After my morning shower I had to use a wet vacuum to remove the water from the bathtub. Each morning I carried out three, two gallon buckets after showering. Each time I washed dishes I removed three buckets. The laundry was far more – eight to ten buckets depending on the size of the load. This adds up to lots of water per day.

I wonder how much water each person in a developing country uses in 24 hours. I’d bet it is roughly the same amount I use for my morning shower.

As time goes on, we will be experiencing more world-wide water shortages. This is amazing, considering that 2/3 of our planet is water. Yet very little of this water is potable or even good for washing. With more droughts world wide we will be facing some severe water shortages in our future unless technology can save us by converting some of the seawater into potable water. I know this technology is around the corner, but what will we have to endure before it does, and how much will water cost in the future?

Municipalities around this country are looking into various ways to save water. Here in this little town water meters are being installed, in spite of the protests of the people. We were told that water won’t cost us any more money and that the meters are being installed in order to keep track of the water supply and how much is actually being used, but we know this is a lie. Water meters mean that it is a question of time before we will be paying large water bills which some people won’t be able to afford. This is already happened on Vancouver Island.

In the meantime, we use gallons of water just for dust control year round. Municipal sprinklers are on full and hard every morning during the summer in order to water lawns, but the residents have stringent water restrictions for watering their gardens. As a result, many properties have brown lawns, dying trees and veggie gardens which must be hand-watered. Not only is this very unattractive, but it is dangerous.

We live in an area which is threatened by fire each summer, as our summers are very hot and dry. As well, we have beetle-killed pine trees which are difficult or impossible to remove due to the mountainous terrain. This means high fuel loads and with water restrictions the danger is increased. And it’s crazy because we’re surrounded with wonderful ground water that our municipality won’t use, which runs downhill year round. They tell us they’re concerned about Garidiasis (beaver fever) bacteria, so instead they’re using arsenic laced well water to supply the town’s drinking water and will soon be cutting off the surface water altogether. It costs much more to treat arsenic water than it does to get a one micron filter for Garidiasis treatment. Also, our surface water is gravity fed and doesn’t have to be pumped uphill to the users as does the well water.

Why is this happening? Someone is making money, I would suppose. Why else would stupid decisions such as pumping arsenic water uphill be employed when other much cheaper and safer water could be gravity fed to users? And where is the province in all this? When citizens write to our local ministers we are told to simply trust our local municipality, yet they’re the source of all our problems.

If we were living in a developing country there might be riots in the streets from the way things are being run here. Water delivery is an essential service. No one can live for very long without water. And we are not allowed to collect the wonderful surface water which is running past our doorsteps!

My parents used to tell us kids that we’re very lucky to live in Canada. In other countries there’s so much government corruption, they said. They believed in their government to do right by its people. If that was true then, things have changed drastically.

The Chief Administrative Officer of our town tells the mayor what to do. When we complain to the province we are repeatedly told to “trust the people we voted in.” However, they have done nothing whatsoever to earn that trust, and have in fact done many things which prove to us they should not be trusted.

Locally we have the same problem many other towns and cities in BC have: arsenic in the drinking water. There’s a provincial act – the Drinking Water Protection Act – which is supposed to protect citizens against harmful substances in drinking water. I have learned that this act has no teeth. The DWPA states that quarterly testing must be done if arsenic levels are above the ‘safe’ level, which is .01 mg/litre. Even at that level there is plenty of evidence that minute levels of arsenic can be detrimental to health. There is no ‘safe’ level of arsenic when it comes to consumption, and cooking with arsenic water increases its toxicity by over 200%.

There have been many times when the town’s drinking water has exceeded the maximum allowable concentrations of arsenic, yet the town hasn’t gone to quarterly testing, nor have they attempted to access safer water sources, even though we are surrounded by good surface water, tested to show there is no arsenic. Although citizens have complained many times to the provincial government as well as the health department, no action has been taken to rectify this outrageous oversight.

As well, we have a sewage treatment plant that has never worked properly, even though our local government has repeatedly told us that it is working just fine. If this is so, the taxpayers would like to know why sludge from this plant is being trucked out of there, several miles away for disposal several times a day.

