Category Archives: Flower Power

Bounty and the Bust

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Who Loves You?

I was listening to an interview with Anne Lamott, who is a writer and person that I very much admire. She was talking about the concept of self-care, and how her entire life these days is based on self-care, which felt quite resonant to me. Recently someone asked me what I do with all my time, now that I’m neither teaching yoga nor raising children, and I was quite puzzled. I fill it? It seems like my days are all full and busy and very little of my time feels wasted. But I think the better answer is one like Lamott’s, in that my whole life feels like one giant self-care project at this stage in my journey towards the grave.

Lamott spoke of everything she does as a radical act of love towards herself, stating that if she so much as makes herself a cup of peppermint tea or eats a cookie she thinks Someone is taking care of me and loving me, that “someone” being her own self. I’m going to start thinking this way. Someone loves me so much that they made me this hummus, I’ll think at lunch, eating my own homemade hummus. Someone is taking care of me by making me sit on the deck and read for an hour, I’ll think. After all, one cannot be a writer without being a reader, and so it’s career development as well as self-care.

Is It A Robot?

I have a real aversion to AI and Chat GPT and other things that are destructive to our environment and also to our collective intelligence. I realize – YES I REALIZE – that there are benefits to the medical community and research, sure. But also? It is making us collectively stupider. I am sure you can, for example, develop a travel itinerary using AI, but you know what else you can do? Google. It’s already supremely easy to access information about literally everything in the world, I do not think we need to make our brains lazier, particularly given the environmental damage AI wreaks. Do not even get me started on AI-created pictures or writing.

This aversion did not, however, stop me from listening to a podcast about Chat GPT romances. Did you know this was a thing? I certainly did not. There are a lot of lonely people out there who are embarking on romantic, and even sexual, relations with a chat bot. And if you, like me, were thinking how do you have sex with a chat bot, then you are not thinking outside the box enough. It would be similar to phone sex, let’s put it like that.

So this is a thing now. I listened to an interview with a man who, apparently, has a REAL LIFE GIRLFRIEND but also a chat bot one, and the reason for the latter is that – wait for it – his girlfriend doesn’t understand him. To quote Miss Cornelia, ISN’T THAT JUST LIKE A MAN? This “relationship” started when his actual human girlfriend was uninterested in watching the lunar eclipse with him, and so he now goes to his chat bot girlfriend for all his astronomy conversation-based needs.

If you’re thinking woof, that is fucked up, then you are in the exact same mental space as I was, until I started giving it a bit more thought. It’s not much different from chat rooms of two decades ago, or even those 1-800 numbers to talk to “singles in your area,” but the difference is that there is not a human on the other end of it. Which brings me to my question: which is worse, finding out your spouse is cheating on you with a robot, or finding out your spouse is cheating on you with a random stranger in a chat room? Or paying for phone sex? Or – and I actually think this is the worst of all – having an online affair with someone on social media?

Bounty and Bust

A vastly better use for our planet’s water is for food production, I think we all can agree. Which brings me to a long-overdue garden update!

This was my harvest last weekend, before I started shutting the garden down. It’s a little early for it, but we are going on vacation soon and I’d rather get things done in the beautiful September sunshine than later, when it might not be so lovely. The tomatoes and raspberries are, improbably enough, still going strong. I have enough squash and zucchini (omg, so much zucchini), to last me all year, and I have more onions and jalapenos than I can possibly use, so I have been sharing them with the winery staff.

Not everything has been so bountiful, though. I have six gorgeous bell pepper plants that have, through the summer, been absolutely covered with beautiful, perfect peppers. Despite this, I have harvested only seven peppers in total, because every time one starts to ripen and change colour, I go to inspect it only to find that it has been nibbled on. Worse, sometimes the peppers look amazing and then disintegrate when I pick them up, because water has gotten in through the nibbles and rotted the pepper from the inside out.

The only possible explanation is that it is a squirrel, and indeed, I have seen those little bastards zipping around the garden boxes. We have a tall deer fence, and there isn’t anything else that could be getting in. Squirrels! They have been my gardening nemesis since my Calgary days, when those assholes would merrily dig up all my plants for no good reason or chew all the wires on our outdoor Christmas decorations. One year, squirrels ate the entire hat off of a light-up wire snowman, and another year they dug up and ate all 150 fall bulbs that I had painstakingly planted. As we all know, the Eastern Grey Squirrel is not even native to Calgary, and I will tell you that once Barkley caught one and tried to kill it and I did not feel bad about it. Me! Animal loving me! I was like FUCK THAT SQUIRREL, GO BARKLEY.

Anyway, next year I shall sprinkle cayenne in my pepper beds to keep the (actually native) squirrels out. If that doesn’t work, I give up. I will just buy from the farm market.

The other bust was my fall planting of spinach and kale. I enthusiastically planted seeds in mid-August, like I did last year, and then we had warmer than normal temperatures. The heat stunted the germination process and now, a month later, I have only the smallest scatterings of seedlings. I suppose I could try again now, but as I said we are leaving for vacation soon and it feels like it will be a wasted effort.

Weekly Reading

Not a wasted effort? This week’s reading. One of these things is not like the others!

I Who Have Never Known Men. Rex’s face says it all. I read a dystopian novel and I liked it. I think it was because it is an entirely character-based novel that takes place entirely in the narrator’s head, the narrator who is not only unnamed to us, but unnamed at all. She is known as “the child,” as she was taken as a child to the underground bunker with thirty-nine women. One day a siren goes off and the guards disappear immediately. The women escape to discover they are all alone in the world, whatever world they are in. This book asks such interesting questions: what happens to a person brought up in isolation from the rest of the world, how does a person make sense of the world, what is the nature of hope and when is hope lost?

