#its kind of scary. and moving away from my friends and my province also makes me sad so like. its all mixing up 😔😔

[sheila--e]

Day 21. Woah! She's bisexual! I didn't know that!

[hilarioustextposts]

Hey Abby, sorry to message u with some bummer stuff. You've just got this ~older sister energy~ and I really need some of that right now. Lately I've been feeling very hopeless. I'm not sure if it's because I'm graduating college in a few months and have no plans, or because I feel like I'm not good at anything and therefore nothing good will happen, or if it's because it seems like my boyfriend doesn't even like me anymore. I know you recently graduated college so you probably have been (1/2)

(2/2) through something similar. I was just wondering what you did to cope, how you kept your hope up, what you did when it was down, and looking back how you're doing now. I know it's not your responsibility to make me feel better but I really appreciate your time. Thank u and I hope you're doing really well :-)

Answer below the cut because it is a long one (like a looooooonnnggg one)

Hey anon! Thanks for writing in, I am always happy to get messages and I’m always flattered that people would think to reach out to me. I definitely don’t think reaching out for some kind words, or advice, or even just a sympathetic ear is putting responsibility on someone else to make you feel better. You deserve to have those things! And it sounds like you have a lot going on in your life right now that’s scary and disheartening. I want to mention the boyfriend thing first (because honestly its the thing that is most out of my depth). First I’m sorry you’re feeling that way. I think I would wonder if you have any thing specific that is making you feel this way, if something happened, and how you want to address it with him. Overall, I’m a big proponent of talking things out because at least then you know where you are. Hopefully there’s been some sort of misunderstanding and you work through this. 

In terms of the graduating college side of things, I can absolutely empathize with how you’re feeling. I’m not sure how uplifting my perspective on this is, because to be quite frank, this year since I graduated my undergrad and started my masters, has been by far the hardest of my life. Honestly though what has been most comforting through it all is the fact that every single person I know is going through those same feelings.Some of my friends are trying to get jobs or figure out if they should go back to school, others are traveling, others have jobs, some have moved home for the first time in years, some (like me) are living in a new city. For me, I didn’t have to tackle not having plans since I’m staying in school for a while longer, but I have felt super disconnected from my support system and overall pretty unhappy. But knowing these feelings are normal and shared by the people I care about has helped me feel less alone.

You are not not good at anything. Just because you don’t have plans now or know what is coming next, doesn’t mean things are hopeless. It’s hard. And I can’t promise that will change right away, but I truly believe that things happen how they are meant to. This period of confusion is something that you’re going through so that better things can come after because part of the beauty of uncertainty is that anything could come next. Good things are in the future! Not to be That Bitch but Taylor Swift was right when she said it’s miserable and magical in 22. 

I also think it has been good for me in some ways because it has helped me take stock of how lucky I am and how I am prioritizing things in my life. Seeing the people I love is what has been making me feel the best, so I’ve allowed myself to dedicate more time and energy to making that happen than to forcing myself to give 100% to my schoolwork. If its a choice between seeing friends or getting a few points higher on the assignment, I make sure to choose my friends because we need each other right now and it fulfills me. I also am just trying to divert my attention to uplifting things. I’m really trying to get back into reading more because I haven’t been great about it in recent years but I love it. When it’s really rough, I let people important to me know I’m feeling off. Honestly, I had a bad day yesterday where I was really missing my social group and comparing it to where I am now so I called my mom and explained everything and just let her remind me that it’s fine to not be feeling my best but it will pass. 

In terms of keeping hope up I try to think of what I have in the future that I am looking forward to. For me, I’m (scared but also) excited to be going to law school in a new city in a new province next year. But also there are non-goal things to be excited for too, last week I got to see one of my friend for the first time in 5 months and that was like the light shining at the end of a hard week. Taking note of the small joys makes me feel like not everything is so gloomy. 

