Writing has taken a back seat to work in the garden and showing family around this amazing province.

On Saturday, a whole slew of us made the trip to see the Hopewell Rocks, located on the Bay of Fundy just south of Moncton. What an amazing place. With tides of up to 15 metres, you can actually walk on the ocean floor (at low tide, of course) and see what the eroding action of the waves can do to the land over the course of the centuries. We met up with my brother-in-law's aunt and cousin (who live in Moncton) while we were there so it was a really great visit. In the photos below, you can see the difference between the low tide and the water levels just an hour later as the water starts to move back in: in the first photo, people are walking around the rock; in the second, no people, just water.

On the way back to Fredericton, we stopped in at Alma, NB (Patti and I have been there before and there's a video of Marlee at Alma available on the "Video" page of this site) so that my brother-in-law could have a fresh seafood dinner before flying back to Ontario the following day. Alma is a lovely little town just outside Fundy National Park, with a thriving fishing and lobster industry to boot.

Since we had Marlee Marie with us, Patti and I got take out while the rest of the family went in for a sit down meal. They said their dinner was great and we had a really nice time too. Oren and Deborah, their three kids and some friends of their's stopped to talk as we ate our meal on park benches near the wharf. It turns out they are breeders of golden doodles and were interested in Marlee. I have yet to check out their website (www.risingstardoodles.com) but I'm anxious to see what they do. Their doodles are 3/4 poodle to take advantage of the many benefits of the breed so I'm interested to see the differences.

After eating, Patti and I wandered with Marlee down to the wharf and were amazed to find a small crowd staring down at a small beluga whale that had taken up residence in the harbour. We were pleased that the beluga stayed around long enough for the rest of the family to emerge and get a glimpse. And to think we paid $50 each to go on a whale watching expedition: who would have thought the whales would come to us!

On the home front, I've jumped headfirst into the tree-clearing operation. After our friend Rob and I battled the front-lawn cedars into submission, my nieces and nephew have joined me in the war against the trees in the back yard. With Alex climbing and cutting, Katie clipping away and Matthew showing off his muscle on the big trees, we're gotten most of the clearing done.

The most challenging were a pair of mostly dead hawthorn trees, buried behind a stand of other stuff. Their branches had intertwined with every other tree in the area and their sharp little thorns like to grip and scratch anything that comes near. I'm covered from head to toe with scratches and I'm not yet finished with them. I did, however, get about a third of the cedar branches cleaned and bagged, so that's a real plus.

Writing? Hmm. Well, Alex did do some more work on The Final Curtain. That's good.

Tags: New Brunswick, Hopewell, Fundy, Alma, Rising Star Doodles, Beluga

It's 2:30 in the morning and I can't sleep. My body aches all over and I think I'm a little bit heat-stroked (if that's a word).

You see, we have our friends Nicola and Rob visiting for a couple of days and it's been really fun. But Rob, who is knowledgeable about all things natural, has also introduced me to a nifty new tool: a set of Fiskars loppers that can cut two-inch-thick branches off trees effortlessly. These things are magnificent. I wish I had them last summer when I started trying to get our tree problem under control. What took me days then would probably take only hours with these new loppers.

Rob also loves to prune trees (it's part of his job back in Ontario) and he and I decided yesterday to tackle the massive cedar trees that dominate our front yard. Our goal: to raise the skirts of these out-of-control trees to six feet off the ground and to clean up what's underneath.

With the loppers, the remains of a Fiskars pruning saw (we managed to break two of the wretched little things in the course of two hours) and Rob's expertise, we managed to get the job done in a single afternoon. It's really quite amazing. And it's stunning how much wood we ended up with lying around the front lawn (okay, piled up around the front lawn).

Unfortunately for me, we decided to do this in 30-degree weather with the sun beating down on us. Unfortunately as well, Rob is in much better shape to do this kind of work than I am. So now I'm paying for it, too sore and queasy to sleep.

But the cedars look great. And I'm looking forward to using those amazing loppers to dice up into firewood the branches we cut off (in the photo, the pile of branches is at right and extends at least twice the length of our carport). We've got enough to feed our fireplace for at least a year or two, once the wood has dried properly.

