Maureen Bush's Blog, page 6

Website Fail

For anyone who has had trouble getting on to my site in the last few days, my apologies. There was a “clerical error” at the domain company. Everything should be fine now.

Maureen

In My Garden

For some reason I fail at growing fall flowers in orange and gold. I plant them, for that late blast of colour, but they die, or malinger and die, or bloom but die over the winter. Perhaps they suspect I don’t actually like those colours very much. Instead, I grow reds and some soft pink that reminds me of spring, with a few shots of blue and purple. And then I make it all up to the oranges of the world with pumpkins for Halloween.

Maureen

 

Writing Through Illness

I’m recovering from the longest cold I’ve ever had. It’s a good thing I work from home, because I haven’t been working, and it would be hard to explain to a boss why I needed a month off for just a cold.

My brain was too fuzzy for writing, but as I recover, I have moments of clarity. A writer and friend and valued reader suggested changing a novel I’m working on from third person to first person, as a way to add emotional intensity (which I’d asked for her advice on).

I changed the first chapter, just to see, and liked how it pulled reader-me deeper into the character’s experience. So I changed the entire story. This was the only writing I had brain enough to do – changing pronouns – although sometimes I’d hit more that needed to be reworked.

In my mostly-not-working, I’ve discovered the solution to the second-last-chapter problem, and know exactly what I need to do to reshape it. I haven’t quite the brain power to do the full rewrite, but I’m working on it, slowly, slowly.

And I’m slowly working through some other problems I wasn’t sure how to solve. As I poke along, the answers are revealing themselves.

I’ve found this before, in returning to writing after an illness. Sometimes I find a new clarity about what a story needs. I try to think of it as the gift of the illness, so I have something to appreciate.

Maureen

 

Fall Harvest

Friends and family helped pick apples in September. There were fewer this year because we knocked down a bunch when we were banging off snow in a wicked late summer dump. We lost some apples but saved the tree. We have more wee pears than we could possibly pick – many are too high for us – lucky squirrels. But we ran out of steam, too. There were a few apples we couldn’t reach, the most beautiful on the tree.

Now we’re making applesauce and testing pear recipes. Pear and raspberry, and pear and blueberry isn’t worth the bother of cutting up the little pears. Straight raspberry or blueberry is easier and at least as tasty.

But pear compote with rosemary? That’s a winner! Dark and full-flavoured, it would be perfect with brie, which I can’t eat, but is also just fine with feta cheese. Mild cheddar is too bland, but a strong cheddar might be heavenly. I’d like to try it as a spread in a roast beef sandwich, too.

Next up: apple sauce, and apple slices frozen for winter pies and crisp.

Maureen

The Joy of Writing

After a week of brainlessness, struggling with what feels like an eternal cold, I am, at least briefly, writing again. I can feel my body relaxing as I settle into story, making up absurdities while I listen to Elgar’s cello concerto. It’ll back to Netflix in a little while, but in this moment, at least, I feel just fine.

Stormfall Apples

Calgary’s been hit with another disaster-of-sorts  – a summer snow storm that snapped trees all across the city. (Heavy, wet snow on leafed-out old trees doesn’t go well).

We’re in clean-up mode now. Power company workers from across the province are working to get power restored to everyone who lost it to tree limbs taking out power lines. Any city worker who knows how to use a chainsaw is cutting and clearing roads and sidewalks. Every arborist is at work on private property, prioritized by safety issues, cutting and stacking, with a plan to return later for final cleanup. In an informal poll at the Calgary Herald, 65% of respondents said they had tree damage. In a city of over a million people, where we work to nurture the tree canopy, that’s a lot of trees.

The impassibility of the city during last year’s flood was from flooded streets and closed bridged; this time it was from trees blocking roads and sidewalks. The sounds are different too. Then it was sirens and helicopters and big trucks. This time? Sirens and big trucks and chainsaws. The mayor said not to be alarmed if we heard chainsaws in the night, and everyone just nodded, as if that was perfectly normal.

Two of our trees were badly damaged (luckily not our beloved apple or pear trees). The neighbour’s power was saved in an emergency arborist session – they’ll be back later to finish, including cutting out three large limbs dangling above our side garden. We have a huge stack of branches between the garage and the alley. “Imagine,” my husband said, “the biggest stack that would fit. It’s bigger than that.” Plus three other stacks.

I’ve gathered the apples knocked off when we took brooms to the trees to bang off snow. I’ve set them in bags by the sidewalk. Tart, perfect for pie or crisp, sweeten like rhubarb – in case anyone wants to swing by and pick up a bag. These are the good things that come out of disasters – meeting neighours and sharing stormfall apples.

