By Maryanna Gabriel
It is feeling apocalyptic these days. The smoke from the fires to the north have covered the morning sun rising over a nearby lake on Salt Spring Island. I'm not going to lie. It hurts.
Then there is the heat wave. Today it is cooler. Not to mention the efficacy of the vaccines lowering just as everybody is madly visiting.
I work hard on keeping things alive - stalwart garden friends of green are drooping sadly - am just keeping ahead. Feel blessed to live here compared to so many, but suddenly what was fixed seems fragile.
Can we go back in time? Say 1976? It was all so innocent then and I was not worrying about the elephants.
Somewhere I read a story about a man riding a train in India that was passing dead bodies. Have I already written this? I am getting a deja-vu - I digress. A fellow passenger said why are you smiling? "I am looking at the white flowers up the mountainside and thinking how beautiful they are." Meaning it is how one looks at things, I suppose. Not that I want to stick my head in the sand. Out to the road I go and pick blackberries, then down to the garden to find the last of the rhubarb and into the jam pot they be for a fine finish to left-over polenta pancakes. It is a beautiful life.