Ah, September. I love how it ushers in transition like nobody's business. Out with the old. I'm back in the masters program now, which means commuting in the city a couple days a week, reconnecting with writer friends and constantly reading and writing. It was a bit of a challenging month because extra responsibilities at the kiosk fell to me right when I needed them the least, and when everyone (myself definitely included) was burnt out from an intense and adrenaline-heavy summer. I've spent the month training staff to take over some of my jobs and just letting go of the uncontrollable.
School so far has been really inspiring and stimulating. I'm studying with Annabel Lyon and Andreas Schrodder this year, two writers who I respect and admire a lot. There's momentum for sure. I've started my thesis book and feel like I'm writing endless pieces on top of that. It feels good to be immersed in it again. I think the intensity of the summer has taught me a lot about how to charge into the work I need to do, and to conserve energy where need be. Whoever thinks non-creative work doesn't overlap into the arts is foolish. It all lends to each other if you let it. I was given a decent sum of money from the university and the BC Arts Council to keep on with it, which was much appreciated, and how a masters  degree should be I think.
The only bad thing I can say about September is that I had a bad fall the other night. I fell down our hardwood stairs with water glasses in my hand, and I bashed my back up and the glasses broke in my hand. I went into shock and was hysterical for too long until my parents had to help us at midnight. We're still cleaning blood from the furniture and finding shards of glass throughout the house, and I'm pretty bruised and sore.
Otherwise the month has been mostly home-bodied. We've had some good dinners on the beach with a fire and friends, a big surprise birthday party for a good friend, house guests, lots of good meals and time outside. Losing daylight rapidly has such an effect in this house, beachside with big bright windows. We haven't quite figured out how to function properly when the sun goes down. We don't even have enough lamps to function in the huge open room on the main floor, so we often find ourselves upstairs in bed, reading or talking way too early. When the moon is bright, we know it. When it's dark we know it. There haven't been clouds in the sky, such a strange phenomenon here, and I feel like we've been at the mercy of nature a little. But we have three cords of wood under the deck ready for the change in the season and a winter garden underway in the yard.

tobacco in bloom

We're heading to Ottawa and Montreal in a few days, which is mighty exciting. We haven't been back since we left for good. It feels like it's been a long time. more than a year and a half. I've written a lot about Montreal, especially Saint Henri. throughout the last year. I didn't write much at all in Montreal which was really hard, so I'm glad to make something of it in retrospect. Somedays when I really think about Montreal, the mundane details like going grocery shopping, taking the metro and walking along the canal, I'm overwhelmed with nostalgia. Sometimes the time out East seems like a strange dream that I'm not necessarily eager to return to but that captivates me nonetheless. So I'm excited to go back and walk around the city for a couple of days, and to be able to show the old sights to a cognizant Sebastian Henri. We're also definitely looking forward to relaxing in Ottawa, taking advantage of eager grandparents for some time together, spending some time in a city, watching Sebastian connect with his part of the family he doesn't often see. I think he's getting excited too. 

 Rain just won't come. How strange to look out the window and see dry grass, wilting garden. It's uncommon here, to say the least, to see no rain for as long as we have. But without thinking of the rainless forecast for days to come, it's been a lovely month of more sunshine than I can ever remember on the West Coast. The crops that we grew as experiment, ones which normally would never flourish here, have been filling our shirt tails and baskets: watermelon, cucumbers, tobacco, peppers and more tomatoes than we've ever seen. The brassicas and blackberries struggle. A strange season for sure. We've been living off the garden more than we anticipated for our first year here, and enjoying the bounty of the farmers market, especially the goat cheese and winter squash now coming in. 

 


 

 

oh yes, we love our Poppy

Oh, to be two!

Sebastian turned the big 0-2 last weekend. He brought in the day with an early morning present-opening (a wooden kitchen set and a watering can!) then headed off for breakfast with me and "Ba-pa" Doug donning a card that sang "Celebrate good times!" which he opened and danced to approximately one thousand times throughout the meal. In the late afternoon the party guests began to arrive, and within ten minutes the long-awaited celebration (which we had talked about many times, listing all the people who would be coming and how many "big naps" it would be until the party) was overwhelming and perturbing him. He chased me around the house and garden asked to be picked up as I put the finishing touches on the meal I'd cooked over twenty people. Eventually he realized what was going on, and relaxed. There was much playing, eating and laughing. If anything, that day was a day all for him, during which he must have realized without a doubt that he is loved and celebrated by many, many people. 