I know this isn’t a 100% uplifting response. But I am very hopeful that these feelings are a temporary state of being that we will both make it through. I am genuinely happy to talk whenever, whether that be over anon or messages. Sometimes misery truly does love company and having someone understand can be enough to make things a bit easier. Regardless, I am sending you all the best and my love because these things are not easy, and you’re very strong to be going through it right now.

[bondsmagii]

If it's not too personal, could you talk a bit about your experiences growing up in Northern Ireland with the civil war and the cultural differences between the north and the republic etc? I have Irish ancestry but none of the Irish part of my family is alive and I'm trying really hard to reconnect with that part of my blood and pay homage to it, so hearing about the experiences of someone who's lived it would mean so, so much to me.

I can try but I can’t promise it’ll make any sense; it’s a highly nuanced situation and I experienced it as one person living in one time period and the whole thing is just a huge mess but! I’ll try and keep it as succinct as possible lmao (good luck to me).

basically the most simplified version of the issue is thus:

Britain, being Britain, takes over Ireland, because of course they do

nasty bastards about it

Irish people are understandably pissed and there’s about 800 years of conflict

Britain keeps sending British people over there to settle (mostly from Scotland originally) to up British numbers and get those bastard Irish Catholics out of the idea they can like, live in their own country

things escalate

rebellions happen

Big Rebellion happens (the 1916 Easter Rising)

the Irish War of Independence happens and Britain is finally like OK we’ll chat (centuries later)

My Man Michael Collins goes over the London and negotiates a treaty 

Ireland is given independence but not the six north-eastern-most counties; these countries are the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland respectively

(you’ll sometimes see Protestants calling Northern Ireland “Ulster” but they’re wrong because Ulster is a province and has nine counties not six)

(Catholics tend to avoid using “Northern Ireland” and will call it “the North of Ireland”, “the Six Counties”, or if they’re really political “the Occupied Six Counties”)

some other stuff happened that I won’t get into here because I’ll just bitch about Eamon de Valera for eight hours (if you want to see me bitching I did so here)

the North of Ireland was partitioned as such because of its huge number of British-identifying Protestants descending from the people who had moved over; they wished to remain British and so the North is still a part of the UK today

Irish-identifying Catholics in the North were understandably pissed about this because they wanted their whole country back but were now stuck across a land border with neighbours who didn’t particularly like them and whom they did not particularly like

this escalated into a civil war known as The Troubles (because we’re really great at understating things) where thousands of people died in a bloody conflict mostly contained in the North

(aside from occasional skirmishes and people using the border as a way to escape conviction, the Republic didn’t really have much to do with this war)

it was Bad Times and the North was eventually occupied by British soldiers who set up bases and patrolled the streets and backed up the police for several decades, which only further escalated things 

many years of shootings and bombings and beatings and terror ensued

this is about the point where I come in and start trying to grow up there, fun times 

I’ll put the rest under a cut because wow this is already very long and I haven’t even touched on what it was like to grow up there lmao

detailed accounts of living in a literal warzone under the cut, so beware.

Civil War Funtimes

growing up in a warzone like the one I grew up in was wack as hell because it’s not… acknowledged as a civil war at all. like the rest of the UK kind of just forget it ever happened or they don’t know about it at all, and like as much as I don’t like to admit it the North is UK soil and the idea that thousands of people could be killing one another in the fucking UK is just phenomenal to me. when I talk about my experiences growing up and don’t specify the country, people hear what I went through and assume I grew up in Bosnia or Chechnya or something. it was that bad.

the strange thing is, as unpleasant as it was, while I was growing up there it was totally normal. it was scary sometimes, when coming into direct contact with things, but a lot of the time it was just inconvenient. I remember being stuck in traffic on the motorway going into Belfast and it was hot and we had no water and we were there for hours and we were moaning and complaining and finally when we were allowed to move again it turned out there was a bomb up ahead and the Army had been called in to diffuse it, but at the time it wasn’t about The Bomb but more about I’m Hot and Thirsty and Several Hours Are Gone From The Time I Had To Run Errands In Belfast. it was only when I moved away from the North and lived a more normal life that I looked back and began processing fully how fucked up it was to live there.