I just have to make sure I take it easy and don't push myself too hard. It's great to make progress but it won't help anything if the work kills me.

Tags: Garden, Cedar, Fiskars, Pruning, lopping, New Brunswick

Yes, this past week I've done just about everything but the cover letter for my novel submission. First I was knocked out by the blood tests. Then work heated up a lot. Later in the week, I played golf a couple of times and then, just to wind things up, Patti and I walked home from our local Canadian Tire with a new 10-foot ladder, perfect for cleaning our eaves troughs, replacing light bulbs in our car port and getting to dead branches high in trees.

Tonight, I fly out to Ottawa for a week-long course. On top of participating in the mediation training, I'll also get a chance to see my brother and his family and, if possible, spend some time each evening on my novel submission. With luck, I'll complete first drafts of my cover letter and biographical statement this week. If I'm really focused, I'll also do a revision of the draft synopsis of The Silent Goodbye, my latest Phillip Gold novel. I sure hope it sells!

I played the Gage Golf Course in the lovely town of Oromocto, NB on Friday with some friends from work, people with whom I had not yet played. I would like to say I put on a good show for them but I didn't: 123 over 18 holes. Terrible. The Gage course is much longer than my home course and the grass on the fairways is deeper and thicker. It took me a while to get used to the density of the grass and, let's face it, when every third shot you hit is terrible, a longer course is a scary place. Anyway, I got through. I don't know if they'll ever want to play golf with me again.

Thankfully, I settled down and played 18 decent holes at my home course, the Kingswood executive, Saturday morning. I wasn't great but I was steady and, after working out a few kinks, played pretty well.

This morning, I tackled the clogged eaves and then cut away some of the branches that were contributing to the clogging. The experience convinced me that we really need to get a professional arborist in here. And soon.

I won't be able to blog while I'm away but will catch up on all my writing progress next weekend.

Tags: Phillip Gold, Garden, Oromocto, Gage Golf, Kingswood

Two years ago, we bought a beautiful bungalow on the south side of Fredericton, close to our work, even closer to the fabulous O'Dell Park in the centre of the city. The house is on a great lot, with lots and lots of trees and bushes. After we had the fence installed around the backyard for the dog, it seemed the perfect place.

What we didn't realise was how much work it would be. It seems the previous owners allowed the flora to run a bit wild and now, two years later, we're finally coming to grips with how much work it's going to be to whip it back into shape. This is an especial challenge for us, two people with practically no skills in this area. The fact that, in the past 24 months, no fewer than three major chunks of trees have come crashing down during various storms makes the job even more critical.

I did a little bit of pruning and tree control last summer, cutting down the obviously dead bits, hacking back the new growth and saplings that had taken root where they should not be and all that. But I really had no clue what I was doing and I hadn't grasped how much more has to be done. The growth is often so dense that trees are fighting each other for sunlight and soil nutrients. Some trees have been allowed to sprout three or four "leaders", meaning instead of growing healthily skyward, the trees are spreading outward and sharing their energy too thinly among the many trunklets.

Our first step has been to ask a friend of ours who is an expert in all things growing, having been written up in national magazines for her garden knowledge, to have a look around. Her comments were clear and forthright: your soil is no good for gardening and your trees and bushes need to be thinned and cut back. She pointed out some specific steps we should take but also recommended we bring in a qualified arborist to examine our trees and help us work out what to do with each.

A little bit of luck led to our second step: the arborists of the City of Fredericton offered a free outdoor workshop on tree care and maintenance. We learned a lot there, including that the city's professionals can be invited to our home to look at the trees that are on or near the road allowance in front. That's great, since two of our main concerns involve the massive cedars that are growing near the curb and a line of other unidentified trees that are floundering nearby.

They also gave us tips on pruning and, just moments ago, I bought myself a small pruning saw just like the one they used. The next sunny day I get, I'll be out there working to bring at least some sort of order to chaos, in anticipation of a visit from the arborists.

Tags: Garden, Trees

The past couple of days have been extremely busy and, to be frank, exhausting for me. While I was hoping to make more progress on drafting the synopsis for The Silent Goodbye, most of my energy was taken up preparing for and then delivering three workshops at conferences here in Nota Bene.

