June camping and and and

I will miss a lot but here are the June highlights.  Our grand-daughter's first riding lessons week was delightful to watch.  She also caught her quota of fish.  She missed a week of  Kindergarten but learned a lot of real-life stuff.  She even got brave enough to bonk the trout and cut off the head.  Gutting is still not her job but she will watch it now.  

The first day of Nolan's week of playing hooky from school had turbulent weather.   He usually has luck with praying to the weather gods. :)  The first day was cancelled though due to lightning.  However the sky cleared to go back up the hill (behind his head in this picture) and catch more fish.  This is the second day as he practiced his arm circles while moving forward.

He worked on his homework while I did laundry at our suite.  It is also an easier place to clean fish as there is fresh running water. 

He got to go kayaking also as another friend came with kayaks and took him.  They left the kayaks for us to use anytime that week.  That was an unexpected treat.  They also came with a load of wood and visited often in the evenings.  He happily went home with a quota of trout for transporting.  

After we returned him to his father I invited a single mother and her daughter to visit the camp.  The daughter caught her first fish and also went kayaking.  She was so proud of herself.  She cooked on the fire and had a delightful time.  On Saturday I kept her overnight so her mother could have a break.  But all good things must come to an end and you are only supposed to camp at these wilderness recreational sites for 2 weeks at a time and we had been there 3 weeks.  So the big job of returning the RV to the village and cleaning it out had to be done. Then one of my former students, a special needs girl, invited me to her graduation.  She also got a scholarship to go to the nearest big college in the fall.  She is relishing the thought of independent living.  Here she is on the big day with her supportive cousin.

June is a busy month.  Father's Day weekend is also the local rodeo weekend and it is kick-started with a charming small town parade, led by an RCMP officer in full regalia.  

The grandchildrens' riding instructor also entered a horse group in the parade.  We just watched it go by down our street in lawn chairs out front.  That is our rv parked on the other side of the street.

My favourites are also the pipe bands.  It stirs something in my celtic soul.

I will do the rest of June at a later date.  

Been away a month

I actually thought about not blogging anymore because I had been away so long.  Then my fingers and brain got itchy to write.  I also needed to see what you folk out there had been doing.  So I think the best way for all of us, is to do a quick pictorial of May and then two of June.  I have been camping for over three weeks this time and am now at home for a week with Internet access.  So here are some May photos.  

  I gave out carnations and baby's breath to mothers/grand-mothers/great-grandmothers on Mother's Day Sunday at church.  The leftovers came back to me.

May's lilacs were lovely, scenting the village.  The pioneers who first settled here during the gold rush, must have missed this shrub from their homelands, as they are everywhere.  I went up and down the alleys of the village to pick these that hung over fences.  My mother painted lilacs on the limoge china vase for Old Man Watching and was painting his favorite flower on it when she died.  It needed another firing but Old Man liked it the way it was.  She was making it for a Christmas present but died on St.Patrick's Day in March.  I can't believe it was the 80's when she died.

We had taken the RV home for a week and went back to luckily find the best spot for the Grandkids' visit.  The geese came early one morning with 4 goslings.

Our grand-daughter came for her week of playing hooky and being with Nanny for fishing/camping/horsemanship.  

  She loves fishing in the AM in pajamas.  This was her second trout.

  A

friend came to take her kayaking to see the beaver lodges on the other side of the lake.  But she still had to do her violin practising every day.

  She took 4 days of horsemanship and was doing rising trots by the last afternoon.  She was even doing hoof pick up and cleaning on the second day....

  Nanny had a fun time with her.

I got to go camping

Eventually it stopped raining and  dried  up enough to get our RV into the lake spot that is our second choice.  I sleep so well up there.  

Here I am threading line on to tiny hooks.  The fishing was not good at all.  They seemed to be still down deep in the middle of the lake and lethargic even though the ice had been off the lake for a few weeks.  But I just love being out by a campfire and reading and getting some sun again finally after 6 months of fall and winter.  I actually got burned one day so had to get out my straw Minnie Pearl hat.  

