Down by the Fraser River, which forms the boundary of our small farm, New Year’s Eve afternoon. A brief moment of peaceful beauty, soon to change…
The book reviews have been coming daily so far in January, and though this looks quite impressive, I hasten to reassure my readers that it will definitely not be the pattern of the year. January so far has been something of an anomaly, a time of stillness and a sort of tipping point for what is proving to be a transitional time in my life, in a smallish and positive way.
(And as some of you might remember from previous comments, we don’t have TV, so that time is freed up for dallying with books. At least an hour or two a day, if our friends’ TV watching habits are anything to go by.)
For the past twelve years I have been that most involved of maternal figures, a fully fledged dance mom, and it had looked like this would have been one of the busiest years yet in that regard, as it would have been my daughter’s “peak year”, the last fully dedicated to dancing before her graduation from high school and transition into the next stage in her life. After much agonizing, the decision was made in October to call it quits right now, a year early, as it were. No more long commutes to the dance studio in the city two and a half hours away, no more trips to Vancouver to visit her choreographer, no more sweating over solos and arranging for rehearsal sessions and cutting music and mulling over costumes, and most lovely of all, no more monthly tuition, choreo and fuel bills. We are suddenly free from the self-imposed tyranny of the dance world, and though there are definitely deep regrets for the many positive aspects of being a serious amateur dancer, we are both, she and I, rather enjoying the experience of going into the festival and competition season stress-free (for we are still both involved on an organizational and volunteer level in our local performing arts festival), and being able to look forward to being home in the springtime, instead of daily on the road to somewhere else.
For we’ve also decided to take a sabbatical from running our plant nursery this year, something we’ve done twice before in our twenty-one years of involvement in the business. Our personal perennial garden desperately needs a concerted year (or possibly two) of attention, something impossible to do when one is tied up in the greenhouse growing thousands of lovely little plants for other people’s gardens. The little propagation greenhouse, my 12-hours-a-day home in February-March-April-May, which has been yearly shored up and patched up and made to “make do”, is at last going to be replaced with something a bit bigger, much better built, and more comfortable to work in.
January 1st, 2014. Ice coming down the Fraser River has piled up a mile or so downstream, causing an ice dam and upstream flooding of our lower fields. This is looking north, as the river runs backwards in the main channel, on the other side of that ice pile mid-photo. I had to scoot out of the way, as my feet were about to get very wet!
And what with various family medical crises these past few years, including losing a family member to cancer, my mother’s serious fall in the summer and subsequent transition into a seniors’ care facility, and a flare-up of problems with my own two broken ankles which still refuse to work properly several years post-injury, it’s time for a healing year, emotionally and physically. Time to step back, and look inward for a bit.
Usually January 1st marks the time of taking a huge breath and diving into the combined maelstrom of dance festival preparation and concentrated seed starting and seedling care. Not this year. Not a single seed has been planted – heck, not a single seed order has been made! – and the dancer has cheerfully packed away her pointe shoes and has turned to drawing up ambitious garden plans instead. Under doctor’s paradoxical orders to both favor my ankles and exercise as much as possible, I’m attempting to do both by having some sitting down time every hour (which happily translates into reading time and computer time), and by using hiking poles when out and about, which is slightly awkward in that I am still learning how best to use manage my sticks properly when going up and down hills and on narrow paths. But the ankles are noticeably less painful at the end of the day, so maybe it’s working. One can hope!
We’re presently getting some work in on our still-not-finished self-built house, including a gorgeous set of floor-to-ceiling bookcases in a newly constructed hallway/office space which we are calling the “L Room”. “L” for its funny shape, and for “Library”, too! It’s coming along nicely, and when completed will house my working collection of plant books, as well as a goodly amount of “pleasure” reading, my old wooden desk, desktop computer and scanner/printer, filing cabinets and last but not least my piano. Which I hope will figure more prominently in my own near future, as once it is properly settled in I will be able to resume playing, at last in a quiet corner all of my very own. I’m inwardly tremendously excited, though I show an outer calm. 😉
It’s been a very good winter to be off the roads, as the weather has been rather frightful – lots of snow, and warmer temperatures turning everything to ice, and then snow again. We’ve shovelled our roof off four times so far – a record – to prevent ice buildup on the eaves, and this morning I see it could likely use it again. A few inches of fresh snow yesterday morning, followed by above-freezing temperatures and slushy rain in the afternoon, and this morning minus 6 Celsius. Lots of icicles.
