Last fall I attended a museum exhibit called On The Waterfront, where they displayed a number of old photos and postcards of the waterfront from days gone by. I thought I might share a few of these, for those interested in history and vintage memorabilia.
In this postcard, we see swimmers enjoying the beach in Grand Bend in the 1920’s. One hundred years later, it remains a popular beach resort, but my how bathing suits have changed, although these may have seemed daring in the flapper era.
Imagine paying five cents for a dance – if you ran out of money, you were done for the night and maybe went for a moonlight stroll instead!
Many of the waterfront amusements then involved dance halls or pavilions which attracted people for the nighttime entertainment, as much as the beaches did during the day.
My great-grandmother lived across the river from this resort and dance pavilion. One of my father’s earliest memories was of hearing the music floating across the water while being babysat – with the probability of a cookie and a reassurance that his parents were not too far away. Built in the the early 19th century, it hosted parties coming down river on steamships to attend the dances and stay at the hotels and cottages. Long torn down, it is now the site of a private clubhouse with a beautiful wood floor which would make a perfect dance floor.
Before there were bridges and motorcars, you, and your horse and carriage, could also hop on the ferry to get to the party.
Fast forward to the Big Band era…
Care to jitterbug anyone?
When my parents were dating in the late 1940’s, they attended the Big Band dances at this venue on the shores of Lake Huron. Opened in 1946, it had an outdoor dance floor, as dancing under the stars was very popular back then. It attracted big name bands such as Tommy Dorsey, Guy Lombardo, Louis Armstrong, and Glen Miller who played to crowds of up to 3,000 on weekends. My mother recalls going for a hamburger and a Coke at a nearby diner after the dance – hamburgers were 25 cents, a sum they could barely afford.
Moonlight Serenade – by Glen Miller and his Orchestra
By the 1950’s as musical tastes shifted, it attracted the likes of rock and roll’s Bill Haley and the popular crooner Pat Boone. I’m certain my parents did not attend this crowded Pat Boone concert, as I was born a few days later.
By the 1960’s when we used to picnic in the park there on summer Sundays, there was nothing left of it but some broken cement from the dance floor and a few crumbling walls. Now, it’s a tennis court, with a historical plaque marking the site, although a few years ago they held The Simply White Dinner(link) there, and dancing under the stars resumed for one enchanted evening.
When we see pictures of young people congregating on the beach this summer, partying and having fun in the midst of a pandemic, it seems crazy, but youth is ever optimistic. Although, looking back at these old photos, it does seem a much more romantic time. Perhaps music and moonlight never go out of date.
August has always been the most depressing of months to me. Summer is already half over and the threat of cold weather looms in the distance, heralded by chirping crickets, cooler nights, and heavy morning dew. Those hours of evening lightness are no more – it’s dark at 8 pm, a warning of much worse to come. A bit melodramatic maybe, but hey, it’s Canada, we live for summer here.
It starts with the clouds. You may wake up to a flawless blue sky, but soon those big puffy August clouds come rolling in, spoiling a perfectly nice beach day.
Oh, they’re pretty in a way – it’s best to look at things from Both Sides Now. (Musical interlude – Joni Mitchell wrote this song on an airplane looking down at the clouds, although it was first made famous by Judy Collins. I find the lyrics gloomy, but then it’s become such a strange world, I really don’t know life at all….)
Then you start to see the odd tree branch dipped in paint. There’s a big maple tree on the main street which always starts to turn in early August.
Then there are the back to school ads, a perfect dilemma this pandemic year, although some kids may be looking be looking forward to returning and seeing their friends. Classes don’t resume here until Sept 8 after the Labor Day holiday weekend.
While the stores may beckon with fall clothes, I really can’t justify shopping for anything but essentials when there’s nowhere to wear it, but just being in a store for some hands-off browsing cheered me up immensely.
It hasn’t been the best of summers, with my health issues in May/June (my favorite time of year), the hot humid weather, July’s multiple catch-up appointments and the isolating pandemic solitude. The normal distractions which might bring joy – street festivals, summer theatre, concerts – have all been cancelled.
Plus, August is my birthday month, which is depressing enough, as I’m wondering how I ever got to be that age?
Yes, that age. (BTW, Paul McCartney wrote that song when he was just 16, but it was not recorded until the 1966 Sgt. Pepper’s album, the year his father turned 64. The lyrics reflect his view of old age – gardening, grandchildren, an annual vacation on the Isle of Wight, if it’s not too dear….but even that is out this year.)
I remember my father when he turned 65, saying he wished he was 16 again and looking at him and thinking, you’ve got to be kidding, they’re paying you to stay home! Yes, it’s nice to be retired and collecting the old age pension but it also means you’re old! While I wouldn’t want to be 16 again (too much angst), my stress-filled 30’s are looking pretty good, and someday I may look back and wish to be my current age. I know I should be grateful to be still alive, relatively healthy and COVID-free, when so many are not. (End of whining).
