Spuds And, Um… ‘Spunts’

December 13, 2017 / Diane Henders / 45 Comments

So there we were, stumbling across frozen ground in the darkness carrying a powerful flashlight and a digging fork… and Hubby turns to me and says, “This is going to be a blog post, isn’t it?”

Yes; yes it is.

Why were we apparently robbing graves in the dark of night, you ask? Well, I’m pretty sure it’s my dad’s fault.

He loved potatoes, and we had them for nearly every meal. Every now and then my mom would sneak in a bit of rice or pasta; but as my dad tactfully explained, “That was okay, but I wouldn’t want it every year.” I love potatoes, too, and most of our meals include the humble spud.

But the other night Hubby came into the kitchen where I was making gravy and announced, “You know we’re out of potatoes, right?”

My jaw dropped in horror. What?

WHAAAT?!?

We had roast beef. With gravy. And NO POTATOES? I turned off the heat under the gravy pot and marched toward the door.

“Please tell me we’re not going out to the garden,” he said.

“Of course we are. We have gravy. We need potatoes.”

“It’s pitch dark, and the ground is starting to freeze.”

“I don’t care. We need potatoes.”

Which led to the aforementioned jacklighting of potatoes. As it turned out, it was remarkably similar to grave robbing since some of the hills were a little on the rotten side; but we did end up with enough good potatoes to soak up our gravy. Whew. Crisis averted.

Later in the week I was waiting my turn in the insurance office, playing Scrabble on my phone to pass the time. It’s a point of pride for me to win – in all the time I’ve had it, the app has only beaten me once.

I was down to three tiles, so I knew the game was almost over. I hadn’t seen the Q (worth 10 points) yet, which meant the app had it. By then there was no way the app could win – I was already beating it by nearly a hundred points. But I really wanted to stick it with that Q.

I had three letters left, and there was only one place where I could unload them all at once.

But I hesitated. The available letter on the board was C.

And I had U, N, and T.

I’ve already mentioned my profoundly Canadian habit of never using foul language in public even though I’m actually a complete potty-mouth.

I was in public. And it was a really rude word.

It wasn’t as though I was going to stand up and yell it out at the top of my lungs, but still. My Canadian conditioning runs deep.

I stared at the board.

Sneaked a surreptitious glance around the waiting room to make sure nobody could see my screen.

Then I snickered inwardly and unloaded the dirty word that ended the game. But I felt as though I should apologize to the little old lady beside me, just in case she’d seen it.

…But then again, if she was as Canadian as I was, theoretically her private vocabulary was just as colourful as mine.

Any dubious victories in your world this week?

Mactac, Mullets, and Manure

November 1, 2017November 1, 2017 / Diane Henders / 30 Comments

Anybody remember the Mactac of the 60s and 70s? Maybe you knew it by another name, but it was all the same thing: adhesive-backed vinyl printed with colourful graphics.

I suspect that people with taste avoided Mactac like the plague it was; but out in the sticks where I grew up, the only taste we had was in our mouths. Every questionable surface in our house got covered with either woodgrain print or sparkly gold paisley on white.

It actually looked okay for a while. But then the adhesive deteriorated and the vinyl curled up, creating tattered edges that looked as though rodents had been gnawing them and leaving a sticky residue that defied any attempt to clean it off or reglue it.

My love affair with Mactac faded when I realized that it inevitably suffered a slow and ugly demise, and the last time I applied adhesive-backed vinyl to anything was in the late 70s.

Until this week.

We needed a cheap-and-cheerful solution for a kitchen backsplash until our construction budget recovers enough to upgrade our kitchen counters. So the other day I was walking through the store when some pretty glass tiles caught my eye, for less than half the price I’d expected.

Yep, adhesive-backed vinyl had reared its deceptively attractive head. It’s even embossed with grout lines like real glass tile, and it’s insanely sticky.

I succumbed. I’m really hoping it doesn’t curl up and die like the old-school stuff.

Looks like glass… smells like vinyl.

That blast from the past made me think about other oldies that are new again… like the mullet haircut. If you’re not familiar with the mullet, it was an 80s hairstyle trimmed short around the face and ears, with the rest of the hair left long in back. The instant the 80s were over everyone restyled their hair and pretended they’d never worn a mullet. Overnight, it went from a fashion statement to a joke.

