You know how I like to hang on to friends for decades, and last week Sherrie, who I’ve known since grade 1, came over for lunch.  Can you imagine visiting with someone you’ve known for 56 years?  Her husband Art came too as she doesn’t drive, but we shooed him away so we could reminisce properly.

Since I go to Osoyoos often to help mom I get to see the old haunts, not that there are a lot of them in that little berg.  Sherrie and I still refer to Happy Hollow as Happy Hollow, which any newcomers wouldn’t even know.  That’s the area behind the RCMP station and the school and is indeed, a steepish hill leading to a flat area.

I never run into anyone I know in that little town as I guess most have moved away.  When I grew up in Osoyoos the population was 1500 but now it’s 5000.  It’s still fabulously easy to get anything within a few minutes.  I can hit the health food, drugs, grocery and liquor stores easily under an hour.

And this is sadly no longer the case in Kelowna where everyone and their dog now wants to live.  Why?  We’ve had a horrible winter and no spring to date.  If you’re reading this and are contemplating moving here, please don’t.

I sold our Richter street house myself within two months of listing it, so there’s no way this market is showing any signs of cooling down.  I keep hearing about how exorbitant rents have become.  In other words, do not move to Kelowna unless you have buckets of money.  Kind of like Vancouver.

Nicky and Haruka adopted a ten week old King Charles cavalier spaniel and named him Fuji.  Nicky brought him over the day Sherrie was here and we were all going berserk over how cute he is.  Naturally this didn’t sit well with Louie at all, as he immediately snapped at the puppy and hated him.

Louie loves people and on our walk his happiest moments are when we run into someone who’ll give him a little petting.  The mail people are fantastic as Louie starts to run when he sees the mail truck and so they have to stop and get out no matter what else they may be trying to do.

So I just assumed a dog that loved all people would at least like a puppy but no.  He doesn’t really like other dogs, though he doesn’t act mean to them.  He’s a people dog, not a dog dog, and certainly puppies are anathema to him.

Because of this dreck weather I’m horribly behind, but there’s some hope on the horizon.  When the nice sprinkler company came to turn on my system, I mentioned my pruning dilemma to them and they said they had someone who prunes.  I was so thrilled as I don’t give a damn what it costs, I won’t have to kill myself with these tall cedars.

It’s amazing how quickly hedges and trees can get out of control.  So I want these people to just cut the hell out of all of it, and that should be good again for a while.  Even though I enjoy the image of being Sleeping Beauty in her overgrown castle, it gets to be a bit much when there’s no longer any house visible at all.