Although it may feel like summer has slipped away without much in the way of enjoyment, there are still a few weeks to relish the rest of the season. Here are a few things to love about this time of year.
A trip to the Farmer’s Market is always fruitful….
Plums, peaches and nectarines.
The glads for sale are a riot of color but the pinks are still my favorite.
It’s melon season.
And tomato season.
And cherry pie season.
And let’s not forget corn on the cob, slathered with butter for those lucky folks who can eat it.
The new ice cream place is doing a booming business, although they don’t have gelato. Does anyone really need all those weird exotic flavors when chocolate reigns supreme?
Note these are mostly food related, but it’s mostly healthy food and food can be enormously cheering! You can walk off the ice cream and cherry pie with a stroll On The Waterfront. (see future blog)
and watch the boats go by.
Having the beach to yourself on an August day can be a reflective type of solitude,
with only the annoying screech of seagulls to interrupt your thoughts.
You can go beach-combing and gather enough shells,
The Inspiration…
to make a souvenir of summer!
The Beachcomber
PS. WordPress congratulations me on my third anniversary of blogging (once a week, Wed/Thursdays, 154 posts, 84 new followers give or take a few persistent vitamin sales people). This was posted in the classic editor but I’m wondering why the photo captions are no longer centered? And why I can’t shrink photos? And where is the word count so I don’t ramble on? I couldn’t post video either? It seems like some of the basic functions are gone. Onward and upward to the dreaded block editor, eventually, but for now I’m enjoying these last days of summer.
During a particularly trying time in my life, a summer filled with stress and drama, I bought myself a lemon tree.
They were half price by late July, so I also bought one for my mother. I had read in Oprah magazine that was the thing to do to cheer yourself up, a reminder of the old saying – when life hands you lemons make lemonade. (Oprah was always keen on the visual stuff). Of course, the photo in the magazine showed a smiling model beside a waist-high plant covered with big lovely lemons. Being optimistic, I expected that’s what I would be getting eventually, with some TLC.
I might also have been inspired by one of those posts which circulate from time to time on Facebook, a real estate ad depicting an abandoned Italian castle you could buy for cheap (it might even have been free) if you were willing to spent millions restoring it – an enormous stone monastery-like building which came with it’s own lemon grove. It was the lemon grove which appealed to me – I already owned a building which required extensive renovations.
I’ve never seen a lemon grove, but it must be lovely. I’ve passed orange groves on my way to Disneyland as a child, but never paid much attention. We don’t grow lemons here in Canada, our winters are way too cold to grow any kind of tropical fruit outside of a greenhouse. While my southern readers might be amused at my nativity, I had high expectations of being able to pick my own fruit. I envisioned making lemon cake from scratch using my own homegrown lemons.
My plant did smell heavenly – I placed it outside in a sunny spot, and made sure it got watered and fed regularly, and it rewarded me with fragrant flowers right on schedule. By fall when the nights started to get cooler, I brought it into the garage, and went they got downright chilly, it was brought into the house and placed in a sunny spot by the big front window. With such a prime view it should have been happy. By then it was covered with small green dots, which grew to the size of big green olives which then shriveled and dropped off one by one. My mothers did the same, so I know, it wasn’t anything personal, it just wasn’t able to adapt to the change in conditions. (It’s not like I expected a bumper crop or anything, but could not one or two of them have reached lemon-hood?)
Ah well, the best laid plans sometimes go awry, but I could just as easily buy shriveled-up lemons from the grocery store in the dead of winter if I needed to. If you’re looking for a moral/life lesson instead of food, this has definitely been the year for way laid plans and being adaptable to change, but if you are looking for recipes, I don’t have any to share this week because although I’ve tried multiple lemon recipes, with mixed results, nothing was worth bragging about.
Just-okay blueberry lemon loaf
I could never seem to get the right proportion of lemony flavor no matter how much zest I used, so I don’t bother experimenting anymore as I found an excellent Lemon-Curd Cake at the grocery store which can’t be beat. (sometimes the easy way out is the best….)
It has lemon curd in the middle so it’s in the frozen dessert section, which is a bonus as it keeps well and you can just slice off as much as you want, for company or not. Sometimes I add more lemon curd on top for an extra dollop of lemony goodness.
However, while lazing on the swing recently, reading the June issue of Victoria magazine,
Such a pretty cover….
I noticed a culinary feature on lemon and lavender,
And the lemon and lavender scones looked very tempting. Plus I just bought some creamed honey at the Farmer’s Market. They also sold a lemon-flavored creamed honey which I may get on my next trip.
Lemon and lavender scones drizzled with creamed honey
And then there was this lemon tart – although decorating it with dried roses and sprigs of lavender does seem a bit over the top, my August garden yields plenty of both.
Lemon tart decorated with lavender sprigs and dried roses….
So many lemony-good recipes, so much time to experiment this summer, so yes, my own lemon grove would definitely come in handy. Best to pick up a couple of lottery tickets when I go to the store to get some lemons….
