August 2021 – Lion Tail Magic

Steam heat

We’ve been living in a regional sauna lately — heat warnings most days this month. I go out as little as possible when the weather’s like this, mainly for groceries and to water our drooping garden plants.

By late August I’m longing for cool autumn weather — which looks like it’s still pretty far away — so for this post I’ll share some photos I took on one of the rare rainy days a couple of weeks ago, up at the Royal Botanical Gardens in Burlington. My brother and I spent some time strolling Hendrie Park, until the rain became torrential, lightning flashed and thunder boomed all around us. We felt sorry for the two wedding parties there that day!

Just looking at these photos makes me feel cooler; I hope they affect you the same way 🙂

Widespread cloud cover took the edge off the heat while we walked the pathways.

Magnificent rust-toned sunflowers nodding way over my head

I like the contrast of these fluffy Teddy Bear Sunflowers with their huge shiny leaves

An explosion of colour against cool green leaves

Dragonflies welded together in a mating dance landed briefly by this crimson water lily

These soft creamy day lilies reminded me of sheer lacy curtains waving in a summer breeze

The stormy sky reflected in a pond shortly before the rain blew in

Wherever you are, I hope you’re keeping cool while this month burns its way into the history books.

Just try this out, will you!

I’ve been working through a marketing book about honing your message, and one of the questions the book asked its readers was ‘What ticks you off more than anything?’

I had to think about that for a few minutes, since I have a number of pet peeves, like everyone. Eventually one thing particularly came to mind: people who always refuse things.

I’ll readily admit that my hubby and I are more adventurous than just about anyone we know personally. There’s very little we’ll say “no” to, whether it’s a new restaurant, a new activity, a new place to visit.

My mother-in-law said to us once, as we took her to a favourite restaurant in Toronto whose entrance was located down a back alley: “Where do you find these places?”

Well, I explained, a couple of years previously we’d arranged tickets to a theatre performance of Argentinian tango, and we thought it would be fun to have a themed dinner beforehand. I found a book on all the ethnic restaurants in the city, then looked up all the Latin or Spanish restaurants and picked one. It was a fortuitous choice and we’d been going there ever since. Best sangria ever!

In our house we have a standing rule: guests can’t refuse food without at least trying it. (Before they come over I always check on any food issues first, of course.) Once tasted, if someone doesn’t like the dish they certainly don’t have to finish it, but that rarely happens. Most food is delicious if it’s made well, and even if someone’s tried out a dish in a restaurant, that’s not a guarantee that they’ve had a good version of it.

All of us have likes and dislikes, as the interesting individuals we are, but so many people seem to have a much bigger negative list than positive.

Such a narrow little world they create for themselves. They won’t even give something new a chance, and really, how do you know if you’ll like something otherwise?

People who look for perfection and absolute order will always be disappointed. Half the fun of doing anything is being surprised by it – the random roadside café on a trip that served great food, the movie you didn’t expect much from that turned into great entertainment, an outfit that looked blah on the hanger but amazingly good when you tried it on (just bought one of those the other day, as a matter of fact 😊 )

Imperfection makes things interesting. Possibly our all-time favourite golf course is in rural Tennessee. It’s not upscale by any means – it could certainly use a little TLC around some of the greens – but the layout is spectacular and adventurous between and across two flowing rivers, and both times we’ve played there’s hardly been anyone else there. We love it so much that each time we travel down there we make a point of seeking it out.

Our favourite eateries tend to be family-run ethnic restaurants with really great, unpretentious food that feels like you’re eating at their home.

On trips we like to get away from our hotel and wander the streets in town to see what’s there – a great shop on a small street in Paris that had shelves and shelves of inks and writing instruments; food trucks along the harbour in Papeete, Tahiti, where we had fantastic small plates under awnings in the pouring rain; a shaman shop in Cuzco, Peru where I bought a cool carved and feathered gourd rattle.

What experiences we would have missed if we always looked for the posh and controlled! We’d never have met a group of school girls at a temple in Bangkok who asked if they could practice their English with us, or the little alpaca who wanted to have a taste of my hubby’s pant leg in Peru, or have rattled through the crazy dusty truck ride to find the local camel market in southern Egypt.

We’d have never had a Yorkshire barkeep explain what a “vicar’s collar” is (a poured beer with too much foamy head on it), or spent an evening on the banks of the Nile singing Egyptian folk songs with the boat crew, or even discussed our subsidized health system in Canada with an interested waiter in New Orleans.

Stop saying “no” to the unfamiliar, or the less-than-perfect. Approach everything with curiosity and an open mind, and you’ll never be bored. The world is full of fascinating things to explore, if you’re only willing enough to enjoy them exactly as they are.

The little writer that could

I think I can, I think I can, I think I can write a novel…but I didn’t for a couple of decades, or more. Actually, I’ve been jotting ideas for a very long time. With every approaching milestone birthday I’d set that date as a deadline for writing a book, but it never came to pass.

You see, nothing new ever happens unless you take a chance, take that first step outside your comfort zone.

I have finally finished that first book, and I did pop the cork on a bottle of champagne. I typed “The End” on August 1, and thought I’d run out to get a nice new bottle, but as fate would have it, all the stores were closed for our Civic Holiday. Drat! I hunted through the stock of wine in our rec-room bar, and finally found one old bottle that someone had given us for a gift a while ago. It was dusty, and debatably drinkable, but it was the only option, so after dinner we opened it up, hoping for the best. Luckily, it was still potable, although I suppose it wouldn’t have mattered if it wasn’t.

What really mattered, of course, was the achievement, and even if the book never gets published, the fact that I wrote it means a great deal.

