Visiting Patsy

Fred (above) is a big bruiser of a beast. And I absolutely adore him! He’s vocal and terribly friendly (he runs to the door when I come home); he’s also heavy and long. Like I say, he’s one big bruiser, but he has this thin raspy high, high voice. He’s a soprano in a bass body.

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Cultivate,  the big performing arts festival begun during my first summer here, is not happening next year. I’m not surprised. The local Arts Council is terribly dynamic but they took on a big  challenge with this third huge annual event, so they’re taking a year off to re-evaluate how it’s undertaken. They say Cultivate  will be back in 2021 but I wonder….

The heaviest known organism in the world is a clonal stand of Quaking Aspen in the Fishlake National Forest of south-central Utah (above). Connected by an enormous underground root system, the stand occupies 43 hectares and is estimated to weigh 6,000 metric tons. The root system is also among the oldest living global organisms, with an estimated age of 80,000 years.

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After I washed the sofa and laundered my massive wool blanket because Sheba barfed on them, I got the bottle of Cognac Beth bought for Patsy, loaded Sheba into the car and drove to Drumbeg because it was absolutely beautiful yesterday afternoon. It was 15° and sunny and I tried out the new road into Drumbeg Park.

After about half an hour of bliss walking together, we came on Patsy who was also visiting the park with two friends. I arranged to drop by with the Cognac after Sheba and I finished walking.

We had a really  nice visit. It was just a perfect afternoon, and we laughed a lot. We both got into brief stories and then forgot where we were going. We laughed a lot about that.

I’d been feeling kind of cabin bound, at the end of last week—a little bored with my routines and iffy weather. But the walk in the park yesterday woke me up to my good fortune in living so close to nature. It really gave me a boost in spirit that’s still with me.

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I did no work on the armature for my figure yesterday. I’ve done none-to-little for ages. Instead, I went to Michael’s  in Nanaimo (pointless) and searched online for decorative papers with which to coat it—all to no avail. So today I’m getting back to it and I’ve decided to coat it with shit paper and add a decorative coating later. I’m going to Vancouver to look for paper at Paper Ya  and Opus  on Granville Island in a couple of weeks—and to have lunch at Le Crocodile.