The first two took place Monday afternoon in Saint John, at the conference for an organization that is called something like "Atlantic Association of University and College Student Services". I spoke first on the issue of the challenges and opportunities faced by institutions of higher education as they seek to expand their representation of international students. Then I led a workshop on the conflict that too often arises between the legal obligation to provide academic accommodation to students with disabilities and the "defence" of academic standards mounted by some members of the academy. Both are highly controversial topics and, with exceptional turnouts of some amazing people at each workshop, I really enjoyed and learned from the experiences.

This morning found me back in Freddie, facilitating a half-day workshop at the annual conference of the group known (to me at least) as the Canadian Association for University Continuing Education. Sorry but I have a really hard time remembering these long, involved names, especially since the organisations are often referred to simply by the acronym: AAUCSS and CAUCE. Today's 3.5 hour-session attempted to help participants move past the "buzz words" about inclusion, positive environments, wellness, empowerment and all that currently being bandied about by universities in Canada and to understand what it really means for an institution to commit itself to be an inclusive, positive place. Again, a fantastic group of participants who, I'm afraid and pleased to say, probably taught me more than I taught them.

Preparation for these kinds of workshops is intense and the performance itself is both exciting and exhausting. Doing three in the space of 24 hours is more of a challenge than I'm used to so I'm now in full crash mode. I tried to play a round of golf this afternoon to kind of let myself down easy but heavy rain and lightning ended the game after seven holes. Still, I shot three-four on the first two holes so I'm pretty pleased.

Meanwhile, I managed to edit together a video of Marlee playing with her beloved orange balls, which will be available soon on the Video page of this site. That's good. And my net book came through with flying colours at today's conference, the Open Office suite performing admirably through my first attempt to create and use a powerpoint-style slide show in a presentation. Kudos to that.

I also want to send out a big "Happy Birthday" to my sister Janice. June 1st is her day and I wish her all happiness today.

Tags: Human Rights, CAUCE, Phillip Gold, Open Office

A beautiful Victoria Day weekend here in Nota Bene has brought with it sunshine, warm temperatures, golf and black flies. If you're counting, that's three to the good but one very, very bad.

I had never really dealt with black flies until I arrived here in Freddie two years ago. When I was a kid, friends talked about them after trips to their cottages in the Muskokas and Kawarthas but I had lived a black-fly-free life. I didn't know how lucky I was but now I know the truth: black flies are right little bastards.

I played eighteen holes of golf Saturday morning and ran headlong into the black-fly menace. It was bad enough that I hung up my worst performance of the year with the clubs but coming home to find six serious bites on my arms made the whole experience a nightmare. Literally. For the last three nights, my sleep has been affected and, on this night, I'm awake at 3:30 in the morning, my arms on fire and itching, my head spinning. I also have an itchy eye and, fool that I am, I failed to heed the warning signs in time to get some antihistamines to help me.

Awful awful awful awful.

Holiday Monday turned into a bit of an early-summer scorcher meaning that, but for brief jaunts into the world to exercise the dog, we holed up in our oh-so-cool basement to do laundry and watch movies. The best of the three was Julie & Julia, the Meryl Streep/Amy Adams comedy from a year or so ago. I really enjoyed this movie and was once again blown away by Meryl Streep. This is, by all accounts, a minor little film in her repertoire and yet, there she is, delivering yet another stunning performance. She hits all the right notes as the famous chef, Julia Child, creating a wonderful chemistry with on-screen husband Stanley Tucci. Streep makes this movie worth seeing, her acting performance easily overcoming the weaknesses of the parallel plots.

We also watched a harmless British confection, Confetti, the story of a wedding magazine's search for the most original nuptials. Half mockumentary and half mad-cap comedy, Confetti bounces along fairly well and ends in a surprisingly satisfying way. We were pleasantly surprised to find Martin Freeman popping up again, having first encountered the every-man actor in Love, Actually, then later in the English version of The Office, which we have just gotten around to watching this summer. There were times during our viewing when I found myself wondering why Confetti hadn't done better at the box office (the website Rotten Tomatoes reports that the movie earned merely $145,000) only to be confronted again by a string of completely nude people in one of the three sub-plots. The nudity is so aggressive and in-your-face that it detracts from the entire film.

Back to work tomorrow and, if the black flies will allow it, back to sleep now.

