Dogwood in Bloom

The dogwood trees are in bloom - both the pink and the white. Like everything else this year, they are early. I usually start watching for dogwood flowers at the end of April. This year everything was early and often out of sinc - crocus before snowdrops and most hellebores were even later.

















Now the tulips are just beginning to fade and with dogwood trees in bloom, summer is just around the corner.

Playground for Adults

A Playground for adults? It's not what you think! The park at the end of my street has created this.

It is an outdoor fitness center for adults. I think it is part of a Participaction Program. There are even free circuit training classes.

The equipment is very large and durable and offers to tone up and strengthen all body parts.

This is ideal for anyone who does not like working out at a gym and the price is certainly right.

Change Your Brain Change Your Body

I borrowed this book from the library after watching a PBS Special with Dr. Daniel Amen, a Psychiatrist, who purports to show you how to lose weight and keep it off for life.

This is a very readable book and it may in fact have the answers to weight loss over time. But it is actually a book on brain health. Dr. Amen believes that a healthy brain can create a healthy (i.e. thin/slim) body.

There are a few things that destroy your brain such as excessive alcohol, sugar, smoking and drugs. Some diseases like dementia and depression destroy brain cells as well. He doesn't make it clear though which comes first, the disease or the deterioration of brain cells. He does say that alcohol/sugar/smoking/drugs can accelerate dementia and mental illness.

He makes a very good point that I had not considered prior to this. It is basically if your body is unhealthy, then your brain is also unhealthy. The two work in tandem. With an unhealthy brain you cannot make good decisions. You may not do what is best for you because you may unable to find and examine alternatives and use logic and wisdom and knowledge together to assess situations. Some parts of your brain may be working at a sub-prime level.

The good news is that if you eat a low calorie fruit and vegetable rich diet, exercise aerobically for half an hour a day and keep a positive attitude, your brain can become healthier. This book is motivating.

LDS Temple

Emotionally, I think I should have a little religion in my life; intellectually, I always manage to talk myself out of it.

I am interested in religion - most religions. I have always thought that the Pope and the Dalai Lama and the heads of all major religions should meet once a year to discuss their common ground like love and peace for starters. This could be the equivalent of the G8 for religion.

I am always amazed at similarities in very diverse religions.

My knowledge of the LDS Church expanded as I became involved with researching my own family history. When I heard that I could see inside a temple without actually converting to Mormanism, I jumped at the chance this week.

The LDS Church has built the first Western Canadian Temple in Langley, BC. As it won't be dedicated and consecrated until May of this year, the church, in interests of transparency, has opened the temple for the public for tours until the 24th of April.

It is well worth the trip out to Langley for the architecture alone. It has amazing stained glass windows, marble floors, crystal chandeliers and much, much more.

Check out this website first though http://www.ldschurchtemples.com/vancouver/

Composting Continued....

This is my new composting bin. It is made up of two 80 liter storage bins and one lid. The inside bin has holes along the side to let in air and holes along the bottom for drainage. I can collect excess liquid in the bottom.

To work effectively, this compost needs alternating layers of carbon and nitrogen based products. The best carbon is dry leaves but I can't start collecting those until the fall (although there are some places with oak leaves which have fallen recently). I am substituting shredded newspaper for now (unfortunately the newsprint has jammed up my paper shredder!). And, I have just learned that dryer lint is a good carbon substitute as well. There is cardboard, but how does one easily shred it.

For the nitrogen component, I am using most of my fruit and vegetable scraps, coffee grounds, tea bags and egg shells. The exceptions are orange, grapefruit and lemon peels. If I can find one of those old hand grinders, I might start grinding these up for the compost but in the normal state they will not decompose very quickly.

Originally, I was planning on having two bins but I think they will take up too much room on my deck. I think I will dump the bin every three of four months onto a sheet of plastic, remove the soil that can be used and put the rest back to start the next cycle.

And, the best part of all of this is that I no longer feel bad about disposing of my over-ripe bananas!

The Secret

Oprah had a show with Rhonda Byrne discussing her book some time back but unfortunately I missed it. This book has been on the best seller list for a long time but I only had the opportunity to read it this past week (after I found it on my daughter's bookshelf).

As probably everyone knows, The Secret discusses the Law of Attraction and the benefits of positive thinking through a series of quotations from many people, past and present, who have embraced the new age thought process. Thoughts have energy and consequences. We can control our thoughts. If we think good things, good things will happen to us.

I love the quote attributed to Henry Ford, and often voiced by our Weight Watcher Leader, "Whether you think can or you think you can't, either way you are right".

This book is definitely an upper - well worth reading.

Composting on a Deck

I now have an 80 liter plastic bin on my deck, 24" x 16" x 15", that is the beginning of a compost experiment. The bin has holes in it for drainage and air. If I do this right, the books tell me I should have usable compost in three months.

Today, I started the first additions - shredded newspaper for the carbon layer, some soil from old potted plants for the next layer and my kitchen scraps from the past week for the nitrogen layer. I have left the top off so that the rain can dampen everything enough. The bin has a place to catch excess water, so I can leave it in the rain for a day or two without danger of becoming waterlogged, I think.

In the past week, my kitchen waste has congealed down to about two liters so it will take awhile to actually fill the bin. If the ratio is 4 carbon:1 soil:1 nitrogen, it will take a month or two just to fill the bin.

I am hoping that the heat reaction which accelerates the breakdown of the carbon and nitrogen components, will begin with the second layer of carbon/soil/nitrogen has been added.

Happy Easter Everyone

Easter Sunday used to mean being cold in new summery clothes, candy in a pink and blue and green basket wrapped in cellophane, church singing Alleluia, Alleluia, and a small gift like a paddle ball, a kite, jumping jacks or marbles. Best of all was a mesh bag of allies (we didn't call them marbles then) with a steelie or a glassie in it.







Easter Sunday now means family dinners, Cadbury cream eggs, and starting bedding plants for my garden.

Daffodils

Some daffodils are at their peak, just in time for Easter.

"Daffodils" (1804)

I WANDER'D lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretch'd in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:

Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:

I gazed -- and gazed -- but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

By William Wordsworth (1770-1850).

Hard to Read

Why do I finish reading a book I don't like? I used to think I just wanted to find out 'who done it' but this morning I think it might be more than that.




Last night I stayed up late finishing The Empress of Asia. Here is the promotional excerpt for this book:



"Empress of Asia is an ambitious and stunning new novel from Adam Lewis Schroeder. Schroeder has painted a beautiful and compelling story of youthful innocence and determined love against a setting of the horrors of the World War II POW camps in Southeast Asia.





Unfortunately, the 'horrors' in this book were all too graphic and I am going to have nightmares about it for awhile. Sometimes I can forget about the hard-to-read passages in books and hard-to-watch scenes in movies by telling myself that these things are really not true or are exaggerated for effect. However, I did check some of the other facts in this book - such as that Vancouver actually did have at least one traffic light in the 30's - so I believe that the 'horrors' may have a lot of truth in them as well.





This is another novel set mainly during WW2 but it begins in Vernon, BC. Harry Winslow leaves his home after high school to find work on the boats in Vancouver during the depression. It ends in 1995 shortly after the death of the Harry's wife, Lily, in St. Paul's Hospital in Vancouver.





After reading this book, where there is good and evil in many corners and where Harry, the story teller in this book, does not see all of it, and has very little insight in general, (but is still a 'good' guy), it makes me wonder how much we miss in our own lives. It is easy to see how major events have changed the lives of those around us, but it is not easy to see how major events have affected me.