My hands and arms are like lead due to my Kamikaze-like gardening methods.  For example, I’ll do things like pull on an errant root like a badger with a snake’s tail, rather than stand up and get a shovel.  Last weekend I gardened for a total of about 16 hours, and yesterday for four hours, and now my body’s weak from the experience. 

But it’s that time of year, so if not now, then never.  Hence, I’ve now planted an inordinate number of tomatoes, including some heritage varieties, one of which will be almost black!  I also have potatoes, cucumbers, broccoli, peppers, Swiss chard, beets, carrots and green beans.  I’m pretty excited.

Yesterday the weather was motivational, so Nicky and his friends helped me with some difficult work like weed eating.  As this isn’t your conventional yard, the weed eater is a gas-powered behemoth that I can barely lift, never mind maneuver around the plants.

You’d think with the four times per week of gym attendance, and the heavy gardening and yard work, I’d be as thin as Nicole Kidman, but no.  It’s strange, but working like a mule seems to engender a mule’s appetite, and I indulge it.

The SOSS (Southern Okanagan Secondary School) grad class of 1972’s having a reunion on the Labour Day weekend, and I can’t be the largest one there.  It’s frightful enough to have to show up all jowls, but with Donald Trump’s girth to boot, it’s just too much.

Mojo resembled The Donald the other day, too.  I put down the dogs’ bowls of their dry munchies for breakfast, and Mojo just looked at hers.  This never happens with a dachshund, so I felt her body and realized she was as taut and blown-up as a zeppelin.

I don’t know what caused it, but she was fine by dinner time.  The day before the cats had brought in a mouse, as they like to do.  Mojo won’t tolerate a mouse in the house, so after stalking it for some time, she was finally able to get it when I moved the TV and stand out of the way.

However, in the past I’ve always been able to get her to drop the mouse once dead, but this time she just couldn’t stop herself and ate the whole thing.  I’m thinking the mouse must’ve disagreed with my pure-bred dog.

But unfortunately, not a single food item seems to disagree with me.  I invited my friends Kathy and David, Pat and Larry for dinner on Wednesday.  I made the broccoli and coconut milk soup I had in my latest newsletter, as well as chicken, rice, beet salad and a four-layer chocolate chunk torte for dessert.

Thankfully I know myself well enough, and before they left I wrapped the remaining cake and gave it to the two couples to take home.  I knew what was going to happen to it if left in my possession, and with three months to go until the reunion, I can’t take any chances.

As you’ll recall, Luke installed video surveillance on the property after the garage got robbed a few weeks ago.  This turned out to be a very opportune thing, in light of the damage caused by a group of marauding bruins.

On Thursday morning, our garbage day, I let the dogs out as usual, and they didn’t return.  I looked out the kitchen window to see if I could find them, and saw the heavy city garbage can on wheels had been knocked over.  Naturally the dachshunds were busily chomping on the contents.

Once I had the dogs inside, I went out and got a shovel and broom and cleaned the week-old garbage off the carport floor and steps leading up to the sliding door.  While doing that I heard water rushing in the yard.  I went to the water box where all of the irrigation lines originate, and found a line broken, water spewing out and the box full to the brim.

On the way back to the house I looked down do my vegetable garden and saw my bee hive was smashed to pieces!  Now I was beginning to wonder what on Earth had roamed our property in the night, and when Nicky got up I told him to replay the night’s tape.

In the meantime, I was phoning landscapers and Denis, trying to figure out how to turn off the rushing water.  The box was about to overflow, at which point an awful lot of water was going to whoosh into the neighbour’s yard.  And these are the neighbours who are very odd to boot, so it wouldn’t have been good.

The only answer seemed to be to find the valve at the bottom of the box, and turn it off with a big metal T shaped implement.  Nicky and I both tried, but with three feet of turbulent water on top of the valve, and the gushing cold water hitting us in the face, we couldn’t find it.

Finally Brent, the landscaper, sent his stepfather to come and try to turn off the water.  Brent’d been fooling with it the day before, and thought maybe he’d done something stupid.  However, this turned out not to be the case.

When his stepdad came with a friend, they marched to the box, one held a piece of plywood against the rushing water, the valve was now easily visible, and voila! They turned off the water and the catastrophe was averted.

Meanwhile Nicky had replayed the night’s tape, and the story it told was a fascinating one.  First one sees bears bounding toward the camera, their eyes red in the darkness.  Then you hear the garbage being knocked over, and then you see them up close: a mom black and not one, not two, but three cubs!

I guess at first they must’ve slapped the bee hive around, then came up the fence line, and stepped on the irrigation pipes.  Brent later looked at them and said a great deal of weight came down on them to break one like that.  Then the bears found the garbage and enjoyed a feast of that.

Once full they left piles of bear dung in the yard, and I guess sauntered away to sleep it off somewhere.  Now I have the garbage can itself inside the little shed on the top of the driveway, and the door is kept shut.  I love animals, but honestly, I have to draw the line at a family of bears.