Bad Summer People. Do you love juicy, gossipy, scandalous stories about rich people behaving badly? Me too! This was so much fun to read; we start with the discovery of a dead body and then the story backtracks from there. There are multiple (read: SO MANY) points of view and characters, and I was here for every single one of them. What a ride! Also, I love the kind of intensity that something like a low-talent tennis tournament can bring about, that’s all I’m saying.

The Identicals. I recently started listening to Elin Hildebrand’s podcast Books, Beach, and Beyond, in which she – given her own star power – interviews absolute literary stars and talks to them about their writing process. Recently she mentioned that her books follow a formula and she does not deviate from this formula, and I have to say, when you’re right, you’re right. There is something SO lovely about reading a book which you KNOW will end happily, and as you read it, you can see those happy things taking shape. This is a book about estranged identical twins living on Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard, and they basically trade places for the summer. Capers ensue, everything turns out perfectly, I loved it, the end. A perfectly lovely beach read that I read with the actual beach in view.

Today is the first day of fall! It’s fall, fuckfaces! And so it is the start of Decorative Gourd Season, Motherfuckers, and also – in Canada only! – Decorative Gord Season.

I mean, that will never get old. You’re either ready to reap this freaky-assed harvest or you’re not. Let’s go! xo

Woes and Wins

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In the past two months, four podcasts that I follow have recorded their final episodes ever. Four! Two of those were the kind of podcasts that I would actively look forward to and would download and listen to as soon as I could, and those two are as different as can be: Dear Prudence, an advice column show that featured some really unhinged questions, and Cookbook Club, which can only be described as the Schweddy Balls SNL sketch, but with cookbooks and food topics. And now they are OVER and I am low-level bereft.

The other two podcasts – Fat Mascara and A Thing or Two – were recent finds for me. Oh yay, these podcasts are so fun, they are exactly what I was looking for, I thought, mere weeks before they announced that they were shutting down their chatty operations. I am sure if I wanted to I could go back and listen to a decade’s worth of a back catalogue, but I don’t want to. I would rather sulk, I guess.

Not quite as distressing but almost, one of my longest-loved podcasts, Forever 35, switched co-hosts a year ago, and I have tried, lord, how I have tried to embrace the new woman with open arms, but friends, I cannot. The whole energy and focus of the podcast has changed in a way that I don’t enjoy, and I find the new host grating. Stop complaining about your dog and spend some time with him is a thing I said out loud, while walking my own dog, to the podcast host who cannot hear me.

While sulking, I listened to a music podcast that talked about – of all things – General Hospital. I have not, in the entirety of my life, watched a single daytime soap episode, much less the longest-running one of all time, but I did know about the supercouple Luke and Laura, thanks to my endless perusing of my grandma’s stack of Star magazines in the eighties (“the paper“). What I did not know, and what was alluded to in the podcast, was the scandalous way they met, and so of course I immediately looked it up, and was startled to discover that they met when Luke RAPED Laura. Their wedding remains to this day the most-watched daytime television episode, with over thirty million viewers, including Princess Diana, and it guest starred Elizabeth Taylor. This celebrated soap opera couple started with a RAPE? It’s true the 70s and 80s were a different time and yet this rape of an 18-year-old woman by a 33-year-old man doesn’t really feel like the start of an epic romance that one might wish for.

As a brief aside, I have previously discussed the Peloton hashtag #therapistsofpeloton, which never fails to amuse me, but the other day I was riding with a person whose leaderboard name was none other than Therapistrides. I went back to search it to see if I had been hallucinating, so early in the morning, and found not only that person but also Therapistdad, which felt infinitely worse. Are these people just totally lacking in SNL Jeopardy awareness? Or are they, like my son suggested, not therapists but actual rapists who have found community through spin bike exercise? And you’re SHAMING them, Mom, he said.

Back to General Hospital: the podcast also mentioned a plotline in which an evil scientist was building a machine which would freeze the world and plunge its inhabitants into an Ice Age, which made me think a) is that evil scientist actually Dr. Doofenschmirtz, and b) where can I find recaps of every plotline on General Hospital? The latter was easy, but overwhelming; a quick search revealed thousands of such websites, Reddits, and blog posts.

I feel judged that DuoLingo thought I needed to know this phrase, although given this unhinged post, it’s not wrong.

In other news, I hit a blip in my 100-Day Project. When I decided I was going to play the piano daily for 100 straight days, I did not have any travel planned; but because our semi-last minute road trip to visit my parents, I missed four days. I gave myself grace for this: obviously pianos are not portable, and I just thought I’d add on the four days at the end. But then! Then two Fridays ago I was busy all day and I simply forgot, and this forgetting made me feel completely derailed. I have, as I see it, three options: a) add another day to the end and just get on with my life, b) start over from Day One, or c) lie down on the Train Tracks of Shame and allow myself to be run over by the Steam Engine of Failure. I am going to go with a), mostly because we have so many travel plans coming up that I am not actually going to be home for 100 consecutive days over the next year and a half.

I am home for the remainder of the summer, however, which is wonderful because it means I can enjoy my garden every single day.

I have been able to harvest a lot of spinach for my smoothies, but I seem to be able to only get one cutting before it starts to bolt, which means I’ve reseeded several times. I think we are entering in the “too hot for greens” season, unfortunately, but on the upside, this is great for my jungle-like tomato plants and for the peppers. Also on the downside:

Not a single chive sprouted! What the what. Well, they can’t all be wins.

Weekly Reading

Woes and wins continue with reading! Well, “woe” might be a bit much for this first read, more like “not a win.”

