FAVOR TO ASK

Hello,

How are you doing? Sorry to bother you, do you have an account with Amazon?

 

Thanks

Some wedding photos

> Me with Rina and his brother, Syden, our tour guide with KIA. I was Syden's dad when he got married and now it was my turn to "do" Rina.
>

Now we are all up to date.

Tues, 23rd Apr, 2019

After lunch I drove south to meet with friends who are going to Cambodia.  I always have to search on Google maps to find out how to get to places and how long it's going to take.  I don't think Google takes into consideration the strange traffic lights in St. Albert.  There must be a dozen of them through the city and, if you have to stop at one of them, then you stop at all of them.  On the way to the coffee shop I also had to stop for a train crossing the road - I don't think Google thinks about them either.  I thought I was late but Mary Ann was putting her bag on the table as I walked in and I opened the door for a lady who turned out to be the other person I was meeting.  Kenadi is a student at the University of Alberta in the Physical Education Department; Mary Ann is her boss.  The UofA has a programme called "Play around the World" and they send groups of students out each year to developing areas of the world to play with children.  So many children nowadays can't play simply; they need complicated gadgets.  Play around the World shows children how to play with simple things.  One fun game I saw them doing was to spread a sheet of plastic on the ground and to pour liquid soap on it.  It was hilarious watching children sliding all over the place.  

This year the students will stay in my apartment so I wanted to meet them to talk over what I've left there and how to use the cooking system etc.  I've got one of those new fangled hotplates that comes on when the pan is put onto it and turns off automatically when the pan is removed.  I was not happy when I discovered that my lovely pressure cooker and non-stick pan won't work as they are not stainless steel.  When you buy pans for this type of system you have to take along a magnet to see if they are magnetic; if they aren't they won't work.  Life is getting so complicated.

Talking about playing simply, the Cambodian lads across the road have all the things they need; they use the computers to play games, they have guitars and take lessons, they play football with other students on the weekends, they've got special drawing computers as they are quite good artists.  As children we had next to nothing.  At Christmas we got one toy and a bag of nuts and either an apple or an orange.  The younger siblings were more fortunate because the older ones, as they started to work, would buy them a gift.

We made tents out of the clothes horse; maybe people don't know what this is!  It's the rack on which we hang clothes after we've ironed them.  There's nothing nicer than fresh smelling, ironed clothes.  We would use sacks and old mats to make the tent.  Then we'd play house or cowboys or just sit messing around.  Marbles were a big thing as all we needed were some marbles and a few holes in the ground.  Hopscotch was popular, jumping from one square to another.  Then there was "Kick the can" in which we sent a can into the air and tried to hit it - don't ask me why.  Our bicycles were made of spare parts and we learned to ride by leaning against the garden wall and pushing ourselves along.  We also had work to do, feeding the hens, cleaning out their sheds and sometimes digging up the ground so the hens could find worms.  There was also the many rabbits that needed feeding and cleaning.  If I got fed up I'd run away from home; that meant standing in the coal shed until it got dark and then I'd go home.  So different to today - we don't have a coal shed anyway at the farm.  

I arrived in Lacombe just in time for dinner.  Other friends were there.  Now that I'm back in Canada it's totally different as the people I meet are generally "mature" although I did see two children over Easter.  It was a happy time but the conversation is so different to my chats in Cambodia.  The family for years haven't had much money but recently a relative died and now they have more than they need.  They joked that they'd gone into town to buy an Easter bunny chocolate for a great grandson and they'd come away with a very elegant, battery operated car which he can drive.  The lad's is less than two years old.

Wed, 24th Apr, 2019

I spent the night in Lacombe and had an early wake-up.  Sheila always sits by a large picture window and watches the birds and squirrels come to the feeders.  It's lovely to sit there having a chat and enjoying a coffee.  I don't have coffee in the morning but it's a ritual with Sheila.  We play catch-up with what she's been doing; Sheila loves travelling and visiting places around the world while her husband stays at home and cuts the grass.  I had a bowl of soup with other friends and then I tackled the drive back to the farm.  As I left the house I saw two Mule Deer walking through the garden.  They are not troubled at all by humans and they just continued strolling along.  After 50 years of gardening, Sheila has decided she needs to protect her vegetables with a fence.  It'll be interesting to see if it's high enough to keep them out as they are great jumpers.