I’m Catholic, so right off the bat I kind of got the shitty end of the stick. both sides were bad, don’t get me wrong, but Protestants had the backing of the police and the British Army and it’s been confirmed that both organisations backed Protestant paramilitary death squads; i.e., helped gangs of Protestant terrorists murder Catholics and get away with it. they also committed a lot more atrocities of their own, including opening fire on unarmed civilians, so it’s kind of a shitty deal when the two organisations sent in to protect everyone align with one side of the civil war and don’t give a shit if you’re getting beaten to death in front of them or something. I remember one time my friends and I were chased by a gang of people who found out we were Catholic somehow, and they were throwing lit fireworks at us in full view of the police, who did nothing. we were 15. 

how did they know we were Catholic? there’s a million ways to tell. growing up there sort of required knowing what I call the sectarian geography of the country. certain places were Catholic, and certain places were Protestant. saying you were from a certain town or village could confirm your religion to a potential enemy. in large cities, especially Belfast, saying the street you were from could out you. I had to be careful what side of the road I walked on, and there were streets I couldn’t exit from if I was going into the city centre for fear that someone would see and wait for me. likewise, names could be used to identify you. my friends and I had several different names we’d give depending on what area we were in or the name or accent of the person talking to us. it’s subtle things, too – I mean obviously you’re Catholic if your name is Seamus or Sean or Eamon and obviously you’re Protestant if you’re called William or Billy but it wasn’t always as obvious as that. it was safer to be subtle. if I’m in a Catholic area and want to use a fake name for whatever reason, I’m Joseph McCarthy. if I cross the street to a Protestant area, I’d be better off as James McAllister. all of us learned this growing up, and there were so many nuances I can’t even remember a lot of them now. I know should I ever visit Belfast again it’ll all come back, and so will the subtle shifts in my accent depending on where I am. but to think I knew all this at 12, 13, 14 years old? and it was the difference between life and death, quite literally? I have no idea how I dealt with the stress.

making it into the city was only half of the battle, anyway. violence could erupt at any moment, and bomb scares were known to happen. I’ve been in a number of riots which almost always escalated from a peaceful protest, because of Army and police presence being unwelcome or unfairly biased. during such riots people could and did die: the police and Army used rubber bullets because they’re apparently “less deadly”, but many people, including small children caught in the crossfire, were killed by them. often there was added danger from the IRA (Irish Republican Army; the main Catholic paramilitary force) who would show up to take shots at the police and soldiers, meaning that civilians were very often caught in the no-man’s land between offensive and defensive fire. this was not occasional pistol fire, either: both sides were armed with semi- or fully-automatic weapons. again, this is on streets legally in the UK. 

bombs were also a threat, though most of the time they were just threats to create panic and disruption. however, it was occasionally real: I once found a bomb myself, in a newly opened supermarket that was packed during its first week. it was hidden on the shelving and around its outside, nails and ball bearings had been taped to use as shrapnel. I remember going quickly to tell the store manager and him pulling the fire alarm so people didn’t panic too much. everyone went out into the car park and it was only when the bomb squad arrived that people realised. a humorous note to this story is that my parents lost me in the chaos, and found me talking animatedly to several police officers and a member of the bomb squad, in his full protective gear. I was 13, and I’m sure they were wondering just what kind of trouble I’d got myself into in the 20 minutes I’d been out of their sight.

finally, a lot of people died. I mean, a lot. thousands, in a country with a population of only one eighth the size of London alone. every single person in that country knew someone who had died or been injured during the fighting. it’s a very close-knit country; both sides of the conflict have a strong community spirit and towns and districts are often very close, with many people knowing everyone if not by name then by sight. when you take several thousand people and have them killed violently, their death will be felt through fifty to one hundred of their friends, families, neighbours, colleagues, etc. in a country so small, that reverberates and quickly takes in everyone. many people knew several of the dead; older people might know dozens. many more would have witnessed something. my friend group were no different. it’s been over a decade and I still can’t talk about it in any detail, but all I’ll say is that I lost a friend of mine when I was 15, and it was a very violent, drawn-out death at the hands of a mob of adults. he was my age. the reason for it was because he was Catholic. being the same age as him made it a very strange experience. even now, on my birthday, I think about the fact that he would be my age if he had lived. he’s frozen in time, and the rest of us have grown up and moved on, and it’s so unfair it makes me feel sick.

as for the culture,

(forgive the abrupt ending, but to be honest that part of things always exhausts my emotions when talking about what it was like to live like that.)

