Just thought I’d share moments from my good day with you.

A pancake with a beauty mark.

Cleaning up a home.

Planting the potential, the hopeful, the tomatoes.

Indulging in thick conversation with one of my favourites.

Watching a thirst quenched.

Crossing a natural boundary.

How was your day? Can you sum it up in a sentence or two?

The Gulf Islands off Vancouver Island are rather well-known for having a high population of artists on the island. Or as I like to say “Arteests.” I cannot count the amount of people I’ve met that moved to Pender so that they could pursue their artistic aspirations. What do you think it is about the Gulf Islands that attract artsy-fartsy people? It reminds me of Paris in the Romantic Era where the composers and poets conglomerated to share the creative spirit.

There is a friend of mine who has collected sea glass to use in her textile art. There are groups of people who get together to create fabric art, there are so many potters on island, and even people who make their own paper. There is so much to learn from people here and it is so inspiring.

And all that is not mentioning the writers we have here on Island. My poetry class is continuing well but I don’t think I’m confident enough to consider myself in this group. It has given me the material and means to send off more writing to literary magazines for more rejection notes. It’s funny to steal yourself for rejection that way, you package up your babies, you think they’re real pretty and they come back “Not quite what we’re looking for,” and somehow they seem a little less shiny after that.

A writing teacher once said to me that I should consider what I write as compost, to build up the soil so that one good plant can come up healthy. Well, when I write bad poem after bad poem, the thought of it all just being compost does not make it more encouraging.

I had my first pottery lesson on Wednesday and I was admiring the wheel and I really wanted to try it. I begged my teacher to let me try a hunk of clay on the wheel. Since we didn’t have water set up, it wasn’t the right timing anyway. But he said to me, “I’ve taught hundreds of students on the wheel, and maybe 1 or 2 have ever gotten it the first time. When I was learning how to throw pots on the wheel, my teacher told me I would have to throw 10,000 pots before I would get one good pot. And I thought, I’ve only made one pot today. That means, 10,000 days of practise?”

When I heard that, I had two things to consider. Persistence, and validation. What makes someone stick at something creative like pottery or writing or painting if it takes so much practise to have anything acceptable? I can only answer this one for myself, it is the joy of doing it.

The second issue, validation, when can you call yourself an artist? When someone buys what you create? What someone “professional” says it’s good enough? What a funny world we live in that we do not always create for the simple joy of creating? When is it enough that we can say to ourselves “You’ll do.” And our self-validation is sufficient?

After all this musing, I sigh, shift my weight and stare at the daffodils blooming on my desk. What a work of art! They are perfect because of what they are, because of how they are formed, because they are doing exactly what they are made to do.

Maybe I’ve hit on something important here…

We have already received our order from Salt Spring Seeds. Those guys are super-hero fast! I was so impressed!

Yesterday I was asked how I’d changed since moving to a tiny island. It was a great opportunity to self-examine what has happened to me in the past 2 years that we’ve been living here and then what has happened since we’ve been slowly learning to farm.

One of the biggest realizations was garbage. Yup. On Pender Island, you have to deal with your garbage differently because any garbage you create, you have to take it off the island with you or pay someone $5 a bag to take it off for you. This is a huge change in consciousness. We have a fantastic recycling centre on Pender that will take just about anything, from clean plastic wrappers, to bottles, to milk cartons, to old batteries. They do an incredible job down there and even though people get intimidating by their strict sorting regime, they provide the island an excellent service. And, at the recycling centre, they have a “free stuff” section. Marc has scalped screen doors there for making bat-houses, old glass sliding doors for cold frames (for the garden) as well as cast iron pots, enamel pots that are great for melting beeswax and even a couple books.

We’ve had to learn how to compost properly because we any food scraps we have can be turned into fertilizer for the garden. It’s been really neat seeing our food scraps (plant matter only please) turn into useable soil to nourish more food. I tend to have a fondness for most things cyclical.

We also fully utilize our woodstove. Any paper or cardboard that we can burn to heat our house, we take pleasure in becoming little pyro-maniacs.

Another way we’ve changed from living on a tiny island, is the way we eat. This has been somewhat conscious but a lot of what has changed our eating has been sub-conscious as well. We want to eat in seasons but sometimes we do so accidentally. When it is October and the apples are dripping off the trees and the trees so laden with fruit, we take full advantage. For a month, we squeeze, dry, bake, nibble and ferment apples. This results in the rest of the year being rather sick of anything to do with apples. Sure, we take them out of our freezer sometimes for an apple pie or an apple crips, or maybe even apple pancakes. We grab a bag of dehydrated apple slices for a snack. But we do not buy apples in the store anymore because of our over-dose on them in apple season.