His new art easel.

A quiet moment before the guests arrived.

Birthday "bumps" in the fish taco parade wagon. 

The long-awaited birthday "piieee!"

Uncle "Nomi," a dump truck, and a helmet. 

Family portrait in evening, with a two-year-old.

The Backyard Bounty

After a stretch of sunshine, the gardens are stabilizing. The Farmers' Market is filling out: gooseberries, raspberries, fresh garlic, broccoli, zucchinis as well as the usual suspects. Wednesdays in the Creek are becoming a tradition; Sebi and I bring a basket and some cash and stock up as much as we can. The only reason is we go to the store anymore is for nuts, the odd watermelon (we can't help ourselves), milk and cheese. Otherwise, we've stocked up at the food co-op and are trying to eat way more brown rice and beans to match our veggies. This is kind of diet used to be so unappealing to me, but I've come around. There's nothing some spices, chipoltle mayo, soya sauce or an avocado can't spruce up. It's also an exercise of strategy and creative cooking. And of course, sacrifice.

Even with the garden underway, we still can't rely on it. We baby the plants. At dusk we drown slugs, we water squash so carefully to avoid powdery mildew, and we built contraptions for the tomatoes, tobacco and cucumbers to trap heat. We see entire rows of kale and beets devoured overnight by a handful of wood bugs or one tiny slug. We can't rely on our garden yet. It will get better and better with the years, as we build the soil up, save seeds, hone our knowledge. We had a late start with moving mid-April and a wet spring, but there will always be wet springs. Or dry springs and wet summers. Or wet both, or dry both. Right now we're lucky if the garden supplements the farmers' bounty. We get a handful of raspberries from the path, or a few sweet peas or some stalks of kale. Later we will get more,  onions, potatoes, squash and tomatoes, but not now. Right now, we're turning to the native plants that thrive in wet springs, or mild summers, no matter what the West Coast throws at them, they can adapt. We have a huge salal bush in the yard (you know, the dark glossy leaves often found in bouquets) and as the berries ripen you realize you're crazy to spend the day hunched over the raspberry spindles, watering, mulching, slug-picking when you have an abundance of berries right there, thriving. They taste like grapes and wild blueberries, a tad chewy and a bit fuzzy, but you adapt. We find native blackberries buried under morning glory on the edge of the yard, and find they are so good, lemony somehow. So we pick them, freeze them, store them for a big berry mix in the freezer. We go out to the shady forests and pick huckle berries for hours. We spend the afternoon in the cherry tree and eat well for days. Next will be blackberries, that rampant, aggressive, thorny weed that blesses the West Coast all over.  Is it perfect? No. We have to leave a lot for the birds, bears and the plants themselves. We get caught road-side without water and have to eat half our bowl. We sit with children on our laps and try to ignore their little hands shovelling berries into their mouths as we pick. But man, it's satisfying, and on the best of days, even bountiful.

Sebastian's imagination is roaming these days. He talks about impossibles that quickly become truths around the house. For example, Sebastian and Poppy go to work together in their "car-car" and we have to bid them farewell. This usually happens on Sunday, the one day of solid family time for us. I say, "Hey Sebi, neither Mama or Papa have to go to work today!" and he replies, with a serious look, that he in fact is heading off with Poppy. Fair enough. He also works with Shed staff in various awesome places, such as "sky!" or "in a boat!" At first some Mom-guilt set in about his boundless imagination settling on the mundane, work of all things, but I quickly realized it's a form of mimicking and relating, and it's fine. 

Work is a big topic around here, though, especially this summer. When I'm not down at the taco stand on the weekend, Sebastian often has to endure my long phone conversations about Shed logistics, stock orders, or run out with me mid-day when I'm not supposed to be working. There are other sorts of work, too, of course. Laundry, cooking, gardening, cleaning and so on. And emails to UBC, bouts of editing and reading for my freelance stuff. Alex is working four days a week on Keats as well, and throughout the day Sebi often checks in with me to makes sure that Papa is in fact at work. 

He doesn't ever seem frustrated about all this work, although the transition back into the summer schedule made him clingy for a couple of weeks. We make sure to lay as low as possible whenever we can. Most days we play in the garden or go for walks. I like to think it keeps us sane.