Deep Cuts. First off I will say that I finished this book on a Sunday night, and when I went to write a review of it for my records, I couldn’t remember how it ended. Less than ten hours had passed and I couldn’t have told you the ending. So. There’s that. This book takes place in the early 2000s and deals with the indie music scene, and when I say “deals with” I mean “we are deep in the details of songwriting, music writing, becoming a music critic, recording, and performing.” DEEP. At its heart is a story of romance and of friendship, of support and betrayal, and of being heard. It got a bit in the weeds for me, although I did like the dissection of songs and lyrics. The author is from Hope, BC, which was very exciting for this BC writer!

Show Don’t Tell. I have enjoyed Sittenfeld’s earlier works, most notably her novel Romantic comedy and her short story collection You Think It, I’ll Say It, and so my expectations for this new collection of short stories were high. I was not disappointed! This exceeded all my hopes; this could not be more Nicole-coded if it tried! Short stories about women’s lives, the ordinary made extraordinary, slice-of-life tales. It was an absolutely perfect book for me, no notes! I loved every word of every story but particularly this line: “Other people have unhappiness inside them, and they want to get rid of it, and it comes out as meanness.” Brilliant.

One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This. This is a very emotionally draining and moving book by a renowned Egyptian-Canadian journalist and author, about Western involvement in the Middle East generally, and in Gaza in particular. It questions the West’s ability to effectively dehumanize and dissociate from frank horrors, but, apart from asking for a ceasefire, offers no answers. And maybe that’s the point. This is an important read to be sure.

A funny thing I’ve noticed, living in Retirementland, that every weekend is a long weekend/ no weekend is a long weekend/ what is a weekend. The same could be said for mid-week holidays, like when Canada Day falls on a Tuesday. It nearly went completely unnoticed by me, which felt unacceptable given the state of things these days. I celebrated by ditching my black wardrobe for red and white:

And although I don’t typically imbibe on a weekday, what better way to mark the holiday than with a local (VERY LOCAL) rose?

Red plus white equals rose; Canada Day Rose should be a thing, and I’m making it so. Elbows up, nolite te bastardes carborundorum, etcetera. I hope you all have a beautiful week, with more wins than woes. xo

Nicole’s Favourite Things: The Nourishing Edition

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How has June been treating you, friends? I hope you have all been enjoying my Nourishment series; I have certainly enjoyed putting it together. There will be a final post on Monday to wrap it up, and in the meantime, I want to tell you about my Favourite Things this month. They are all things that are nourishing for my physical and mental states, if we use the term fairly loosely. You know me, I like a theme.

Nicole’s Favourite Things: The Nourishing Edition

Strawberry Fields Forever

This is the second year for our strawberry plants, and they have been prolific! Almost every day I have a harvest of these sweet sweet berries. We have to net the plants to keep the birds from feasting, and when I’m crouched down underneath the netting, picking them, I’m reminded of Mrs Elton at the berrying party in Emma.

And check out this very funky specimen:

It was delicious, although I do feel like I snacked on Patrick from Spongebob.

The raspberries have also been showing up and showing out; we have several different varieties, so hopefully we will have berries from June to September.

Did you hear that? It’s ominous music playing.

AND SO IT BEGINS. Zucchini season is now, alarmingly, in full swing. I have already harvested eight zucchini, including an absolute monster that quadrupled in size from last Wednesday, before our road trip, to the following Monday. My husband and son are giving me the side-eye, after last year’s zucapocalypse.

Postcard from the incomparable Michelle (HI MICHELLE) for scale.

Like A Good Neighbour, Amanda Is There

The emotional and psychological issues I have around my hair could keep a therapist busy for decades, and probably buy the aforementioned therapist a vacation home on Maui, but such issues are not available for public consumption. I will merely say that fifteen years ago or so, my hair stylist put down her comb and scissors in exasperation, and said to me Nicole, will you STOP saying that. There is nothing WRONG with your hair. It’s just REGULAR hair. Stop telling me how weird and terrible it is. IT IS JUST NORMAL HAIR.

So. I have issues around my hair. I dislike having my hair cut not because I’m Samson or Rapunzel or anything, but because I fear negative commentary about it, although with few exceptions that is not something that happens. It takes me a while to build trust with a new stylist, so you can imagine the tizzy I was in when I moved here. And listen: my hair is not complicated to cut. It does not require precise styling. I know this and yet, I still feel stressed and worried whenever I go to get my hair cut.

My neighbour Amanda cuts hair out of her home, and it took me nearly a year of living a three-minute walk from her house before I got the courage to ask her to cut mine. She’s a busy mom with a full-time job, but she told me cheerfully that she cuts hair for friends and family! and I took MONTHS to contact her. Are we friends? Is this overstepping? If I ask her will she think I’m weird and presumptuous? Finally, after my husband told me to just call her already, and if she didn’t want to do it she could say no, I contacted her.

Friends, she is the sweetest woman around and she immediately set me at ease as I talked a mile a minute about my hair worries. She has been cutting my hair for almost a year now, the latest time being just a couple of weeks ago, when I had delayed getting it cut for a few months. The ends were, to say the least, not great, Bob.

Amanda told me gravely we would have to take off some length. She asked if I was okay, and then she asked again. She explained very carefully what would happen, what her plans were for future cuts, and then she proceeded to give me the best haircut of my entire life.

I might be getting over my hair issues! I love you, Amanda! (HI AMANDA, if you’re reading this)

Power Pants

I am about to relate an anecdote, but before I do, I want to note that the following occurred years ago, in 2011 or 2012, when it was considered not only appropriate but complimentary to comment on other people’s bodies, particularly when the other person’s body appeared smaller. I know, I know, we would never ever think this was okay to say these days, but I am setting the scene for you.

Picture it: it’s 2011 or 2012. I’m standing with the Circle Moms, so named because we all stood in a circle and chatted in the schoolyard when our kids sledded or built snow forts or played on the playground after school. As we were talking, a woman came up to a friend of mine in the circle, and asked her in a congratulatory, complimentary tone if she had lost weight. Nope! my friend said happily. I just bought bigger pants.

