It's raining, it's pouring: can I be the old man snoring???

Have I been so overwhelmed with it all that I have missed that many days of blogging? How negligent of me...do I apologize? Or would that seem egotistical in that I am assuming my oh-so-many fans can't live without my entries? Or do I just pretend I am sending these out to the universe of cyberspace...

Jeff is home for lunch, allowing some sanity time for me (much needed for some reason - does rain have that much negative power over me?) - all I hear are the chucking of bean bags and counting of points from the other room, brief squeel-y cheers and incessant "Daddy...Daddy...Daddy" as I imagine she pulls at his pant leg or shirt collar. Oops: there is the clomping sounds of toddler heads colliding and now the tears I can almost feel from here.

Construction of my front yard garden is on hold - the white-lidded engineers were about this morning staking, leaving me wondering if my new "burm" (or "bunker" as Jeff calls it) is about to be shredded by excavators. Did I just waste a lot of time and muscle? Alas...backyard gardens will now have to be the focus...which will be welcome relief to our family who, though enticed by the cow skulls at the rock pile, are fatiguing of the twice-daily chuck-stones-like-mad-and-pray-the-clunker-of-a-van-will-make-it-up-and-out-of-the-pit "adventure".

Hmmm...deep sigh. Goodbye moments of peace. Maybe I'll let the kids paint their own little mural on the living room walls???

Back to Holstein

“You know,” he said between sips from his styrofoam cup (because “it keeps warmer than one of those normal mugs” and so he dutifully writes his name on the cup and sets it aside, using it daily for a week or so), “it sure costs a lot these days to be dead.”

I couldn’t see him from where I stood behind the counter, having just scooped out 81 cents worth of penny candy for some acned tween who was trying desperately to calculate how many coins he had in his grimy paw.

I couldn’t even remember if this local coffee-drinking farmer, maybe ten years my senior, still had a wiry mustache that tickled that afore-mentioned Styrofoam cup each time he raised it to quietly slurp, or whether he’d shaved it off. Months ago, after he had joked about having cheek and chin stubble due to lack of finances available for purchase of a razor, some Mall regular had cockily placed a cup with a few "coppers" and a note attached stated, “money for the poor: help ______ buy a razor”

It costs a lot these days to be dead?

Intriguing… much like many of the conversations the morning “coffee club” regulars have off in the corner of this general store. A group of mainly men with impressive, usually sage, advice from all and any (even when not requested or desired), and the copious tales of delight, horror, sadness, humour, and life in general.

This talk of death and the cost of coffins, burial plots, death taxes (such a happy note at the day’s beginning!) lead into another fellow present’s sharing of his ongoing jocular threat to his very elderly father. “Careful what you say and do to us, Dad – or we’ll bury you on top of your dad and you’ll be there forever”. (Apparently he and his dad were in all-out war most of the time.)

UNfortunately I rarely hear more than a murmur, the odd comment audible between customer purchases, phone calls, morning routines. Not wishing to appear too nosy I only infrequently amble over to fill my own "mug of murk" (so some short order cooks call it? Uncle John's Bathroom Reader says it so it must be true...), though fascinating is usually an adjective that could be chosen to represent the coffee club's a.m. banter...

Monoculture

I have known for while about the evils of lawn (herbicides, insecticides, etc of course that were originally created to kill ALL lifeforms for war purposes, but also the vast amounts of water needed to keep these non-native plants alive and lush) and especially the evils of mowers that then murder the poor blades, spewing gas and sweat into the ozone. I have also spent many hours dreaming of what will fill my front yard once I have back-breakingly lacerated all evidence of grass. But I didn't know before reading Liz Primeau's intro on lawn history that WE have, by eliminating all types of plants/bushes/flowers other than grass, CREATED a monoculture (and therefore our very own problem). No longer does the ecosystem with multiple varieties of bugs feeding off of one another exist, meaning that certain bug levels get out-of-hand... With only grass and little else there is no "balance" and so certain types of insects, bugs, fungi greedily create their own nasty, destructive empires.

Yes, so guess what I did today? (And am already paying for shoulder-wise.) I'll have to take a pic of my half-shredded lawn. My loving husband has already brought back a load of rocks (our kids have become experts & adore chucking stones into the van's open back - not to mention uncovering millipedes and worms and, more frighteningly, cattle skulls, teeth intact).

The goals is FREE. Rocks from farmer field piles, bushes and perennials from others overloaded gardenscapes...there IS one "statue" I have my eye on (which is odd for me - a non-collector who rarely covets material items)but otherwise FREE free free....

And yes, this lawn commotion ("turf under construction") has me temporarily skipping the Holstein mini-series (suspended pro tem?)...

As Liz Primeau penned: "I realized I wanted to save the world. Then I realized I couldn't save the world, but I could change my own garden. Then I thought that maybe, just maybe, my neighbours and all their friends might take up the cause. Maybe, just maybe, we could weave together a network of poison-free, biodiverse, nature-friendly garden that would, in the end, make a difference. And this has become my quest." (p.24, Front Yard Gardens).

My "Letter of the Day"?

You know someone is an amazing friend and person when not only do they send you a letter, but they include a bag of tea for you to drink while reading it! (Written on May 28, 2001 – in an ongoing journal of a very transitional period of my life. Can I even recall who blessed me with such a letter and pekoe treat? Not exactly though I hazard a guess…a blonde dynamite of a friend, encountered in Kamloops during my Bachelor of Ed training?)

