Once upon a time a man whose ax was missing suspected his neighbor's son.
The boy walked like a thief, looked like a thief, and spoke like a thief.
But the man found his ax while digging in the valley, and the next time he
saw his neighbor's son, the boy walked, looked and spoke like any other
child. -Lao-tzu, philosopher (6th century BCE)
Unbounded appreciation and affection to all the compassionate, caring, and supportive mothers I have had the privilege to know and learn from. Today and everyday, I thank both new mothers and great-great grandmothers, and all in between. More so than ever, Gaia requires your incredible strength, intelligence and commitment! Bravo The Sisterhood!!!
Patrick and Corinne, We thoroughly enjoyed our visit with you and as always your hospitality was superb. Corinne you always amaze me with your meals and Patrick you always amaze me with your wine and liquor supply. Of course your company is best of all. Great photos but a shame we only have a blurry photo of Patrick - guess we were laughing too hard.
We arrived in Pendleton early evening and parked with all the BIG trailers, motor-homes, 5th wheels in the Kicking Horse Casino lot for free. The Casino is huge and very busy with middle America people - smoking allowed, even cigars in some areas - ugh. Gerry played a slot with $10 and won a whopping $4.25.
The drive down was through huge farm country and of course by several dams on the Columbia. Some beautiful lakes. Small towns that seemed to be predominantly Mexican as most every business had a Mexican name and the people appeared to be Mexican. Today we are off to Twin Falls I think. Well I think I will shower and go over to the Casino and get Gerry a coffee. Take care, Dawn
Patrick, See you were with us during our overstayed long visit. I loved the Mother’s Day card with the puzzle. I did all three with the different sized pieces. Also appreciated the nice comments re being a mom.
We are in Twin Falls Idaho tonight. We have travelled through farm land and cattle country for the last two days. Boy there is a lot of wide open spaces along the route. Roads are great, traffic busy considering the small populations and many many semi trailer trucks. We visited some towns and toured an old prison in Boise where the youngest inmate was 11. All in all a good trip so far. Cheers,
Dawn
I was up at 7:30 am to feed the felines, tuna cat food, this morning as a special Mother's Day treat! Chloë and I had arranged to walk along the KVR while Lady Dar was a churchin'! I managed to do my first set of shouldares before she arrived, around 9:20 am and we left Burns shortly thereafter. Parked at the lot, just down the road from Hillside and set off across Naramata Road at almost 10:00 am exactly. Chloë had wanted to head back down the KVR towards Penticton but I persuaded her to go north, towards the Little Tunnel, although we not planning to go that far today.
The Peach City Runners Blossom 5/10 Miler was in progress, [the latter starting on Languedoc Road], when we crossed Naramata Road and just before we reached the continuation of the KVR, Leandro came pounding by, so we cheered him on! Simply gorgeous day, already, over 24º C, when Chloë checked once we were on the trail itself, and projected to reach 26º C. [In fact it was 27.6º C when we returned to car!] Trail was quite busy with bicycles and dog walkers so we had to keep our wits about us and our ears open not to impede the cyclistii.
The lake looked like hammered, dimpled metal, the surface mirror smooth for much of its expanse. We enjoyed chatting about all sorts of things so really lost track of time. Just before we reached Arawana Road and Workman Place, the latter leading to Kettle Ridge Lakeview Estates, a fairly recent, high-end development I've often cycled around, we were overtaken by Nancita and Guillermo, out for a ride. Visited for a few minutes before they rode off and not long after we turned around to retrace our steps.
Lovely cool breeze so we really didn't feel oppressed by the rising temperature. As well, a fair bit of cloud cover so we weren't baking in unfiltered sunshine, all that much, whenever the trail was un-shaded. About half-way back, we spotted a lone quail perched near the very top of a tall, dead tree. We surmised he was looking for a mate! Slight downhill grade helped a tad as when we re-crossed Naramata Road it was almost three hours from start to finish! I was delighted with outing as it was the longest, both in distance covered and duration, since I embarked on my latest regimen. A most decent work-out for Chloë, as well, since she simply hasn't had the time, given work pressures, to walk over last few weeks or so. At any rate, we congratulated ourselves and enjoyed the drive back to Burns, all the windows wide open and the lovely breeze cooling our sweaty selves! Map and Stats for walk:
https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/3643276491#.XNiQVC8EnUg.email
Chloë dropped me off and came inside to plan rest of day. She was making dinner. Originally, to be done at her place but since we all wanted to watch the next episode of Game of Thrones we decided to eat at Burns since Chloë doesn't subscribe to HBO. Then she headed back to Sendero, Lady Dar following. She had picked up some plants at Garden Works on her way back from church and wanted to help planting them, etc., as well as with arranging new rugs Chloë had bought for her patio. After they left I fixed myself a hearty brunch of overlefts, [I was famished after great walk!], and then proceeded to do the last two sets of shoulder exercises.