Tags: Meryl Streep, Julie And Julia, Confetti, The Office, Martin Freeman

It would seem that this spring's weather here in Nota Bene has been perfect for the growth of grass. The frenzied growth of grass. The out of control, out of the ordinary growth of tall, thick, luscious, impenetrable grass.

I came back from Ontario ten days ago to find our backyard had turned into an absolute jungle. So, last Thursday, it was with some relief that I finally got the chance to roll out our electric lawn mower and begin the task of bringing it back under control. Little did I know but the lawn had no intention of going down without a fight. The photograph below shows the lawn (with Marlee) in better, tamer times. Don't be fooled.

I decided to divide the task into smaller, bite-sized chunks since I knew every square foot of lawn would require several slow passes of the mower to get through the sometimes foot-tall grass. I worked slowly on the southern half of the backyard to start and everything seemed to be going fine. After about a half hour, a friend dropped by with her dog for a visit, giving me a chance to take a break and the mower a chance to cool down. So far so good.

After the dogs had a nice romp and the friend and her pooch had left, I fearlessly returned to the job, intent on finishing at least the southern half of the yard. All that was left was a particularly thick section of grass but I figured, with patience and perseverance, me and the old Yardworks 12-amp mower would get through. Less than five minutes later, however, I was standing over the mower, watching smoke pour out of its on/off switch box, listening to an ominous electrical crackling from within it. The lawn, it would seem, had gotten the better of the machine.

I'm no handy-person and, I'll be honest, I don't much like messing with electricity in any way, shape or form. I usually know my limits. But, in this case, I unplugged the machine, took apart the little box and found only a little bit of soot and a lot of very normal looking wiring. So I put it all back together, plugged it back in and very carefully switched it on. More smoke, more crackling, more reason to fear. I unplugged the mower, coiled up the extension cord and called it a day.

A week later, after a great deal of research and some consultation with those more knowledgeable than us, we finally bought a replacement for our dead soldier: a new Craftsman gas mower from Sears. It's got a Briggs & Stratton "Platinum Edition" engine, 190 cubic centimeters, delivering 9.0 foot-pounds of gross torque (whatever that means). If this thing doesn't have the power to tame our lawn, nothing will. It'll mulch, throw the cuttings into a rear (dust resistant) bag or simply fire them out the side of its body and into the world. I'm so excited to give it a try I can't sleep. That's why I'm sitting here writing this blog entry at 3:45 in the morning.

I have to get through a full day of work before I get the chance to gas it up and go. But I'm stoked. Look out grass; you've met your mulch!

Tags: Garden, Craftsman, Sears, Briggs & Stratton, Yardworks

I'm just back from a week in Ontario where I took care of some personal business and visited with family and friends. It was a great trip, if a bit emotional, and I'm afraid I didn't get the chance to see everyone I had hoped to see. I did, however, get a lot of reading done and delivered copies of the second draft of my latest Phillip Gold novel, The Silent Goodbye, to my next round of readers.

I'll be posting blogs on a number of topics over the next couple of days, including the three Dick Francis novels I read on my trip, Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer (a book recommended strongly to me by Emily and Clare, who even suggested that some of their friends feel Colfer's book is better than Harry Potter), birds I saw on the trip and even perhaps a commentary on the state of my garden here in Nota Bene. We've had a warm, wet spring and the jungle in my backyard is threatening to overwhelm us.

Right now, however, my energy is at a low ebb so I won't be blogging more tonight, just posting a promise new entries soon. Good night!

Tags: Phillip Gold, Dick Francis, Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer

The beautiful weather is finally running out but I'm glad to say I took full advantage while it lasted. With rain in the forecast for the next four days here in Nota Bene, the gardens and lawns will thrive while the walks with the dog will only get messier and muddier.

Monday was a holiday for government and quasi-government employees here in Nota Bene so two friends and I took advantage by travelling an hour south to St. Andrew's on the Sea, a resort town on the Bay of Fundy famous for its whaling and its golf. It's too early in the season for the former so we took the Algonquin Golf Resort up on its offer for lower greens fees for early-season players.

