I’ve used bamboo stakes in my garden for over twenty years, and I’ve been injured many a time.  One would think I’d be more careful as a result, but the other day I forgot about being cautious in the garden.  I noticed some dead periwinkle leaves and dove for them, but in my zeal I forgot about a bunch of Echinacea I’ve staked.

Wham!  I slammed my right eyebrow right onto the top of the three foot high stake with some good force as I was on my way down to the periwinkle.  I immediately felt relief I’d missed my eye, though the whole area felt kind of bad.

By that evening I saw bright lights on the edges of my vision plus I saw a few black dots in the eye that hadn’t been there before.  I trudged off to the ophthalmologist who diagnosed a vitreous detachment.  Nothing serious, as it would’ve happened with age anyway, but the blow just hurried it up by a decade or two.

You’d never think gardening would be such a hazardous thing to do.  However it’s not only dangerous it’s damned expensive as well.

The other day I was pondering the front of my deck, looking at the straggly, struggling phlox and said that’s it, this is all coming out of here right now.  I decided I wanted to match the top and bottom gardens, so drove off to Art Knapps for some Echinacea plants.

I got a bunch of those, some soil and peat moss, then spent a few hours tearing out the phlox, preparing the area and planting the Echinacea.  Something wasn’t looking right, and I realized the bed should be ringed with the same rocks used in the lower garden.

I got 50 rocks and threw them in the wheelbarrow, put those around the edges and stood back.  Now that’s more like it.  However as I said to mom, I was close to hospitalization by the end of my little project.  Another way the garden is hazardous: complete body breakdown from overuse.

As I was feeling bad about aging and how the old body breaks down, I remembered something that cheered me up.  Next July I’ll have 30% off every Tuesday at Value Village and all of the thrift stores due to being 60.  Isn’t that fantastic?

Those two old dudes were at Value Village again the other day.  You know the ones I told you about who look at stuff with magnifying glasses and who told me they sell on EBay.  That day I found a beautiful scarf, made by Etro Milano, with the tags from the store still on it for $7.

I’ve been collecting used CD’s too, now that I have a working sound system and may want to have a bit of mood music playing in the background when I entertain.  I’m determined to find a bar car somewhere, a la Mad Men, and cover it with bottles of booze.  Then my living room will be all woman cave-ish and I can block out the garden’s vile demands for beautification with music and licquor.

Here’s something that disturbs me greatly.  The other day I received a nice e mail from someone which said, “Re-sent from July 16th.”  In their message they said they’d e mailed me an order and hadn’t heard back.  Thank God the man tried again, as I replied and assured him I wouldn’t get an e mail requesting fruitcakes and just ignore it.

God only knows what happened to the original e mail, but I got the order sorted out, and it’s given me a much-needed boost.  The order’s from a book store owner in New Brunswick who wants to try my products in preparation for a possible order at Christmas.

I know this is the time to market for corporate gifts but I’ve purposely been ignoring doing any of it.  Psychologically it’s very difficult to think of Christmas when it’s 35 degrees outside and I’m watering petunias and picking cucumbers.  I’m pretending there is no such thing as either winter or Christmas.

But I’m going to try my old trick of making myself do one thing a day for the business.  You’re reading this and thinking surely to God this lazy sloth of a woman can do one lousy thing, and even at that, what good will it do?

Trust me, I’m always as surprised as you are that just one thing daily adds up to a lot.  I’m always amazed at the results whenever I try.  However it’s so easy to let days, then weeks, then even months slide by without lifting a finger.  Then I wonder why there aren’t any orders.

My dear friend Beverly from former Prince George days, took 10 fruitcakes as gifts to Oklahoma with her this summer.  She said she continues to receive e mails from friends saying they’ve just had another slice of yummy fruitcake.  It makes me realize I have to tell people about the on-going appreciation such a gift brings.

But of course all of this sounds dreamy in theory, but the reality is one poor old woman buying hundreds of pounds of product, baking thousands of fruitcakes, and lugging heavy packages to the post office every other day.