Lady Dar was back just before I was finished and I then I had a quick shower and change before we set off for Township 7, for a glass of Rosé, part of the winery's Mother's Day event. We arrived around 4:30 pm and were only people there so we had a most pleasant time, chatting with Devon, chap who had been in charge of Tasting Room but will be working with winemaker, starting on Monday morning, as his long-term career plan had always been to become more involved with wine-making process. Lovely evening so it was a terrific way to whet our appetites for meal to come. Bought a bottle of chilled Rosé for Lady Dar, along with four roses to support fund-raiser for Breast Cancer, and then toddled off home.
Chloë arrived shortly after we were back, having stopped off at IGA for ingredients for meal she had planned. While she started on main course, [shrimps in pesto!], she fixed us appetizers, dip and rice crackers which we nibbled on, watching an episode of Hinterland. Shrimps were to go on top of a salad, [cherry tomatoes, cukes, red onion and Feta cheese], and once salad was ready and shrimp drained, Chef Chloë joined us in the Rumpus Room and we ran the episode of GT she had not seen. I watched some of it but since I'd already seen it, I did a few kitchen chores while The Sisterhood were glued to the screen. After Chloë was caught up she returned to the kitchen to prepare the shrimp and we re-started Hinterland.
Didn't take her long to ready shrimp and when done we were called to serve ourselves. What a wonderful topping the pestos drenched shrimp made for the delicious salad. We took our filled bowls back into the RR and put on the next episode of GT, just recorded at 6:00 pm. Another cliff-hanger so we are already counting down until next Sunday! Then into the living room for the presentation of Mother's Day presents. I had two small gifts, a bar of cherry soap, from one of the local orchardists, along with a jar of lemon curd, both from the Farmers' Market. I gave Lady Dar a bar as an Xmas stocking stuffer and she really liked it, while the lemon curd is her absolute favourite, preferring to eat it with a spoon, right out of the jar, as opposed to slathering it on toast!
Chloë had three gifts for her mother. The first, a contraption for holding corn cobs on the bbq, a present from Etta and Duke and then a gag item, a delightful, small garden gnome! We had seen them at Rona when looking at garden furniture a few weeks ago and agreed it would be a wonderful "tease" as Lady Dar cannot abide such ornaments. As far as gnomes go, this one is actually quite adorable and Chloë wanted it for her deck but we both thought we'd like to upset her mother first! Real gift was a state-of-the-art fitbit inspire HR, she and Ayn decided they would give her. Now all she needs is an advanced computer programming degree to start using it! Dessert was two designer ice-cream tubs, Häagen-Dazs chocolate/peanut butter and cookie dough flavours! After presentations, Chloë started her Mother on initializing fitbit while Scullion Patrizzio did the dishes. By the time various apps were downloaded to her iPhone and sketchily understood, Chloë was ready to head home.
Although it was only just after 9:00 pm, she was rather tired from our walk, not having done such a distance of late. Thanking her for the wonderful meal, her Mother for the lovely gifts, we said goodnight and returned to the RR to watch the final episode of Unforgotten. Absolutely chilling portrait of the serial killer who is eventually charged with a murder, committed over twenty years ago. Interestingly enough, the actor, Alex Jennings, who plays the psychopath, is also in Victoria, another series we have enjoyed. In this series he is Leopold I of Belgium and it took me a few episodes of Unforgotten to place him as his accent, in the latter, is so heavy and pronounced that he creates a completely different character, terribly unlikable, for different reasons, although not as monstrously evil, of course. A measure, without question, of his remarkable, chameleon-like ability. Then we polished off the episode of Hinterland we had been watching earlier. Talk about tortured detectives in both series! Exhausts us to watch them have to deal with the crimes they must investigate and somehow try to navigate their own troubled personal lives. Extremely sensitive portraits of complex characters, struggling with terrible demons. Makes us feel blessed that we only have to deal with Freeloaders!
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