Limoneto
PS. My apologies for the somewhat deceiving title, see the Victoria magazine website for a recipe for lavender-lemonade. (link)
As Jane Austen famously said, “Where shall I begin? Which of all my important nothings shall I tell you first.”
(Jane was writing to her sister Cassandra, who fortunately saved 160 of her letters, for they tell us much about her life in the early 1800’s. Unfortunately, she destroyed the majority of the correspondence, reputed to be in the thousands, after Jane’s death, likely to protect her reputation. Jane’s witty and barbed comments make for amusing reading now, but may not have if you were the subject of her satire.)
Caught up in the minutiae of her daily existence, Jane probably felt there wasn’t much to write about – much like my life at present. First there was the spring that wasn’t, then the summer that wasn’t and I’m sure the rest of the year will be more of the same. It feels like things are in a holding pattern, but this is the new reality of living in the time of COVID.
I started the Corona Diaries in May (link to first installment), back when the pandemic was still fairly new, with the intentions of recording a personal history of life during lockdown. Here’s a recap of what’s happened in the not-terribly-exciting months since then.
THE SCAVENGER’s MISTAKE: (otherwise known, by the grass-cutter, as that damn table….)
Before plastic surgery to fix the sagging side…
May 21 – While out for my daily walk I noticed a discarded table put out for pickup. It was at the end of a driveway along the river McMansions, so it was of high quality, solid cedar wood with a hole in the middle for an umbrella. (I live at the poorer end of town but like to walk there for the shade trees). Now, I’ve been known to scavenge the odd thing or two on garbage day. It’s truly amazing what people will throw away, like this corner picket fence, which ended up sheltering my rose bush from the snow plow,
They threw out the $300 arbor too?
and a wrought iron cart which found new life in my garden after a coat of paint.
Lime green spray paint
Nobody seemed to be around but I noticed my mother’s grass-cutter doing a lawn nearby with his riding lawn mover, so I waved him over and enlisted his help in carrying this perfectly good table three doors down to his truck, and then later from his truck to my back yard. I did hesitate, because I remembered “The Summer of the Patio Stones”, but that was ten years ago and my back had been fine since and he proclaimed that it wasn’t very heavy and I didn’t want to be a wimp and I really wanted the table. I could envision it painted light blue under my shade trees, and a Jane Austen tea party in progress sometime in the COVID-free future.
(photo sourced from Pinterest)
(Maybe Serene Blue, like this chair I painted in chalk-paint?)
Was it worth it?
No! No! A thousand times No! I spent a miserable month with back pain, living on Tylenol Arthritis around the clock. As I could not sit or lie down comfortably, there was no blogging done and little computer time. I could not even focus on reading, so I lay on the couch like a tragic heroine from a Jane Austen novel (possibly the overly dramatic Marianne Dashwood, from Sense and Sensibility) and felt sorry for myself. Well, at least it isn’t COVID, I thought, trying to cheer myself up.
A COVID TEST IS MORE PAINFUL THAN YOU MIGHT THINK:
By early June I was dealing with a couple of other health issues, one of which involved a fever – intermittent low-grade when the Tylenol wore off. Despite a fever being such a rare occurrence for me that I can’t remember ever having one, even when I had the H1N1 flu, I was not worried about having COVID – fever, headache, fatigue and some abdominal pain, but no chest, SOB or cough and I could still taste and smell food.
Any day you wake up and can smell the coffee is a good one…
On Day 4, after doing the COVID assessment test online and speaking to as assessment nurse, I booked an appointment at one of the drive-through testing centres – way more painful than I thought. It’s supposed to hurt the nurse said, when I complained, it means you got a good sample. It felt like he scraped the inside of my nose for ten seconds. I had to pull over on the drive home to see if it was bleeding. It wasn’t, but it hurt for about half an hour more. Luckily, the test results were available online within 48hrs – negative. Well, that was a relief.
A few more days of misery ensued, in which I suffer from both back pain and mystery illness, which seems to be getting worse. On Day 7, I started an antibiotic and felt much better after 48 hours, so likely not COVID as the response to the antibiotic was so quick.
Still, there was that nagging worry, reinforced by a nurse who said, everyone presents differently and my neighbor who casually remarked, how do you know you didn’t test too early? Is that the kind of thing you say to an already paranoid person? So, I got retested on Day 14, mostly for peace of mind so I could visit my elderly mother whom I had not seen for several weeks, and it was negative too. The second test hardly hurt at all, a mere pinch, by the exact same tester.