I should probably sign off. This quiet Sunday morning has left me feeling rather introspective, hence this rambling post. Both teens are sleeping in, and my husband is off at work. It’s snowing again, the dogs are sleeping in front of the woodstove, the bird feeders are topped up, my kitchen is relatively neat and tidy, and my plans for the day – a bit of paperwork, some puttering about in the construction zone, a bit of sanding, a bit of painting – are modest and manageable. An intriguing book is waiting for my attention as well, My Brilliant Career, by Miles Franklin. Teen angst in Australia, circa 1901.
Happy January, friends. A full fresh year stretches before us. I hope you are all feeling as optimistic as I am that it will bring good things, and that we will all have the inner resources to weather the inevitable storms as well.
Cheers!
January 2, 2014. Same spot as the idyllic picture at the top of the post, a short two days later, after the water has flooded the banks and receded, leaving much ice behind.
Leaves & Pages 
Dear friend, Thank you very much, I was really happy to have been following your blog. I’m still a lot to figure out, and here I can only say that you are an awesome blogger, full Inspiring and hope you can inspire more readers. Thanks and greetings compassion from Gede Prama 🙂
Thank you for the very kind words. 🙂
Scenery is just beautiful! Reminds me of home back in Scotland. Suddenly make me feel homesick!
It is beautiful here, no question about that. Interesting that it reminds you of Scotland, which is a country high on my would-love-to-visit list. We once had visitors who compared our landscape to that of their area of northern Russia, exclaiming excitedly over identical trees and plants, which, when one looks at a world map, makes perfect sense!
Simplifying can be so difficult and i admire the steps you’ve taken toward achieving that goal. Please just don’t get carried away and abandon your thoughtful and lovely posts, okay? I think I am not alone in enjoying them thoroughly. Selfish, I know. So many things are a joy when we don’t “have” to do them; possibly the planting of a seed or a two will happen because you want to once that ice starts to melt a little more. Beautiful photos.
No plans on abandoning the blog! It is a true pleasure to engage in this bookish (and occasionally personal) conversation with you all. 🙂
And yes, the “have to” aspect takes some of the joy away from things. The nursery grew out of my personal passion for plants and gardening, and as the years went by and we became more “successful” the personal end definitely suffered. Luckily I have a good solid customer base locally who loyally comes back stronger than ever after the sabbatical years; we’ve done this twice before – once the year my father was in hospital all through the late winter, passing away in May – and then when we needed to help my mother by renovating her rental properties for sale. This time around we intend to get some nursery and garden infrastructure work done, taking advantage of having at least one of the teens still at home. (The older one thinks he might go a-travelling this summer, to work away from the home region for a change.) Financially we’ll definitely miss the nursery revenue, but it will be balanced somewhat by my husband putting in extra working days here and there, and at this point we both feel we need the “time” more than the “money”. And yes – some seeds will be planted soon! Because our nursery specializes in perennial plants, I am generally planting in December-January in order for first-year starts to be large enough for sale in May-June. The relatively few things I need/want for our own garden this year don’t need to have that sort of head start, so I’m quite enjoying the break from playing nursemaid to delicate seedlings for another few weeks. 😉
I’m glad you will have time to tend to yourself this year — it sounds like hard but meaningful decisions were made all around. Good luck with the work you’ll be doing on your home and garden, and it’s been lovely to see so many posts lately, by the way! 🙂
Thank you for the kind words. 🙂 Yes, these were tough decisions, and I have found myself having occasional qualms, but mostly I just feel a huge sense of anticipation for a year of “freedom” from having to be in so many other places, whether that means in the greenhouse or at the dance studio!
The L room sounds magnificent. I wish I could have one! I’ve got a spare room that I’m trying to figure out what to do with — but I think it’s going to be more spare bedroomy than library-y. (Space constraints.)