 The willow trees along the shore were just starting to bud out and the hummingbirds came back.  The first morning they came to camp I was outside in my  housecoat to put in my lines, when one came right up to my nose and hovered as if to say, "Nope, no nectar in there."  So I put out two feeders but the first visitor was a butterfly.  Can you see it hanging underneath.  It returned to sip even when the hummers were fighting over the best red metal flower.

There is some kind of primal soothing that goes on around an evening campfire.  

A new immigrant, single mother from Dublin, and her daughter, came for one night to visit and experience the lake.  They loved it.  When it was too cold they played snap inside the RV.  It was an adventure for them to just open the sofa and sleep nose-to-toes for the night.  The dinette table also collapses into a 3/4 bed but they used the sofa as it is roomier.

It was cold in the morning, near freezing, and they had to wait for me to get up and put the gas furnace on and have coffee.  They made the coffee actually.  Fishing was poor but the sun was shining.  So the daughter, Trinity, decided to go floating on the lake.

They had to leave for school duties.  Another Old Scotsman who was there in a tent was doing an AA dry out.  He is hilarious and was there last year doing the same kind of retreat.  We had some cold nights and rain so I offered him the joy of coming inside to watch a DVD while the generator charged up the batteries.  He chose some old oaters like Bonanza and an old Mel Gibson.  He fell asleep on the sofa without it being opened so I just threw some more blankets on him and let him snore.  I was glad that I had shown him some Christian charity that cold night as in the morning the generator would not start.  He pulled out the batteries which was a tough job for a 73 year old.  He tried many tricks but decided one of the batteries was dragging the other down.  So we hauled them to town for testing and sure enough Old Man had to pay for a new deep cell battery.  Old Bill also re-installed them.  

I was so glad when I could clean up all the mess and have a furnace again and a generator that would re-charge things.

I was so happy to have the place uncluttered that I bought myself a bouquet of flowers for the wee table the next time we went down to the village.

 I was very thankful for my warm bed during the cold nights.

But oh how I love the peacefulness

of being out in the wilds.  The quiet and the flops of jumping fish and the beaver going by and watching eagles and osprey fish to feed their young is such a delight.  

Disappointed Camper

I was wanting to go off to the bush after all the people that were here for Easter weekend had gone home.  I took a drive up to the lake, 15 minutes above the village, to see where the best spot to camp was for a few weeks, and maybe just park the pickup to hold the spot.  It is a first-come-first served camping area with wide areas between the sites that can each cope with 3 or sometimes more RVs.  I told Old Man that if I wasn't back in an hour I would be holding down a spot and putting out tablecloths on the heavy wooden table and setting up campchairs along the shore to claim my territory.  Then he could bring up the RV.  However all the spots were full.  Our landlord was planning to pull out of one of our favorite spots today and we arranged to pull in after he left.  But it rained all night and off and on all day and  he couldn't get his trailer up the hill as the mud is sandy silt and slick.  So he left it there.  Our RV is stocked and ready to go.  We will just have to wait until the rain lets up and the mud on the rocky road out of the site uphill to the main road, is dried enough to safely move big units on it.  The lake has lots of returning wildlife to watch.

I am still waiting for someone to 'fess' up about bumping our bumper last Nov.  

So in my disappointment about not being able to go camping, and not wanting to camp in the rain anyhow, I went surfing on the Royalty.nu site to see pictures of the Queen's 88th.  I found this picture also of William and Kate and George arriving at some airport down-under.  The dress received rave reviews and the yellow was a nod to their symbolic colours.  However, William in an aside told Kate that she looked like a banana.  I can't stop laughing.  

Praise the Lord

Easter ceremonies are over.  I brought the children from the Sunday School lessons in the hall, for a 3 minute walk to our suite for an egg hunt.  After an explanation about the connection in the symbolism between eggs and the round tomb cover and new life in the Spring we walked to our suite and I took them on a spying tour.  They  were not allowed to pick any eggs or coins up, but could spot as many as possible for later when I would turn them loose.  These children are all being helped by Social Services which is so good for them.  But their mothers also appreciate the time to meditate during the church service when the children are led out after the second 

hymn.