Whatever I had was certainly strange and unusual, as I never get headaches or fever. While I was not sick enough to go to ER, and felt well enough to drive the fifty minutes to the testing center, what if you weren’t? It’s definitely not ideal for someone to be in the car with you, especially if there is a long wait time. If the tests only have some degree of accuracy, depending on viral load and whether you are testing too early or too late, is a negative test a positive reassurance or a false one? Even antibody levels may not be all that reliable as they are reputed to wane quickly after a mild case. Ten days seems to be the critical time period for many patients, where you’ve either recovered or end up in the hospital on oxygen. If my antibiotic response was just a coincidence at the ten day mark, and I did have a mild case where did I catch it? I had been at the hospital lab a few days before for thyroid blood-work, the grocery store and the hardware store where the teenage clerk sneezed behind the plexiglass before shoving my receipt into the bag. So many unknowns, it’s mind-boggling. At any rate, I slept a lot and was lethargic for another few weeks but am now back to my regular low energy-normal and grateful to be recovered from whatever it was, plus the back pain had departed by then too.
With the back pain/health issues/general lethargy/hot weather, there was no daily walking, no gardening and no flowers bought at all, as I couldn’t even lift a watering can. Also no table painting, or other painting projects, or deck cleaning or window washing either, and certainly no house work! Freedom 55 in a sense…it was a month of nothing.
THE VICTORY GARDEN WAS A BUST:
My total Victory garden expenditure was $8 – for three types of lettuce and one tomato and cucumber plant. The cucumbers were stunted, tough and full of seeds, but I still have hope for the beefsteak tomatoes. I harvested two of the lettuces, the third unknown variety was so bitter even the rabbits wouldn’t touch it. I prefer romaine but couldn’t find any, nor asparagus which I had wanted to get started this year but I was able to harvest my rhubarb for the first time. When I went to pick more, there was a nest of baby bunnies underneath the rhubarb leaves. As there was a lot of rabbit fur lying around and I’m not into sharing with the wildlife, I left the second crop for them. They eventually hopped away, but next year I need to replace the fence.
Poor little things sheltering in place…
We had some pleasant days in June, perfect for reading outside on the swing, but I had nothing good to read, so I looked at pretty pictures in Victoria magazine. (I collect the back issues, as I find them inspiring. In my next life, I would like to work for this magazine.)
And then Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah!
THE LIBRARY REOPENS
June 9 – the Library reopened for Curbside Pickup and I got 6 books the first week. They brought them out to you in a little paper bag to minimize handling, so I now have a collection of paper bags to recycle. I miss the librarians, but it’s too hard to chat through a mask through a car window. I was still too miserable to read then but am back to reading one book a week.
It was like Christmas in July…
STRAWBERRY SEASON
June 21 – I had recovered enough by strawberry season to drive an hour to a farm to buy a flat of berries to make two batches of freezer jam. Normally I would go to the Farmer’s Market, but it’s overcrowded at the best of times. I took my mother along for the drive, as she needed to get out of the house. She enjoyed the drive through the countryside and remarked how green everything was, and I felt guilty for not getting her out more often, but where exactly is it safe to go when you’re 94? She misses going out for groceries. At least she still lives in her own home. Imagine all those seniors confined to the same small room in nursing homes for months on end, and the amount of cognitive decline. The retirement home we had toured last year, ended up with ten COVID deaths this spring and it was one of the better ones.
(pioneer provisions for the winter)
HAIRDRESSERS SHOULD BE DECLARED ESSENTIAL WORKERS:
June 26 – I was reunited with my hairdresser. We were both happy – I was happy I could see out of my eyes again, and she was happy to be out of the house, but as I was her only client for 2 ½ hours (cut and color) she can’t be making any money. The price went up by $10 to $75, but I would have paid much more. They’d only been open a few days so she did have to remind the other stylist not to come near the sink with her client while I was rinsing, and informed two customers, who walked in ignoring the sign, that masks were required. No more waiting room – you stay in your car until they come and get you. I do appreciate a strict business owner.
PORCH VISITS RESUME:
On July 1 Canada Day, I was well enough to receive my first porch visitor, (unless you count the bunnies). I brought out my blue Moroccan dishes and served key lime pie, chocolate chip cookies and a pineapple punch.
It was good to entertain again, even if not at a table. We sat on the deck, socially distanced, for four hours, as it was a perfect summer day, warm with a nice breeze. The remainder of July was so hot and humid you couldn’t even go outside, let alone entertain there. We’ll meet again someday, when it’s cooler…
(This song by Vera Lynn, who died recently at age 94, was popular during WW2 and could be our new COVID anthem.)
THE WEATHER: (every diary should include a good dose of complaining about the weather.)
Since then hot and humid has ruled the day. The majority of days in July were over 30 C (90 F), with humidex often close to 40 C, and not much cooler at night when the mosquitoes reigned. Two weeks of no rain meant I had to lug the garden hose around one evening, thus ensuring several itchy nights. What did we do without A/C? We wilted like Jane Austen heroines…..
SHOPPING RESUMES: (sort of….)