I had a mullet haircut back in the 80s, and I even wore it for a while after everybody else started laughing about it. I loved that haircut. It was comfortable and practical: I had the long hair I loved, but it wasn’t in my face. I still don’t understand why it became so universally despised.

But apparently it’s in style again for young male hipsters and Millenials. So I wasn’t unfashionable; I was only a few decades early… and the wrong gender. Details, pshaw.

On to our next M-word: Manure. We got a giant load for our garden so of course I had to share it with you, my beloved readers.

Why, you ask? (I’m hoping that’s a ‘why?’ of guarded curiosity, not an anguished cry of ‘oh, sweet Lord, why?!?’)

Well, it seemed appropriate since I’m usually full of shit; but ultimately it’s because I couldn’t resist the punchline:

Mactac, mullets, and manure… you don’t want to get any of them on you.

18,000 pounds of horseshit. That’s more than I usually manage to pack into a post.

I’m A Rock Star!

September 6, 2017August 19, 2020 / Diane Henders / 36 Comments

Don’t worry; it’s safe to stick around – I promise not to sing. I wouldn’t do that to you. Hell, I wouldn’t do that to my worst enemy.

No; my rock-stardom isn’t related to music (for which we can all be thankful). It’s related to… well… rocks.

Our new home site is basically a gravel pit, which is good for a house foundation but not so good for gardening nuts like us. The rocks are so plentiful and so interlocked that you can’t even dig into the “soil” here with a shovel – you have to bash it apart with a pickaxe or hoe.

Or…

You can dig it up with power tools, woohoo!

My latest toy (rented, sadly – it’s a little too pricey to own).

Playing with an excavator is a blast for a gearhead and toolaholic like me, but my excavating services won’t be in demand anytime soon. After the first hour, I could make the machine do what I wanted about 90% of the time… if I worked with intense concentration and at the pace of a crippled snail.

The secret to not causing major damage with an excavator is: If anything goes wrong, TAKE BOTH HANDS OFF THE CONTROLS. (That stops everything from moving.) But I’ve spent far too many years operating tools and vehicles where you NEVER take both hands off the controls.

So when things went awry on the excavator I usually remembered to let go with my right hand; but my left hand clung stubbornly to the joystick, causing some amusing and occasionally alarming gyrations. But hey, I didn’t wreck anything – I only knocked over one little aluminium garden stake; pshaw. And I did get the grade the way I wanted it.

One of our projects was contouring the rhododendron garden before I started hand-placing rocks and wheelbarrowing soil:

About half done. Only a few more tons of rock and soil to go…

The paper sunshades are to ensure that our poor little rhodos don’t fry in the 33C/90F weather we’ve had lately. The wheelbarrow and pickaxe and hoe and shovel are to ensure that I sweat enough to look as though somebody dumped a bucket of water over my head before rolling me in gravel dust.

A couple of days ago I dragged my filthy-but-triumphant self into the coolness of the house and announced to Hubby, “I’m totally rockin’ that garden! I am a rock star!”

He chuckled. “Do you want help?”

“No, thanks. I have a system. I load up some rocks, wheelbarrow some soil, then go and get my rocks…” I paused, grinning at his widening smirk. “…off.”

Which, of course, was a nod to my favourite rock stars from long ago, Dr. Hook. Even clowning around (or maybe especially clowning around), those guys were amazing musicians. A few decades later, Dennis Locorriere (the guitarist and usual lead singer) is better than ever. Sadly, Billy Francis (the singer for this song and, um… ‘exotic’ dancer) went to the big jam session in the sky in 2010, but the scenery was mighty fine back in 1975 when this video was recorded! (Relaxed-fit jeans must have been a male designer’s idea.) 😉

So… this week I’ll be rockin’ to ‘Get My Rocks Off’ while I rock my garden.

Rock on!

Oh, Deer!

July 5, 2017 / Diane Henders / 54 Comments

Last week I mentioned that mice were infiltrating our house; but we’re also keeping a hostile eye on the deer that are zeroing in on our garden.

Now, don’t get me wrong; I like deer… in venison pepperoni, with a side of fries…

I’m kidding. (Okay, not really; venison pepperoni is delicious. But unless I was really hungry I wouldn’t bother killing a deer just for pepperoni.)