The course was in decent shape for the first of April (well, the greens were a bit of a disaster but the rest was not too bad) and the back nine of Algonquin is as pretty as any I've seen. Most holes between 11 and 16 run along the shores of the Bay and the views are spectacular. The view from the first tee is gorgeous (see top picture) but the first nine holes are, in fact, merely average. They are made quite challenging by the fact that most greens are hidden when you're standing on the tee, meaning first-time golfers like me were at a distinct disadvantage. It's also a long course but the beauty of that back nine makes all the challenges worth overcoming.

The back nine, as I said, is amazing. We're told that the 12th hole, a short par three where you feel like you are actually driving the ball into the Bay, is the club's signature hole. It really is a glorious location and, I have to admit, that view (see second picture) makes the tee shot all the more difficult. I am pleased to say that I dropped my drive right on the edge of the green and, if my memory serves, made a par by two putting from about 18 feet. Not at all bad, if I do say so myself.

The fact that I didn't play too badly in my first effort of the year made it all the more fun!

On the garden front, my indoor seeding experiment is working well. I've planted seeds for tomatoes (beef stake and grape), zucchini, cucumbers and beans in the small plastic trays and placed them on the desk in our spare office. After a week's carefully moistening of the soil, the results are amazing. I've got growth from all five of my veggie varieties, with only the beef stake tomatoes and the beans lagging behind. I'm very impressed but, since they all seem to be growing so well (especially the zucchini: see the third photo), will I have to repot them in something larger as an interim step until the risk of outdoor frost ends?

It's a nice problem to have. After last summer's debacle where my tomatoes and cukes emerged on the vine just in time to freeze and rot in November's cold, I am hopeful that I'll have something more like a bumper crop this year.

Tags: Garden, St. Andrews by the Sea

The second absolutely gorgeous day in a row. Clear blue skies, temperatures in the low 20s, snow on the retreat. Fabulous.

With the long weekend, I've been taking some time to start the job of tidying up the yard and getting ready for the real work. I wandered around this morning, picking up all the random garbage that had blown onto the property during the course of a windy winter and, low and behold, I found two tiny bouquets of pretty yellow flowers. Now, I am well aware that they might be a form of dandelion but that would spoil the joy of finding them pushing their way up into the world.

I have also been taking advantage of this quiet weekend with beautiful weather to continue with my reading. I finished Dick Francis' Rat Race this morning. Not my favourite. I don't mind the main character, Matt Shore, but I find the whole plot extremely thin and a little too contrived. The love interest, Nancy Ross, is no great shakes either. Never fully developed, she takes on too much importance too soon for the main character and that makes for a fairly wooden relationship. On the other hand, there is a pretty fantastic scene where Shore, a commercial pilot, attempts to locate Nancy in her tiny Cessna somewhere over southern England after her plane was sabotaged and rendered without electrical power. A beautifully written, tense scene. It's too bad the rest of the book doesn't live up to it.

I've picked up Candide again but it's slow going. My French is okay but not strong enough to read this classic at any great pace. I'll keep working on it though and, when I need a break, I'll switch to The Girl Who Played with Fire. Some break!

Tags: Dick Francis, Garden

Fall has certainly arrived in New Brunswick and, with it, some of the most spectacular colours I've ever seen. This morning, I took my usual drive down Highway 7 between Fredericton and Saint John and found myself driving through an amazing landscape, almost other worldly in its vivid hues.

Highway 7 rolls over hills and through valleys as it heads south and offers some pretty impressive vistas. Sometimes, it's a hillside in the distance, awash in reds, oranges, yellows and golds, all mixed with a spectrum of greens. At other times, the forest comes right to the side of the road and the individuals trees leap out at you as you flash by, on fire with colour.

My mom would have loved this, the most impressive autumn I've ever witnessed. She would have wanted to drive and drive and drive, ohhing and ahhhing at the trees. She would have loved the trip Patti, Marlee and I took after work tonight, first along Highway 7 to the valley town of Welsford, about 40 km from Saint John, then for a bite to eat at Georgette's Diner, and finally the return trip home, along the back roads through Fredericton Junction. Almost every foot of the trip offered something amazing to see (including a flock of deer in a roadside field, which sent my heart into my throat!).