I’m sorry that this is a wholly depressing account, but it was a warzone; I get the feeling that’s to be expected. what I can say is that despite everything, I miss living there dearly. despite how horrible it could be, the country is beautiful and a vast majority of the people I met and grew up with were wonderful. I miss it a lot. I miss the landscapes, I miss all the places I used to go to lose myself. I miss the forests and the waterfalls, I miss the Causeway Coast, I miss turning the bend on the motorway and seeing Belfast nestled in its valley with the sea on one side and Cave Hill on the other. I miss the little villages, I miss getting lost in the fields and the trees and the trails, I miss the tiny little pubs and the small harbours and drinking by the lough with my friends. I miss the food, and I miss all the little quirks in the way we talked, and I miss walking down the street or going into a shop and having my friends’ parents recognise me and act like they’re all my mothers (“ach, how’ve you been? lookit you! I can’t believe it. you used to be so wee!” – no matter if they’d seen me a week ago, I was always wee then and taller now).

I was lucky enough that my friends and I were much more open-minded; members of the new generation who were getting sick to death of all the fighting. there were both Catholics and Protestants in our friend group, and sometimes the only thing that got us through was making dark jokes and poking fun at one another. I miss that, too – living away from the country and knowing no other people from there makes reconciling what happened very difficult. even now I have an innate connection with people when we hear one another’s accents. we’ll start chatting like old friends, and it’s wonderful, because religion doesn’t come up at all. we’ll ask where each other is from, and usually we’ll have heard of it, and then we’ll probably start bitching about the weather or the roadworks that are still there eight years later or something. sometimes we’ll even start making a few dark jokes of our own, and it’s always a relief to laugh. it loosens something in the chest. I don’t think there’s a group of people more resilient than those from the North. we’ve seen some shit, and we still manage to live through it and laugh about it. I remember one time in school, when we were about 16, me and my fellow Catholics were going to skip school for St Patrick’s Day (we never got given the day off, honestly) and our Protestant friends were jealous, and we invited them along and they were jokingly saying that nah, they couldn’t, it’s a Catholic celebration, it wouldn’t be right, etc, and finally one of them was like “we’ll come to St Paddy’s Day if you skip school and come with us on St Proddy’s Day” and we were like “what the fuck is St Proddy’s Day” and he was like “idk it’s like St Paddy’s Day but for Protestants” and I was like “alright when is it” and everyone decided it was the day after St Patrick’s Day so our entire group skipped school for a two-day drinking fest. to be honest it’s stuff like that I remember more than the fighting. 

I didn’t get to go to the Republic as much as I wanted to, but despite the border I find the culture is just as warm, just as welcoming, and the sense of humour is brilliant across the board. Irish/Northern Irish culture, no matter what you want to call it, is just very familial. it’s warm. everyone is genuinely interested in everyone, everyone is genuinely there for a laugh (craic, as we’d say – pronounced ��crack”. common greeting is “what’s the craic?”). it’s a nice place to be. you come from a culture known across the world for its friendliness and its love of fun, but as depressing as some of this information is, I hope you realise that you also come from a very resilient people. despite everything I love the place and I hope to go back one day, when I’m ready to do so. and the best part is that despite everything, I know I’ll be welcome.