Anyhow, when we bought our beautiful little corner of the wilderness we intended to put an 8’ deer fence around our garden. That was supposed to have happened a couple of months before the garden was planted, but despite our persistent efforts we still don’t have a fence. The contractor might finally get it started next week. Welcome to Island Time.

Fortunately there aren’t many deer around our place, but every now and then one wanders in… like the one I caught grazing on the grass (fortunately not on my peas or beans) this weekend.

I opened the front door and yelled, “HEY DEER, GET LOST!”

The deer stared, and a thought bubble appeared above its head: “What the…?”

“I SAID GET LOST!” I strode purposefully toward the garden, expecting the deer to run as soon as it saw me leave the house. After all, its counterparts in Alberta flee at the barest glimpse of a human. But apparently Island deer are braver. Or dumber, or both.

It stood gawping at me as if it couldn’t quite believe I had the nerve to interrupt its dinner. And it didn’t run.

Finally when I was only about 20 yards away it deigned to trot a few paces to the west. Not away from me, mind you, but laterally; giving ground but refusing to stoop to an undignified retreat.

But the deer was the only one burdened with dignity. I broke into a gallop over the uneven ground, waving my arms and bellowing, “RUN YA LITTLE BASTARD! RUN! HRAAAGH!!!”

After a single incredulous glance the deer took to its heels, but it still didn’t run flat-out. When I started gaining on it, it finally put on a proper burst of speed and vanished over the berm that surrounds our property, undoubtedly to meet its friends in the forest and describe the wack-job that had just chased it.

And wack-job I was; because I had been in the middle of a construction project. I was wearing safety goggles; my earmuff hearing protectors had gotten tangled up in my hair so they flopped and bounced (painfully, I might add) off the side of my head; and it was hot so I’d tucked my T-shirt up inside my bra, exposing my pasty white belly.

Seeing that apparition advancing, it’s no wonder the poor damn deer didn’t know what to do. It was probably laughing too hard to be capable of running. But my garden is still intact. So far.

I sure hope we get our deer fence installed this week – the snickering from the forest is starting to get to me.

Know of any good deer deterrents (that aren’t rated by calibre)?

* * *

P.S. Woohoo! I have a draft cover for Book 12, and preorders should be available shortly. Stay tuned! But… I can’t decide on a title. What do you think?

Here’s the draft of the cover blurb:

Reluctant secret agent Aydan Kelly is posing as an arms dealer when her gangland buyer is implicated in a deadly plot to attack Remembrance Day services.

Partnered with an agent she can’t trust, Aydan races against time to stop the terrorists; but her partner’s volatile temper might blow the whole op… if it doesn’t kill her first. And when she discovers her lover is embroiled in the case, Aydan must decide: Will she sacrifice him to save hundreds of innocent lives?

Have your say:

Hedge-Sabres And Sky-Mice

April 13, 2016April 13, 2016 / Diane Henders / 41 Comments

We watched Star Wars Episode VII a few days ago. I’m not a rabid Star Wars fan, yet I still found myself re-enacting the epic lightsabre battle in my front yard for the amusement (or possibly bemusement) of the neighbours.

It started with a shrub.

Our house is one of those crappy layouts with vehicle access from the front, resulting in an unattractive “garage-with-house-attached” look. Most of our front yard is occupied by the concrete driveway, but we’ve created a perennial bed beside it. The bed contains a bunch of flowering plants, plus a single cotoneaster shrub that I keep trimmed to a manageable size.

The cotoneaster is not, however, in a convenient location. The driveway is on one side and there’s a stepping-stone path on the other, but the shrub is smack in the middle, just out of comfortable reach.

Enter me, stage left, wielding an electric hedge trimmer.

I had two choices: step into the perennial bed to get close enough to use the hedge trimmer with both hands the way it was meant to be operated… or balance precariously on one leg while leaning over to decapitate the cotoneaster with one-handed swipes of my deadly hedge-sabre.

Yeah, you know which one I chose. (For the record, about the worst time to get the giggles is when you’re balanced on one leg, flailing around with a power tool that’s capable of shearing off twigs the diameter of your finger. Fortunately I managed to escape a well-deserved painful injury.)