We videotaped the drive down Highway 7, then took some still photos in Welsford itself, including several of that magnificent tree you see in the photo at right. If you want to see the video (or at least some highlights of it), wait a couple of days, then check it out on Youtube by searching "markwwnb". It'll be there soon, along with numerous videos of Marlee Marie frolicking at some of New Brunswick's neatest spots.

Ahh, Fall. Nobody does it better than New Brunswick!

Tags: New Brunswick, Fall, Trees

It's been an interesting week. New Brunswick has tumbled headlong into fall, with temperatures dropping sharply and rain alternating with sunshine on a day-to-day basis. Most importantly, however, almost every night brings a warning of frost, that enemy of all things vegetable.

Since I planted most things late, as in at the end of May, my veggie plants are only at about the three-quarters stage of growth as autumn falls. While we've had a pretty good crop of beans (both string and runner), the tomatoes are still small and green, the cucumbers are just pickles, the carrots really want to be fully grown but aren't and the brussels sprouts, well, the poor brussels sprout plants. They just can't seem to generate enough oomph to put out a sprout or two.

And now comes frost. Tonight's forecast doesn't say "Frost Warning" it says "Frost". I guess it's time I accept that my lateness in planting is going to mean no vegetables whatsoever after tonight. So sad.

On the writing front, however, things are definitely more productive. I went back last night and did a full revision of the scene involving Shannon Olivier's appearance in court. I expanded it quite a bit and made some small adjustments and additions to the existing sections. Again, I think it reads pretty well. In fact, I'm quite proud of it.

I hope I can keep up the momentum. Time is such a challenge, though, with work hyping up and fall house chores arising and life just keeping on trucking.

And, of course, there are the other writing projects that keep calling out to me too. I had a really interesting conversation with a colleague in Saint John, who has read the Abigail Massey stories and seems to agree that a longer work (maybe a novel) that takes Abigail and her pals to Saint John in 1943 would be a good idea. So my colleague has been feeding me nifty tidbits about Saint John history, lots of ideas upon which I could base the book.

Abigail, it seems, is getting restless. She's bored just hanging around the McAdam Station and Hotel and craves another adventure.

Tags: Phillip Gold, Abigail Massey

Beans! About a pound of them. Fresh, green, crisp and delicious, straight from our garden to the table. What an amazing feeling of accomplishment it is to find the garden you dug and planted is now turning out fabulous-tasting morsels of freshness.

Even more exciting, the pound we picked the other day represents just a portion of the beans that were hanging on the plants. I had been worried that we'd have to pick some of the smaller, younger ones to round out the meal but I was pleasantly surprised to find there were quite enough full-sized beans to satisfy our hunger. And they were so good. Much better than the pathetic, thin-skinned things you find at the grocery store.

As if that wasn't enough excitement, I have also been making excellent progress again on The Silent Goodbye. I wrote an entire section the other day, as much as 3,500 words in one sitting. I have further developed and deepened the relationship between Gold and Constable McLean and I think I have done a decent job of providing some of the backstory from previous (unpublished) novels without dragging things out.

So far, so good. I have one more major scene to write before Gold starts the trial. That's going to be fun to write. I'm calling on my sister and brother-in-law, both legal professionals, to help me make sure I get points of procedure right.

I know, stop writing about writing it and get back to writing it.

Tags: Phillip Gold

Beans! Beans! Actual, real life, edible beans, popping out all over the place in our garden. We already have enough to serve ourselves for a single dinner. Twenty beans or more! Hooray.

And everything else seems to be coming up very well too. The tomato plants are about six inches high, the cucumbers are starting to come along and I'm honestly starting to think I may have to pull some carrots soon. Parsley, arugula, thyme also becoming available for eating. I'm so impressed.

And Patti's experiment with planting nasturtiums along the carport in my recently moved sod has actually produced flowers. Amazing. All the books told us they'd be killed by the grass. Very exciting, to say the least.

In the meantime, work continues to go well on The Silent Goodbye. I am again in a rhythm and things are moving along very nicely. I think I'm going to have some rewriting to do to even out the tone and style but that's okay. I like the flow and I think it's working out well.

I'm not sure what to do about the sexual tension between Gold and the lovely constable Stacey McLean. So far, she's kept him at a distance but...

Of course, some of my hesitation might be because I'm not sure I can write the romantic stuff. We'll see.