We have huge potholes in our local streets which are not being fixed, and roads which never get ploughed in the winter, and turn into ice. Yet when we inquire about these services we are told that all is well. They’ll get fixed, or, in the case of the sewage treatment plant – it is working well.

Local government employees receive huge salaries and benefit packages which are way out of line with this tiny tax base, and would be more appropriate for a large city such as Vancouver. We simply can’t afford or sustain this, and we worry about what will happen eventually.

In the meantime, our government, led by a power-crazed CAO, has been involved in investing our tax dollars in risky business ventures without showing us – the taxpayers – any sort of business plan. If a bank won’t finance the venture, why would the taxpayers – especially since government has no mandate to create private enterprises.

We are told that the reason this government is risking our tax dollars is because they’re trying to create employment in this small town which has had two mill closures and there are many out of work. It is their job to create the support needed for business to move in and to make the town more attractive to business. It is NOT their job to create the business itself. This is a misguided attempt to create enough money for the outrageous salaries at our city hall I would guess. Our tax base can’t support them, so they’ve been existing on grant money.

While I’m on the subject of business support, there is very little of that here. Unwilling to spend tax dollars where it is needed – in improving services so the town is more attractive to potential businesses – they have also cut off services they used to provide, such as garbage pick-up. In a tiny town such as ours, they were told that the reason they were cut off is because businesses exist to make money, so they can now provide their own garbage service. It is difficult for small businesses to stay afloat in this economy, so any support at all is helpful.

Our Chamber of Commerce holds their meetings in the District offices. Frequently staff members sit in and listen to proceedings. This is unfair and not at all correct. C of C meetings should be for private entrepreneurs, not local government. How can they discuss problems with local government when staff is allowed to come in and comment? There are times when discussion is needed on topics which may not be suitable for government staff to hear.

Many of the citizens of our town have been cowed by veiled threats from the CAO when they bring concerns forward. The officials we thought we elected don’t seem to be running this town at all. They listen to the CAO who seems to tell them what to do, how to vote in council, and decides matters which should be dealt with using a committee of council, or a variance committee. This person has far too much power.

When our little group of Ratepayers talks to other Ratepayer groups around the province, we learn that many other towns have the same problems. What in hell is going on? What happened to our system of democracy?

I think a great deal of the problem is that many people aren’t paying attention. In that case, there will always be those who take advantage. It’s rather like hiring someone to manage all your money, and then finding out later it’s all gone. We must make an effort to pay attention – go to meetings, ask questions before we wake up and find out we have no freedoms left.

Instead of newspapers, I’m writing for an online forum/blog called Town Talk Canada – www.towntalk.ca

Anyone can write for this forum – all free – ads free – it’s very easy to post and lots of fun. We need a wider variety of opinions on all family-friendly subjects. I hope that anyone reading this post will click on the above link and “join the family.” Many subjects are explored. There’s a budding ‘fiction’ section, and an ‘arts’ section too – many other catagories as well. WE NEED MORE WRITERS!

 But I did get a taste of it last spring around this time, when the editor who used to be there was off with a back injury and I went in cold to try my best to do what I wasn’t qualified to do.  Still, I knew then that my situation was temporary.  Now it isn’t.  But I’m dealing with it.

The last blog entry covered my rant about the pet food industry and how Science Diet has ripped me, and many other pet owners off by leading us to believe that SD is the very best food we could feed our pets.  My 14 year old female cat Allie is diabetic and overweight, even though she’s eaten SD all her life until recently.  The raw food experiment is all about getting her insulin levels either greatly reduced or even eliminated altogether if that is possible for this kitty, who has been insulin dependant now for nearly six years.