We also have a small decorative pond and waterfall in front of the house. We take the pump out for the winter, but the piping remains year-round. Somehow the water in the pipes manages to get stagnant and stinky even though it’s been frozen solid for six months, so we usually restart the pump on a breezy day. Even so, the area around the front of our house always reeks for a few hours.

The pond last spring. It looks benign, but don’t inhale for a day or so…

So imagine me, surrounded by stink and locked in a duel to the death with the cotoneaster, then add this to your ridiculous mental image: a swarm of frenzied sky mice swooping and chirping around me.

What are sky mice, you ask? Maybe you’ve heard pigeons described as ‘sky rats’; I call sparrows ‘sky mice’. They’re just as annoying, useless, and prolific as pigeons, just not as big. (I exclude song sparrows from this category – I’m talking about Chipping Sparrows, the little brown-capped guys that relentlessly repeat the same strident tuneless chirp from dawn to dusk. It’s like a dentist’s drill to the eardrum.)

The Chipping Sparrows love our pond, our sheltering trees and shrubs, and the bird-friendly seed and berry plants in my garden. I enjoy watching them through the window, but outside their incessant chirping drives me nuts. I once christened a scare owl ‘Rodney’ because he got no respect from the sky mice, but they don’t respect me, either.

Maybe I oughta go after them with my hedge-sabre. There’s a tiny chance that it might throw a scare into them, but more likely they’d just crack up with birdy giggles that sound just like their regular irritating chirp, only more derisive. They’re laughing at me, I know it.

Then again, considering my performance a few days ago, I can hardly blame them…

P.S. The Virtual Backyard Book Club kicks off today! Please click here or use the new Book Club button in the right-hand sidebar to join me on my virtual backyard patio for introductions! (I’m still ironing out the last of the wrinkles, so please bear with me…)

UPDATE: Speaking of wrinkles… If you tried to access the Book Club site and got stymied with logins and passwords, that was my fault. I messed up the settings, but they’re fixed now – please try again. I’m very sorry for the inconvenience! 😦

Attack Of The Killer T… Oh, Wait; That’s Been Done.

September 16, 2015 / Diane Henders / 49 Comments

They’re coming. They slowly fill our house like an inexorable tide, backing us into the corners while we battle them with knives and saucepans…

Okay; so they’re not exactly ‘killer’ tomatoes.

We’re about to get our first hard frost so we brought in most of the garden produce this past weekend. (The snow in August was just a warning. This time they’re serious: Predicting -4C. Brrr.)

We measure the production of our garden in gallons because we transport it all home in 5-gallon pails. Our weekend haul was 10 gallons of green tomatoes (fortunately they ripen easily indoors), 15 gallons of carrots, and 60 gallons of potatoes. We could probably feed a small town.

But we can’t help ourselves. Every year I say to Hubby, “You know, we’re planting an awful lot of potatoes.”

And he says, “Uh-huh”, and keeps on planting.

I don’t really try to stop him. For a foodie like me, a plethora of potatoes is pretty close to heaven. When we dig them in the fall, Hubby maintains a stoic silence while I exclaim: “Oh, wow, look at this one! Now that’s a potato! Look at the size of this one! Oh, look, look, there are tons of them under here! Woohoo!” On and on I go with boundless enthusiasm until we’ve extracted the last tuber. You’d think I’d never seen a potato before.

It’s the same with the zucchini and tomatoes and beans and everything else throughout the summer. Chortling over the plenitude of produce, I drag Hubby hither and yon in the garden babbling, “Look at this one! And this one! Look how big/shiny/beautiful/(fill in superlative here) this one is!”

It’s not until I’m into the umpteenth hour of standing in the kitchen chopping and blanching and canning that the thrill begins to fade.

Yes, that is a 10-gallon pot full of carrots.

That’s when I begin to remind myself that there are three supermarkets within a mile of my house. I could just trot over and buy whatever I wanted throughout the winter instead of going to all this trouble. And if I wanted to ogle large quantities of vegetables I could go and stand in the produce department.

But it’s not the same. They’re not my vegetables. Supermarket potatoes are generic. Ours are Norlands and Vikings and Purple Caribes and French Fingerlings and Yukon Gems. We line them up and do taste tests and debate production levels with the seriousness of a UN conference. (Potato taste-test winners thus far are the French Fingerlings and Norlands, but more testing is required.)