Never mind.  I’ll worry about all of that if my marketing attempts go anywhere in growing my corporate orders.  I like to worry about things that haven’t even happened yet as I think it’s a good way to procrastinate.

In the meantime, I’m carefully freezing apricot halves so in January when the north wind blows I can make myself a really nice-looking apricot crisp.  I’ll be looking back on the fruitcake season that was, and with any luck, deep satisfaction welling within me.

Poor Louie with his long coat is suffering from the intense heat we’re currently experiencing here in the Okanagan.  I continue to run around in the yard in my underwear and even at that I’m over-dressed so I can just imagine the poor pets.

Petra, Kathy and I had a nice lunch last week sitting out on the veranda at Harvest Golf course’s restaurant.  It’s a gorgeous setting, and the weather was ideal.  And surprise, they actually have quite a lot of decent things on the menu.  I don’t know about you, but I’ve been to places where I really had to force myself to order from their dreck menu.

I don’t know what got into me but on Sunday at the dot of 10:00 AM when Sears Home opened, I raced in and bought a stove.  Boom!  It wasn’t really all that sudden, as I’d been browsing on-line for a used stove, and then I thought oh what the Hell.  I then went on-line and perused Sears and picked the one I wanted, then went in and ordered it.

I noticed the majority of the new stoves have these ghastly huge windows that fill almost the entire oven door.  I said to the salesperson I wonder what people do when they get something stuck between the panes, as invariably happens if you bake a lot.  He chuckled ruefully and said yeah, really.

The stove I bought has a very small window, is a Frigidaire and is white, so now I’m in a mess as my old fridge is almond.  Remember almond?  It came after harvest gold and avocado and before stainless steel, which I don’t like.  But as the fridge is still fine I couldn’t see throwing it out right away, so will try to cope with the mismatched appliances.  Cue theme from Deliverance or The Beverly Hillbillies.

One day in early 1999 I was out on a Sunday and on impulse bought a new stove, fridge and dishwasher at Sears.  I remember coming home and saying to Denis guess what I bought at the mall today and him going what? It was amazing, really.  Now that’s what I call shopping.

So these three old friends are now 14 years old, but the stove saw too much action.  It’s the stove where the kids made their vile pancakes from home ec and also the mad food fetishes like deep fried onion rings, crepes, and deep fried calamari.

I started the fruitcake business on that stove.  I actually ran the business from that one stove for quite a while, though I had to use the United Church’s so-called inspected kitchen as a front.  You know, rent the kitchen one day a month, then turn out 500 fruitcakes and act like I did it all there.  The usual.

So it’s a bit sad to say good-bye to the stove, though I won’t miss its cracked ceramic top and filthy horrible oven and cloudy window.  I kind of feel like buying hundreds of pounds of fruit and making even more jam, just to try to push the elements right over their limits.

But as it’s 37 degrees out I won’t do any of that.  Instead Louie, the cats and I will remain inside the air conditioned house and peruse recipes so that we can inaugurate the new stove when it arrives next Wednesday.

Mom held her usual birthday extravaganza in Osoyoos for me on the weekend.  There were 16 people in attendance from the Town Drunk to the Town Mayor.  Jerralynn barbecued skewers of shrimp, pork  and chicken with mushrooms, onions and peppers.  She made a delicious Black Forest cake for dessert.

Because of past experience, mom wanted at least 16 bottles of wine chilled in the fridge, one bottle per person.  Some people don’t drink wine at all, yet all of it and more was consumed.  Jon, the Town Drunk, likely had three or four bottles on his own.  When he left he was incoherent, so I’m guessing he had the non-drinkers’ portions.

Guess what the majority of my gifts were?  That’s right, booze.  I received 7 bottles of wine and Nicky gave me a bottle each of vodka and tequila.  There were also gifts such as a lovely floppy hat, a bath set from the Body Shop, and Luke gave me his old Ipad!