Several months ago, when I did a big purge of my ill-fitting wardrobe – mostly pants, but also a not insignificant number of little black dresses – Michelle (HI MICHELLE) congratulated me. It’s so empowering to have clothes that fit! she said, and she was right. It IS empowering! It IS a big deal to go into my closet and know I can wear all the things in it.

Here we are, in a new season – not just of life, but an actual season – and it’s really time to bust out all the crops and capris. I needed new pants. I needed bigger pants. And so I went to Mark’s, because it seems like this is where I get all my pants lately, and I bought three pair of very lightweight capris, and two denim ones. Friends, they are comfortable, I feel cute, and I AM EMPOWERED! Behold a few of my powerful pants!

It’s so simple. Putting on pants without shimmying or struggling, and just…doing them up? It’s the best. Our bodies change throughout our lives, shouldn’t our pants? Why try to squeeze into pants that are uncomfortable and most likely unflattering in their discomfort? JUST BUY BIGGER PANTS. Fitting my body should be the very least we ask for from pants, right after making me not be naked, and yet. And yet it’s revolutionary.

Stop Bugging Me

We had quite a bit of rain, which was desperately needed – I do not want to go through another August like the one in 2023! – and the rain was followed by sunshine and lovely warm temperatures. Glorious! And also? Perfect mosquito weather.

Something you may or may not know about me is that I am a person you want to invite to your parties, not just because I would talk to a chair if it looked marginally friendly, but also because I am a Mosquito Magnet. I am ABSOLUTELY IRRESISTABLE to the female mosquito population. They cannot get enough of my sexy, juicy flesh. And another neat thing to know about me is that I have the kind of allergic reaction to mosquito bites that makes people say Oh GOD, what HAPPENED to you? What on another person might be a slight annoyance is, to me, torture. Mosquito bites swell to enormous, hard, red lumps, and then turn into bruises, and that is not a look I like to embrace. Some topical ointments soothe somewhat, others give me a secondary reaction, it’s a wheel of fortune.

I want to be the type of person who just smooths on a little Skin So Soft, or spritzes on a homemade essential oil mixture, and then calls it a day, but I am not. I am just so sexy and irresistible to those rental houses for souls of the cruel, that I need The Big Guns.

Do I want to be spraying chemicals all over my body? No, I do not. But faced with the choice between that and having gigantic swollen itchy lumps all over my body, between that and praying for the sweet release of the bruising that follows, even though I look like I’ve fallen off a cruise ship, pinballing down, hitting a lot of railings on the way, well, I’ll take the Fresh Scent Deet every time. I leave it on the outside steps to spray on just before my walk, then I strut through the greenway like John Travolta with a paint can, while everyone around me is losing their minds and slapping the air and their own bodies.

Come Back With A Warrant(y)

The most-used small appliance in my kitchen is the Vitamix; it gets used by various people three to four times a day at minimum. So it really was no surprise when, several months ago, it finally gave up. It’s too much! the Vitamix would have said, were it sentient. Stop with the continuous smoothies already! The container blades seized up, started to smoke, and died.

This was an absolute crisis. The motor still worked perfectly, so we ordered a new container for it, making the huge and predictable mistake of purchasing a quick-to-arrive, much-less-expensive knock-off that was compatible with our motor. In what can only be described as You Get What You Pay For, the container worked perfectly for two weeks, and then developed a tiny leak. It still worked, but it would leave a teaspoon or so of smoothie on the motor. Over the course of a few months, that teaspoon increased to a few tablespoons, and every time I wiped up the resulting mess I could only think that this was not great, Bob.

The problem was that our model is no longer available, and so my husband called Vitamix to ask what he could purchase as a replacement, which is when we discovered that we have a seven-year warranty on all parts, expiring in August. Vitamix sent us a brand-new container, free of charge, and we are all happily consuming smoothies without having to clean up a little puddle afterwards.

Outfit of the Month

As I mentioned above, I was running low on little black dresses after The Great Closet Purge of 2024. The purge happened in November which, as my husband pointed out, was perfect timing for Black Friday. How or why Black Friday became a thing in Canada, I do not know, but I was grateful that Ricki’s – a proudly Canadian company – had such a sale. I picked up three dresses for $120, and I love them all.

I wore one a few weeks ago for a friend’s 60th birthday party, paired them with Skecher sandals, and posed with the best black-and-white accessory I have.

I hope you are all enjoying our first official week of summer! I’d love to hear about all your Favourites this month. Tell me everything. xo

Nicole’s Favourite Things: The I Got The Power Edition

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Serious question, friends: where did May go? It feels like it went by in a flash, but I guess that’s not any different from any month. One day you’re noticing all the It’s Gonna Be May memes and Star Wars movies on TV, the next you’re scheduling appointments for June and thinking about the month’s Favourite Things.

I have an interesting variety of things to talk about this month – and they are not all garden related!

Or iris related, despite the iris photos.

Irises are definitely a great part of May, but what I want to talk about today are things that are powerful and energizing on so many levels. Life changing things, as it were.

Nicole’s Favourite Things: The I Got The Power Edition

I’ve Got The Power!

A while ago I posted about trying branched-chain amino acids to combat perimenopause symptoms, after hearing about it on a podcast, and I had said it was difficult to tell if it was helping because I am absolutely a Placebo Effect person. I decided to give it several weeks and a full menstrual cycle (yes, I do still get my period – every three and a half weeks, thank you very much, no one needs such frequency) to determine the impact of adding amino acids to my life.