And despite my aching back, I know that in a few months I’ll eagerly yield to the seduction of the hortiporn once again.

Hey, if it made sense it wouldn’t be a hobby, right?

* * *

P.S. Just because I know you’ve come to expect dirty jokes on my blog, here you go:

Q: Why do gardeners make excellent gossip columnists?

A: Because they’re always digging up dirt.

And:

Q: Why did the gardeners get kicked out of the church picnic?

A: Because they were telling dirty stories.

And finally:

Did you hear about the 1-900 line for gardeners? When you call in, a happy hoer will talk dirty for you.

I could go on, but I wouldn’t want WordPress to censor me again for all these dirty jokes…

Cremation, Cucurbits, And Coc… Erm… ‘Roosters’

September 2, 2015 / Diane Henders / 66 Comments

This week’s silliness comes to you courtesy of my friend and long-suffering employee, David, who went to considerable effort to snap the following photo for me:

Ummm…. Okay… There’s an unexpected combo…

This is why David and I have worked together so well for so long: a complete meeting of minds over all things even remotely humorous. We laughed ourselves silly(er). Cremation and hospitality? Is there a brew pub in the basement so you can suck back a few pints after immolating the mortal remains of your loved ones? Or maybe they rent out the chapel for weddings and bar mitzvahs in between memorial services?

I guess it could be worse, though. My mind immediately leaped to other unfortunate potential combinations like ‘Cremation and Wild-West Weenie Roast’, but maybe that’s too tasteless entirely. (And there’s nothing worse than a tasteless weenie.)

Speaking of weenies, last week I speculated that my zucchini might have suffered shrinkage due to the frosty outdoor temperatures. Eh, no. Not even close.

Just as plump and perky as ever (the zukes, not me).

I realize these are nothing compared to the behemoths that grow in more temperate climates, but those gardeners know better than to turn their backs on a zucchini plant for two weeks at a time. I shoved these bad boys into the downstairs fridge, and when I went down to check on them the next day they’d wedged themselves against the door in a bid for freedom. I’m pretty sure they’re still growing. Maybe the researchers who developed Viagra should be studying zucchini right about now.

Anyway, floating along this stream of consciousness…

I spotted this on my walk yesterday:

Yes, that says ‘Rooster Scented Jasmine Rice’

For those of us who grew up on a farm, this brings to mind (or rather ‘to nose’) a far-too-vivid image. Have you ever smelled a rooster? Nasty. Just nasty.

But it could have been worse. They might have used a synonym for ‘rooster’. I’d love to see the reactions of passersby if they’d been advertising ‘Cock Scented Rice’.

Maybe you think I’m reaching a bit with that thought, but I assure you I’m not. This fine product is available from Amazon if your local grocery doesn’t carry it: http://www.amazon.com/Grace-Cock-Flavored-Soup-Mix/dp/B002Q46EH6

Yes, this is a real food product.

And speaking of Amazon, I just had to share a capture of the screen that displayed when I looked up the soup mix. Note the ‘Also-Viewed’ offerings: ‘50 Ways to Eat Cock: Healthy Chicken Recipes With Balls’, and ‘Aunty‘s Spotted Dick Pudding’.

Amazon has a dirtier mind than I do.

Ahem.

As usual, my stream of consciousness has carried me far past the point where I should have paddled hurriedly ashore and portaged past the treacherous bits.

So, leaving behind the sordid beginnings of this post, I’ll finish off with something bearing no connection to cremation, cucurbits, or cocks. (Though, come to think of it, it does include two out of three of those. Dang, if I’d had Aydan eating zucchini instead of peas from her garden I could’ve scored the trifecta.)

Anyway, voilà: I’ve finally finished another cover update. This one’s for Book 3: Reach For The Spy:

Quite a change from the original, but I didn’t feel comfortable pointing even an unloaded weapon at my photographer friends.