Lynn, who’s lived on the orchard beside ours for the past 40 years, always brings me apricots for my birthday.  As I’m typing this I have part of my mind on the stove as apricot jam is burbling away.  She gave me about 60 pounds of apricots and I’ll need all of them.

When I arrived with my puppy on Friday evening, our friend Jim was there from Vancouver and so were Freddie and Wendy.  Jerralynn arrived after work, and then we had dinner and partied late into the night.  As you know, I come from hardy Hun stock, so my family parties like it’s 1999 all the time, yet I’m too weak for it.

So I’d like you to picture this scene.  My pup and I were fast asleep early Saturday morning when the amplified telephone in my room rang.  I lifted my sleep mask and saw it was 6:19 AM.  Then the orchard workers decided to drive their tractor back and forth under the bedroom windows for half an hour.

Needless to say I packed it in at that point, and got up, though I felt dead tired.  Due to feeling a murderous rage welling up in me I did the old star 69 to get the last number called.  It was David Bruck, Gerry’s middle son.

I left him a steely, measured message regarding the fact there was no message left from him, yet he had called at 6:19 AM so I was wondering if everything was okay.  He called later that day and said sorry many times, but both Freddie and I were miffed.  Freddie’s bedroom also has an amplifed phone, and he also had the tractor experience.

The birthday party was on Saturday night, so once again I didn’t get to bed until midnight, then was up around 8:00 Sunday morning, feeling seriously weakened.  I immediately got one of those ghastly migraine auras I now get if I’m over-tired and had to lie down for a while until it went away.

My pup and I took all day Monday to recuperate from Osoyoos.  Those people reading this who’ve accompanied me there are nodding when I say it’s NOT for the weak.

I don’t know why, but I’d kind of forgotten about shopping at people’s homes as another option for finding great stuff.  If I need anything, my M.O. is always to head to the thrift stores and browse until one day I find the item.

But I’d made a list headed up Long Term, and many items have been on this list for quite a long time.  Then I remembered our local site for finding used goods at people’s homes, castanet.net.  What joy and excitement to be able to cross three items off my list in just one week.

First of all, I’ve been without music, other than a radio, for about four years.  For some reason the stereo system didn’t work, and as I’m incapable of opening a CD case, I certainly can’t figure out electronic problems.  In any case, I had hideous, huge old speakers, so I started by taking those to the Salvation Army.

Then I began to look for speakers on Castanet, and found two nice Bose speakers for $50.  I drove over and bought them from a 15-year-old kid in West Kelowna who tried to explain woofers and tweeters to me.  I just said if sound comes out, then that’s what I want.

Luke hooked up the speakers and of course he had the amp working in no time.  He then gave me strict instructions never to touch the amp, and I swore I wouldn’t.  Then he handed me a flipper (I now have four lined up on the coffee table) and said this is how I’m to play music henceforth.

After that, I found an adorable metal bistro table and two chairs set for $40, which I’ve put down in the vegetable garden beside the greenhouse.  I put a lovely pot of snapdragons on the table, and voila!  Adorable.

Then I got a decorative metal bench for my xeriscape garden, to be placed at the end of the pebble pathway along the cedars.  It was kind of beaten up for $85 but by then I thought oh what the heck, I’ll just pay the 85 bucks to the woman.  And really, where it’s sitting, no-one can even see any of these defects, so I have to ignore them, too.

My stove is 14 years old and a complete mess, so now I’m shopping for one on my new favourite site.  I found an ad which says 1.5 month old KitchenAide stove for which the person allegedly paid $1600 for $600 so I’ve contacted them.  Maybe I can cross stove off my list soon, too.

As the kids and I reviewed my fab purchases, Luke said why would any buy new?  Why indeed, but it sure is great for people like me, as the stuff people throw away is still so nice.  I said to Luke honestly, the only thing I buy new are dogs and food, because the latter just isn’t any good used.

Let’s face it.  I may as well be under house arrest considering the way I have to live.  I have two wardens watching me at all times now that Luke lives here too.  I would never in a thousand years have guessed I’d have two full grown men living with me at this point in my life.

