Prince Albert Voice
Despite the frigid temperatures, I am unable to deny Spring finally seems to have decided to arrive, and stay. There was limited evidence the season had sprung upon us, like an early crocus peaking through a white capped bank of snow that refused to melt, however I was beginning to think we were going to go straight from winter to fall. It didn’t help that May long weekend, which I call “Gardening Long Weekend” saw my friends posting pictures of snowfall from Kamloops all the way to parts of Saskatchewan and beyond. We had a schmear of the white stuff yet it was enough to help me decide NOT to go shopping for bedding plants quite yet. Then the wind came, and because there’s nothing more unpredictable than Mother Nature when she blows a gasket, leaving me with a false sense of security, I shrugged my shoulders and thought nothing of it. I have a little green house just outside my back door. I’ve weighed down the bottom of it and I’ve been fairly aggressive in handling it, pushing against it and testing to see how far I could go before it would collapse, fall over or otherwise cause damage to the precious cargo stored inside. Nothing I did made me think my plants were threatened and I felt quite secure in my own mind that I could move the plants I’d purchased into my greenhouse. I had tomatoes and cucumbers I’d planted from a kit, which I shared with you a couple of weeks ago. But I also had some peppers and wave petunias as well. Oh, have you already noted I’m writing in past tense? The days were warm and sunny, after it finally stopped snowing, and my plants were adjusting to their new home, albeit not exactly thriving but, they weren’t throwing themselves out of their pots either. I felt quite confident that another week in the green house and I’d be planting them in their permanent homes. My Mom came and found me. “Your little greenhouse on the deck…” she began. I nodded my head, looking out the window, and noted the trees dipping and dancing as the wind whistled through the bare branches just beginning to sprout leaf buds. “I think it’ll be okay,” I said, “I have the zipper open a bit so wind will go through it and not create a balloon of air and I have some rocks, an old heavy grill and a brick on the bottom so it should be secure.” My Mom listened then finished her sentence, “the wind just picked it up and threw it onto the ground. Everything is destroyed.” Well played, Mother Nature, well played. You got me.
The lowly potato. Prince Edward Island boasts a large portion of its economy to it and yet, for some people, they look down their nose at the vegetable and prefer dishes which are difficult to pronounce yet satisfy their food snobbery. They choose elegant, fancy restaurants with dishes so expensive the menu doesn’t list a price. Clearly if you need to ask the cost, you can’t afford to eat it. Yet, perhaps we should be more concerned with the pronunciation of the dishes first, before we entertain the cost of eating it. Once in a while, I like to indulge in feeding my emotions rather than just eating for the sake of sustenance and nutrition. When those times arise, I look to the humble potato to satisfy those cravings. And unlike some other languages, which prefer to dress up the root vegetable to make it more palatable, I simply just want to sit with my family at the dinner table with a huge plate of crispy, steaming hot french fries in front of us. Next to the plate we each have the condiments of choice we wish to dip our fries into and the only rule is… “no double dipping!” So once you bite the end off a fry, you can’t redip. This is an important rule especially for my youngest boys who, since the time they first dipped their fingers in their food, have believed food is meant to be dipped, sucked, licked and nibbled upon only to be dipped into another sauce of their choice. It’s taken us a long time to get them to the point they know they shouldn’t double dip… but they still sneakily try to do it anyway. For me, I don’t have to worry about them “contaminating” my choice of condiments as I prefer things a bit spicy. With my fries I have spicy gravy, full of flavour and a bit of heat. I guess some people would say I like fries with my pepper, the same way I like my sunny side up eggs and my steak. I like adding some jalapeños to my fries and some of the pickled jalapeños juice to the gravy. And a dash of vinegar (honestly, it’s a lot more than a dash) takes the flavour to another level of delicious entirely. I’m not one of those people who needs ketchup and a liberal sprinkling of salt on their fries. But I am a person who tries to know how to order fries and gravy in several languages, so I can always find a taste of home, wherever I go. And one day, I look forward to going to France and ordering “baton et de pomme de terror cuit en friture” (French fried potatoes Wikipedia assures me), the syllables and words rolling off my tongue as impressively as if I’d actually been born in the country rather than have just been visiting.
One of the earliest “truisms” as I like to call them (you might call them a proverb) I ever learned is ‘a picture is worth a thousand words.’ My cousin sent a photo that featured her mother and mine. There were two boys in it as well and we were hoping to identify who they might be. And while our attention was held by those two boys, my mind soon drifted and my eyes focused on other things in the photo. I wondered who might have played the guitar that was affixed to the wall behind my mother’s head. I wondered which Bible study aid my Aunt was reading as she concentrated on the words bound inside the book encased in both her hands. In front of her, on the table, the family Bible lay open, ready for her fingers to search for answers as she endeavoured to draw closer to God. I recognized the King James Version she was reading as I’d seen it at my Grandmother’s home when I was a young girl. And I’d seen it later, after Grandma died. We’d inherited her sofa after she passed away. One day I was exploring and discovered the sofa opened up; it was actually a hide-a-bed. And inside the hollowed out cushioned seat, I found my Grandmother’s Bible. The family Bible. And it’s a treasure to me, as much as this photo, of my Aunt holding her publication and learning from the Bible is. My Aunt inspired my Mother to want to know God and His identity. As an atheist, it was a miracle my Aunt found God, and even more so that my mother did too. When Bible students called on my Mother’s home, she would see them coming and hang a cross on the wall. She believed in God, she just didn’t want to know ‘their’ god … and my Aunt changed that for my parents. She dedicated her life to God and remained loyal to him up until her recent death. Looking at this old photograph had me pulling out my phone and looking at the photos stored in my album.
Despite all the years I’ve been around successful gardeners, I still learned something new to me this gardening season. Sweet peppers need extra time to grow so early April is too late to start growing my seed indoors. I’ve been saving seeds for over a year so I wish I would have looked into it sooner and started them earlier. It’s okay though, I’ve found several local sources for sweet peppers and I’ll still have a variety of the plants in my garden. And even though I’m the only one who will eat them, I’m going to grow a couple jalapeños this year. Pickled, I enjoy eating them filled with tuna salad but they’re also tasty as jalapeño poppers baked in the oven, chopped in mango salsa or as a delicious addition to omelettes, wraps and taco burritos. Green sweet bell peppers have me reaching for my epipen due to my allergy but jalapeños don’t bother me, isn’t that strange?
I really haven’t made it a secret that it is the simple things in life that tend to bring the greatest pleasure to my life. Time spent with my children, tea and a good book, interesting conversation, gardening, a classic movie or a drive in the country all go a long way to contributing to a nearly perfect day as far as I’m concerned. I enjoy burning candles, in the house and in the seating area of the deck outside, when the weather allows me to but I’ve been waiting for my two littlest ones to outgrow the curiosity that draws them to the flame. I’d rather not have the fire burning than to have one of them singed. So I’ve found other ways to have subtle scents throughout our house without having to worry one of the children will be hurt.