Snow And Shrinkage

August 26, 2015October 2, 2018 / Diane Henders / 39 Comments

So it snowed on Friday. Yes, in mid-August: http://www.cbc.ca/news/trending/summer-snowfall-near-calgary-greeted-with-only-in-alberta-sentiment-1.3200450

Only a couple of weeks ago we hit the hottest temperature in 110 years of recorded Calgary temperatures: 34 degrees Celsius (93F). I know that’s not terribly hot compared to the rest of the world, but we thought we were going to melt. Then Friday morning it started dumping down rain, a north wind blew in, and by 4 PM it was 1.5 degrees Celsius (34.7 F) and… yes, snowing.

Leaping to the rescue of our veggies, Hubby and I drove to our garden outside town, where we pulled out our three big 30×40 tarps and covered most of one garden (the potatoes and onions had to fend for themselves). When I mentioned I was thinking of burrowing under the tarps to pick a couple of zucchinis before they got too big, Hubby replied, “No, don’t worry, they’ll shrink in this cold weather.” I promptly snorted tea through my nose at the mental image of shrivelled, flaccid zukes huddled shivering under the tarp.

Which, of course, reminded me of this scene from Seinfeld.

And while I’m in that, erm… area, let me tell you about the gigantic rod of hot meat I got in my Brazilian last night. It was amazing! It just kept coming and coming until I was so sore and exhausted I had to beg for mercy…

Wait, why are you looking at me like that? I was talking about a Brazilian barbeque restaurant. What did you think?

Yes, we went to Bolero for dinner last night: a meat-lovers’ heaven. Fixed price, all you can eat. There’s a salad bar, too, but don’t be distracted from the main event (which my friend Laurie terms ‘meatatarianism’). The servers keep bringing gigantic skewers of barbequed meat to carve at your table until you beg them to stop. Last night it was bacon-wrapped filet mignon, garlic parmesan sirloin, habanero pork loin, lamb shoulder, bacon-wrapped chicken, and a few others I can’t remember, including some squares of amazing grilled halloumi (Arabic cheese that has a very high melting point), and absolutely delicious grilled pineapple. Yes, I was in pain afterward, but it was so worth it!

Meanwhile, I’m slowly resurfacing into real life after my burial in the last-minute minutiae of releasing Spy Away Home. Emerging dazed and blinking, I’m looking around and realizing I haven’t done anything silly for a very long time (unless you consider gorging on meat to the point of pain to be silly).

This needs to be remedied – I don’t dare let my silliness levels drop too low or I’ll wake up some day to find myself dressed in a suit, sitting at a boardroom table and nodding seriously while somebody drones on about ‘leveraging synergies’ or some shit.

So please help me out here: What’s your favourite silly activity, one that’s guaranteed to make you laugh?

Oh, and in the mean time, here’s a little gem I found on Facebook that helps explain our attitude to snow in August:

P.S. Spy Away Home is now available for pre-order at all retailers – click here for links. Release date September 4, 2015!

Doing The Crabapple Tango

September 3, 2014 / Diane Henders / 27 Comments

Don’t worry, it’s safe to read this post – the Crabapple Tango is nothing like the Green Apple Two-Step. I won’t even mention diarrhea. (Okay, technically I just did, but that’s all for this post.)

Most people have probably never heard of the Crabapple Tango, but anyone with a fruit tree knows what I’m talking about.

First you need a fruit-laden tree and a stepladder. Ideally, the tree will have been pruned by an irresponsible orangutan with the express intention of creating an impenetrable mat of tough branches garnished with millions of spiky twigs.

Like all fine dance performances, proper preparation begins months in advance. Throughout the summer the tree should be repeatedly drenched with road dust, pollen, tiny black bugs with an affinity for human mucous membranes, and that particular brand of sticky dirt that’s peculiar to apple trees.

The crabapples must be at that precise pinnacle of ripeness whereby half of them rain down upon the performer’s head at the slightest disturbance of the branches, but the rest are so firmly attached that it’s necessary to twist and yank them loose. This sets up the proper blend of tension/release in the dance.

As always, stage layout is critical. The ground beneath the tree should never be flat or level. And the tree should be jammed in the inside corner of a five-foot tall fence, making it impossible to safely access it from any angle.

Ideally, the Crabapple Tango should be performed on a windy day in bright sun. This adds to the entertainment value while the audience waits to see whether the performer will be thrown bodily from the tree by wind-tossed limbs or merely blinded by looking directly into the sun while reaching for the topmost branches.

Once all is prepared, it’s time to introduce the star of the performance.

Me.