[filipinawives]

Bukas na lang! Impulsive Filipinos

  I write many an article about life in the Philippines and about understanding Filipino culture and mindset, and I can see a positive side to most things. Wonderful, kind-hearted people who have a lot to teach us hard-hearted “foreigners”, as I’m sure most involved in Australian Filipina relationships learn to realise. But this is one area where I must admit I find myself struggling to understand, and that is why Filipinos tend to act with impulsiveness with little to no thought of long-term ramifications and sometimes tragic results that hurt them more than anybody else.    

  “Bukas na lang” means “Ahhhh, leave it for tomorrow.” Let’s not think about it today. Again, I love this place and I love the Filipino people here. This is my home. But my goodness, I find this so difficult. What I’m talking about is Filipinos making decisions to suit right now, and to hell with the consequences. Sometimes this is tied-up with pride, hurt feelings, etc. See the previous article on “onion skin” and how easy it is for Filipinos to get their feelings hurt, and how this can lead to careless decisions. But it’s not just that. It applies to so many things. There’s a lack of forward planning, and decisions are made without considering consequences in the short or long term.  

Impulsive behavior - Filipinos AND Australians

We can all be impulsive. Our emotions and our hormones can make us do stupid things which we later regret. Those Australian men who’ve got themselves involved with a pretty girl who’s just plain wrong for them because her attractiveness made our brains switch off, yes I’m sure they (We? Yes, I’ve done it too!) can relate to the folly of impulsiveness. Fear can be a motivator too, ie. fear of losing what appears a great deal. If we’re angry we can say things we wouldn’t normally say. But most of the time we try not to do this, and we try to consider the medium and long terms. Filipinos though? I suppose maybe its emotion (ie fear, pride, love/desire, anger, embarrassment, etc) which motivates a lot of short-term decisions. There just seems to be less decisiveness in trying to avoid rash decisions than you will see in your average Aussie. Emotions tend to rule the day, and very little is done to fight this. Little in the way of internal struggle, or even useful advice beyond the clichéd mutterings of “He/she is not thinking of his/her future!”  

You are not thinking of your future!

Has everyone heard this one? This is what they say when the teenage girl drops out of college because she’s pregnant to her boyfriend. Their situation caused not only by sexual attraction, but by a lack of planning…..family planning! He didn’t bring condoms. She never insisted on them! But whether it’s that, or the kid simply not taking studies seriously, or tossing in a job opportunity because it meant would miss the family and friends, that’s the common response. Everyone says they were not “thinking of their future”, but this often lacks weight because the person who says it rarely thinks of their own future either. Before I came here permanently, and when I had just been a frequent visitor, I still thought mostly as an Aussie. How else could I? I grew up in Australia! In Australia I was always acutely aware of the “wolf at the door”. Always aware that the world was a scary place, and that it would eat you alive without you having security and stability. House….money in the bank….safety from the elements and from “bad guys”, etc. Yet Australia has safety nets that the Philippines doesn’t have. You can’t “get the dole” or be placed in a nice housing commission house if you find yourself on the street with no money. Here? No money and no house means you go hungry and you may sleep in the rain. Is that enough to motivate the average person, especially those with family to support, to work hard and to hang onto a job? Not necessarily. I can remember a job I had years ago in Sydney. Had wife and baby at home at the time. I was in my 20’s and it was the late 80’s. And no, I didn’t have a mullet hairstyle. I was just a whole lot slimmer. I had a manager at work insult me, and he did it in front of others. And I sat there and took it. Would have liked to have got up and told him to stick the job where the sun didn’t shine, but no I sat there in silence. Because if I had done so, I would have let my family down and our future plans to move up to QLD when we had enough money for a house deposit would have been put off for maybe years. And that would never have been OK.  

Here? Let’s think of some occasions of Filipinos not “thinking of their future”:

Had a driver (with wife and two kids) try to side-swipe a motorbike in our car (with child passenger) because the motorbike driver had given him “the dirty finger”. I shouted at our driver and told him never to do a thing like that again. Later had his wife text message us with his resignation, because his feelings were hurt. He went back to driving his tricyle.

Same driver it seems had a few arguments with a subdivision guard. Went home…got a gun….pointed it at the guard’s head. Fortunately his late-father was in the NBI, so his old mates collected his home armory and no charges were laid, or he would have been in jail now over hurt feelings.

