Title : Five Things Friday
link : Five Things Friday
Five Things Friday
1. Sunshine! Much expediting beachwalks with visiting friends (see my IG for a photo). Like my Californian visitors last week, L, coming from a sweltering-at-38-degrees Bordeaux, claimed she would have been quite content with rain and grey skies, but oh, I was so happy to be able to show her how beautiful Vancouver is in the sunshine. . . .
2. Friends to walk on beaches with. And take to Van Dusen Botanical Garden, as I did with a friend last week, an ex-colleague visiting from the island. And to meet for coffee, as I will with another friend, one I've known since high school, this morning. And to have lunch with next week and try to catch up on our respective creative projects, our families, our travels, as I will with an island friend, one whose first gallery show I went to on the weekend. Friends who travel to visit me and whom I travel to meet for the first time. Friends whom I need to email to set up a meet-up now that I'm settled back home.
I posted almost a year ago about the transitions in friendship that I was experiencing and fearing and celebrating and becoming aware of throughout the process of, first, my retirement, and then our big move. I'm hoping to follow up soon with another post. For now, I'll just say that I feel richly blessed with friendships in ways that I couldn't have anticipated -- perhaps not even have appreciated -- two years ago.
3. When I posted about post-travel fatigue, about how it combined with my entertaining and catch-up efforts our first week home to lay me out flat, "SmitoniusandSonata" wisely commented that "Just stretching out on the sofa , reliving it all is called for ... two trips for the price of one"
And that comment really resonated with me, made me aware of how much I still have to integrate, how much this trip is still working away inside me, demanding to be narrated, if only to myself. I'm trying to make a bit of time for this, despite my current Real Life calling me back. Wednesday's photo-heavy post about our train ride through Slovenia is an example of that effort. So is scrolling through the too-many photos I took, deciding which to delete.
Most likely to be deleted are the numerous screenshots taken to capture Google Map's directions to get where we were going without gobbling up too much data enroute. This one represented an easy jaunt, the tricky part coming in trying to park the car. . . .
But this last one, with its promise of 23 minutes to our destination, Ah, this one was a challenge. Let's just say that while 15 of those kilometres might have taken 15 minutes, the last 3 turned into at least 15 slow kilometres--and at least 15 minutes -- driven by Paul as I craned my neck trying to find a sign for Spinčićeva Ulice. . . .
4. We've been whipping the terrace garden back into shape after our three weeks away (as well cared for as it was during our absence, there are nonetheless signs that it missed us -- we didn't expect the kids to do any pruning, and they couldn't do much about the wind damage that occurred). I've got a garden post in the works, but for the moment, I can tell you that there's a serious campaign directed against these . . . ugh, things!
When I first saw them, clustered in fives or sevens or even, shudder, tens, on the underside of hydrangea leaves, I thought they were grubs, although we never saw them move. But there was evidence of some chomping all over, and the hydrangea seemed poorly overall. We removed them manually -- again, ugh! shudder! yuck! -- and have been combing the shrub daily to pull off encouragingly decreasing numbers of them.
And I've finally figured out what they are, after I found one (putative) adult, a very homely critter that I quickly squished, a flat round disc of grey matter that made me think to check whether "hydrangea" and "scale" might yield results. Yep. Our hydrangea is infested with Hydrangea Scale, and the information on the beast isn't particularly happy news. Those "things" I first thought might be grubs -- I've photographed them inside my bracelet to give you an idea of their size, and perhaps you can notice the striations across the one on the left, the striations that let me imagine a grub -- are actually the egg cases. So instead of five, six, seven, even ten grubs to a leaf, we were removing hundreds and hundreds of eggs! Is that the good news or the bad news?!
We're hoping that doing our best to keep the numbers down for the next generation, and supporting the shrub as best we can through this season might be enough to let Nature sort itself out. I never used pesticides in our old garden, being able to count on the natural balance and a relaxed approach to imperfection. I sense this may not be so easy in our smaller space where we lack the predators such as snakes, wasps, dragonflies, and insect-eating birds that used to help keep the pest numbers down. We'll see. . . . Any thoughts? Suggestions? Experience with the dreaded Hydrangea Scale. . .