Speaking of inelegance, I’m still schlepping around in my yoga pants and t-shirts. I haven’t dressed up once this summer or been fun shopping, but I’ve expanded my repertoire of stores to include Michael’s (framing, but still out of canvas boards), the hardware store (home of the sneezer and special lightbulbs), Winners (had to use the washroom, one of few open) and the Dairy Queen (twice, once with my mother who enjoyed the treat), where the young man making my milkshake told me he liked my mask with the paw prints. (I didn’t even know they were paw prints, as it’s reversible). But horror or horrors, a visit to the Beauty Boutique revealed that they were out of Estee Lauder Night Repair, a product I have used for over thirty years. (Thankfully that face mask hides wrinkles too.) In common with so many other things, once it’s out of stock, it’s out for months. Lesson learned, I scooped up the last eight boxes of my favorite Yardley English Lavender Soap at Dollarama, and noticed a lot more bare shelves since my last visit there in March. I also popped into Reitmans to check on my missing (capris) order, before they go bankrupt, but I didn’t try buy or try anything on, although I saw some cute summer face masks. I resisted as summer’s already half over, and surely we won’t be dealing with this next year?
I’m still being cautious, mask and gloves and disinfectant, but am not as paranoid about going out as I was in the early days. I still hate grocery shopping, even more so now that the hot humid weather makes the mask more suffocating, but I’m going weekly now to take advantage of all the fresh summer produce, instead of every 3 weeks. I speed walk through the aisles during the off hours and try to avoid the nose-wiping-with-hand/nose-blowing-but-failed-to-disinfect cashiers. I know it’s allergy season, but medical-me is horrified by these things.
THE GREAT MASK DEBATE:
We can turn to Jane’s wisdom again for advice on this thorny topic.
An adaptation of Jane Austen…
Perhaps the matter can be simplified into two camps – worried pessimists (I’m sure I’ll get it and die), versus sunny optimists (the odds are against it and I’ll live). This debate has been settled recently by city council finally mandating mask wearing indoors in public spaces, with the inevitable protest ensuing outside city hall.
TO EAT IN OR OUT?
I’m tired of cooking and eating the same old thing. We’ve had takeout a few times but have not been brave enough to visit a restaurant patio yet…likewise dining in when that happens. One, it’s way too hot, and two, you can’t convince me (see above scenes) of the safety, when so many people have hygiene fatigue. Many of the pop-up patios seem crowded, and being surrounded by ugly wire fencing, barrels and a few potted plants in some parking lot is not my idea of an appealing atmosphere. Now I might be tempted if it was more like Paris, with bistro tables and a red awning, or something with a water view.
Coastal living photo
THE NEW VIRTUAL REALITY: (or think like a millennial)
July 16 – The museum curator emailed that my mothers art exhibit is still on for this fall, and she’d like to hang it earlier than planned. I’m surprised, as I had assumed it would be on hold until next year, but as we’re going into Phase 3 they are planning ahead on having galleries and museums open soon. (This is a 3 month show we had committed to last summer, as these things book up well in advance). I had already completed most of the prep work back in January and the paintings are finished, but I still need to do some framing and art cards, after the curator makes the final selection. (There is only space for 25 out of 40 paintings so I’m glad it’s not me choosing). Of course, thinking like an old-fogy, I can’t imagine anyone going to a museum right now, but she assured me that if we have to lockdown again in the winter, the exhibit will go virtual. Spoken like a true millennial! So, that’s something for my mother to look forward to – although there won’t be an open house, she might even get more exposure online. (For readers unaware of my mother’s amazing story, she started painting again at age 87 after she gave up driving. I entered her in a gallery contest for local artists and she was one of three selected, so she got to show her work for the first time at the age of 90. This will be her third exhibit since then.)
We have been lulled into a false sense of security here, not having had any COVID deaths or hospital admissions since June, and relatively few active cases. We were down to 5 cases, but recently climbed to 25 as more things reopen, but it is still manageable with testing and contact tracing. All of the nursing home outbreaks are over as well and visits have resumed. While things may be better stats-wise, it could flare up again at any moment. The very randomness of this virus is the scariest part – once it stealthily enters a place, one case can become ten and then a hundred and soon it’s snowballing out of control, and now the dreaded back to school decision is looming and with it cold and flu season not far behind.
DOMINOES
July – All spring, appointments have been falling like dominoes, one after the other. I’m now in the process of standing them back up again – hearing, vision, dentist, medical tests. A trip to the hospital’s ambulatory care for a minor skin procedure was so efficient it should run that way always. (Absolutely zero waiting – screened, registered, escorted to room, doctor there two minutes later). I’m trying to take advantage of this little lull to get things done, as it’s better to get all these appointments in now before the next wave hits….because we know it’s coming.
Finally, if we have to go into lockdown again, after enjoying this bit of summer freedom, remember Jane’s words of wisdom….
Dear Readers: Thank you for still reading…..next week’s blog will be much much shorter, but Jane may be making more guest appearances in my blog, for she really has a quote for everything!
(All Jane Austen quotes and illustrations sourced from:)
There’s nothing as delightful as a summer breeze. It’s especially welcome after a long hot and humid spell, when the wind suddenly swings to the north dropping the temperature by over ten degrees.
My childhood bedroom faced south and I have memories of waking up on a June morning to a cool breeze, blowing the white curtains into the room like billowing ghosts. I still like the sight of gauzy curtains dancing in an open window.