To this end, I’ve been on Internet doing my homework.  Found a wonderful site: www.catinfo.org written by a vet.  She gives a great cat food recipe which I am now feeding.  Allie missed her kibbles when I took them away because she was addicted to them.  I believe she’s over that now, as she takes the raw meat very well.  I mix in organ meat – chicken hearts for the taurine and chicken liver for other nutrients, plus brewers yeast and olive oil.  I’ve been freezing them in serving sized containers which I figure she’ll eat in 24 hrs.  She’s been eating a bit more than that, which is fine.  I don’t want her to be hungry unnecessarily, but I’m getting her used to the idea of mealtimes.  She was always a free-fed cat – food available 24/7.  That has been much tougher than changing her food.  She isn’t so far touching the small bones I’ve left in her food, so I am giving ground up eggshells to make sure she’s getting enough calcium.  Sometimes I add pumpkin seed oil, to make sure she’s getting enough omega 6 fats too.

Her doctor says I need to keep a good eye on her, as we expect her insulin requirements will go down.  We recently had to put her dosage up, as she wasn’t stable.  This was just before I began feeding raw.  Since then, I’ve noticed subtle changes in her.  Her coat is healthier looking, her eyes are looking very clear and her walk has improved.  Her walk was the typical walk of a cat who’s diabetes isn’t being controlled properly – it looks like they are walking on eggs.  Now she still walks ‘carefully’, but not as bad as she was five days ago when I took the kibbles away.

I have learned that I need to leave some small chunks of muscle meat in her food so she must chew.  This is good for her teeth as well as her jaw muscles.  I learned that kibbles shatter when the cat eats them.  The tiny pieces of kibble get caught between the teeth and sit there fermenting.  This is the main cause of dental problems in cats.  Muscle food doesn’t get caught between teeth designed to handle a diet of raw meat.

The other two cats aren’t taking the diet change so well.  Ringo hunts and always has, so I’m not worried about him.  He is totally addicted to his kibbles though – like a teenager to junk food.  But I know he gets his nutritional requirements met, as he is eating the diet he was designed to eat: mice and small birds.  He always eats his kill up – not wasting anything.  But I am not giving him kibbles in spite of the fact he hunts because of the damage I see it has done to Allie.  I don’t want Ringo’s health to suffer, and it eventually will if he is allowed to eat kibbles.  Currently he’s in great shape, but no thanks to what I’ve been feeding him.

I am currently cat sitting for my daughter.  Her cat, Jackson, will eat wet cat food, but won’t try raw food.  He’s another kibble freak, but he has had to survive for 48 hours without kibbles now.  I regularly offer him wet and raw food, but he is stubborn.  He likes tuna, and even though fish isn’t all that good for cats, I broke down and gave him some.  In spite of it not being that good to feed a cat, I figured it was still better than kibbles, and it would make him happy for awhile.  He hunts, but will not eat his kill in spite of being shown how to do this by Ringo.  I think perhaps he may change his mind over time. Where I live, hunting is easy.

  I will continue to monitor Allie especially, but also the other two cats.  I am glad to know the truth about these commercial kibbles, but it does make me angry.  I spent all that extra money on SD, thinking I was doing the best thing for my cats, but instead I was slowly killing them.  I can see the improvement in Allie after only five days of proper diet.  The other two cats aren’t so quick to change, but I won’t give up.  I’m pretty stubborn when I’m sure I’m right.

It was easy to switch my two little dogs over to homemade food.  They took to it right away, and as a result their coats are shinier, teeth and breath much better and they are healthier.  The cats are a different story. 

I don’t have to worry about my one cat, Ringo.  He hunts every day and eats what he catches.  His diet is a perfect one for a cat.  Cats are carnivores and as such they absolutely need animal protein and calcium from raw bone.  The best diet for a cat is mice or small birds which they can hunt and eat.  In these small creatures, there’s the exact balance of nutrients cats need.  Unfortunately some kitties just won’t hunt.  For these, the next best diet is the B.A.R.F. diet – bones and raw food. 

I didn’t realize how much carbohydrates are in cat food – 35- 55%!  Cats don’t need any carbs in their diets at all.  Their bodies don’t know what to do with carbs, since they were designed to eat only meat.  These unnecessary carbs go to fat and effect the poor cat’s health. The cat keeps eating because they aren’t getting the proper nutrients, and they get fat and develop other health problems such as diabetes. 