I am very excited. We’ve been plugging away at building this house for over twenty years now – taking time out for two babies definitely sidelined our progress – but this winter we’ve found a new surge of energy (probably because I’m home a whole lot more, lol) and things are starting to happen again. At first my husband looked sceptical when I enthusiastically waved my hands around and said “All this wall – bookcases!!! And over here. And here. And here, too!” but once he got started the caught the fever and has produced some lovely built-in cabinets which are even better than I had originally planned for. I will share photos when they are all completely finished; filling them up with books will be an absolute happy time. 🙂
It must be bittersweet to leave the dance world. I hope you have a lovely 2014 and enjoy finishing your new house!
Definitely bittersweet. I miss seeing her dance, and she misses dancing. Right now we are taking an Eastern dance/bellydance class together once a week, which she says makes her feel like she’s still doing “something”, but it’s not the same as dancing for hours daily, and she definitely misses her teachers and being part of the performance troupe. Festival season will be hard, I think, but it will be grand to not have the stress, and there are so many jobs to be done behind the scenes that we will be fully occupied in making the experience good for the others. She was never “career-track” with her dancing; we always knew it would have to taper off; but making that decision a year early was tough.
On the plus side, we both are enjoying the luxury of TIME to do some other things. Like working on the house, (which isn’t really new anymore; we started it in 1991 and are *still* plugging away getting the last bits finished and re-doing stuff which we finished early on and now needs renovation) 🙂 and once the snow melts, doing some serious gardening.
Good luck with the ankles, lots of times the body heals well enough for us to keep going, especially with the right medical advice. Enjoyed hearing more about you and your farm, house, etc. Post periodic pictures, that would be fun.
Thank you for the good wishes. I was in quite a lot of pain last year during nursery season and it didn’t go away afterwards – it actually worsened; I’m on my feet for very long hours, and I re-injured joints which weren’t quite “like new”. (I broke my right ankle 4 years ago, and my left ankle the next summer. The first time slipping on stairs, the second time while out hiking- a twisting fall.)The recommendation, after X-rays and much poking and prodding, is to keep moving but avoid excessive weight bearing activities, which translates to walking sticks when going any distance, and not standing for hours on end. There is some nerve damage in one ankle, and quite a bit of calcium build-up in both, and we did discuss surgery, but no guarantees as to how that would work out, and I’m hesitant for fear of being *really* sidelined. But I think the down time will help heal things; the walking sticks make a HUGE difference, though I feel a bit wimpy using them out in public – I get a lot of comments, because few people knew I was having problems. (Just everyone who reads this now on the internet, lol!) 😉
I’ll try to keep posting occasional pictures; it is rather nice to look back on these sorts of posts to track what has been happening in my life, and I *love* hearing snippets about other people’s lives as well. 🙂
I was a bit envious of your reading rate, thinking you might finish your century by April – not to mention your posting! It sounds like you have found a new balance, and your sabbatical year sounds lovely. I am glad it is off to such a good start!
This isn’t the norm! Well, the reading rate is, but not the posting rate, lol! When my life is going nicely I do tend to go through the books at a rate of one every day or so – depends on how “dense” it is. Always have been a fast reader, since childhood, so that part is purely genetic, I’m sure. My dad was a fast reader, as is my son. And we don’t watch TV at all – no reception down here in our rural valley & though we now have a satellite dish for our internet service we decided against getting the TV package, because we do love our quiet reading time. 🙂
Re: the century – I was thinking ten “century” books a month would be a good goal, leaving two months leeway, because life *will* get busy and this concentrated down time will come to an end sooner than later. It sort of already has, as just today I have started data entry and scheduling for our upcoming regional youth performing arts festival – a nice big job which will gobble up much of my “discretionary time” over the next 4 weeks or so. Funny how time manages to fill itself so easily… Well, I’m *never* bored!
I don’t know how I missed this post a few days ago. I always start my day with my favourite blogs.
Thanks for sharing your plans and new directions with us. Sounds like a positive year of changes for you all.
And I would love to see those bookshelves, filled, when they’re finished..
I did put a few books on the shelves, but just to see how they looked. Still very much a work zone so not quite ready to move in yet. Soon, though. My husband built some more shelves today, and they are ready for me to finish up and stain tomorrow. He is the absolute *best*! (Or is he just an enabler of the book collecting habit? Hmmm…) 🙂