I sometimes imagine myself in a condo, no yard, just hours and hours of free time to fritter away. But then I go out and start shoveling, then get the wheelbarrow and load it up with pulled weeds and soon I start to imagine what it’s going to look like in summer. Due to the minus 27 in January, I see my blanket flowers (gaillardia), heliotrope and penstemon all died. Wimps, I guess.

Also gone are the two bunches of arrowleaf balsamroot flowers that were here when we arrived 34 years ago. That makes me particularly sad because my dad used to pick a huge bouquet of them in the hills above Osoyoos and bring them to my mom each spring. I’m grateful a third bunch is alive right at the top of the driveway, but now I wonder if it’ll disappear too. I can’t imagine it was the winter, but it could be the ton of pine needle debris under which they tried to live.

The area to the left of my driveway, which is covered in pines and where the indigenous flowers lived, was given to the City by the O’Reilly’s in exchange for their permission to develop the subdivision. Mrs. O’Reilly visited a couple of decades ago and said she and her husband gave a lot of extraneous small pieces of land to the City, which was super nice, but kind of unnecessary in my mind. I mean, the City??

Another sad thing I noticed is no more hooey hoo hoo hoo from the mourning doves. There are now ring-necked doves that are invasive and seem to have overpowered my birds. I grew up with that sound. Have I mentioned how much I fear and loathe change?

And finally, I used to see the last stars when I sat on my couch in the early morning, but now, nope. Thank you to everyone who thinks it’s very important to keep an outside light on so that no other person needs to be bothered by pesky twinkling stars.

I went to Osoyoos last week and came to the realization that Luke isn’t a gardener. It’s not his thing, and I’m not there often or long enough to work in the garden, so we had to get some help. The hint it wasn’t working was the five-foot-long, two-foot-wide, one-foot-deep gouge he’d “trimmed” into the side of the hedge. All I said was “don’t ever do that again.”

My nice new neighbours, Sylvie and Jim, who live beside my vegetable garden, were admiring the bamboo I planted in the corner many years ago. It’s incredible as you can see its progress day to day. It must grow at least six inches daily. How or why it would do this in a temperate climate, and especially given all that was killed during the sudden cold snap, is the question. It’s quite the champion.

Because having 22 dahlias in pots, ready to plant into the garden aren’t enough, Sylvie and I went to Costco today and visited their nursery. The other day I noticed fruit trees were around $125 at Art Knapps, but here they were $55 so I bought a plum. The soil was $17 instead of $45, so as sorry as I feel for the nurseries, Costco sure can compete.

But now I have to find a spot, then dig a nice big hole for that plum. It’s odd that I’d buy another fruit tree, given I’ve had maybe three cherries in total from the tree I planted about five years ago. I don’t think the twelve-year-old apricot’s had a lot of fruit for the past couple of years so why do I think this plum tree is different? Hope springs eternal.