I’ve backed up the files onto two separate portable drives, and am determinedly leaving the pages to rest for a while. It’s been surprisingly difficult to step away – I have so loved telling the story of my tarnished heroine and her adventures into the supernatural – but during the down-time I am getting caught up on quite a few chores that took a back seat for the past few months, so that’s a good thing anyway.

Editing will begin in a couple of weeks, coinciding with the return of kids to school at the beginning of September. I wonder if that may be fate; as a child I always loved restarting school each autumn. I may have grumbled about homework and occasionally day-dreamed about being outside on a beautiful fall day if I was bored in class, but I loved the atmosphere of learning.

Learning to me is one of the greatest gifts in our lives. There are so many fascinating things to explore about our world! Today is World Elephant Day, for example, and I just read that elephants have about 150,000 muscles just in their trunks, which are remarkable appendages that they use to drink with, breathe with while wading in deep water, and pick up food with – anything from small twigs to large fruit and grasses. When we were in the Okavango Delta of Botswana we watched one elephant rip up great hanks of grasses with its trunk and stuff them into its mouth.

I learned a great deal from writing my novel, and for anyone who thinks they’d love to write as well but are too worried about their ability to finish to even begin – as I was – I can tell you what guided me to that final page:

I had a good idea of what my heroine’s journey was going to be – in other words, a plan. I would have found it virtually impossible to start cold turkey. Maybe some writers can do it that way, but I couldn’t.
I was worried whether I’d have enough of a story to tell, but as the heroine’s journey went on, a lot of events fell logically into place. After all, every action has consequences, and I was interested to see them play out. Sometimes the results surprised me as much as they did the heroine, and that was half the fun!
I wrote every single day throughout November to get to the desired goal of 50,000 words. That was really important to me – it was my barometer to decide whether I was capable of producing an entire book. Every successful author’s advice has always included one particular message: perseverance is key.
Embarking on this project was a big leap of faith, but I didn’t want to reach the end of my life (some day in the far distant future, I hope) without having at least tried. At the beginning I worried about all the same things as other would-be authors, I’m sure: am I worthy, can I fill up an entire book, can I come up with believable dialogue… In the end, my journey was as intense as my heroine’s, and we both discovered new things about ourselves.
Every big project looks intimidating at the beginning. The road to success consists of achieving one part of the big picture at a time. Writing that first chapter wasn’t too bad, and then the second, then the third…and one day eight months later the last.
Finishing the book has given me an enormous confidence boost. If I can do it once, I can do it again – for Books 2 and 3 in the trilogy (for which I’m furiously jotting down ideas even now), and for a couple of non-fiction books I also want to write.

Goals and journeys are only ever achieved by taking that first wobbly step into the unknown. I’m nervous about editing my draft, wondering how painful/frustrating it’s going to be, but I forge ahead in the knowledge that I have a dedicated group of beta readers waiting excitedly to see what I’ve created, and I can’t wait to show it to them. I hope they love it as much as I do, even if parts of it stink and need revising. Then, like the Little Engine that toiled determinedly over the crest of the hill, I’ll be able to say, “I thought I could”.

Choices in difficult times

Is it just me, or does this cloud look like a balloon animal?

I needed another stress break today, so I went on an impromptu trip to one of my favourite places that’s appeared in my blog several times, the botanical garden at the Butterfly Conservatory in Niagara Falls.

One of our neighbours has two dogs, one of which hates being outside if all its people are inside. It’s a dog thing – some don’t mind being outside in the yard, but the majority I’ve seen only want to be out if their humans are as well. When dogs are stressed, they bark until the stress is relieved.

The barking went on for over forty minutes; this had been going on all week, every day throughout the day. Today I’d had enough and went over to speak to the family. I’d planned to talk to the parents, but they weren’t home, and I chose to speak to the son about the issue. I was polite, but angry.

I was at my wit’s end; we’ve had ongoing issues with this family since they moved in. Things like repeated trespassing, damage to the adjoining fence by the son over a year ago that the father promised to fix but still hasn’t, and other issues I won’t list here.

What I should have done, though, was ask the son to put the dogs in the house and to have his parents contact me.

These are challenging times and we’re all feeling the strain. Even though the world is making great progress against the coronavirus, we’re not out of the woods by any means; we can just see the outer edge of the trees. A lot of people have lost loved ones, lost a job or a business, been affected by political issues. We’ve all struggled to stay sane in general.

The father came over to our house later in the day and asked that in future if something’s bothering me I should be speaking to them, not the kids. That’s a fair request, and it’s the choice I should have made.

Everyone is irritable, as much as we try not to be. All we can do to mitigate that is try to be as considerate of others as possible.

Be nice to the store clerk, keep an appropriate distance from others in public, drive responsibly – be a good neighbour, which, although I had good reason to be fed up today, I didn’t do the best job of either.

I read an article the other day that complaints about neighbours have escalated in the Ottawa region in the past year, and I’m sure other communities have experienced the same thing. Our region also holds quite a few tourist attractions, where we’re still having issues with visitors misbehaving – sometimes, sadly, those visitors have lost their lives doing risky things.

We’re all stressed, and looking for ways to blow off steam in the craziness of 2020-2021, but let’s try to do it respectfully, and safely.

I had an issue that needed addressing today, but I could have handled it better. The whole situation bothered me so much that I had to get out of the house for a while. I relaxed as soon as I started walking around in nature. The gardens were busy today, but everyone was calm and considerate; nature is a great way to chill out. I’ll share with you some of the peace and beauty I found, as at least a virtual stress break in case you need one too.