Office security guard learns someone is squatting in his house in the province. Gets on the bus. Gets a gun. Fully intends shooting the squatters. Not sure why he didn’t succeed, but nearly did. Also a family man, and would have dumped his family because his anger won the day.

Domestic helper with six kids, useless husband (doesn’t work, and has mistresses). Lived in poverty, and resembled a broomstick. Worked with us. Good salary. Had plans for building a proper house. Husband tells her to come visit. Fakes having a stroke (yes, I’m serious!), which the doctor identified in examination as fake. Did all this because she loved him and missed him, and lost what would have been long-term employment and a good future for kids.

  Basically, we’ve had to learn how to talk to staff very carefully and at the same time expect to see good employees throw everything away if they feel embarrassed or get their feelings hurt. Hang the consequences. Forget about taking it on the chin, because life is just like that. Forget what ol’ Malcolm Fraser said about “Life was not meant to be easy”! We already have to put up with staff needing to take days off because it’s their birthday, or it’s their child’s birthday, or someone asked them to be a bridesmaid at their wedding which is taking place on a work day. We’ve had staff telling us they wanted to visit their mum for her birthday in the province the evening before. Me? I sit here and work when I have a fever, or with a bad headache, or when my back is giving me merry hell. Because if I don’t do what is required, then my business will suffer and my clients will go elsewhere. Who could blame them? And that’s just reality. Yes, getting a little off-track here onto work-ethic issues, but it’s all part of it. I really do wonder why so many Filipinos take the path of least resistance. There is a wolf at the door in Australia, but there’s a whole pack of Filipino wolves here in the and they have rabies! Let your emotions get the better of you in the Philippines, and you lose out badly! And no, sadly I don’t have any answers. If you intend to have dealings with Filipinos, you can expect to come across this difficult phenomena.  

The following article Bukas na lang! Impulsive Filipinos wasRead more at: Filipina Wives Blog

[rusticrevivals]

My mother does not approve of swearing. Of even the most mild sort.  My sister and I were not even allowed to say ‘shut up’ to each other without being sharply reprimanded.  When my father used to say “what the hell?” in absent-minded consternation over some project he was attempting to repair, she would sharply remind him with his name or an exclamation of shock, that our young, innocent ears were in the vicinity. One of my very earliest memories when I was about 6 and my sister 4, was when we collected our first trial instruments from the London Suzuki Institute, Jennifer’s being the instrument she still plays hours daily as her profession and passion, and mine being the instrument I finally sold to help fund my own profession and passion.

  As my mother, who had had to take a few lessons on each instrument first just so that she could help us at home, was attempting to make a sound from Jennifer’s strings (in front of both sets of grandparents, I might add, who were most interested in these new additions to the family) she became exasperated because no sound was emanating, and in her frustration she said her “F-word”:  “Oh, FIDDLESTICKS!”  without realizing how incredibly apt and timely this choice of ‘swear word’ actually was.  (Although we laughed at her, it became even MORE apt when we realized the problem was in fact to do with the bow, or ‘fiddlestick’  – she had forgotten to resin it!)

Richard’s sons both took violin lessons for a while too, and we still have each of their instruments at Blue Belldon Farm, for some reason, but of course I’ve never owned another ‘cello  (“violincello” is its proper name; thus the apostrophe in front of it each time is technically correct) since I was 18 and sold it to buy my first proper showjumper.  Our father always got a kick out of saying that Jennifer was busy ‘FIDDLIN’ AROUND’ whilst I was outside just “HORSIN’ AROUND’.   But the daily reminders of ‘fiddling’ are everywhere around us.  As mentioned last week, the New Denmark ‘Music Ranch’ has a country band every Saturday night with Atlantic-based expert ‘fiddlers’ (although having been brought up on ‘proper classical music’ and the term ‘violin’,  Mom and I don’t quite have the appreciation that we should have for the fast ‘fiddling’ that is a tradition in these Eastern provinces.)

