Let's dance

Miss B had her first dance recital last Saturday night, and it was amazing. I don't think it's usually the case that dance school recitals are so good you would actually pay to see them if your kid weren't in them - I think most of the time they're the sort of things you sit through just so you can see your kid embody the spirit of Second Octopus from the Left or whatever, in their $140 sequined Second Octopus costume and make-up that looks like it was applied with a putty knife. Which is why I hesitated for about two years before I put Miss B in dance classes. She wanted to dance so badly, but I couldn't bear the thought of her being paraded about like that.

I wanted Miss B to be in a dance school that was about expression and creativity, about helping dancers feel comfortable in their bodies, whether they be lanky or roundish or whatever. Oh, how lucky we were to find Miss Lynn! Her choreography is so exuberant, her dancers (from the little three-year-olds right up to the grown-ups) are encouraged to be themselves and not little dance clones, she picks lovely music (like this and this and this and this and this). Even the costumes in the show were gorgeous. A fantastic teacher, and a fantastic night all around. If you're in St. John's and you hear about a Lynn Panting Dance show, even if it's a student recital, you should go. What a lovely time.

And also

Did I tell you that my charming and talented Hubby C's poetry chapbook, Sea Legend, has been shortlisted for this year's bpNichol Chapbook Award? Yeah, I don't know why they haven't updated their website, either. But no matter. My husband rules.

(In case you're wondering, bpNichol was a Canadian experimental poet, and is in no way affiliated with those dirty, sleazy oil-spillers who also go by the name "bp.")

Newfoundland weather

After mentioning in my last post that it was cold and rainy on Sunday, it went and got really warm. And humid. With an eerily warm wind. I planted some clover and poppies where there had been grass outside our front fence, and moved an unhappy peony. Moving peonies tends to make them unhappier than they were before, but this one was so very unhappy that I figured I would give it a shot. It's in Miss B's garden now, and I hope it wants to stay there.

And then yesterday it was too wet for gardening, so I stayed inside to deal with a Ridiculous Problem. A Ridiculous Problem of which only the very privileged can complain. There is too much food in my house. I have the great fortune to have a very generous mother-in-law with a Costco membership, and, as a result, my house is always filled with grocery items I did not buy (and that I likely would never buy). I managed to make a small dent in the bananas by baking some banana-date bread, and a smaller dent in the apples by baking a free-form kind of apple-pecan kuchen-type desserty thing. And I braved the bowl of neglected clementines. I have a lot of clementine juice now.

I think I'll try to make some kind of jelly with it, like this satsuma orange jelly here. Do you think that would work? Or would it turn out disgustingly sweet?

Speaking of sweet:

Poor neglected middle child. He's been doing some very impressive limit-testing lately. Like chucking his sister's lunch containers out the kitchen window. And refusing to go to sleep. And whacking people with various objects and laughing impishly when we put on our Very Serious Voices to explain that hitting people is not okay. Arrrrrgh. Exasperation level is high. But just look at him! I'm sure you can imagine how difficult it is to stay angry at someone with a face like that. I'm doomed, people, doomed.

Sunny Saturday

Well, I didn't get any photos of the trip to the annual plant sale at the MUN Botanical Garden, where Miss B picked out some perennials for her very own flower bed (all of which are pink and purple, dontcha know).

And I didn't get any photos of the first Farmers' Market of the season, where I sat in a dandelion-filled field, eating delicious spanikopita from my aunt's market stall, surrounded by friends and relatives and acquaintances, most of them with babies or toddlers or children in tow, and where Miss B climbed a tree and waded in the banks of wildflowers with her pal Si the Spy.

I didn't get any photos of the grumpy walk to dance class or of the happy walk home (with ice cream).

I did get a shot of Miss B chatting with Hubby C in the afternoon sunlight, though.

(I believe they're discussing the finer points of where tattoos come from.)

I also got a shot of one of the raised beds Hubby C made out of old scrap wood while the rest of us were out adventuring. And you know what's funny? My dad, way down in Costa Rica, spent the day making a raised bed, too. (Did I tell you my dad lives in Costa Rica? And that he has a blog?)

And of a sleepy Newby in the garden.