Nicky’s going to be 24 in August, and has never lived elsewhere, and Luke will be 27 in September, and fooled me with his brief exodus to Alberta, and then the recent marriage.  I kind of thought he was out for good once he’d bought into the house in Sylvan Lake with Dan, but no.

So here we are.  One small woman and two huge men who can’t do anything other than work on installing some turbo charger into the old ’92 Civic.  For breaks, they hop onto their dirt bikes and roar off into the hills.  I’m tellin’ ya, I’m getting very, very close to the end of my patience with this gig.

They can’t turn off the lights or keep the driveway gate closed so the puppy will be safe.  All of their many Purolator deliveries for computer and car parts have engendered huge piles of empty boxes, and finally after days of haranguing, Luke deigned to take his own garbage away from the yard for me.  He was pretty shocked at the suggestion, but he did it.

Selling the house has crossed my mind, as a one-bedroom condo would solve an awful lot of my problems.  But then I think of my garden, the dog and cats and think no, surely there’s got to be a way to get these two needy adult children away from me.

Nicky’s refused dinners for about four months now, which has been great.  He prefers a nice couple of bags of McDonald’s or some sushi instead.  But Luke likes my cooking, so yesterday I decided one thing I simply have got to stop doing is cooking.  So I didn’t make any dinner, and just acted casual.

Luke came upstairs at 7:00 and said he hadn’t realized what time it was (being immersed in computer games and all) and said something about dinner.  I said nonchalantly, “I didn’t make any.”  He went “oh” and I heard him make himself a sandwich.  Whether this will work or not, I don’t know.

My last strategy came to me when I heard the cats chasing off the interloper the other night with their caterwauling.  I thought maybe if I bring strange testosterone into this place, it might drive these two males out.  It’s really a measure I hate to take as it’s so drastic, but if I can switch out two unhelpful, dirty males for one helpful, clean one, I may have to try that.

But in the meantime I’ve cheered myself up with the discovery of ripe figs, which I’ve never eaten in my life.  I bought them when the German kids were here, and now I’m into my second box, and love them.  “And if you don’t care a feather or a fig, you may grow up to be a pig.” Remember that song?

Didn’t I just say, “Luke’s driven off….”? Imagine my surprise when I woke up last Saturday to find him back.  He was sleeping in his truck as the house was locked.  Nicky’s deigned to go to Vancouver the last week of each month for his job, so I had the place locked up.

I said, “What’re you doing here?” and he explained with all the rain and flooding the oil rigs weren’t running and so he wasn’t working.  I just pray to God the rain stops and the oil rigs start working as you have no idea the kind of filth that kid makes in this house.

First of all, he decided to do a mechanical project on Nicky’s dreck 1992 Honda Civic.  However he didn’t use the empty garage, which has a cement floor and all.  No, far better to take my car out of the carport and use it.

Yesterday morning I was out there with a product called Duke that busts grease off concrete.  It took a while but the carport’s back to normal.  I can’t say the same for the rest of the house which is a wreck.

And can you see the irony in it all?  This was the week I was to be mercifully alone, as Nicky was gone for his job.  But no, I have to be chaperoned 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

So my days are ruined by dirt and the nights are ruined by relentless cat fights outside my bedroom window.  Why they fight there is a mystery.  But there’s an orange tabby that looks a lot like Mango hanging around, and my cats hate him.

This morning at 4:00 AM I was in a beautiful, deep sleep, enjoying a lovely dream.  Suddenly there was a baby crying in the dream, which made no sense whatsoever, and soon enough I was awake, realizing I was listening to another cat fight.

Then I had to lay there pretending to be asleep, as of course Louie jumps on my head if he thinks it’s time to get up.  I can’t count the number of days I’ve gotten up at 4:00 or 4:30 for the day with this damned dog.  Of course most people wouldn’t be sleeping with him in the first place, but that’s another story entirely.

The only saving grace in having either kid in the house is that I make them dogsit so I can get to the gym.  I hate leaving the puppy alone, so if one or the other will hang out with Louie I like it.

