Snowbird of Paradise

Near the local recreation centre is a rhododendron grove that I love to visit at this time of year, and I recently enjoyed showing some friends the huge bushes. This week the bush beside my patio began to flower and another beside the neighbouring building was just glorious.

Spring is sprung, the grass is riz.I wonder where the birdies is.They say the bird is on the wing, but that’s absurd.I always thought the wing was on the bird. (Anonymous, although a favourite of the great Spike Milligan.) My patio has been glorious for the last couple of weeks with blooms in the adjacent garden. I daily give thanks to the gardener who makes all this possible. At the same…

Today I watched two films on my television and both of them were dark. Very dark. Not dark in the dramatic depressing sense (although there was a bit of that) but dark in the visual sense. In both films the screen showed more black than any other colour. Both films were set in the past, with one set in the 1950s (Marty Supreme) and the other set in the 16th century (Firebrand), so I am wondering…

I live in a multi-level condominium apartment building, and my unit is on the ground floor. I moved here three years ago and have found it to be a very positive environment. I love my view of the garden and the fact that I am within walking distance of everything I need. A few months after I moved in, my nearby neighbours had a falling out that caused a bit of commotion around their patio and in…

Another lovely walk in another lovely park.

A lovely afternoon walk with my youngest child at Neck Point Park.

This weekend I enjoyed a lovely visit with family from the UK in Calgary, Alberta. We spent Sunday morning discovering the joys of hunting for interesting rocks and watching the waterfall at Elbow Falls.

I haven’t eaten grapefruit in years, but I don’t know why. In the past have enjoyed grapefruit for breakfast many times and I especially like the pink ones, but I can’t remember the last time I bought one. Image via Flickr Today it came as a surprise, then, to have a sudden yearning for grapefruit. It happened because I was told that I could not consume grapefruit as either food or juice from…

Photo by Julie Strome Photo by Julie Strome

Rennett Stowe from USA, CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons Have you ever thought of yourself as deadwood? Probably not. Have other people ever thought of you as deadwood? Again, probably not. After all, you are intelligent, well-read, active in your community, and kind to strangers. Definitely not dead and clearly not wood. So “deadwood” as a composite…

For a year or more I have been watching as some women on television display what I have been calling Mar A Lago Hair. As you read this I am pretty sure that you have pictured in your mind the hairstyle I am thinking about. The hair is long, it drapes over the shoulders in the front down to the nipples, and it has carefully crafted wavy curls. Image via platformhairextensions.com It is often…

A few weeks ago I wondered if I should publish here some of the various things I have written over the years, and you encouraged me to go for it. It has taken me a while and some trial and error to figure out how to turn scanned images of hardcopy documents into Word documents. It was also a challenge to figure out that the best way for me to publish them is to get a plugin to enable me to embed…

Today I watched as one angry man evoked three very different responses in the people around him. I had an appointment for regular blood and urine tests at a nearby clinic. When I arrived I found the front desk unattended but I could hear a technologist in one of the clinic’s processing cubicles, so I waited. I wondered if she was alone and felt sorry for her because I could see five people in…

The sky was pretty tonight, and the moon was very nearly a half moon. So far, Nanaimo is cold but snow free, and I am thinking about all the people who are struggling to cope with snow and ice. I hope you all survive this onslaught, that you stay off the roads, and that you have someone checking in on you.