And of a mysterious purple tulip growing in the gooseberries.

And now the sun is gone again, it's chilly and damp, and we're looking forward to a no-special-occasion turkey dinner at my mom's this evening. Bear is overtired and fragile and unraveling a bobbin of burgundy heavy-duty thread all over the living room, Miss B is at a friend's place, and Newby is making little animal noises in the crook of my non-typing arm. We're inching toward summer, bit by bit.

Is this you?

So, over the last week or so I've gotten two seemingly-normal comments from someone whose username comes up as "Viagra Online." Um... is this you? The username doesn't link to anything, and I've been assuming it's spam and deleting the comments, but if Viagra Online is a real person, leave me a comment saying so!

(Today I got another comment from "Buy Generic Viagra," so I'm thinking spam. At least now I know where to get generic Viagra, though. Thank goodness! I wasn't sure how much longer I could go on without that particular information...)

Getting warmer...

Two whole days of not freezing! Yesterday I did this:

That's the grass between my fence and the sidewalk, all torn up to make way for clover and California poppies. Bring the bees! You like the moss on my pickets there? Yeah, damp climate. Very mossy town.

I also planted potatoes (no photos yet, because you know what dirt looks like already, and that's all there is to look at), and got started clearing out the raspberry patch. We've got raspberry canes taking up the best real estate in the yard, and I'm getting rid of them in favour of putting in a tomato bed. I have loads of other places to pick raspberries (they grow pretty plentifully around here), but nowhere else with enough sunshine to grow tomatoes. Luckily, I have friends who are happy to adopt a few raspberry canes, so they'll have good homes. In preparing to dig them up, I had to clear out a lot of forget-me-nots, too.

I brought them inside because they're so pretty.

Aren't they?

So. Cold.

For weeks, people elsewhere in Canada have been on the verge of spontaneous combustion. My American blogger friends are eating fresh strawberries and peas from their gardens, and watching the tomatoes grow on their sturdy, leafy vines.

It's effing freezing here. Like, winter coat, mittens, and hat freezing. No snow (although other parts of the province had flurries yesterday), but there's a frost warning for tonight.

Not that this should be a surprise. The average last reported frost date for St. John's is June 12. The latest in Canada. Ack. At the moment I'm listening to our lunchtime call-in radio show, because Tuesday is their gardening day and I'm obsessing about getting out there and getting my hands in the dirt, but today is definitely not the day. For now, I'm working on the theoretical side of gardening.

Any Newfoundlanders and Labradorians reading will recognize the book on top. Good ol' Ross Traverse. Our climate and soil conditions here are pretty harsh, and our growing season is very short, so most gardening advice really doesn't apply. There are some really lovely gardens here, including some very productive vegetable gardens, and if you consult the local experts you can do fairly well.

Most of my seeds this year have come from Hope Seeds in New Brunswick, with some locally collected seeds as well, and a few conventional varieties from a locally-run shop. I chose Hope Seeds because their seeds are heritage and open-pollinated, which is important to me, and because they're relatively close by, so they almost count as "local." I chose the most short-season and frost-hardy varieties of everything, so I really hope I do alright.

So far, Hubby C has assembled our potato bed (I'm using our old wooden composter to grow some potatoes barrel-style) and built one raised bed for onions and leeks. Still too cold to plant those guys, but maybe by the end of the week.

My other concern is the cherry tree out back. It's our neighbour's tree, but a third of the branches hang over our property, and the arrangement has always been that the people in this house have been free to help themselves to however many cherries they can reach.

The tree has been blossoming like mad for a week, but it's been so cold out that no bees have been around to pollinate them. This photo is from last week, when the sun was actually out. The petals are starting to drop now. Oh, I hope some stealthy, sweater-wearing bees managed to get to the flowers while I wasn't looking!

All this talk about the weather (I think everyone I know has mentioned it in their Facebook status today) got me over on youtube, looking for a video for R.E.M.'s Pop Song 89 ("Should we talk about the weather? Should we talk about the government?"). I ended up finding a ton of old videos that brought me right back to high school, including this one, which is nothing less than sublime. Is anyone making music this good any more?