Traditional letter-writing has, unfortunately for many, disappeared. The physical unfolding of paper and excitement as you strain to see what has been happening in someone else’s life…I momentarily considered, “what would I write in a letter to someone at this point in my life?” and then it dawned on me, almost as though I was a 300 year old woman who had never before seen a dial phone let alone a computer keyboard, that letter writing is what I am doing this very second. Each time I press the “submit” button on the blog site my little ‘letter of the day’ has been created…

Campbell Cork, the History of Holstein’s editor, penned with great pride in its introduction: “No longer must all this information be stored in heads, attics, and photo albums”. I adore that deduction. And it wasn’t really all that long ago that “the people’s history” was even considered history at all. What happened behind closed doors, or in women’s quarters, worthy to be classified as history? My B.A. in Women’s Studies sure ingrained the switch of the anthropological take on history (or “herstory”) from political arena to private domain as fresh, genuine, and necessary.

So I am apt to assume that Holstein must be then of importance at this point in my life as it lingers (explodes? ha ha) into a "mini-series" in this blog...

What did you look like, Hols-a-Wood?

According to the History of Holstein 1850-1996 book (available at the General Store – from which the one situated beside my computer is currently on loan), settlement of Egremont farmland began in the early 1850s. Originally known as Hols-a-Wood, in 1905 Grey County designated this hamlet the “Police Village of Holstein” (an odd-sounding ring to that name?).

I often wonder about the appearance of this country originally – before the nestling instinct of westerners scratched a new template from the wilderness. I’ve observed the endless prairies (absolutely breathtaking normally and even more so when lightning storms hit) – were the trees in this part of Canada as endless as the prairies? Instead of golden wheat field after wheat field shimmering into the horizon did the forests seem to go on and on and on? Was it terrifying - manufacturing sentiments of disparagement and that almost belittling sense you feel when standing in a place like the Grand Canyon and realizing just how little, and unimportant, you really are? Or was it jaw-droppingly stunning – an environment to embrace despite its untamed ferocity?

What did Holstein really look like when Europeans arrived? What did it smell like? Wouldn’t a time machine come in handy? (Especially when your husband has no desire whatsoever to aid in your living-life-like-a-pioneer vision. No blame – toilets can be particularly and luxuriously helpful, as can running water, gas heat, and those funny things called automobiles.)

The Mall's "Women's Department"

A woman tosses a bag of maxi pads on the counter. Dressed in a wonderfully flattering, skimpy mini-skirt she is barely recognizable as the 50ish woman who used to clean my mom's home.

"Yes," she says vibrantly giggling. "Yes, I still menstruate."

She winks at an older woman in the store and just as I sense a private joke is being shared, they decide to let me in on it. The older woman swipes her hand through curly silver locks and spryly approaches the counter.

"Well..." I have grown to like this mature "granny" who at first seemed standoffish and grouchy. She raises puppies and she can laugh at herself - how can she be all that bad?!

"Well..." she repeated and gave a full explanation of the adventure her ovaries have been having. When she went, years ago, for a scheduled hysterectomy the specialist informed her that, after much search, her "female parts" were nowhere to be found.

"They've been taken out," the doctor assured her. When, she had wondered, had they been robbed? The only deduction seemed to be that while she was in the hospital after suffering a miscarriage her entire feminine innards must have been purged. Then, last year during some testing for cancer, two very distinctive "blobs" turned up on the xrays. "One is an ovary," she was told, "and the other its shadow."

"Can you just imagine?" she wondered aloud, a lilt of mirth peppering her tale. "So," she stated in finality as she gathered her newly purchased goods and stepped toward the door, "so I asked him, 'Hey Doc, how are those ovaries of mine?' and he told me, "wrinkled and shrivelled up just like they should be!'" With a gleeful chuckle she was gone, holding the door for the maxipad-hugging woman behind her.

The Start of the Holstein Mini-Series

Photo from "Seasonal Ontario Food" Blogspot

Affectionately known as "The Mall" by locals, the Holstein General Store, built and began in 1890 by Neil D. McKenzie, located on Lot 22 in the hamlet of Holstein, Ontario (about 200 people reside here) is the hub of life in this rural area. My parents bought the business in Nov 30 1999, on the cusp of the millennium (though sometimes by the feel of it you may think as you step inside that it was 1899 rather than a century later).

Dad's motto is "if we don't have it, you don't need it" and if, on the rare occasion that something isn't to be found in the store, we will try to uncover it from somewhere (a neighbour's barn? mom's garage?). Once, at about 2 am, a local telephoned mom and dad desperately seeking a sump pump as theirs had just exploded and gushing water was frantically filling their cellar. They didn't know who else to call??? Dad found him one, took it over, and installed it.

On Saturday mornings, at 7:45am, I roll into the store for a morning of work. Brushing aside the newspapers chucked around 3am on the front step so I can yank open the new steel door, I enter and angle towards first, the coffee maker (water dumped, button pushed, customers soon to arrive for bubbling hot liquid), second the light switch, and third the antiquated safe with whom I have a tumultuous relationship. Some days the sucker withstands kicks and unkind rebuffs before allowing access. (What was that film in which two kooky, suicidal dudes created a business where you could be videoed hurling your technological arch enemy over a cliff, and for a larger fee, see it explode and burn??? The safe, and our computer printer - who lovingly completes any job my husband gives it but jams up whenever I am near, for me, these two would be the disdainful objects I would gleefully launch.)

You may think I am merely a "clerk" (supposed to dust and vacuum and check out customers) but no, no, no....there are many more roles than just this that I play at The Mall. I am: source of information (though limited as we are a post office and so can not legally give specific details, such as home addresses or directions), police officer (or so the not-so-young man I caught stealing this morning would acknowledge), psychologist, lock-mouthed gossip-catcher (especially from the regular morning "coffee club" that knows all), and oh so many more...

Follow along with me on my "Holstein Mini-Series"...