Happy 25th!

To celebrate our 25^th wedding anniversary, Rob and I are taking a train trip from Toronto to Vancouver.

Slow travel seems an entirely fitting way to honour the passage of time.

25 years!

Incredible how time flies, unbelievable, scary, wonderful, magic.  

It really doesn't seem that long ago that we held hands on a balcony in Zihuatanajo Mexico, impulsively getting married when we were on vacation.  The wedding may have been an impulse but we'd been living together for a few years and engaged for several months. Our friends Liz and Darcy were there to witness, and we celebrated officially with our family and friends with a big bash a few months later in July.

I am happy to be making life's journey with Rob, I can't imagine what my life would be without him by my side.

My Favourite Things

Bobby McFerrin's voice is such an incredible instrument.  What a genius!

I stumbled on the 'My Favourite Things YouTube video, went to his site, and just found out he is in Toronto on April 16.

Serendipity is a beautiful thing.

Half Blood Blues

Winner of the Giller, but also a finalist for the Man Booker, Governor General, Roger's Writers Trust, and long-listed for the Orange.  Wow.

Wonderful story and well-deserved acclaim for Esi Edugyan's second novel, Half Blood Blues.

Her dialogue is great, and although the story spans a few decades and hops back and forth between periods, it was never a struggle to know where you were in the story.

As I was approaching the ending and there were fewer and fewer pages left, I kept wondering how she would wrap up such an intricately woven story.  Although the finish was abrupt, I thought it was absolutely brilliant.

Paris. Jazz.  Love.

Here is the author being interviewed on Studio Q - just hours after winning the top prize.

Full Fish Moon - April

Kim Larson incorporated three different names for the April moon into this beautiful drawing:  

pink, fish, and egg.

April 6th, 2012, 3:20 p.m.

the moon is full again

April Fools!

bloodroot

Light snow today.

It has been tough weather for the plants this spring.

Warm spring days... crocus up...  then unseasonably hot... crocus keeled over but magnolias bursting...  sudden cold snap resulting in prematurely withered magnolia flowers.

hellebore

This weekend I have the blood root starting to unfurl, hellebore still in bloom after about two weeks, psilla, blue star flower, pulminaria, variegated tulips, daffodils, wasabi, wild ginger on its way, and bleeding heart shooting up in leaps and bounds.

cherry blossom in foreground, psilla carpeting the slope in the ravine