Along with millions of other pet owners, I was brainwashed into believing that Science Diet is the very best thing I could give my pets.  But S.D. puts corn meal into their cat food, something a cat simply can’t digest.  They also use meat by-products, the unusable animal parts left over after butchering.  (Check ingredient list on side of package.) 

Our kitty Allie has been with us for 14 years now and is diabetic.  Most of her life she’s eaten Science Diet, supposedly the best on the market.   I discovered that most commercial pet foods are species inappropriate, and cat foods are the worst offenders.  Often you will find high levels of carbs in the dry foods.  Even worse, the oils they use have gone rancid, so they use hormones to get the cat to eat it.  Some of the cheaper brands use both road kill and ground up deceased pets, making your friends cannibals –  very unhealthy.   I know what a big deal it is to change a cat’s preferences though.  Allie is very addicted to her dry food, and I’m having a tough time convincing her otherwise.  I offer wet cat food at the same time she ‘asks’ for dry.   

Wet cat food has a much better balance of nutrients than dry – even the cheaper stuff.  Also, wet cat food has a high water content.  That’s good because cats are supposed to get most of their water requirements from their food, in the form of blood.  Fortunately Allie likes wet food, so now she’s getting more of it.  On top of the wet food, I’ve been giving her some good raw food.  I chop up some raw chicken with the bone along with raw chicken heart and spoon a little of this mixture on top.  So far she’s eating it with reservations.  She does eat some, but tends to leave some also.  It is good food, but doesn’t have that hormone fix she’s used to receiving. 

I really need to get her off the dry food as soon as possible because of her diabetes and the fact that she currently isn’t stable.  Her blood sugars are much higher than they should be, so I’ve had to increase her insulin.  I’m hoping that the levels will decrease as she is fed more wet food with raw, or better still – has mostly or totally a raw diet. We bought a grinder to grind up the raw bone we will be feeding.  I plan to make up a bunch of little containers for the freezer with the right mixture of raw foods. I think the pet industry wants us to go through animals faster because they end up making more money from us.  I think the average veterinarian isn’t consciously part of this conspiracy, but most will admit they don’t know much about feline nutrition. 

As well, society’s general attitude seems to be more lax when it comes to cats over dogs.  When I adopted my two doggies, I had a long form to fill out, and an interview to go through before I was accepted.  While I have no objection to that and would support that, I was surprised when my daughter adopted a cat from the same agency and they never asked her a single question, never mind put her through an interview.  Is a cat’s life less valuable?  Generally people believe dogs live longer. Not true.  A cat can live 20 years, but the average dog lives 12 -15.  Cats are believed to be more independent.  While that is true on some level, they can’t survive without us, contrary to what some would have you believe.  Even Ringo who feeds himself, relies on us for shelter and love.  We have given him kibbles, without knowing any better and he eats them.  Even kitties like their junk food I suppose.  Still, he’s the healthiest of all.

I’m also running the veggie garden, something I neglected until late in the season due to a full-time job in town and other commitments. The garden is just starting to produce in any great amounts.  I planted quite late this year, but wanted to get veggies in.  The veggie garden is important enough that I keep it going, the perennial border was sort of sacrificed, and some of it has burned out.  The best plants here are drought resistant.  The flower garden is now recovering, since we had some cooler days for about a week, so I guess that setting up the sprinkler now and again as I dashed out the door, was enough to sustain most of it.  There are usually casualties at this time of year, but this year they’ve been minor.  I’ve just been lucky. 

Most gardeners are shocked when they see my garden.  “Where’s the garden?” is the unspoken question in their eyes especially when shown the veggie garden.  Most hard-core gardeners have their grass all nicely clipped and everything is carefully weeded.  Mulch – often cedar, or something pretty – is present around each shrub or plant. Veggie gardens are always in neat rows or mixed in with flower beds in interesting ways. 