5. Heading out to meet my friend the other day, I caught a glimpse of my hair in the mirror, registered how long it's got again, that it's almost back to the length it was before I chopped it off to begin the Great Greying Project
I know that some of you preferred my hair at shorter lengths, but I'm feeling much more myself as it's growing back in, and I have to say I'm very pleased with the mix of grey and what's left of my natural colour. And pleased doesn't begin to express how happy I am not to be scheduling -- and paying for! -- a colour application every five or six weeks. . . .
So there we are -- Five Things Friday, and it's almost the weekend. Here in Vancouver, at least, we have sunshine at a very comfortable 23 degrees, and I'm about to get out in it. You know what I'm going to say now: if you have a minute, I'd love to hear what you're up to, whether you have plans for the weekend, whether you've ever struggled with Google Map directions whether in your own or in a completely foreign language, whether you've been thinking about friendships, fighting hydrangea scale, growing your grey. . . . or just want to wave hello. Posts upcoming on most of those topics, but for now. Happy Friday to all of you!
 |
| This is the view from the common-area rooftop of our building, looking North to the still-snow-capped mountains. . . .so good to see some snowpack there, a bit of insurance against summer drought, and something I've been alarmed to see absent the past few years. |
I posted almost a year ago about the transitions in friendship that I was experiencing and fearing and celebrating and becoming aware of throughout the process of, first, my retirement, and then our big move. I'm hoping to follow up soon with another post. For now, I'll just say that I feel richly blessed with friendships in ways that I couldn't have anticipated -- perhaps not even have appreciated -- two years ago.
3. When I posted about post-travel fatigue, about how it combined with my entertaining and catch-up efforts our first week home to lay me out flat, "SmitoniusandSonata" wisely commented that "Just stretching out on the sofa , reliving it all is called for ... two trips for the price of one"
And that comment really resonated with me, made me aware of how much I still have to integrate, how much this trip is still working away inside me, demanding to be narrated, if only to myself. I'm trying to make a bit of time for this, despite my current Real Life calling me back. Wednesday's photo-heavy post about our train ride through Slovenia is an example of that effort. So is scrolling through the too-many photos I took, deciding which to delete.
Most likely to be deleted are the numerous screenshots taken to capture Google Map's directions to get where we were going without gobbling up too much data enroute. This one represented an easy jaunt, the tricky part coming in trying to park the car. . . .
But this last one, with its promise of 23 minutes to our destination, Ah, this one was a challenge. Let's just say that while 15 of those kilometres might have taken 15 minutes, the last 3 turned into at least 15 slow kilometres--and at least 15 minutes -- driven by Paul as I craned my neck trying to find a sign for Spinčićeva Ulice. . . .
When I first saw them, clustered in fives or sevens or even, shudder, tens, on the underside of hydrangea leaves, I thought they were grubs, although we never saw them move. But there was evidence of some chomping all over, and the hydrangea seemed poorly overall. We removed them manually -- again, ugh! shudder! yuck! -- and have been combing the shrub daily to pull off encouragingly decreasing numbers of them.
We're hoping that doing our best to keep the numbers down for the next generation, and supporting the shrub as best we can through this season might be enough to let Nature sort itself out. I never used pesticides in our old garden, being able to count on the natural balance and a relaxed approach to imperfection. I sense this may not be so easy in our smaller space where we lack the predators such as snakes, wasps, dragonflies, and insect-eating birds that used to help keep the pest numbers down. We'll see. . . . Any thoughts? Suggestions? Experience with the dreaded Hydrangea Scale. . .
5. Heading out to meet my friend the other day, I caught a glimpse of my hair in the mirror, registered how long it's got again, that it's almost back to the length it was before I chopped it off to begin the Great Greying Project
So there we are -- Five Things Friday, and it's almost the weekend. Here in Vancouver, at least, we have sunshine at a very comfortable 23 degrees, and I'm about to get out in it. You know what I'm going to say now: if you have a minute, I'd love to hear what you're up to, whether you have plans for the weekend, whether you've ever struggled with Google Map directions whether in your own or in a completely foreign language, whether you've been thinking about friendships, fighting hydrangea scale, growing your grey. . . . or just want to wave hello. Posts upcoming on most of those topics, but for now. Happy Friday to all of you!
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