This same principle applies to blueberries. We have 500 blueberry bushes here, that is an acre of blueberry plants! In July, when it is blueberry season, we wake up in the morning and pick blueberries, then we scheme on ways to sell blueberries, we talk to everyone about how many blueberries we have and if you’d like another bag just let us know. And we are blueberried-out by the time August hits. Then we do it all over again with blackberries. Of course, we freeze blueberries and blackberries because who can get enough of these sunshine bombs, especially in the darkest of Winters. But to think of buying these fruits, it seems rather absurd.

I haven’t bought a banana in ages. I love bananas but because I have other fruit available to me for free, I do not even think of their yellow goodness.

In the past two years, how have you changed because of where you live? Do you think where you live affects your lifestyle?

I had a really good day today. I hope you don’t mind if I share with you a couple highlights. We stayed over on the “Big Island” last night and caught the morning ferry back to our little island. I had a beekeeping lesson with a friend of mine as he’s going to help me out with some of the hives waaaay down on South Pender. (They are practically in a different time zone to us up here on the North… and they dress funny….) And then Marc and I spent some good quality time in La Garden.

After digging around in the dirt for a while, trying our hand at planting some early seeds, we took a break for chips and water and watched the kittens pounce on each other through the lavendar.

I planted (above) spinach in September when we had a streak of sunshine. I’ve taken a couple snippings from it. But ya know those big plastic boxes of spinach you can buy at the grocery store? Yeah I can polish one of those off in one sitting. I’m a little spinach-enthusiast and could rival Popeye with one spoon behind my back. So this tiny patch did not fulfill the craving but it took the edge off and complimented a couple homemade pizzas.

And I wasn’t even lying when I said we had flowers coming up. These snow drops and big yellow daffodils are brightening up the garden already. We’ve had one bumble bee come by for a visit on our early-blooming heather and the cats have taken offense to the intrusion.

We have another one of these heather bushes down by the lower garden where Gertrudabelle hive is. (That is, my first hive.) They love these tiny pink blossoms and it is a great early nectar source.

This is the top garden, right outside my front door. In the summer, this was a tomato jungle with potatoes accidentally growing between and snap dragons and various herbs sneaking where they could. Another year, now it is another volley of hopeful seeds nestled in quiet rows waiting for the miracle of germination.

Yes, I know it may be too early. I mean, is February 21st too early to start a garden? Time will tell…

And for you readers that are not gardeners, I went down to the coup to put the chickens to bed (can you still not relate?) and I was turning over the warm little egg in my pocket, looking at the moon, thinking of my good friend and husband back at the house, my full belly, my great day of keeping bees and digging in the dirt and I was very thankful.

I’ve been thinking about the pursuit of happiness lately. What are people looking for? Why are they not finding it? I have been thinking that happiness perhaps, is not what we should be searching for. Perhaps Contentment should be the goal instead. Contentment is more attainable and more consistent. Happiness seems to come and go. It seems that a state of euphoria would be exhausting, even to the most optimistic of us. Maybe Happiness, especially generated by a series of pleasing situations, is overrated. I know I sound bitter and pessimistic when I say this but I think my next thought is actually more hopeful.

If we, instead, pursue contentment, then it is a state of being that is generated from inside us. We choose it and our circumstances do not have to deter us from our aim. If we obtain a real daily satisfaction, then whether it rains tomorrow, or snows (ack! seeds!) or sleets or is another sunny day that I am not outside to enjoy, then no matter the situation, I can still be thankful and satisfied.

Getting to this place is the tough part for me. When I can be satisfied, thankful and content no matter the situation, I’ll let you know. Because today, I had a very good day. It’s best to talk about theoretical happiness on a good day.

Happy Sunday. I hope it was satisfying for you too.

Happy Birthday Mom! 50 years is a milestone. And since I’ve only known you for 27 of those years, I can say with some certainty that you will do 50 just as gracefully as you have the last 27.

I think that my favourite attribute about my mom is her capacity and capability to listen. She listened to me learn how to talk and patiently corrected my grammar. She listened to what topics interested me and directed me to the right avenues to pursue said interests. She has utilized her listening skill to raise her children, to assist friends with their last wishes, to run a homeschooling group, to lead a Bible study, to organize a Women’s ministry and to sit with people in Hospice. I think this is a skill that I could benefit from, imitating her.

So raise your mugs of tea to lovely Mommy. You’ve certainly come a long ways. And you have so much yet to experience! Love you!