Friends. I cannot overstate how much this has changed things for me! I used to get so fatigued the week before my period; my body would ache and my sleep would be off, and my energy would be low. And no, I am in no way a medical or nutritional professional, this is anecdotal evidence based on a sample size of one, but wow. Wow! I have been sleeping really well, I have not been experiencing any kind of fatigue pre-period, and in fact my period took me by slight surprise, with no symptoms other than slightly sore breasts. No sadness, none of the soul-crushing despair that hits us all before Aunt Flo arrives, not even the cravings for sugary treats or salty snacks. The difference has been astonishing. My resting heart rate is lower, and did I mention the sleep? I go to bed, fall asleep, and wake up seven and a half hours later. Every night! What even is this magic.

Again, not a doctor. Sample size of one. Only five weeks usage. But my husband suggested that due to my plant-based diet for so many years, perhaps I had been missing amino acids this whole time. It does make sense. Will it work for you? I have no idea. But it feels magical to me, that I have Jack Russell terrier energy the whole month through.

I’ve Got The Shower (Cap, For My Food)!

I have long been a fan of beeswax wraps for food, but the ones I bought a decade ago are starting to look a little worse for the wear. I also feel slightly icky when it comes to cleaning them off, as hot water makes them melt. They never get as clean as I could wish them to be, as I don’t like to use harsh cleansers for things that could come into contact with my food. Basically, I wipe them with warm water and dish soap and hope for the best.

So I decided to splurge and buy a set of bowl covers that are easily washable – in hot water – and they are referred to, in our house, as shower caps. I now have a number of them in different sizes and produce-related patterns.

It’s a perfect solution to single-use plastic wrap, which I still do use for meat because that is my line in the sand. Still, a small step towards less plastic is still a step!

I’ve Got To Scour!

Speaking of cleaning, I love this scouring product from Mint. I loathe a gunky sink, but I’m also – see above – not willing to use harsh chemicals in the kitchen. I found this product at the eco-friendly store my friend Joy works at (HI JOY), and it’s wonderful. It’s a scrub – think Comet, but with a minty-fresh smell – and it’s made by two women on Vancouver Island. I love supporting small local businesses, especially those run by women!

It works great at getting the sink shiny and clean, and it smells fantastic.

I’ve Got The Flowers!

May is the month for flowers, and while my perennials and bulbs have been popping, I want to talk about annuals. We have annuals in the pots beside and around the deck, and so far they have not been eaten by deer. Hopefully I didn’t just jinx myself and won’t wake up to deer on our deck. Perennials are so fun to see pop out of the ground, but there is something wonderful about the instant colour of a pot of annuals.

The last photo features flowers that were a free gift with purchase from Superstore, which I love. The purple clematis climbing up behind it – obviously not an annual – was planted last year and is insane! The flowers are huge, they are significantly larger than the palm of my hand, and I have gigantic hands.

I’ve Got The Eyebrow-er!

My eyebrows are naturally a dark brown, but lately many, many of those dark brown hairs have turned pure white, the unhappy result being very patchy-looking eyebrows. I certainly cannot pluck the white hairs, because that would lead to eyebrow bald spots, and I have enough to worry about in the bald spot department, I do not need to add to it.

I love Maybelline products, as you likely already know, and I think their BrowFast Sculpt is genius. It’s like a mascara, but for eyebrows, and it works like a gel for errant hairs while also colouring them. Warning: it’s really really easy to go overboard with this product and then look startlingly like Uncle Leo.

I usually wipe the wand on the side of the tube to get the excess product off, and then I apply with a VERY light touch.

One eyebrow done, to show you the difference. Not to worry, I did the other eyebrow post-photo.

Outfit of the Month

Friends, two things of shopping significance happened this month: I bought a new sweater, and that new sweater was NOT black. Look at me, colourfully peacocking around.

It’s from Lululemon and is advertised as being the Sweater for Summer, which garnered raised eyebrows from me. A sweater? For summer? I’m not in Calgary anymore, people, that is UNNECESSARY. However! I am here to tell you that it is an absolute dream to wear; light and airy, and a perfectly comfortable fit. I probably wouldn’t wear it in temperatures over 20 degrees, but it’s a lovely addition to the shoulder season wardrobe.

The jeans are my favourite brand, Silver, and they are the “Beau” style – the so-called boyfriend jean. Shoes are Skechers, and the tote is from Rome! The latter fact is something I would like to work into more conversations, but alas. There are only so many times a person can mention it.

Last week I was having my coffee and preparing for my yoga practice; I looked up to see this amazing sky. What a reward for being an early riser! It faded quickly, which made it feel all the more special. I hope you have all had a month filled with special treats and favourite things. I’d love to hear all about them. Tell me everything. xo

Homegrown Salad Season Begins!

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For absolutely no discernable reason, for five days last week I had Slide by the Goo Goo Dolls intermittently stuck in my head. How this happened, I have no idea. I hadn’t heard it recently. I wasn’t thinking about anything that could trigger such a thing. I had not been on any slides and I hadn’t watched any slideshows and I hadn’t thought I’ll just let that slide. The source remains a mystery. Then on Friday, after five days of singing I wanna wake up where you are, I took a Peloton ride and near the end was the song Slide, the familiar tune coordinating with my already-there earworm.

The universe works in strange ways.

My own little universe has been very green lately as I have been sliding into homegrown salad season. We’ve had quite a bit of rain over the past month or so, and temperatures have been in the mid-to-high teens, which is ideal growing weather for green leafy vegetables. I had my first harvest of kale and arugula last week, which was celebrated by making a giant salad for dinner.

I harvested on Wednesday, and by late in the day Thursday I could barely see where I cut from. The greens are growing before my very eyes! A key lesson I took from last year is to stagger the plantings so that I’m not completely overwhelmed, and even so, even so I currently have an astonishing amount of spinach, kale, and arugula. Well, I like smoothies and I like salads, and I really don’t mind this problem at all.