Do you know why I know that for a fact? Because my dear friend Liz kept every letter I wrote to her from September 1967 until June 1968.  She, her brother and parents went to Switzerland for a year, and I of course remained in the lovely bosom of Osoyoos.

I was visiting Liz and Liza yesterday, so she lent the letters to me to take home and re-read.  What a joy to be able to re-live the events of 45 years ago as though they occurred yesterday!  What I realize more than ever is that we really don’t change all that much over time.

One letter ends, “I’ll tell you how much I weigh if you tell me how much you weigh!” (We were 13 years old).  It’s also a chronicle of music, “I love the song Lady Madonna,” and fashion, “My mom’s making me the cutest dress with an empire waist and baby doll sleeves.”

I talked about the many Elvis Presley movies we saw every Friday night at the Sunland Theatre, and mentioned that I got the cool new Monkees album.  I wrote about how horribly stupid I was in math and how much I hated band.

But most importantly, the letters chronicle the year of my first boyfriend, Aldo.  It begins in September, with me describing the first kiss in detail.  It continues with movie and dance dates, and ends in June with, “I can’t wait until after the last school dance when I can say good-bye forever.”

I realize I’ve been a bad girlfriend ever since I was 13, and I believe if you’re just no good at something you should leave it alone.  I described events at which I “accidentally” ignored Aldo, or “unknowingly” flirted with someone and made him mad.  Oh My God, I was a little brat even then.

The letters also mention mom attending a Liberal convention in Ottawa, where she planned to support some guy named Pierre Trudea.  A letter sent in June describes my time as a Trudeau Girl and the excitement of campaigning for him.

In the letters I’m reminded how unfairly I felt I was being treated by my mom, who wouldn’t allow me to attend Teen Town dances.  Many of my letters to Liz ended with “of course mom wouldn’t let me go.”

But perhaps it was all to the good, and here I am, 45 years later, reading my words and feeling highly bemused by them.  The main message I got from that year’s worth of letters is this: thank God I didn’t have a girl.

It took quite a while to read that many letters, as I think there are about 40 of them!  They’re all at least one tightly-written page, but some run to as many as three pages.  So, like this blog, it seems I’ve had a long-running attachment to describing my week’s activities to some hapless reader.

You know how Gene Kelly sings, “Gotta dance!” in the musical Singing in the Rain?  I guess my motto’s going to have to be, “Gotta write!”

The country mouse visited the city mouse, and had a good time!  Alison lives near the corner of Yonge and St. Clair, so we were minutes from the city by foot or subway.  We also drove around in the car, so I was able to see quite a lot of Toronto in four and a half days.

When leaving the house Alison has to program the motion-sensitive alarm.  As I secretly felt smug because of where we live, you can only imagine my chagrin at a call from Luke that we’d been robbed while I was away!

Nicky was home alone, and fast asleep, as were the dogs, so someone just helped themselves to a bunch of car parts and tools in the unlocked garage.  Luke came home from Thailand the following day, and found out about it from a freaked-out Nicky.

Thankfully Luke is a computer and all-around electronics genius.  In one day he and his pal Tyson layered on the security.  Thanks to them we have cameras, alarms and motion-sensitive lights, and now the place feels as secure as its nickname, The Compound.

But back in Toronto, there wasn’t a thing I could do about it, except to feel briefly perturbed.  I was too busy.  We began with all-out cultcha in the form of the Picasso exhibit, followed by the play War Horse.  A sob fest if you love animals, so just a heads up.

I had the first manicure of my life, as there are several Vietnamese-owned nail salons near Alison’s house.  I bought a vintage half-slip at a store in Kensington called Courage My Love.  We later did a driving tour of Cabbagetown and Rosedale.

The morning always began with lovely coffee and a great read.  Alison and J.T. are avid newspaper readers, so I was in my element.  I’ve decided I simply have to try to find the Sunday New York Times someplace in Kelowna. 

Because I’ve been pals with Alison since we were six we have our own way of interacting.  For example, when I developed blisters from all the walking, Alison stopped and said, “Okay, give me your shoes.”  Because we have the same size feet she decided by switching shoes I could survive because the pressure points would be different.

And speaking of shoes, we went to the Bata Shoe Museum, which is well worth it.  We also saw a cute French farce one evening entitled The Game of Love and Chance.  Lunch one day was at the cutest restaurant I’ve ever been in in my life, called The Red Tea Box on Queens.

Alison pointed out the author John Irving two tables over one night when we all went out for dinner.  Walking along Yonge it’s like this: “Hana!” (Gartner) “Alison!” They hug, and chat.  Celebs by the bucket.

Alison said, “Oh there’s Geddy Lee (from Rush).  He and I go to the same gym.”  I just adore knowing Alison.

And all too soon, the country mouse had to pack and leave, my suitcase filled with fabulous finds.  But now that I know how pleasant it is in Toronto, I’ll certainly be planning to do that again.