Yes, back in the days before A/C, we used to sleep with the windows open all summer. The upstairs bedrooms in our old farmhouse would get pretty hot in the dog days of August, but I don’t remember it being brutally hot all summer like it is now. I put the A/C on the third week of May, and except for a few cooler days in June when I could open the windows and air out the house, it will stay on until late September.
On July 1, Canada Day,what’s moresymbolic of patriotism than a flag snapping in the wind, beside a maple tree.
Oh Canada!
The sight of sheets flapping in the breeze is a lovely thing, with the added bonus of that wonderful fresh-air sun-drenched smell when you drift off to sleep.
While I may get refreshing north breezes on my back deck, I have to move under the shade trees if the winds are from the south – a perfect spot for dining alfresco. (table photo from Pinterest but see The Corona Diaries next week for my latest scavenger find)
Add in some poetry:
Poem from Victoria July 1999 issue
And some music: (The lyrics of this oldie but goodie paint a perfect picture – “Sweet days of summer, the jasmine’s in bloom. July is dressed up and playing her tune”)
And you have the ingredients for a perfect summer day. As Henry James proclaimed, “Summer afternoon, summer afternoon, to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.”
A swing or hammock gently swaying in the breeze can lull you to sleep while you’re reading.
A cool breeze on a hot day at the beach makes for awesome waves.
Surf’s Up!
And what’s a sail without a good stiff south wind.
I was surprised they held the annual sailboat race this year, although there weren’t as many entries. The music and food festivals were all cancelled, but spectators could still line the shore and watch the parade of boats go by.
Sailboats social distancing….
Finally, there’s nothing like sitting on the deck with a cold one when the heat of the day is over and an evening breeze descends to cool everything off.
An old-fashioned root beer float…
Wherever you are, may the rest of your summer be a breeze!
Lyrics: “Summer Breeze” 1972 Seals and Croft
See the curtains hangin’ in the window
In the evening on a Friday night
A little light a-shinin’ through the window
Lets me know everything’s all right
Summer breeze makes me feel fine
Blowin’ through the jasmine in my mind
Summer breeze makes me feel fine
Blowin’ though the jasmine in my mind
See the paper layin’ on the sidewalk
A little music from the house next door
So I walk on up to the doorstep
Through the screen and across the floor
Summer breeze makes me feel fine
Blowin’ through the jasmine in my mind
Summer breeze makes me feel fine
Blowin’ through the jasmine in my mind
Sweet days of summer, the jasmine’s in bloom
July is dressed up and playing her tune
And I come home from a hard day’s work
And you’re waitin’ there
Not a care in the world
See the smile awaitin’ in the kitchen
Through cookin’ and the plates for two
Feel the arms that reach out to hold me
In the evening when the day is through
Summer breeze makes me feel fine
Blowing through the jasmine in my mind
Summer breeze makes me feel fine
Blowing through the jasmine in my mind
It’s been a bountiful year for lavender. I don’t remember ever seeing so many buds on my plants before – the bees are certainly rejoicing!
Lavender is an easy-care perennial, sun loving but can tolerate some shade, does well in drought and poor soil – exactly my kind of plant. I have about twelve bushes but admit the ones in the shady back yard,
are not as lush as the ones in the sunny facing front.
I’ve grown lavender for years as the fragrant smell has always appealed to me. It’s inexpensive at $5 a pot, and once established, it’s beauty can last for years. I usually plant English lavender as it is the more cold-hardy species. My few attempts at growing French lavender were not successful as it did not survive overwintering here in our Canadian climate. I also prefer the sweeter English lavender smell, whereas the French has a sharper Rosemary-like scent. French lavender has a longer bloom time and a darker purple flower. Someone brought me back some from Provence once and while it was nothing at all like mine, it would still be lovely to see someday.
(Colors of France photo)
These photos from my garden show the progression of color with the season, from the palest shade early on,
gradually darkening to a more vibrant purple.
In certain lights it can take on a blue tone,
but the softer light of early evening really makes the purple color pop.
Usually by the end of July, the buds are dried out but there are always a few spears still growing in September. Cutting them back is supposed to encourage a second flowering – I’ve never tried this but might this year as it is so abundant. While some people like to harvest early for best fragrance and dry their lavender bundles upside down, I prefer to enjoy the beauty of the plant and and strip the dried buds off later.
If you don’t have a garden, a pot of lavender is a nice alternative.
Lavender has long been known for it’s calming fragrance. Add a few drops of lavender oil to the bath water after a stressful day for instant relaxation.
Lavender Pillow Spray
For sleep-inducing properties, use a lavender spray or tuck a lavender sachet under your pillow. I often give sachets away as presents and one year my cute little 5 yr old neighbor insisted on taking one home for her shift-worker dad. Lavender can also be used in cooking, adding a subtle fragrance to baked goods like cakes and cookies. While I’ve never baked with it, I used to drink a brand of lavender flavored Earl Gray tea before I gave up caffeine.