In my veggie garden I use raised beds, as I’ve said in previous blogs.  Or, I use garden boxes with open bottoms which I move by taking them apart.  This year I’ve let the fall rye grass and white Dutch clover grow to its full length in the pathways.  This makes it a challenge to walk through, which I don’t mind, but most people probably would.  The tall grasses and weeds give me good protection again the winds which are extremely drying here.  It also gives the ground grouse something green to eat; and now they aren’t touching my chard, lettuce mixes or any other produce.  It acts like a living shield, protecting my produce.  My bush beans get wind burn on their tips.  The rest of the plant is OK because the fall rye is high enough and bushy enough to mostly protect it.   

I’ve got mature weeds in the beds as well as sprinkled throughout the garden.  It happened when I got so far behind on tasks this season, due to working outside our place as well.  I decided that since I had an overwhelming number of chores to catch up on, weed pulling couldn’t be too close to the top of the list.  If they’re helping to hold down soil, but aren’t choking off anything – stay.  Dandelions are welcome if they aren’t bothering anything else. Ragweed is everywhere here, but the big ones will overwhelm the smaller ones.  Since they’ve got a short tap root, they’re easy to pull.  So if I wait until there’s a few big ones, the chore is easier. 

Of course I couldn’t get away with doing this if I lived anywhere near another gardener, or even near enough to someone’s house.  We’re pretty isolated here.  However, if I lived in town, chances are we’d have a much smaller property to maintain, so I might have been able to keep on top of weeds – or at least have a better chance.  Less wind there too.  

I’m currently harvesting huge amounts of chard, rhubarb and an abundance of herbs such as basil, thyme, sage, motherwort, caraway/thyme, loveage.  The bush beans I planted late are just beginning to produce beans, and are mostly still in flower.  I probably planted them just in time or a tad late, as beans don’t like cool weather.  I hope they are finished completely before the temperatures noticeably dip.  Peas planted  about two weeks ago are a couple of inches high.  They’ll be maturing when the evening temps are much cooler – weather they like.   

A few of the onions another gardener gave me survived and are getting big now.  I had planted most of them in with the carrots in order to fool the carrot rust fly.  That trick works too – but not against greedy little black bears who have a thing for carrots.  As soon as the carrots were 2″, he pawed through the whole box, looking for carrot.  This wiped out the carrots and the little transplanted onions.  Fortunately I’d planted just a few around the gooseberry bush I just put in this year.  They are the large Spanish type, and they’re just getting some real size on now.  I can see their ‘hips’. 

The basil and tomatoes in pots, growing close to the house are doing well.  I’ve been making and freezing pesto.  So far I haven’t harvested enough tomatoes to freeze any, as they are just beginning.   

My blueberry bushes growing in pots are still struggling on.  Actually one of them has produced reasonably well for being such a little bush right now.  I probably need a huge rectangular container and a ton of peat moss mixed with spruce needles, old cones broken down and sawdust to plant them in.  Our local soil is alkaline.  Blueberries love very acidic soil – about 4.4 – very acidic for most plants.  I love blueberries.  They don’t mind shade, so I keep trying to get them going here.  I’ve been feeding them fish fertilizer, and they seem to like that.   

Since it is so challenging to garden here, I am leaning more toward all native plants except for the veggie garden.  Went on a garden tour here earlier in the summer and saw a great garden for our climate.  The gardeners rarely water, and use mostly native plantings with a few well-chosen perennials – hardy and very drought tolerant.  Smartest garden I ever saw.  They hired someone to set up the hardscape, recommend plants, place them etc.  I paid careful attention – that’s what we need here!

And our lives are so short – average 70 odd to 80 odd – a few years longer if we’re both lucky and one of nature’s ‘chosen.’  We get to witness such a small snipet of it.  But since we are ‘self-aware’ we can research /read about the past and learn more about ourselves in the present.  We tend to reach forward into it through the lives of our children and their children and try to imagine a future we can no longer attempt to imagine because the technological advances we are living through right now are so plentiful and are moving so quickly that no one can really keep up any more, never mind imagine something more advanced.