Maureen

Stories in the Mountains

Last week we had a final brief summer jaunt to the mountains, but it felt more like fall than summer, with fresh snow on the mountain peaks. One morning we hiked up Baker Creek before breakfast, layered up, gloves on, frost on the plants.

Baker Creek was the furthest west creek to flood last year, and by the chalets it became a vast swath of huge gravel. It’s been dug out and reconstructed, but still looks wildly different than before. It also looks much tamer, now, to our eyes, in comparison to what we found upstream. A pedestrian bridge caught debris and all the boulders and trees tangled upstream of the bridge. We stood on a bank of boulders and fallen trees all in a tangle, several metres above the water. The bridge has been removed (pilings damaged), and the trails wiped out.

I also found tidbits for a story. I’ve been collecting bits for a while, and found a little more at Emerald Lake a couple weeks ago. On this trip I found another piece at Stewart Canyon at Lake Minnewanka. It’s like collecting jigsaw puzzle pieces and not having any idea how they fit together until the latest piece ­­– that one – connects here and then that connects to this and suddenly there’s a bit of story that’s come clear – oh – there.

I have half-a dozen stories-in-waiting like this, where I find bits and moments and jot them down, and then go back to my main project, knowing the other stories aren’t ready for that kind of attention, not yet. They need to incubate a little longer, and show me pieces and moments, bit by bit, until the story is ready for writing.

Maureen

The Wind Has Returned

The wind has returned, after a summer of unusual stillness. It’s clearly a fall wind, as the first of the leaves start to turn (only the diseased ones, but it’s still a reminder). It’s sad and glorious at the same time. The wind carries an energy that fills me, especially after a summer of allergies. This wind is clean, and I can breathe.

The garden is winding down, but there are moments that thrill me. My Echinacea are lovely this year, after years of struggling to establish the plants – coneflowers in pink and orange that are so absurd they make me laugh.

My long-languishing Japanese Anemone is loving the new ecosystem in our garden, of dappled shade instead of deep shade, after the neighbour’s lovely old spruce trees were cut down by a developer.

Our back garden is fully rebuilt and thriving (after massive damage from the developer).

There are more kids in the neighbourhood, moving into the newly built big homes going up on every street, and that’s a joy. We have lovely new neighbours, a mom and two kids and a very sweet dog, and that’s the payoff for enduring the horrors of a developer for a year.

There’s lots of interest in our knarly old apple tree – I think we’ll find plenty of neighbours to share apples with this year. And maybe some local kids to help pick. It’s always fun to have a swarm of kids in the tree.

And this will all carry into story, as I prepare to dive deep.

Maureen

Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump

I visited Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump, a World Heritage Site, for the first time the other day. It’s a lovely centre, perched on the edge of the Porcupine Hills, overlooking the prairie in southern Alberta. Even on a cloudy day the view is amazing.

The centre itself is beautifully designed, built into the hillside and rising six stories to a path along the top of the cliff. It’s a bit of a celebration of death, of the sacrifice of the buffalo so the people could eat, carried through into the cafeteria that serves buffalo (which is delicious, by the way).

The museum focuses on the buffalo jump itself, on the Blackfoot Indians, and the archeology of the site. All of it is interesting. Afterwards, walking along the lower path at the base of the jump, lush with vegetation fed by thousands of years of buffalo bones piled many metres deep, I could feel time, a presence here that is lost in more peopled places.

Maureen

Playing In The Rockies

We’ve just returned from a week in the mountains, staying in a cabin near Lake Louise.

The weather was threatening the entire week (including actual threats from forecasters, like warnings of possible flooding). We managed to dodge the rain drops, hiking dry every day except post-rain in a meadow where I was soon soaked to the knees from rain drops on grass heads. But that was lovely, absolutely lovely.

We’ve learned some tricks for avoiding the worst of the summer crowds (arrive early), and were well prepared with toques and gloves (summer essentials in the Rockies).

We saw a few animals – a glimpse of some mountain goats, a gazillion what-I-though-were-chipmunks but are in fact ground squirrels. Some were kind enough to pose for photos. I saw a pika for the first time – I’ve heard them, but had never seen the fluffy-mouse-sized creature that loves rock piles. We saw a huge elk, resting in the forest. Another hiker walked back along the trail with us to show us the best spot to view him, and admire his huge antlers.

Stories hovered, a little too shy to settle with so many people around. But they’ll come. They always come, after a trip to the mountains.

Maureen

Emerald Lake