But as soon as I came here last spring I began seeing and hearing the word ‘fiddle’ in another sense.  Fiddleheads are everywhere!   Plaster Rock, one of our nearest towns, is the Fiddlehead Capital of Canada, and being that our goal is to live self-sufficiently here, Mom/Joy gave us a book called Edible Plants of Atlantic Canada.  The chapter that takes up the most pages is all about the picking and cooking of fiddleheads.  They are highly celebrated here and other than the World Pond Hockey which was mentioned in last week’s blog, they are a main attraction to the area:

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Fiddleheads are one of the first signs of spring, and since we had a bit of a thaw last week, and actually see some grass blades emerging in the Birch Grove and under the apple trees where the ground is slightly warmer because of the tree roots, we are perhaps prematurely, already getting excited about harvesting these delightful delicacies. Fiddleheads are essentially ferns before they become ferns. They are the furled up stage of a fern when they just start to shoot through the ground in early spring.  As they emerge through the fertile, wet April soil, they grow and unfurl quickly, sometimes lasting just a few days in their furled-up stage.

Though all ferns have a fiddlehead stage, it’s the Ostrich fern that is most commonly eaten, and it tastes, when boiled and then sauteed in butter, very much like a combination between broccoli and asparagus. In the farmers’ markets, where they will only be sold for about 10 days, they can be quite pricey, so we definitely will be hunting the marshes and swamps for them ourselves!

Fiddleheads grow prolifically throughout the damp areas of the Eastern Seaboard. Though they are not hard to find, people tend to keep their locations secret so they will not be over -harvested.  Scary thing, though.   Some fiddleheads look like the Ostrich fern varieties and are not only not edible but can be toxic. So, just as I didn’t attempt to harvest the multitude of wonderful-looking mushrooms that sprouted all over our lawn last autumn, I am tentative about this process also.

  In the book Mom gave us as a Christmas present, it mentions an interesting bit of folk lore: it was once believed that to eat fiddleheads would make one invisible! (Kind of ironic, given that the old Polaroid above DOES make us look nearly so!)  Shakespeare even refers to this in Henry IV, Part 1  when he writes “We have the receipt of fern-seed; we walk invisible”. The “fern-seed” superstition pops up again in “The Fair Maid of the Inn,” a  17th century comedy by John Fletcher, et al., as well as in Ben Jonson’s “The New Inn.”  A wonderfully-named fiddlehead cookbook ,  “Fiddleheads and Fairies”, by Nannette Richford, includes many references to the mysticism behind these succulent tasties.

A neighbour recently gave us a frozen bag of them to try. (Herein is a humourous example of rural life, especially among the proud Danish community.  This lady’s husband was ill, so I made some extra chicken and vegetable soup for them, and sent it over in a thermos with Richard. He came back with home-baked coffeecake, a bar of marzipan and the aforementioned bag of frozen greens!)  We ate them immediately for lunch, boiling for about 6 minutes as directed (just in case there are any dangerous toxins left in them!) and then frying with some butter and a touch of salt.  Absolutely delicious!

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I put a walnut in the one photo, to show you the size of them before cooking (although they don’t actually shrink in size as do so many vegetables, as you can see when put out on the plate at right.

That day must have had violins and decorative scrolls in the vibrational airways, because in the afternoon, in our Scrabble game, I could have TWICE put down variations of the word ‘violin’ (although nothing on the board ever did lend itself to my doing so!) And once while I was waiting the half-hour or so that is standard for Richard to take his bloody turn, I looked over to where one of his boys’ old violins (out of their cases to get humidity from our humidifier) was laid out near my beautiful hand-made butter dish by Ontario potter Natalie (from Remembrances Pottery , a friend who worked hard to make the Carlisle Country Craft and Old-fashioned Market Mercantile a success :   https://www.etsy.com/shop/RemembrancesPottery )  How beautiful these ‘scrolls’ look side-by-side!  And you can certainly see where the “Fiddlehead” delicacy gets its name!