However imagine my shock last Friday when I got home and the dog was like a dishrag.  Nicky said he’d been in the garage with him for a while, so I wondered if he’d been poisoned.  I knew something was wrong with Louie when I held him to my nose and he didn’t bite it.

When I set him down he didn’t move, and just swayed from side to side.  I said to Nicky I’d better get him to the vet.  The vet said the dog likely had a tummy ache, and that’s all.  He said puppies act like they’re dying when they have a stomach ache.  Thank God that’s all it was.  Because as we all know, Louie’s currently #1 in this old woman’s heart.

Louie’s almost 12 weeks old, which according to the puppy books means his infancy is about to end.  I hope it’s not the end of his lovely peppery puppy breath, although if the insane biting settles down a bit it’ll be good.  The scarring on my hands coupled with the bulging veins is really becoming unsightly.

Margaret enjoyed her stay in Kelowna last week and spent lots of time hanging around with Louie because he’s so much fun to be with.  One of his favourite things to do is to lunge at your throat, teeth bared.  So adorable.

We had a lovely week of food, as besides the Thai chicken I made on the first night, we also had shrimp jambalaya, a gourmet meat loaf and steaks topped with balls of herbed butter.  We just skipped wine the entire week, preferring my new penchant for cocktails.

Margaret found a great apartment right on the UBC Endowment Lands, and as she’ll be faculty, she gets a subsidy.  Isn’t that great?  A a result, her goal is to own one of those old glass portable bars.  You know, a little square table made of glass, on wheels, where you can display all the bottles of licquor.  The top row is for the various sized glasses.

I told her if I come across one in my travels, I’ll get it for her.  But I’ll probably keep it for myself, as really, what could be nicer than one of those old glass tables on wheels?

Once Margaret left I decided I couldn’t stand the basement storage room being so messy any longer, and did a huge clean up.  I put masses of stuff in the car and drove straight to the Salvation Army, back from whence it came.  Now I can see what I actually have, and can stop buying the same stuff all the time.

There’s no yard work to be done, due to torrential rain, so I’m very glad to be left alone for a while.  With a one-acre property, one becomes quite tired of the daily farm chores that have to be done.  But now with heavy rain I can’t do a thing.

The delphiniums were all lying on their sides, of course, so I cut them and have a gorgeous bouquet.  They’re Pacific Giants, and the ones I cut are from the round table series and called King Arthur.  They’re magnificently tall and stately with gorgeous deep royal purple flowers.

Now I’m perusing cookbooks with great interest, as the German kids as well as Kathy and David’ll be coming over for dinner next weekend. I have a great cookbook for making homemade crackers, which could be nice with a lovely dip as an appy.

I got the cookbook from Jerralynn, as she’s a huge cracker maker.  I e mailed her the other day I’ve been baking myself into a stupor, and she asked who was eating all of the baking.  I replied that I certainly was not, given life has turned a page, and I may be on the verge of an actual date.

As you know, my friend Beverly was here the first weekend in June.  Then Luke arrived home from Thailand last week, and on the weekend I invited mom to come up for a night.  Yesterday Margaret arrived for a few days of spa-like living, but mercifully Luke drove off for the oil patch this morning.

So it’s been a wonderful opportunity to cook and bake and you know how much I love that.  Because Margaret and Luke were here, Denis came over for dinner last night and I made Thai curried chicken.  Luke always has to have chocolate mousse when he’s home so I made an extra-large amount of that.

Luke forced Margaret and Nicky to drink some of the Thai whiskey he’d brought home with him, and they stupidly did.  Both looked quite sick for a long time, and then this morning Margaret said she felt really ill.  Of course the 3-ounce cocktail and the entire bottle of wine she consumed on top of the whiskey probably added to it all.

Luke said he had a grand time in Thailand, and had a bunch of photo albums and videos for us to see.  He talks to Jan on Skype as always, so in the mornings I was able to wave hello to her over in Bangkok.  They bought a piece of land in her village and Luke says he wants to build a house there because everything’s so cheap.