One year I tried to make my own lavender oil, with disastrous results. There were two methods suggested – the first extracting the oil with oil required steeping the leaves and flowers in a crock of olive oil and repeatedly pressing, straining and adding more buds every 24-48 hrs, repeating the process 6 to 8 times. The second method, solvent distillation, which involved extracting the oil with alcohol to make a tincture, sounded much easier. They recommended ethyl alcohol, but if you couldn’t find it, vodka was acceptable (but not rubbing alcohol). For a non-drinker like me this required a trip to the liquor store where I was surprised to find even the smallest bottle of vodka cost $20. The lavender buds were soaked in the alcohol in a jar, in a process called maceration, meaning steep or rest, an old pharmaceutical term I remember from my school days, as in the extraction of a drug by allowing it to stand in contact with a solvent. The jar was placed in a dark cupboard, with instructions to agitate it once a day. I missed a week while I was away unexpectedly, but it just looked darker and murkier. After several weeks (2-6 wks), you drained the liquid off by straining it through a cheesecloth filter and froze it in a suitable container. The lavender oil was supposed to congeal on top of the alcohol, which does not freeze, and could then be scraped off and placed in a glass bottle. I ended up with about 3 ml (half a teaspoon), of a strong lavender-like but somewhat foul smelling brown liquid, not enough to fill even half my dropper bottle, which eventually got thrown out during one of my cleaning binges. My advice – drink the vodka instead and just buy a good quality essential oil. Some products have fake lavender scents, but I’ve found this to be one of the better brands, and at $12 it’s reasonably priced.
Storing a lavender spray in the fridge to spritz on a hot summer day is a refreshing trick.
The calming scent of lavender soap can help you pause and relax while performing that all important frequent hand-washing activity.
It’s nice to scent your drawers with a lavender sachet. Wedding favor bags from the party store are great for this purpose.
Lavender sachets
I admit the lavender bushes aren’t quite as pretty when the season is over and they’re brown and dried out, but the smell is still lovely, especially after a summer rain.
My lavender is almost ready harvest. With such a bumper crop this year I may have to hire help!
Visiting a lavender farm has long been on my bucket list, preferably one in Provence but even here would do. For those who dream of living such an idyllic life, a memoir of the reality by a New York city writer who moved to Texas with her National Geographic photographer husband to start a lavender farm. I read this when it was first published in 2008 when I was interested in making scented products. As I recall, they lasted about ten years, including time to get the plants established, before they gave up and moved to Mexico. (Rating 3/5 stars.)
Song of the Day: (and Source of Blog Title) Lavender’s Blue
This song is stuck in my brain after watching a Disney movie last week (2015 Kenneth Branagh version). I always liked Lily James as Rose in Downton Abbey and she did a credible job as Cinderella. Okay, I wasn’t really watching it, but it was on TV while I was editing photos. An old English nursery rhyme/folk song from the 17th century, it seems faintly familiar.
And last but not least, one of my mother’s paintings:
This is the first year I haven’t bought any garden flowers – no hanging baskets, no geraniums, absolutely nothing. It was cold with snow flurries until mid-May so the pop up nurseries had a pathetic selection of small and withered looking plants. We went straight into hot humid weather and I was waiting for them to go on sale but then never made it to any of the big box stores or nurseries.
On the plus side I don’t have to water, especially welcome in this record breaking heat. On the minus side, I miss the beauty of having baskets, even the humble geraniums, but I’m trying to focus on my hardy perennials. Due to the late spring it was a bad year for lilacs (exactly 3 blooms) and peonies (a poor showing, only one or two on the new bushes) and some of the rose bushes did not fare well. The ones on the north side are very sparse and two had to be dug out entirely. On the other hand, the rest of the roses were abundant and the lavender was so plentiful it deserves it’s own blog.
Here’s a recap since May. A carpet of blossoms on my daily walk.
My 50 cent purple iris was a beautiful bargain once again.
The daisies showed up early.
Second year for the prolific purple clematis.
The older purple clematis is still hanging in there.
The fuchsia clematis.
Purple salvia and pink roses make a colorful contrast.
The heirloom roses were bountiful.
fifty year old roses…
And so were the Pink Knock-Outs,
and the newer lavender bushes are doing well.
Stay tuned for The Lavender Blues next week…
And speaking of blues, the hydrangeas were more cooperative this year – some lavender hues and my favorite blue tones, aided by a generous dose of aluminum sulfate to acidic the soil. I wonder how much you have to add to get that brilliant blue you see in gardening magazines?
The garden is my backyard oasis, a tranquil respite from this crazy COVID world. How is your garden growing this year?
This month’s recipe was inspired by a book. Recipe for a Perfect Wife, by Karma Brown, is a quirky look at the lives of two newly married women living in the same suburban house sixty years apart – Nellie, a typical 50’s housewife, who is trying to get pregnant, and Alice, a reluctantly transplanted New York City writer, who is trying not to. Told in alternating voices, Nellie 1956 and Alice 2018, with quotes of outdated advice at the beginning of each chapter and lots of 50’s recipes, it’s an interesting look at marriage, then and now.
