Canada Day

Whoa it was hot yesterday. It was 28° and walking was nasty. I kept having to stop in the shade on my way to Queen Elizabeth Park where Deb Williams and her friends and family have their annual Canada Day picnic. When I found them, I found a bench in the shade and sat down to cool down before I joined everyone and then I spent about an hour talking with people I knew.

Walking home, I was struck by how much I enjoyed sitting apart and watching everybody more than being part of everything. I preferred being an observer to being a participant, but when Deborah is involved, participating is irresistible.

The photo above is taken from the bench from whence I watched the picnic. I had watched a documentary about Frederick Law Olmstead the night before. He, like Luther Burbank, is a personal hero. Both men were profound humanists who expressed their humanism in botany; Burbank by "inventing" individual crops to serve man (he genetically bred potatoes that matured in half the time of all previous tubers following Ireland's potato famine) and Olmstead by creating the concept of urban parks and championing the science of landscape design.

The picnic above is on the edge of a pond. You can barely see it through the trees, and the girls you can see running are in a massive field that extends further to the left. It felt like part of Olmstead's legacy to be there.

I am writing this at 6:00am. I have been up for an hour. In this heat, this is the time to walk. Today is predicted to be hotter than yesterday.

Yesterday began with James here to begin the conversion of my kitchen cabinets. Finally! That gaping empty hole is where the dish washer used to  be. I had it removed. I have lived here for five years and used the dish washer perhaps four times so now the rubber is rotten. Now, I will have even more shelves.