thumb in your life.
1. GLOVES – I’m the first to admit I use them sparingly but I’m sure happy to have a set around and nothing beats a new pair; like the feeling of a fresh pair of socks.
2. NAIL BRUSH – Many of us are proud of the dirt under our nails and our calluses but sometimes life calls for clean hands. Small Potatoes Bazaar has you covered.
3. FELCO PRUNERS – My personal favourite are the #2; an essential component to any gardener’s kit and the holster is a mandatory accessory. Available at Pemberton Valley Nursery and their Whistler location along with a great selection of gloves and number 12 on this list!
4. GARDNER’S DREAM CREAM – Treat your hands – they do so much hard work. Stay Wild keeps their shelves stocked with the goods.
5. SCANDINAVE SPA PASS w/ MASSAGE – The heavy lifting and bending is over; this gift is a no brainer.
6. BOOKS! – There are so many options out there but here are my current top three picks: Floret Flowers (Erin Benzakein, Julia Chai), Seed to Seed (Susan Ashworth) and Putting Food By (Ruth Hertzberg). The folks at Armchair Books are great. They don’t always have what you’re looking for in stock but they are amazing at getting you what you need as fast as the other guys.
7. WEST COAST SEEDS GC – Their seed selection is top notch and their website is like a bible for home and pro-gardeners alike. Grow and eat your way to happiness.
8. GROWOYA – A self-watering terracotta pot that you sink into your garden… AKA: a pretty nifty idea that a girlfriend introduced to me as a way to deal with the summer watering restrictions. It doesn’t work for all vegetables but their website is full of information on how to get the most out of this efficient irrigation style.
9. CRINKLE VEGGIE CUTTER – We live in Spud valley and are ruled by potatoes so why not have a cool device on hand to make some funky fries from time to time!
10. VANDUESEN GARDEN PASS – This place is the Willy Wonka factory for plant lovers: so easy to lose track of time, so easy to get “lost”. (Insert the words to ‘Pure Imagination’ from said mentioned movie and you’ll find they’re quite fitting). Plus, you’ll forget you’re even in the city. Every season boasts new blooms and something to discover making it, easily, one of my favourite places to go and geek out.
11. A JOURNAL – note taking and random reminders are a great aid from year to year. They are also a great place to doodle, write down new recipes along with your hopes and greens.
12. PRETTY POTS – There is always a use for a beautiful ceramic pot… be it to house an indoor plant or something outside. But since you’re at the plant store you mind as well plop a plant in there too!
From my sleeping garden to yours… happy semi-hibernation and snow days!
December 15, 2018
Food and Feelings: Fromage

Bonjour*. When you think of France what do you think of? What comes to mind is probably different for everyone. For me, one of the thoughts that surface is about cheap and delicious cheese. After returning from my rock-and-roll honeymoon, I’m left missing the delicious croissants, cheese, wine and various other delightful foods.

Anyone who knows me knows that I LOVE cheese so this trip was full of dreamy surprises. My favourite cheese experience was when Shayne and I went to Le Fer a Cheval in Chamonix, France. We were looking for the best fondue in town and this was recommended to us by a local. This restaurant is so popular that if you don’t have a reservation you most likely won’t get a table. So, we made a reservation and I then counted down the hours, minutes and seconds until fondue-ville.

Le Fer a Cheval

Stoked on life, we ordered the fondue with tomato sauce and potatoes. The cheese had tomato sauce in it and it came with bread and a huge basket of potatoes. I guess you can take the girl out of Pemberton but you can’t take Pemberton out of the girl. It was filling. It was delicious. It was everything that I had hoped for. After this experience, I felt inspired to create a life where fondue was present on a more regular basis.

Fondue in Chamonix

A few years ago, I celebrated Christmas with my in-laws in Kamloops. They decided to have a fondue dinner instead of a traditional Christmas dinner. This, my friends, was amazing. It’s was a very social experience and made dinner super-interactive. There was cheese fondue, oil, chocolate and many food options. However, there were no potatoes.

It’s impossible to scarf down dinner because you have to wait for your food to cook, bite by bite. We did this for a few years but took a break last year. This year we are bringing it back, Pemberton style (in Pemberton) and I’ve decided to call it a Very Merry Fonduemas. And yes, there will be potatoes.

Fondue round two, HERE I COME!

BONUS: Did you know that fondue originated in Switzerland? Praise the Swiss. Also, fondue recipes vary depending on the region that you are in. You can learn more about that HERE.

*I speak very little French but do know a few words. Just ask Shayne (pictured below) because he was witness to me trying to communicate in French while in France (which, I’m sure, was a painful experience for him).

December 10, 2018
Obsession

Lately I’m having a hard time drawing the line between what should get more attention: my new Le Creuset Dutch oven or planning out my garden for next year. What to cook vs what to plant. Either way both schools of thought provide me with a constant mind game and humor my co-workers. Not to mention, a day wandering through the Van Duesen Gardens, tackling Julia Child’s ‘Beef Bourguignon’, absorbing the concepts I’ve been studying in an ‘Intro to Landscape Design’ course and an evening with Stevie (MF’in) Nicks – basically, my mind has been on overload.

Stimulation: it’s a blessing and a curse.

The Internet was slow as molasses for Cyber Monday sales as people consumed their lives away. It’s also made my normal routine of scouring through sites for new recipes to cook during the week near impossible. So, I decided to kick it old school and take to my graph paper, apply some new design techniques and start planning out my garden. Nothing like thinking in colour on a grey day: Julia Child inspirations can wait… lasagna is on the menu tonight and that recipe is engraved in my mind.

The process for me starts by making a list of what I loved and what did well, knowing full well that next year might bring completely different growing conditions. But I don’t dwell on that. Just like I’m not dwelling on the fact that last year we were shredding deep snow at this time and this year it’s warm and wet with the lowest base we’ve seen in years. Gross – but c’est la vie.

The second list I make is what’s sucked or I just don’t want to grow anymore. This is largely based on the fact that I can get it from someone local like Laughing Crow Organics or Helmer’s or without sacrificing my own garden space. Supporting our local farmers is equally as important in the grand equation and should not be left out!

The third list is the experimental list AKA: my favourite.

The other lists include; herbs, flowers and things that grow on the deck. This list will change and grow which is part of the glory of working in pencil.

Second step of the layout plan is to draft your garden space on paper, preferably graph (enter a hint of obsession here), to somewhat of an exact scale in 2D form and trace the outline with permanent marker. Then the fun begins – what grew where and where do they go next: the power of rotation.

Be sure to sharpen your HB2 pencil and prepare your eraser for this stage. Start plopping your veggies, flowers and herbs in as you see fit. Ideas will come and go as fast as you think them and are on to the next. And to be completely honest, by the time you go to plant they’ve probably changed but hey, remember, it’s just as much fun to colour outside of the lines as within.

Third step… sit and wait. It’s winter – the ground is frozen, you can’t plant shit but somehow your kale still seems to grow; roll with it. Pour yourself a tasty beverage, dream up new ideas, play around with your design, your ideas and aspirations. No thought is too small or unachievable. Remember, I started my current garden with nothing but a “green house”.

To obsess over what you want to grow and eat is a healthy, sustainable step in the right direction – you just have to be willing to try.

December 8, 2018

Category: musings

Perhaps it’s me she’s been waiting for all along. Perhaps I needed to drop into this spaciousness for us to find this way to trust each other.

…he is either in a daze of boredom or he is walking kana, penetrated each step by the world, not penetrating it. It’s tempting to call this spirit naïveté, but it’s not: it’s wisdom we lose along the way.”