In the meantime, the writing is flowing and the veggie garden is producing. What more could a guy want?

Tags: Phillip Gold

I have to come clean: I haven't written any Phillip Gold in three days. Okay, there, I said it. I admitted my fault. Work has been extremely busy and so has life in general. Add that the constant rain of the past few weeks has finally broken out into glorious sunshine (and the resulting golf game) and you'll see why I haven't been able to get back to The Silent Goodbye.

My subconscious has been working on it (or is that my unconscious?) and I expect to be able to get rolling again when I next sit down. Too many things have gotten in the way.

By way of update on other things, however, I still have not heard from the publisher about my Abigail Massey submission. I have also given up trying to figure out what that means: they don't review new submissions very often so they simply haven't taken a look at it; they have looked at it and rejected it but figure bad news can wait; they like it but it has to go through the channels for approvals before they contact me again.

I"ve heard all the possibilities and have no clue which is true. I don't want to give up but I'd feel a lot better if I had heard one way or another.

My vegetable garden is coming along surprisingly well. Although we have little critters that seem to go after certain plants, the whole garden plot (so brown and barren two months ago) is alive with varying shades of green. I even had to go out and do some heartless thinning to most of the rows of veggies but learned from the way the remaining plants suddenly exploded in growth thereafter that thinning is a good and kind thing for plants. No actual, edible vegetables yet but we're getting there.

With regard to backyard birds, I made the mistake of buying the really cheap seed and ended up, perhaps not surprisingly, with a yard filled with grackles, crows, doves and pigeons. I'm surprised the neighbours didn't come to complain. So I took the main feeder down and put it in the shed. Within two days, most of the undesirables had disappeared and, for the last two days, we've enjoyed the company of gold and purple finches as well as chipping sparrows and chicadees at our finch feeder. Much better. Lesson learned.

In the area of reading, well, I've gotten myself caught up in Harry Potter again. In preparation for the disappointing film that came out a couple of weeks ago, I re-read The Half-Blood Prince, then followed the natural course of things and read The Deathly Hallows. Now I'm whipping through the first three books, reading the novel and watching the movie in rapid succession to see the changes. I can't believe I never realised how different the ending of the first book was from that of the first movie: in the book, Harry's battle with Quirrell/Voldemort is killing both of them when Dumbledore intervenes to save Harry; in the movie, Harry is victorious over Quirrell but knocked out by Voldemort's escaping spirit and wakes in the Infirmary. Very different.

And, still on the video front, I am now watching the third season of Star Trek: The Original Series again. You can feel the change in quality from the opening moment. For one thing, Kirk and the rest have been allowed to grow their hair out from the military cuts of the first two seasons to hippie styles of the sixties. It just looks bad.

Anyway, that's the update. Off to the golf course now!

Tags: Phillip Gold, Harry Potter, Abigail Massey, McAdam Station

Another Saturday of hard work paid off today with a finished garden that, I must say, looks great. Ready for seeding once we're beyond the possibility of frost.

First step was a bit more raking, then lining the edges (using a thumb-hungry hammer, mind you) with some of the stones I pulled out of the plot. Next I used more of the stones I dug up, plus a number of nice red bricks from our front garden, to create three "walk ways" or, perhaps better, "weed ways" that sectioned the area off into four separate beds. Finally, off to Kent to get bags of "Black Earth", which were on sale at 50% off, to fill up the sunken beds.

I followed my sister's advice and used more stones to section off the herb bed into four parts again, thus creating what I think is an interesting visual impact for the garden as a whole. With the Black Earth in, the lighter coloured stones stand out better and the whole garden looks very nice. I'm pleased with the outcome, even if my thumb is still throbbing!

Sore muscles, weary bones, but a pretty good result, I think. I'll be seeding before the end of May, I think, and we'll see what grows.

And maybe I'll start writing again too.

In the meantime, got my first picture of a cardinal (a lovely female in the tree above the feeders) the other day; it's proudly displayed on the Backyard Birds section of this website. Be sure to have a look. And we picked up a couple of other plants for the backyard that are supposed to attract different kinds of birds, including hummingbirds, so we'll hope for results from that too.