We are witnessing what we would have called the ‘unimaginable’ in the U.S. with Canada and other developed countires following on it’s coat tails regarding war practices, unimaginable voilations of human rights, torture and a host of other uglies that the average person would rather not know about.  From this long term nightmarish U.S. administration comes a long, long list of other ugly fall-out situations world-wide which are far too numerous to list here.  The point being, there’s not a lot to pin your hopes on for the future of our kids, grandkids and …?  So the “Baby Boomer” generation has some of the biggest challenges going to ward off depression.  And the governments recognize this as a serious problem – DRUGS!  Quick!  Drug ‘em up!

You can’t ‘handle’ depression the way you might other things.  You must give it some space without letting it take over.  Find somewhere you can go to be alone that’s beautiful, peaceful.  Bring something to blow your nose on and some bottled water and have yourself a good old howl until you can’t cry anymore.  Then, blow your nose, drink water and move on, going for as long a walk as you can handle.  When
you return home exhausted, have a nap.  When you wake up you’ll feel a whole lot better.  That evening, watch a comedy or entertain or do something fun. You’ll feel better the next day too.  And if you feel it necessary – go again and do the same thing.  Give tears the space and time without letting them take over everything.  You can’t ‘discipline’ yourself into not feeling sad.  You feel sad and MUST express it.

There’s an expression popular now that I hate: “suck it up.”  A quick recipe for psychosis.  Suck it up – push it all down, way, way down, sit on it.  Stuff it.  Sure, a person has to get on with life and do what they must to keep going but that doesn’t mean there can’t be balance.  If you never allow yourself to be weak, to cry, to feel whatever, how on earth can you be strong when you must?  You’ve spent all your spirit “sucking it up.”Sometimes there’s a tendancy to feel guilty for feeling depressed, since I live in this great place and have a good life.  I’m not living inBagdad. But still, you live the life you’re ‘given’ to live and make the best of it.  I try not to feel guilty because I have so much to be thankful for and yet sometimes feel sad, because I
obviously haven’t given ‘voice’ to my sadness, and all humans have that right.  It isn’t about ‘degree’ or the amount of horrible things which have happened, it’s about your reactions and feelings about them, and what it means to you. 

I don’t think a person can properly put things into perspective unless you give yourself the time you need to have a cry.  But you can also make rules for yourself such as: I will take no more than 1 1/2 hours – or whatever.  Then follow with something active – like a walk.

Finding time and space to cry alone is powerful because you are deliberately giving yourself the time and space away from everyone to pour out your heart without worry over how others around you feel.  You could bring a notebook for journaling if you want.  I find it sometimes helps. 

As well I was having other problems at the paper.  I would be told to go out and cover an event, but most of my pieces weren’t making it into the paper, and when they did, they were heavily edited to sound like the editor’s style of writing.  Although I tried to have a forthright conversation with her, and I’ve been open with her all along, I think she might’ve somehow been threatened by me.  I tried to end this paranoia after the publisher told me in front of the editor that she wanted to keep me on indefinitely.  I said I would stay until the end of the summer but that this wasn’t what I wanted to do. 

Ms Editor isn’t new to the idea of having an assistant, but her usual summer assistants were young journalist students.  I am totally opposite – not young, not interested in becoming a journalist, but somehow I still wrote the local paper for a few months without any training at all, and some people enjoyed it while others missed the paper as it was.  I actually obtained a small audience appreciative of my writing, much to my surprise and delight.  Still, I think this lady had an insecure feeling about me, plus she likely wasn’t sure what to do with me.   I didn’t think the publisher factored into my problems at the paper, but she did.

Before I realized the shoulder was really bad, I was sent out of town to cover an important event in a neighbouring town.  It was a groundbreaking ceremony with local politicians and heads of various organizations etc.  The editor told me exactly what she wanted, and I delivered it very well.  The paper came out and I saw my picture on the front page, but the credit was to someone else.  I called the publisher and told her a mistake was made, but she denied it.  I re-sent her the picture, showing they were identical with details in the background matched perfectly and she still insisted another person gave her the front page picture.  I asked her to send the other photo to me at home.  She did, but it was my photo.  The specs were identical to mine.  I re-sent both photos with the specs open, but she still insisted someone else took the picture, even though that was proven to be impossible.  Another woman who works more closely with this publisher says she lies all the time, and that everyone else in the office knows and are trying to deal with it.  I believe she made a mistake and then covered it up.