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  Richard went to meet his brother where he lives in Saint John this past week, and they had a flying trip down to Cape Cod to look at some car parts his brother wanted.  Richard noticed that the fiddlehead is a symbol of beauty throughout the province, as this sculpture in the city centre is a popular photo for tourists year-round as well .  (That’s right, neither Saint John nor Boston/Cape Cod have snow anymore!)

So yes, while we’ve enjoyed the respite of the winter months to recuperate from the struggles of the big move out here, on top of the arduous efforts to plant, tend, harvest  and preserve both garden and orchard, we ARE looking forward to spring! Mom/Joy is even more anxious than we are for it, as she just returned from her two weeks in Florida with her Aunt Jane, and was none-too-pleased to see those 8 foot banks of snow still along our back roads and caked on the cliff walls as we climbed up Lucy’s Gulch!    She had brought back for us a T-shirt each with a happy stick figure on a lawn tractor, and this has definitely got Richard chomping the bit in anticipation of the first time he can fire up the ole John Deere.

  It was his idea to wear the shirts with the snow outside the window in the background.  The irony is actually a bit sad at this point, however!  We harken back to last spring, the week before I moved out here, when my friend Leanne was visiting from Scotland.   She’s coming again this summer, and Richard has promised her another try on the lawn tractor. (Although she’s a good ole country girl as well, who grew up on the 25,000 acre estate on which I worked with her in Aberdeenshire, in 2009, she had never had the opportunity to cut grass on a tractor, as all the bigger jobs on the estate were naturally done by the team of maintenance staff and groundskeepers! So she put up with the long-winded professorial lectures from my dear counterpart, and endured his shouting when her ‘track’ wasn’t perfectly aligned, or when she didn’t raise the mower at the right moment, and apparently she’s coming back for more of the same – only on the sides of mountainous hillsides this time!)

I look back now on this dreadful Ontario ‘flatness’, and just think how blissfully happy we are to be here,  with our stellar and breath-taking views, away from the busy roads, (I remember waiting to snap the above shot so I  could catch the moment with no cars whizzing by on the highway!) the pollution, the noise…  But I DO miss being able to be out in the garden already, as I know some of you in Ontario are doing!  My friend Anne in Carlisle thought it hilarious to send me the following. The chick is even wearing my hat and peasant skirt here!

That’s about the size of it here, too. We are desperate to get turning over some ground with the pitchfork and rototiller!  Remember last spring, when I posted this cartoon, where Richard thought he was made to look old but I thought I looked JUST like the female graphic?

Well, I told him I wouldn’t do anymore ‘devilish’ comics with pitchforks in hand this year.  So instead, I have done an artists’ rendering of the Canadian Gothic, complete with live-in mother:

And I even have the artist, in fields of gorgeous green, painting it on his canvas!

Surely Pippi can’t complain about this, as it’s his actual FACE?  Anyway, the pitchfork is representative, not just of the devil and devilish qualities, but is of course exactly what it stands for – the act of ‘pitching something to the side’.  So, although my mother detests  swearing of any kind, and although my old  co-“Katima-victim” Dave Landry taught me that “Fiddlesticks” is not the REAL “F-word”, I have taken it upon myself to tell winter to go

    And stay tuned for next week, when we WILL begin planting, whether or not there is still snow out there (and there will be!).   We ordered all our seeds yesterday (organic, with biodegradable packaging, from the same company as last year – Hawthorne Farm in Ontario), and Richard has made most of the seeding tables for our basement greenhouse.  All that remains is to drive over the ‘wall’to Trumpty Dumbty-land, where we can buy flourescent lights much more cheaply than here, sadly, get them hung, get the earth into the tables, and voila!  Seeds will be going in for our whole next year’s quality smorgasbording ! It’s nearly time!  Dirt under the (non-existent) fingernails again! Wahoooooooooo!

Fiddleheads and Pitchforks My mother does not approve of swearing. Of even the most mild sort.  My sister and I were not even allowed to say 'shut up' to each other without being sharply reprimanded.