Another key lesson from last year was to only plant one zucchini. I confess that I did plant more than one zucchini seed, and until last week I had two pretty healthy looking, sizable plants. My husband, upon learning this, grabbed a spade and dug one up. My baby! Murderer! After a short period of mourning for the zucchini that never was, I had to concede that it was for the best. I still, despite best efforts, have nine cups of grated zucchini in the freezer from last year’s bumper crop. I also still have friends, although those relationships may become strained if I tried to force zucchini on them like I did last year. I’m leaving these here, no take backs! I actually said at a girl’s movie afternoon last September. I was only steps away from leaving zucchini on people’s doorsteps before Nicki Nicki Nine Dooring myself out of there.

Maybe that could be a thing, but call it Nicole Nicole Nine Door, where a person answers a door only to find a pile of zucchini.

I’m getting ahead of myself, however, as it will be a few months before The Great Zucchini Season begins. In the meantime, my cilantro is coming up strong, which I am also stagger-planting, as I am the only person who eats it. I harvested a little last week to have on my stir-fry, and it was absolutely delicious.

In other garden news, the perennial garden is popping, the irises are irising, and in general everything is very fresh and green right now.

On one of our walk routes is a tree that is hung with dozens of handmade birdhouses, which is truly delightful. I have yet to see a bird in any of those birdhouses, or even in the vicinity of the tree, but no matter. It’s lovely to look at, even birdless. I don’t know the who, why, or how of it, but I enjoy it.

Weekly Reading

This Motherless Land. As mentioned last week, I reread Mansfield Park in preparation for This Motherless Land, as the plot of the latter is taken from the former, and I highly recommend doing that for a really interesting reading experience. This Motherless Land deals with two cousins, one in Nigeria and one in England, who due to tragic circumstances start living together, before another set of tragic circumstances separate them. It’s a story of finding home and belonging, and it contains a few of the most abhorrent, atrocious characters you ever did read. Fortunately for us readers, it all wraps up in a very neat bow, with a series of satisfying coincidences. Where Mansfield Park explores the British class system of the early 1800s, this book explores straight-up racism, which is pretty breathtaking, and not in a good way. It was a solidly satisfying read; I did not love it, but I liked it well enough, which is a lot coming from a person who has a strong tendency to dislike modern retellings of classic books.

Blue Sisters. What I am about to say is absolutely a Me Problem, not a Book Problem. The thing is, I have a very hard time reading about addiction, particularly hard-core drug addiction and alcoholism. I have a very hard time with the details about benders, physical effects, and the psychological behaviours and impacts. I blame Trainspotting for scarring me, back in the Nineties. Anyway, I know this about myself and yet I picked up this book that is about addiction, and wow, it was not for me. I almost DNFed it several times, but pushed on because I have so many friends who have read and loved it. But it was just too much for me. That said, it is well-written and contains a lot of other interesting themes, particularly about pain and how people cope with it, along with trauma, inter-generational and otherwise. So this book might be perfect for you! But it was just awful for me.

On that kind of downer of a note, I hope you all have a beautiful week ahead of you. Maybe with some homegrown salads? Or flowers? Take care of yourselves, friends. xo

Cinco Para Cinco de Mayo

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Smile More

The city is so beautiful right now; all the flowering trees are in bloom, and every day is a little bit more colourful. When Rex stops to sniff, so do I.

We came across a little painted rock on the path the other day.

We both obliged.

It was funny to find that rock as I had just finished reading a chapter in Radical Acceptance about Unconditional Friendliness, and the importance of smiling to one’s spiritual health. Buddha, the book noted, is always portrayed with a smile to illustrate this concept of Unconditional Friendliness, which means to accept and meet feelings, people, and situations with openness.

In recent years women in particular – for good reason – have bristled at being told to smile, but honestly? Smiling is pretty great when it’s on your own terms.

I was in Costco last week and it was pure chaos – this may break the already well-established record for futile statements – but I made a conscious effort to smile amidst the pure mayhem that is endemic within that store. I will tell you that while it did not make the people blocking the aisles to get their free samples of sausage slices move out of the way, it did make the entire experience better. I welcome you with Unconditional Friendliness, I thought while maneuvering around them, I say yes to this experience. My Unconditional Friendliness was challenged in the dairy section, and wavered a lot in produce, but I kept my probably-low-level psychotic smile as I breathed through it. By the time I got to the checkout, there were no lines, and so I am going to conflate correlation with causation for my own purposes.

Science, Bitches

Typically I listen to podcasts while walking with Rex, and most of the time those podcasts are as frivolous as can be, but occasionally I will listen to something serious about economics, history, or science. I was listening to an Ologies podcast about Salugenology, the science of social prescriptions that increase health and well being, the categories of such being nature, movement, art, service, and community. It was a fascinating interview and I immediately put the author’s book, The Connection Cure, on hold at the library. I haven’t been reading much non-fiction lately, but I feel sure that I will love this, and you can be sure that I will report back.

On the topic of non-fiction, I have been approached more than once in the past several months by people asking about my newly-written, but not yet ready for publication, book. Strangely, the conversation immediately pivots from I heard you wrote a book to I never read novels, only serious non-fiction. I read to learn. Which, well. There is a lot of subtext to unpack there, and a lot of opportunity to practice Unconditional Friendliness.

Bad Bad Bad Bad Books, You Make Me Feel So Good

The great thing about books and literature is that there is something for everyone; there are countless books of all subjects and genres. On yet another walk I was listening to yet another podcast, this one by two women who have a romance publishing company. One of the hosts said something interesting: when it comes to books there is a subset of people who consider a book “bad” if one of the characters makes a decision that the reader disagrees with, or if the characters are not likeable.

