Mercury is about to go retrograde, but as we know, the effects are always felt well in advance.  Perhaps that’s the reason for the number of annoyances recently.  Yesterday I was so excited to know that the greenhouse was being assembled.  I wandered down around noon to see how it was coming along, and said to the guy, “Oh, I kind of thought the door would be FACING MY HOUSE……” However, having it face the neighbours’ is really kind of original, so I just walked away, amazed.

I stupidly relied on the family to assist me in laying out the raised beds, and as not a thing’s been done, I phoned Don Burnett, local Gardening Guru for help.  I told him that now everything’s an emergency as Luke and his friend Brian are to be building them on the weekend, and so they have to be laid out this week.  I then made an appointment for today at 1:00, totally forgetting my creative writing class.  Now I have no idea when the bed design will be done, due to not paying attention to my own schedule.

I did receive some wonderful news, though, with the new Okanagan Fruit and Rum bars.  I have a new customer, and that’s the Penticton Wine Information Centre!  The Bench Artisan Food Market also ordered, so I’ll be off to Penticton tomorrow to make deliveries.  If you’re not an entrepreneur, you have no idea of the heady feeling brought on by the thrill of the sale.

 Another personal thrill  is the conversion of the so-called fruitcake hater.  I also had one of these this week, as I had given a bar to the label designer at Challenge Labels.  I was very happy to receive his e mail extolling the product’s virtues, as he’d told me at the beginning that he hated fruitcake.  I told him I would change that, and he was skeptical.  Chalk up another victory for fruitcake.

We just spent the long weekend on Pender Island for a Doyle family reunion.  As you may recall, Denis comes from a family of 11, though two have died in accidents over the years.  So the remaining nine of them (seven males and two females) got together.  My sister-in-law Margaret and I have penned the term ‘fog horning’ to describe their manner of ‘speaking.’  I guess when you’ve always had to fight for everything, including having your voice heard, you learn to project.

Margaret and her son Brendan, Denis and I rented a lovely house right on the ocean.  In the morning Brendan and I went down and poked around in the tidal pools.  There were fantastic starfish a shade of purple so insanely vivid it looked artificial.  We also saw dark orange sea anemones and lots of little crabs in various hues of pink, red and mauve.

The weather was great, which was a Godsend, as the Gulf Islands in the rain are pretty hard to take.  Margaret and I had pedicures at the chi chi spa in the Poet’s Cove Resort.  Wouldn’t you know that she and I were fog horning so much while we were waiting that the attendant came out to remind us “there are treatments going on in the rooms around you.”  I guess it’s a trait not just limited to the Doyles.