Here is one of the children who calls herself a Jesus follower.  She told me that , and I just listened.  We do not proselytise. 

She does a lot of reading and thinking on her own time.  Her parents are agnostic.  But she is so convinced and spiritual.  She cried about the crucifixion.  I caught this shot of her as she ceased to look for eggs, and admired the painting about our fireplace.  

We had 10 family for dinner after the service.  I thought there would be 4 passing through and staying in beds one or two nights.   We adjusted and everyone got a bed.  Everyone got fed.  Happy Easter.  I did a lot of scrambling.  They had to go 2 hours north,

 to Williams Lake for the induction of Old Man's father, Clarence.  It is all over now.  Some stayed with us and some stayed out in the Motorhome.   I made baked ham, two pies, smashed potatoes, a large salad,  and the local Indians were so wonderful to deliver fresh picked asparagus, which all these cowboys just love.  

I am going camping tomorrow and will be out of touch for awhile.  I need some ME TIME.   I am going to the lake to fish for trout and poke sticks in fires.  Alleluia.

Happy Easter

Holy Week is a time of contemplation and meditation and prayer.  On Thursday I attended the evening foot washing ceremony.  I must admit that for some reason my feet felt especially clean afterwards.  And they have for days afterwards.  I attended the Good Friday service too, and had tears at times.  It really is the Greatest Story Ever Told.  A minister, 30 years ago, told me that in every good, well-acted movie or novel, you can find the "Christ Story" if you look for it.

Good Friday service was solemn and touching.  Knox United joined us for a small congregation of two churches' older folk coming together to share sacred times.  The reflection, from Alice Watson, hit many heartstrings.  She said things that we needed to have confirmed.  

Our altar and area around the front was stripped of any ornamentation.  All Maundy Thursday participants in the foot washing, were invited to help strip the altar of any ornamentation.  It is part of life to acknowledge the dark times and the light times.   This is how our altar (above)  looked after the Good Friday service.  And I was so happy to do the Easter Jubilation today.  I took the Sunday School kids for a quick lesson on the real meaning of Easter, and then we went on a hunt for candy eggs to put in our baskets.  

And so today we proclaim....Alleluia  Christ is Risen Indeed.

Holy Week

Last Sunday was Palm Sunday so of course we were given little palm crosses.  At the end of the service of eucharist we walked out the back door in procession waving our crosses and saying, "Hosanna".  We just marched down the street and back inside the hall at the back of the church but it felt like we were living the Gospel reading for that day.

I took the Sunday School kids out for a lesson on the story of the days this Holy Week before the glory of Easter.  They made crayon-resist hard-boiled eggs.  Eggs symbolize new life and the rolling of the round stone from the front of Jesus' tomb.  We put them on the after-service snacks table in a basket for a decoration, but parishioners kept taking them and putting them in their pockets.  

I would say gently,  "I think the children want you to see their art work but, they also want to take them home."  It was fun to watch the expressions on faces as they reached into their pockets and put them back in the basket.  They were on the table with the muffins and cheese and crackers so it was understandable.  I think another year I would let the children keep their best favorite art project egg and offer the rest to the (mostly older pensioners) that wanted them.  

I just returned from the Maundy Thursday evening foot washing and eucharist.  

It is a sombre but spirit-filled time. 

However, I am not looking forward to going to the Abbey tomorrow for the Good Friday service at 10:00 AM.  It is a dark service but we need the reminder that life isn't all bluebells and balloons.  But still I dread that service.  The United Church joins us this week for the Maundy foot-washing and Good Friday service.  We are asked to leave quietly, without socializing.  I will be so glad when we can have flowers on the altar again.  For the 40 days of Lent each year we only put greenery in the altar vases.

I will be so glad, when on Easter morning, we can say "Alleluia" to each other again at the end of the 40 days of Lent.