I hate office politics, and I’ve never been any ‘good’ at it.  I’m too blunt because I hate all the ‘he-said-she-said’ things which seem to happen when you group human beings together.  And this flavour of office politicking was making me crazy.  Also, I felt like a pawn between the publisher and the editor.  And both seem to have silly ‘pumped up’ opinions of their own self worth.  We aren’t talking about the editor or publisher of a major paper here, it’s a small circulation! 

So this was my first exposure to working for a publication of any sort, and it did give me just enough experience to let me realize what working for any publication as regular staff would be like.  Freelance is tough – getting and finding work is ongoing – but you don’t have to deal with office politics.  Either they like and buy it or they don’t.  Pressure is controlled by the freelancer, at least in terms of controlling what you take on.

I suppose what cheeses me off most of all, is that I gave the paper valuable summer time – when I usually spend my days doing the staining on the house, repairing things that need repairing, managing the garden and my own writing, entertaining – because I thought I was really needed.  I worked hard for them and then they barely used what I gave them.  I would be told not to worry.  I’d get paid for my time.  But this was besides the point.  I wasn’t doing it for the money so much as I was trying to gain experience.  And when the editor edited my stuff down to sound like hers, I couldn’t insist on a by-line on my work, since what was published was at least 40% hers.  Frequently I didn’t like it anymore. 

So I couldn’t think of any good reason for me to be there.  They certainly needed me when I began, but I couldn’t see where I made much difference by the time I left.  I really should have left as soon as the editor returned to work, but they asked me to stay and seemed to still need me.  I was told they usually have a summer student, but wouldn’t this year because I was already there.  It seemed like a good idea to stay on at the time. 

  It gets very busy around here during the summer, and it was heartbreaking to see my garden get weedy and the chores go undone.  As time went on, and they weren’t using most of my work anyway, I began to really resent them, especially since I gave them the option of only using my services on a freelance basis, telling them I could be very flexible.  They simply had no respect for my time or for me.  My respect for them ran out after I realized they didn’t deserve it.

During all this summer drama, I’ve planted what will be the fall crop of veggies:  broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts are started in 1″ square pots and I’ve planted peas in the garden.  By the time these are tall enough to be affected by the wind, the weather will have changed to warm days and cool evenings:  just the right sort of weather for these cool temperature loving plants.  I’ll wait until late August to put in my spinach since it matures much faster and has such a low tolerance to heat. This year I’ve grown tomatoes in pots close to the house.  They seem to be doing very well and they’re the early ripening sort – the only kind I can grow here.  I’m just starting to pick some tomatoes from these.  I should have done the same with my poor deer-bitten peppers in the upper garden.  It’s the only plant they’ve nibbled so far this year though. 

I completely lose the sun by mid to late Sept., because it moves around behind the mountain located near our house, and the mountain blocks direct sunlight from our lot during the fall and winter months, returning again beginning in March.  Timing for garden veggies is essential.  I can’t grow anything which needs sun-ripening past Sept. I must also pay a visit to our local U-Pic to buy veggies I didn’t have either the room or time to grow this year.  We’re lucky – our local U-Pic is organically grown produce, so I can confidently can up what I buy there – or freeze depending on whatever it is and how I plan to use it. 

I can never have enough tomatoes, now that I realize how easy they are to freeze and what fantastic tomato sauce they make in the winter!  Sun dried tomatoes are easy to do up from cherry tomato plants – usually wonderful producers.  Years ago I bought a small food dryer for around $30 which works fine.  In this climate I could likely just put them on an old screen and leave them in a semi-wind sheltered spot outside.  They may dry faster that way. 

Anyone reading this – how is your garden going?  Where do you live?  Comments are always very welcome.