Star Trek tomorrow. Quite the buzz around it. I'll give you my thoughts once I've fully digested it.

Tags: Garden

A nasty cut on my finger, a rainy forecast and a new on-line graduate course are combining to make life challenging for me and my plans.

The garden is on hold for at least a couple of days due to the rain and the injury. I did get some more raking and stone removal done yesterday before the knife leapt out and bit my finger. There are still more stones than I can count but I will soon move on to the edging and top soil. Once the weather and the ouchie improve.

As for writing, the finger also has an impact. It's quite sad to see myself trying to type this. So slow. So inaccurate. Lots and lots of mistakes that have to be corrected. The left hand still fully functional but the right reduced to thumb and index finger to protect the damaged third digit.

And the on-line course. Wow. What a nightmare. 90 students, 20 per cent of the mark for participation in on-line discussions. 480 messages to read and respond to in just four days. Interesting topic, sure, but this could soak up hours and hours and hours. If it were an in-person class, you'd have three hours per week plus reading and studying. Workable. But this...

It doesn't help that I'm old and not technologically inclined. So I have to learn the on-line learning environment as well. It took me, for example, an hour on the website just to find the first assignment. I can only trust that things will get better as I grow used to the format.

Gold is still in my mind, though. I'll get back to him. I just don't know when.

I finished the digging this morning. What an amazing feeling of accomplishment to stand back and look at that big, rectangular patch of dirt. Odd, really, considering it is just a big, rectangular patch of dirt. But I made it. Me. No one else. Feels good.

Next step was to get a garden rake and go at it, breaking the earth up, preparing it for the top soil. My cheap little garden rake turned out to be a real trooper. It turns out there's more stone than dirt in there. Big huge pieces of rock, some flat, some like cannon balls. The little rake finds them and then, with a little muscle from yours truly, yanks them out.

My neighbours tell me it is possible that my garden is going in exactly where an old stone wall used to stand. Part of the farmer's fields about 100 years ago when this was still farmland. Just my luck. New Brunswick is already the rockiest place in Canada and I have to put my garden in on top of an old stone wall!

At least now I have plenty of nice stones with which to line the edges of the garden as well as a selection of nice flat rocks to serve as paths between the beds. I also have aching muscles up and down my back, shoulders and arms (not to mention my legs). I gave in after raking about two-thirds of the bed. I'll do the rest tomorrow.

Next stop, top soil and seeding. Oh my!

Oh yeah, before I forget, I've put photos of two new birds on the "Backyard Birds" page. I'm not sure what either of them are because they're both small brown, speckled birds. If you can help me, please e-mail!

I spent a long, cool day outside yesterday, doing something I have never done before: digging a garden. A vegetable and herb garden. Our backyard is set up such that the fence that keeps the dog in is located about eight feet inside our property line, leaving a nice strip of land outside the fence that is available for gardening.

So I spent about six hours de-sodding a six-foot by 12-foot strip of land, preparing it for our new garden. I have the other half left to do today to make what now seems like a massive six-by-24 foot plot.

It was very slow work. I cut out each 8-inch by 1-foot patch of sod individually, using a long-handled shovel. I then moved and placed each chunk carefully on top of an extraneous section of gravel driveway to see if I can accomplish two things with one task: create a garden and re-sod the wasted driveway space.

The garden is going very well, if slowly. The driveway, well, we'll see.

Emotionally and psychologically, it was a very satisfying day. Slow, hard, repetitive work, with the results visible instantly. Most muscles involved somehow but my mind free to wander where-ever it wished to go. And it didn't stray far. Mostly I thought about how nice the breeze was, how good it will be to harvest arugula and chives, peppers and basil, all of that kind of stuff.

It would appear that I need these kinds of days. Marlee, our dog, was content to sit out in the yard, watching me from behind the fence. Friends came over with their long ladder to help me clear our eaves and replace a couple of light bulbs that hang high in our car port. We had coffee, then it was back to work on the garden.

I'll finish digging it today. Then we will line the edges with stones, create a couple of brick paths at intervals for weeding and tending purposes, then finally refill the area slightly with top soil or some such mixture. Finally, it will be planting time.

Challenging physically but mentally a holiday. Something I guess I need.

We'll see what grows from this weekend in all kinds of ways.