First Fruits and some "grands"

We had a lovely visit from son #2 and his family, including their two delightful girls.

I picked them up from the airport on Friday morning.  We spent time relaxing on our

backyard deck that afternoon, while the young granddaughter (6) played in our backyard pool.

By the end of the day they were pretty tuckered out.  They had stayed overnight with cousins who live near the Vancouver airport, and had gotten very little sleep.  So they were soon ready for bed.

On Saturday the girls decided they wanted

to make some little pillows.  They each 

drew a design on a 10"x 10" sheet of graph

paper.  We chose some materials from my

stash.  I thought their color choices were 

terrific.  The flowers and leaves were

attached using steam-a-seam II, and 

Grammy put the satin stitch around the

applique, since that was a little beyond

them.  The older granddaughter (9) sewed

her pillow around three edges by machine

and we used some stuffing from grammy's stash.  I sewed the edges for the 6 year old.

Here's the happy girls with their unique pillows, and a proud grammy between them.

All too soon it was time for them to leave again, and this morning, bright and early, the family took off for an extended trip to eastern Canada.  Jim and I took a very long walk, over 4 miles, a good activity for a holiday morning.  Today is the "August Holiday" in Canada,  also known as "Heritage Day".  It's a way of enjoying a long weekend in August.

After a lazy day of catching up on our reading, we picked a gallon of Saskatoons, the fruit on the right.  Saskatoons are very similar to blueberries, but don't require the acid soil.  Our soil is quite alkalai, and the Saskatoons do well here.  They are a very fussy fruit, though, and if there is either frost or wind when they are blossoming, there is little fruit.  Another hazard is lack of water, which has certainly been our problem this year.  After showers the past weekend, we are at a season total of a little over 3".  

We have four 350' long rows of Saskatoon bushes, but only the few bushes on the east end are producing any amount of fruit.  These bushes were planted just the last few years, and are not crowded together like the rest of the rows, so the little moisture they received did not have to be shared so much with their neighbors.

Saskatoons make lovely muffins, jam, juice and wine.

Then after supper I went

 out and picked our first gallon on Nanking Cherries, the bucket on the left.  We have lots of Nanking Cherry bushes, and some of them are loaded this year.  That whole bucket came from one bush, and that bush still has lots of berries on it.  Nankings have a large pit in a small cherry, so I process them in the steam juicer.  The juice goes for drinking, for cherry jelly, syrup and wine.

We're just at the beginning of all this fruit processing.  Wonder how much I'll get done this year?

Mother's Day Treat

On Mother's Day I was treated to phone calls from our two daughters, and younger son.  Our older son had phoned half a week earlier.  It's too bad that all our kids live far away from us; the nearest is an eight hour drive from here.  But I'm very thankful for generous phone plans and email, with pictures.  In fact, as I mentioned earlier, we had a nice visit with our B.C. son via Skype some time ago. 

When our children were growing up, long distance phone calls were expensive and reserved for really serious occasions--an announcement to our parents that we'd had a baby, or a call from them that my brother had died following heart surgery.  Those long distance phone calls even had a different sound.  When you picked up the phone you heard the kind of static that told you it was long distance calling. 

 

Of course, we didn't have a 

computer or email then either, so I tried to

send snapshot duplicates quite often.  Those

were the days we used an Instamatic

camera to grab quick shot of something cute

going on.  Like the morning the two youngest got into my underwear draw and found a unique use for panties, like a neck scarf?

Or the time #1 daughter came home from Southern Alberta Summer Games with a gold medal in high jump. Lovely memories to have. And oodles of others for me to call to mind on Mother's Day.

But life goes on, children grow up and move away.  Grandchildren arrive and they begin to grow up.  Our oldest grandchild is now completing his third year of studies at York University in Toronto, and doing marvelously well there.  We're so proud of him. The youngest grandchild will begin Kindergarten this fall.  

It shocks me that life goes by so quickly.  I suppose that's a cliche, but it's a cliche because it's true.  I loved the time of having babies and children.  But I wasn't one of those moms who is lost because her children leave home.  There are always tons of interesting things to do.  

So here's to LIFE, and especially to Mothers, Fathers, Children and Grandchildren.