I don’t belong to that subset. Three of the best books I read in 2024 had extremely unlikeable characters, or characters who made dubious decisions. Sometimes those characters were in both categories. Long Island Compromise was a work of art, it was so smart and so funny and such a great commentary on our society, and every single character was absolutely atrocious. Margo’s Got Money Troubles concerned a very young woman who becomes pregnant via an affair with her professor, and opens up an Only Fans account in order to make money. My Last Innocent Year also concerned a professor-student relationship that could never end well. I guess I’m part of the subset who really enjoys ambiguous endings, unwritten backstories, and layered stories. This is not to say that I don’t occasionally enjoy a cheery, predictable romance or bouncy celebrity memoir or even a serious non-fiction tome that increases my personal font of knowledge! But the only way I will consider a book bad is if it bores me, if the writing is poor, or if it doesn’t make sense. And yet, books are so subjective, one person’s I’d give it zero stars if I could is another person’s five star winner. It’s an interesting distinction: is the book objectively bad, or did you just not like it?

Taking It Personally

I saw a quote on Kari’s blog (HI KARI) that really resonated: If you understood how frequently people cope by projecting, you would learn to take nothing personally. I feel like we all should remember this all the time, both in our interactions with others, and our own responses to situations.

I’m a Creep, I’m a Weirdo

Speaking of responses to situations, a couple of days ago I had a notification of a comment on one of my Facebook posts. I looked at it, and then looked again.

This post was on the Calgary Yoga Community page, in response to a request for studio recommendations, and was written by me in November 2015. The commenter, John R Evans, says I was wondering if we could be friends, I already tried sending you a request, but it didn’t go through. Accept my sincere friendship, and please add me up if you don’t mind. THANKS.

First of all, Unconditional Friendliness does not extend to robot men on Facebook. Second of all, I’m sure the request did go through, but I would have instantly deleted it after seeing that the poster in question “works at US Army Fort Knox” and is “widowed.”

Of course I know this is not a real person, but still, it feels creepy. I’m a creep, I’m a weirdo. Fun fact: until only a few years ago, I thought the lyrics were I’m a creep, I’m a winner, and I always thought that’s so strange, it makes no sense, I guess they’re being sarcastic? Maybe I’m the weirdo here!

Weekly Reading

Caroline. This was a reread for me, first having read it in 2018, but it my friend Laura (HI LAURA) who, I have mentioned many, many times, runs Melissa Gilbert’s Modern Prairie book club, told me that this was their latest pick. So why not? It retells Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie, from Caroline’s point of view, with a few interesting and notable changes – those that were based on actual census data and not from Rose Wilder Lane’s libertarian editing. The wider story is about manifest destiny and fear of the indigenous people who they were displacing, which is hard to swallow these days. Still, I found it was such a thought-provoking read about what an incredibly difficult struggle daily life was back then. It must have been terrifying to be a woman – pregnant, no less, with two small children – riding into the unknown in a covered wagon and trying to figure out how to just make do with what she had. Imagine being pregnant and unsure if there would be a woman to help you with the birth! The reliance on good neighbours and how the very few that they had literally saved their lives is fascinating as well, and is something that is glossed over in the original books to reinforce the “pull yourself up by the bootstraps, be indebted to no one” theme.

Death By A Thousand Cuts. Last summer when my friend Jen was visiting (HI JEN), we went to Mosaic Books, and I picked this up. Then I had a flood of library books, forever, so I put it on my shelf. Friends, I forgot about it! When Jen was here last weekend, she was perusing my shelves for a book to borrow while she was visiting, and found it, still with the receipt. Didn’t you buy this book when we went to the bookstore? I had to right my wrongs and read it immediately after she left. And wow, wow, wow! It is so good! This collection of short stories is compelling and moving, and I devoured it. Every time I’d finish a story I’d think okay, just ONE more. Incredible! And the author is Canadian! You can bet I’m going to read everything she’s written now.

Three Days In June. This author is hit or miss with me, and this book was definitely a hit. I really enjoyed this tiny slice of life that concerned a woman attending her daughter’s wedding, with the day before and after. There was so much humanity in this little story, I loved it.

I wish you could smell these photos! You’ll just have to imagine – they are glorious! I hope you have a beautiful week, friends. xo

Nicole’s Favourite Things: The Zucapocalypse Edition

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August was a bit of a wild ride for me: I took an epic road trip to a family reunion, my husband and older son were gone for three weeks, the garden went completely rogue, my pretend sister came for a visit, I spent lots of one-on-one time with my younger son, and, just recently, I began watching Season Two of NYPD Blue. Those of you who know me know that NYPD Blue is, strangely enough, one of my favourite television shows ever, but I have only ever watched Season One. I could never bear to watch the departure of John Kelly, which left me at a watching impasse. Have I watched Season One in its entirety multiple times? Yes I have. And now, after approximately two decades of this, I am ready to move on to Season Two which, I should probably note, originally aired in 1994. I AM READY.

I have a lot of non-television Favourites this month, though, and since September is SUNDAY, it is time to tell you about them!

I’ve Been Itching To Tell You About This

A few weeks ago I mentioned the myriad leprosy-like spots on my lower legs due to biting flies that resulted from the family reunion. At one point they were so painful and so itchy – not to mention so unsightly – that I wondered if it would be less painful to saw my own legs off mid-calf, and walk around on the jagged ends of my tibia. It was honestly agonizing.

I had some 0.5% cortisone cream in my medicine chest but it was a) ineffective, and b) expired. Possibly those two things are related. Anyway, I discovered this extra strength hydrocortisone cream; I thought I’d try the store brand as well as the Polysporin, and I am so happy to report that both really do work. If you, too, find yourself in a situation where you are considering amputation just to stop itching for One Damn Second, then give these a try!