Yes, the crabapples were ripe this weekend, so that was my cue to drag out our stepladder and attempt to inflict grievous injury upon myself. Fortunately I failed, but anyone watching would have given me points for trying.

I had the requisite sun and wind, and after picking everything I could reach from the ground I took to the ladder to reach the apples twelve feet up.

Having suffered abrasions to both epidermis and equanimity while contorting myself through the web of branches, I poised precariously on the second-from-the-top step. With one thick branch pressing into my stomach and another crushing my kidneys, I made a 90-degree pivot, locking myself between the branches… just as the wind gusted.

Trees move in the wind. A lot. And their branches don’t move as a unit. More like scissors, actually.

Balanced on one foot on the ladder, I performed my most emotive tango yet, arching and dipping and twisting. I managed to escape, but it was a near thing.

And the whole time I was thinking, “I don’t need all these crabapples. I don’t even want all these crabapples.” But I was powerless to stop the dance, possibly because I was brought up to never waste food, or maybe just because I’m an idiot.

But I’ve got almost four bushels of crabapples to show for it.

Anybody got some new crabapple recipes? I’ve got jelly, jam, applesauce, apple butter, cider, spiced crabapples, cake, muffins, and pie…

* * *

P.S. I was the irresponsible orangutan who pruned the tree. Next year I’m going to wait until the apples are ready and then just go up the tree with my saw to do my pruning and picking all in one efficient act. Juggling a sharp object on an unstable ladder… what could possibly go wrong?

A Grizzly Attempt At Humour

July 30, 2014 / Diane Henders / 32 Comments

I made a scary discovery this past weekend.

Our garden is out in the wilderness so we’re always wary of bears, particularly in early spring when they’re hungry and grumpy and in late fall when they’re foraging for enough food to last them through hibernation. This has led to me regularly jettisoning my dignity as described here: https://blog.dianehenders.com/2013/08/28/scuse-my-bear-behind/.

But it’s mid-summer, so I’ve been starting to relax a bit. I figured by now the bears would have moved on to higher ground, and it would be too early for them to be coming down around our place searching for winter provisions.

How wrong I was. I had just finished strolling happily through the woods to my garden when one of our neighbours came by and stopped to chat. “Be careful,” says he. “Fish and Wildlife says there are seven grizzly bears in our area right now.”

Seven? SEVEN GRIZZLIES?!?!

Yikes!!!

Needless to say, my trip back through the woods was accompanied by a wildly swivelling head, a sweaty hand on my canister of bear spray, and embarrassingly high-pitched off-key singing.

That might have been pretty funny to a casual onlooker, but it’s old news to anybody who’s read my blog for a while. None of you expect me to exhibit any kind of dignity or decorum anyway, so when I started to plan this blog post I thought, “Let’s see, what can I say about grizzly bears that’s new and funny?”

Y’know what? I got nothing. Nothing is funny about grizzly bears. Grizzly bears scare the shit out of me. If I ever met one in the woods, and I sincerely hope I don’t, I’d probably kak my drawers on the spot.

Nature may abhor a vacuum (though I’ve never understood Mother Nature’s objection to cleaning tools), but my nature abhors any situation in which I can’t find some humour. So my renegade brain immediately leaped to the challenge of making grizzly bears funny. Maybe a grizzly bear in silly clothes?

Eh, maybe not. There’s something about all those claws and teeth that just takes the giggles right out of it.

But then I thought, “Maybe I’ve got it all wrong. After all, grizzly bears must have their problems like everybody else, right?”

And this happened:

*After I drew this I realized it may be another Canadianism, so I decided to provide a bit of explanation for anyone who’s not from around here. ‘Does a black bear shit in the woods?’ is a rhetorical question that translates to ‘Hell, yes!’ Example:

Friend: “Do you want to go for a beer?” Me: “Does a black bear shit in the woods?”

So what do you think? Grizzlies: Tragic heroes of their own lives, trapped in fur suits and destined to be forever misunderstood? Or big-ass scary mo-fos with no sense of humour whatsoever?

I’m leaning toward the latter…

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The deadline is almost here for draw winners to contact me. Lee-Ann, if you’re out there, please email me before Friday or I’ll have to draw a different winner for the Spy Now, Pay Later signed paperback. Thanks!