The only fly in the ointment of course is Jan, whose dream it is to live in Canada.  She said to him the other day, “You love Thailand more than me.”  I tell you, he certainly lived there in his past life because this isn’t normal.

He plays Thai music on his computer and tells enraptured stories about herding water buffalo with his father-in-law.  He showed us a photo of the whole fam out for dinner in a restaurant for the first time in their lives.  Luke said old man Bunyung didn’t know how to use a knife and fork as he’d never done it before.  Amazing, eh?

But now Luke’s driven off to find his fortune somewhere in Saskatchewan and to save money for his house project over in Thailand.  And now I can concentrate on Margaret who’s here to celebrate a fabulous new job and to have a small holiday before working like a frightened idiot until Christmas.

Today I baked banana bread and a really nice white layer cake which was in last month’s Martha Stewart.  It’s a really simple recipe, but it turned out nice and moist.  I cut it into four layers, and filled them with raspberry jam and butter cream icing.  I think cake always makes a celebration seem more official.

I’m celebrating owning the sweetest, most adorable lil’ puppy in the whole wide world.  When mom came up she said “He’s the cutest dog you’ve had so far.”  Margaret is ga ga over him, and can’t stop taking photos and videos.  She said he’s what you think of when you hear the word puppy.  Indeed.

So with family, friends and pets about, head buried in a cookbook, I’m one happy mini Martha.

Luke’s arriving home from Thailand this evening, so it’ll be interesting to hear his tales.  He’s been there since mid-March, so that’s a long time.  If you’re a Facebook pal of mine, you would’ve seen the photo I posted of Luke and his five year old nephew each having a smoke.  Thailand!

Luke said he was smoking a cigarette, and the kid was bugging him for one.  He kept saying no, and then his in-laws, the kid’s grandparents, said sternly to Luke, “Give him a cigarette.”  Luke said the kid also likes tipping back the odd brewsky.

Luongo’s proving to be quite a spoiled little pup who can’t be by himself, even for a few minutes.  If I go into the shower he screams until I come out.  So I was a bit worried about what would happen on the weekend, as Bev was coming for our favourite activity, thrift store shopping.

Nicky announced he wouldn’t be able to look after the puppy at all, due to scheduled rounds of golf.  Bev brought her pug Charlie, and he doesn’t like being alone either, so that was convenient as we were both on the clock.  I said no problem to Nicky, as the pup has to learn how to be alone every now and then as I can’t be here all the time.

We put the dogs into their respective bedrooms at 9:00 on Saturday morning, and headed to the Sally Ann.  Can you believe it, but Bev found a Coach bag, in mint condition, for $20!  As you know, they’re a minimum of $200 new.

After a couple of hours I said we’d better head home, and we did. The dogs were remarkably good as neither bedroom had been torn to shreds.  They were happy to see their moms and I made Bev and I a nice lunch.  I’d bought lovely German rye bread from Monika the Baker at Okanagan Grocery, which we had with cheese and cold cuts.

We took another spin in the afternoon, emboldened by the dogs’ seeming acceptance at being left.  We hit a couple more stores, and at one, Bibles for Missions, everything was 50% off.  Hallelujah.

We got some great stuff, dirt cheap, and headed home to a pitcher of vodka cocktails.  I’d mixed raspberry vodka, Triple Sec, white cranberry and lemon juice together.  It was really good, kind of like a cooler.

Because I’m usually awake at 4:30 AM, I’ve been able to do quite a bit of chipping away at the yard.  I’m up at that indecent hour because Luongo (Louie) likes to bite my earlobes, chin, nose and throat until I get up.  Then since we’re up and my goal is to tire him out, we head down to the vegetable garden and I putter around in the beautiful silemce of the early morning.

So though I’ve sacrified sleep, leaving the house, and planting anything without a dog jumping on my hand with all its might, I’m able to see the beauty of living in the moment with this tiny fellow.  And really, what could be nicer than seeing his joy as he tears through my beds, green onions clenched firmly in his fierce white teeth.