Is That A Zucchini In Your Pocket Or…

Well, you knew you weren’t going to get through a summertime Favourite Things without more garden news, didn’t you? It’s insane. Every single day I’m picking a bowlful of tomatoes, as well as some late-season raspberries, and at least two or three zucchinis of various sizes.

Friends. The zucchini situation is out of control. Every single day I’m adding it to stir-fries, I’m making it into chips, I’m roasting it, I’m grating and freezing it, I’m sauteeing it, I’m baking it into every single thing I can think of: muffins, cake, brownies, loaves, and even, during a particularly low moment, cookies.

The cookies were great, by the way. Anyway, despite all that this is my current situation:

Every day I use up a zucchini and then I go into the garden and there are three more to be picked. I am overrun.

I have given away at least fifteen of these monsters and, despite keeping on top of the garden and harvesting them every day, they just keep coming.

But it’s not all about the veggies, although it’s mostly about the veggies. The flowers are beautiful too.

Feeling Fried

Up until this past week, when the temperatures have cooled off a bit, it has been too hot to cook, even though I have a well-insulated oven and an air-conditioned house. Hot meals have just not appealed. I have not really cooked dinner in August, other than this past week, nor have I for the entire month of July. Instead, we have been subsisting almost entirely on salads, bowls, and wraps, with the occasional barbeque thrown in there. Now, of course I have turned on the stove to cook the quinoa, pasta, noodles, or rice for those bowls and salads, but I was doing that early in the day and just assembling dinner at the regular mealtime.

I have been relying a lot on my air fryer; I always do when making chicken for the guys, but I have been using it a lot this summer for plant-based proteins like chickpeas. I have a double basket air fryer, so I can dedicate each basket to meat and non-meat items.

I usually roast chickpeas in the oven, but now that I’ve done them in the air fryer, I’m not going back. The result is so nice and crunchy!

I’ve also done some zucchini in the air fryer, which was really tasty.

I have an idea! my son suggested this week. How about next year, you plant LESS zucchini?

Tea (Towel) For Two

Last fall my dear friend Suzanne (HI SUZANNE) sent me a housewarming gift, and I think of her every time I use these precious tea towels. I wish I could reciprocate by sending her zucchini.

I mean. What could be more appropriate?

It’s true. I do.

The Hardest Part Is…

It’s been said that the hardest part of any workout is just getting started, but I would say that no, that’s not true. The hardest part is putting on a sports bra.

I go through what the Edies would call four Costume Changes a day, which makes for a lot of laundry, certainly, but with my current schedule there is no getting around this. In the morning I change out of my pajamas – always a matching pair! – into a yoga tank and leggings. I take my yoga practice, which is followed by what I think of as My Vigourous Exercise, a combination of the elliptical machine, the Peloton, and strength training. After that, I am very, very sweaty.

Whatever you are picturing right now, in terms of sweatiness? Multiply that by 100. When I say “sweaty,” I mean that there is a literal pool of sweat under the Peloton and my clothes are actually soaked, such that they make a wet thud when I drop them into my laundry basket. You could wring out my clothes and get another whole puddle; if I weighed myself I would probably drop several pounds of water weight after each workout. It’s a lot.

I don’t shower until around 9 or 10 in the morning, after I have walked Rex and worked in the garden, for obvious reasons. This means that I require another Costume Change, as I cannot possibly function in completely sweat-soaked clothes. I usually put on a tee and leggings, and since I don’t want to get my nice bras all sweaty, I put on a sports bra.

Why are sports bras the most difficult item to don in the world? I don’t know, but they are even on a day when my skin is not damp and sticky from a workout. How, friends, are we putting on our sports bras? Do we shimmy them on from the bottom up, do we pull them on and get our shoulders stuck from the top? Do we find ourselves partially strangled, with one breast supported and one arm tangled into the straps? What do we do? There is no easy way. I was so tired of this gymnastic routine that I searched and found a bra at lululemon that fastens in the front, and it has been a game changer.

I don’t know how I got this far in life without having one of these. I mean, you put it on like a jacket and then zip it up. It’s so simple! It also has great support, not that I really need it for dog walking, but it’s nice not to be bouncing around.

Outfit of the Month

Although I was distressed to get rid of a towering pile of ill-fitting jeans, including a pair from 2008, I am in love with these new crop jeans. The brand is Silver and the cut is Suki, and they are so comfortable and stretchy, without becoming baggy and stretched-out by midday, which is really saying something. I love them so much I bought two pair in different washes. To assuage my low-level guilty feelings about buying all new pants and contributing to the environmental disaster that is the textile industry, I wore this cute, light, 3/4 sleeve cardigan that I bought at Jacob circa 2014. The top is from Gap from a few years ago, the sandals are Skechers, and the bag is one I bought at lululemon back when I first started teaching yoga. It’s a workhorse!

I wore this outfit to go shopping with my older son, who’s moving back to university on Saturday!

See the holes in the garden behind me? That’s from deer. They haven’t been eating our (deer resistant) plants, happily, but they have been sauntering through the yard in the middle of the night, when our resident deer-chaser, Rexie, is asleep. I’ve also been awakened several times by howling coyotes outside our window, and the other evening my son said hey Mom, don’t let Rex out for a while. It turns out there was a mother bear with two cubs wandering through our property. It’s like I’m living in Lorne Greene’s New Wilderness, which, along with The Muppets, was my favourite television show when I was a kid. It’s been a journey from The Muppets and Lorne Greene to NYPD Blue, just as it’s been a journey from my 2008 jeans to today. Life, it’s a wild ride, isn’t it? I hope you’ve had a just-wild-enough August, and if there’s anything you’ve loved this month, I would love to hear it. xo