It was quite a challenge as the strong wind blew my car sideways and I experienced snow, rain, then snow mixed with rain, then a section of the highway where we could hardly see the car in front - I think it was dust from the fields.  It was also very cold so I had the heater on.  I'm still wondering why I came back so early from Cambodia.  Last year I came back at the end of April and we had snow the next day that continued for almost a week.  Anything can happen.  Meanwhile friends at the West coast are sending me photographs of the flowering plants on the balconies and their garlic and other crops already quite tall.

I'd hardly moved while I was in Lacombe so I thought I'd better do my farm walk.  It's strange getting out of the car and not finding Sheba yapping away until I take her for her walk.  Now I have to force myself, especially as it's not pleasant and there's nothing to see.  I wore a fleecy, a down jacket, a knitted jacket with a hood, a woolly cap and mittens.  I didn't see much of the scenery as my head was down because of the wind.  I did see a couple of deer but they ran off as soon as they saw me - a lot different to the Lacombe deer who visit the gardens, eat all the greenery and then just saunter to the next garden.  

Thurs, 25th Apr, 2019

I continued my task of getting rid of my belongings.  I passed on a lot of bookshelves to Stephan and he seems happy about having them.  Now I've just got a few boxes in the attic which should please Rachel who has to deal with things when I'm dead.  I wonder if I should become like Julian of Norwich, who happened to be a medieval nun?  I don't know why she did it but she had herself sealed in a room and she never ever came out.  I do have questions about how she managed to deal with such things as bodily functions but she survived to a ripe old age.  She didn't have to bother one little bit about possessions.  

Over Easter, Jenny had made a Pavlova which needs only egg whites so she asked me to make a custard with the yokes.  It worked out very well but I joked that it wasn't as good as Bird's custard.  She corrected me.  In the old days, when this was a dairy farm, we made custard using the milk from a cow that had had a calf; it was called colostrum and was very thick and yellowish.  Until I got used to it, I didn't like the look of it at all.   After lunch I dressed up for my farm walk.  The winds are terrible.  I really don't enjoy going for a walk wearing so much clothing but it has to be at this time of year.  I visited the bee hives but only a few of them were coming out of the hives.  I didn't see anything today.  That's not quite correct as I do see the odd duck but I can't keep on mentioning them.  

One of these days I will have a reality check and will discover that things need doing.  There's no point in starting any seedlings in the house because they germinate and become too tall and unhealthy.  That job will start at the end of the month and then May will be the time for ploughing the garden and getting it ready.  That's the time when I start enjoying being back in Canada - right now I wish I was somewhere warm.  

My Blog

If you are wondering why you haven't heard anything lately it's because I have stopped using the blog. I asked people to let me know if they still wanted to hear from me and I now have a list. I write to them on a normal email which makes life easier for me and them. If anyone out there hasn't asked for his/her name to be on the list, please send me an email. Peter.

Vetifer grass

Peter, the man in charge of the homestead let me buy one Vetifer plant (each plant has about 100 or more slips) which we put into an old cement bag and headed back home. I dropped off one chunk of the plant with Mzee Ramahdan and friends (who were very excited to have some to plant) and then brought the rest home to plant the next day.

 

Vetiver Grass has roots which reach 10 m in depth and which have a stronger sheer strength than steel which makes it the number one candidate worldwide for erosion control. It has value as fodder, medicine, perfume ingredient, mulch, thatch, and basket weaving as well. It doesn't set seed outside of its home country and it does not spread underground like some grasses. You can take part of the clump without destroying the rest of it. If you take the whole clump away, it doesn't return from the roots so you can modify a landscape without having a long term regeneration problem. In one year, each of the slips should be a clump of 100 slips. So, by year three, there should be plenty of project material.