This book appealed to me because of it’s unique format, plus I thought it would nice to read about what life was like for my mother’s generation – my mother had 4 children under the age of 7 by 1960. (It’s exhausting just thinking about that.) The book was immensely readable, but not quite the light fluffy read I had expected. While itstarted out okay, it soon took a dark turn and ended up with a strange ending. I didn’t really like any of the characters, dishonesty seemed to be a common trait – hard to base a marriage on that, even back then when people often didn’t know each other well before becoming engaged. Of course the author was trying to make a point, and it would make an excellent choice for a book club discussion. You could even make some of the 50’s recipes like Baked Alaska. I always like it when the book club dessert matches the book club selection.
My recent Hermit Cookiesblog, sparked a discussion about family cookbooks, Betty Crocker and Fannie Farmer being old favorites, although my mother’s bible was the Purity Flour Cookbook. Growing up on a farm in the 60’s, my family meals were invariably our own home-grown vegetables and meat, and of course no meal was complete without a potato. No rice or noodle casserole dishes for us, and spaghetti was simply pasta doused with a can of Campbell’s tomato soup. My mother did not experiment with recipes like Tuna Noodle Casserole or Chicken A La King because my dad and brothers would simply not have eaten them, and I myself was a picky eater, although she did make a good meatloaf and macaroni and cheese with bread crumbs on top.
garnish with a layer of potato chips?
For many modern housewives that era saw the ushering in of convenience foods, instead of made from scratch. Although we had boxed cake and brownie mixes, my mother made enough homemade pies and tarts to feed a threshing crew and just once that glorious Sixties Desert – Baked Alaska.
Perhaps I remember this momentous event because of it’s rarity. It was not for a special occasion, but simply on a summer evening, a couple of hours after supper to ensure that no one was too full for dessert. If you go to all that trouble, you want to make sure your masterpiece is appreciated.
For those of you unfamiliar, Baked Alaska is basically a mold of frozen ice cream and cake, smothered with a layer of toasted meringue.
Although both my (2009 reissued) Purity cookbook recipe and the one in the book, call for white sponge cake and strawberry ice cream, my mothers version was reminiscent of this Martha Stewart creation, with chocolate cake and vanilla ice cream.
It was a marvelous sight to behold, with the meringue all puffy and peaked, and who would believe you could put ice cream in the oven! Perhaps I also remember it as chocolate cake was always my birthday choice growing up.
Baked Alaska can be complicated, if you want to mold it into a perfect dome shape, or use tea cups to make individual portions as in this Martha Steward recipe which calls for strawberry and vanilla gelato and of course, being Martha, she’s making the cake from scratch. What exactly do you do with all those separated egg yolks?
But it can also be easy if you just cut your cake and ice cream in a slab, layer it up, freeze it hard, and then smother it with meringue, as per this recipe in my mother’s 1965 version of the Purity cookbook.
Maybe not as fancy as the dome-like creation, but wouldn’t it be the same thing? I even wondered about using a carton of liquid egg whites but some sources said the heat from the pasteurization process would negatively affect the egg proteins. (Cream of tartar is included as an acidic stabilizer to keep the proteins in the egg whites from sticking together thus enabling a smoother stiffer consistency. Alternatives are lemon juice or white vinegar.)
So, I did a grocery run yesterday and bought a carton of liquid egg whites, and decided to experiment last night, and they whipped up just fine. I used lemon juice as I couldn’t find any Cream of Tartar at the store.
I forgot to buy cake, so I used two portions of Mug Cake mix from the pantry, not the best idea as the shape was not ideal and there wasn’t enough cake.
I froze two portions of vanilla ice cream in teacups (a la Martha above), and assembled them over the cake, and then added the meringue.
It wasn’t bad, but plenty sweet. I made the mistake of putting the assembled product including the meringue in the freezer for about ten minutes (as it said you could), while I cleaned up the mess, but I wouldn’t do that again, as it made the meringue hard and cold, and then it took too long to brown and by the time I took it out the ice cream was melting. Better to just put it in the oven as soon as it’s assembled. Of course I also stopped to take a few pictures, so that didn’t help.
If I was to make it again for a crowd, I’d do the slab cake, and maybe strawberry and chocolate gelato, which isn’t as sweet. Maybe when I can have people over again and hold a book club under the trees. It’s so brutally hot here this week, 35 C (95 F) and 42 (106 F) with the Humidex, that any ice cream served outside would melt lickety-split.
Despite my love of all things vintage, especially fashion, I don’t think I would have wanted to live in the fifties – it seemed very much a man’s world. I posed that question to my mother, and she said – it seemed okay at the time. Like many things, some decades are best viewed through a veil of nostalgia. I’ll leave you with some marriage advice quotes from the book – relics from the past….
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