So, I sort of thought that - this year - maybe I'd kind of "blog" a whole growing season here at Garn Gardens! This year's first big project was completed this weekend: one new raised-bed vegetable patch right on the front lawn (who needs grass?)! After laying down old, rotted, hole-y carpet, we created brick walls and then built a "lasagne" foundation (advice from fabulous book given to me by my mummy!)
Layers were: carpet, then criss-crosses of last year's sunflower & wildflower stakes, then copious amounts of home-made compost, then topped with a peat-soil-sand mix. Phew.
Project number two was extending the "potato patch" that was semi-built last year (and yielded the yummiest potatoes, pumpkins and squash!) We can't wait to see the "before & after" photos when these gardens are brimming with edible goodies by mid summer!
My own little 'living-room-greenhouse' is moving right along this year. Lots of tomato sprouts, eggplants, and the second picture below is my garbanzo beans stretching toward the sun!
I got a bunch of sunchoke tubers at the seed swap. We ate half of them tonight (to make sure they're as yummy as they say .... yup!). And now, the rest will go into the ground! There's more info about these "Canada Potatoes" in this article here.
Below are some pix from a walk around our midwinter landscape today. Click any photo to see a larger version. It really feels like the "dead" of winter right now.......
All of a sudden, I understand why large, handmade dolls cost so much money. Holy crowly, do they ever take a LOT of time to make!
And yet, in the spirit of Christmas, and with 'visions-of-Sao-Mai' in our heads, my mother & I handmade a (giant) doll last weekend!
Her name is "Magali" (my mum chose the name because it belongs to one of my students, and she has always loved the sound of that name!).... Magali (like her namesake!) loves to sit around with the gals, drink wine & chat!
Tip-to-toe, she's 3.5 feet of funloving woman! I am charging $300 to make the next one!
As my "Cat Dance Investigations" deepened, I began to notice that MONPA (the museum of non-primate art), who sponsored the Cat Dance book, had these veeeeerrrry strange upcoming exhibitions.... (which include such things as The Poetry and Prose of Pachyderm Prints:Elephant dust marks !!)
The final word on this real-or-hoax cat quandary goes to the reviewer at bikemag.com:
"If this book (Dancing with Cats) is meant to be humorous, then it is the most subtle, ingenius work written to date. A strange conclusion, yeah, I know. Sort of like thinking, "That's either the next mother of my children or that's the most beautiful man I've ever met." Odd. Disturbing. There you have it."
Okay so, ever since I bought that "Dancing with Cats" book at the Book Party .... I've been quite obsessed! I mean: how cool would that be? Dancing with a cat? (fess up! you know you're all mildly intrigued.... )
And yet, as I ventured further down this furry eurhythmic path, I began to suffer more and more doubt & suspicion. I mean .... how come I've never heard of these waltzing felines??!
So, I wandered on over to youtube and spent some quality time researching every kind of search string I could think of, from "dancing with my cat" to "dancing cats" to "do cats really dance?" And .... these were the only two quality videos I could find:
Not exactly stellar confirmations of the "dancing cats" phenomenon.
And so, I went even further down the rabbit hole (cat box?). I found a few reviews of my newly purchased "Dancing with Cats" book. The first came from Vernon Felton, who writes for bikemag.com:
"I’m struggling to find the words. Groping and bumping my head against a thousand walls. How, exactly, can I relay just how disturbing Dancing with Cats truly is? For instance, I was planning to use that as my first sentence: Dancing with Cats is truly the most disturbing book I’ve laid eyes on….but nah, still doesn’t convey it.
.... There is no world-wide trend of cat dancing. If there was, the nightly news would play reels of it non-stop.
.....If Ted Turner and the combined satanic forces of NBC, ABC and CBS haven’t already fabricated this story, it simply doesn’t exist. Seriously. "
Which begs the question: could this "Cat Dancing" thing be a hoax?
Next up, I found an interesting review which fully believes that it IS a fabricated phenomenon!
And so, I next visited the Museum of Hoaxes, to see if they had commented on the topic (and... they had!)
So I got this crazy idea about having a "Book Party". Inspiration was provided by my favorite 2nd hand bookstore on this planet: Ted's Paperbacks & Funky Treasures! Above is my "night before" preparations ---- organizing book searches, special categories, and wrapping up some inspirational prizes for my partygoers!
And party, we did! We went on quests for books about Ancient Times, books by female Canadian authors .... we even went on treasure hunts for old Betty & Veronica Double Digests (which seemed a worthy challenge to find!)
"Book Party"ers had to search the deepest, darkest corners of Ted's (well organized!) sections ... venturing into such remote and exotic parts as the "Metaphysical" and "Science Fiction" zones... !!
But, with their sharp & crafty research skills, the partygoers persevered and .... we got our winners!
In the category of "Best Title", the outstanding choice was .... "Silence of the Hams"!
" Most Interesting" was "The Parables of Peanuts" !! (I am ridiculously excited to start reading this.....)
And, the SURPRISE winner in the "Best Cover" category was "Dancing with Cats" !!
Who even KNEW that there was such a thing?
Check out this site.... http://www.monpa.com/dwc/ for more info on this (apparently common) activity (there are even CLASSES taught about "how to dance with cats"!) According to this website, people have been dancing with cats for centuries. (what the...?_)
Please euthanize me if I ever turn into an old hippie woman who DANCES with her CATS!! Of course I am secretly intrigued by the notion .....
I might just have to get a cat.
I also might just have to have more Book Parties!! Cheers to all partygoers AND the fabulous staff at Ted's Books!!
We refuse to accept that the 2008 Okanagan Wine Festival is over so.... we just kept "fest"ing anyway!
This weekend, we headed Shaggy back down south, this time to a little campground on Vaseux Lake --- right beside a wildlife sanctuary and ... a whole bunch of wineries!
Photo above is taken on the lawns below Noble Ridge Winery, which is perched in the hills above Vaseux Lake.
Above photo was taken as we biked (all uphill!) to the four wineries in the hills right above our campsite.
We fell head over heels for Tangled Vines "Tickled Pink" rose .... taste explosion!
We also biked the KVR trails from OK Falls, through Kaleden, all along Skaha Lake. Above is a picture of one of the many historic buildings in Kaleden .... must go back there for dinner soon!
There's a gorgeous resort in Kaleden --- Ponderosa Point Resort --- run by such nice people. The owner of Ponderosa stopped to warn us that he'd just chased two grizzly bears out of his resort (the KVR rides through it).
We weren't exactly thrilled with the idea of biking alongside grizzlies.... so Ponderosa owner let us pile our bikes into his truck and he drove us past the bears! (no bear pictures... sorry ... but, then again, I'm not really sorry!)
We ended the day with a picnic in OK Falls and one last glass of their local nectar-of-the-gods! We might extend "Wine Festival" a little more this year and head to South Okanagan Provincial Campground for another bike-wine tour .... soon!
After laying down old, rotted, hole-y carpet, we created brick walls and then built a "lasagne" foundation (advice from fabulous book given to me by my mummy!)
Layers were: carpet, then criss-crosses of last year's sunflower & wildflower stakes, then copious amounts of home-made compost, then topped with a peat-soil-sand mix. Phew.
