Spring Tune-Up

2006-03 Well, it's finally official, we can take off the winter tires and go in for our spring tune-up - yes, for the car as well. For a winter that was reasonably mild and had little snow, it seems to have lasted forever. Not a hard winter, really. Certainly the folks in Saskatchewan or eastern Canada will not sympathize with us - but a dreary one. Never mind that now. Spring is here, the sun is shining once again, and there is lots to be going on with. Easter weekend means the ladies change from their winter shoes and purses to their summer sets. Men can score points by taking notice of this! Easter, of course, is also a reminder of hope and renewal. A nice time to plan ahead for the coming months. The garden stores are crowded with eager and optimistic dreamers, each imagining what their garden would be like if only they had the time. And haven't garden stores changed? Each year the accessories get more and more elaborate and more space is given over to water features, ponds and fountains. Six rose bushes and some glads no longer make a garden. The traditional statues of garden gnomes are still there, but beside them we have statues of children, animals, birds and all sorts of imaginary beasts. The other day I saw a flattened head of a hippo that presumably you would float on the top of your pond to discourage the raccoons. I wondered if I attached one to the roof, would it work on woodpeckers? You can buy flights of butterflies to attach to the outside walls of your house or garage or masks to hang on the fir trees - some of these even double as bird feeders (one lights up at night!) I think it is all good fun. I like the idea of making the garden another room of the house. Folks in apartments can buy beautiful ceramic pots to fill with flowers, add a balcony-sized fountain, and create their own summer oasis. Throw in a few of the giant butterflies and it is a tropical paradise. On the topic of how many roses make a garden, I see there is a new series of four 'Explorer Collection' roses now available, with names like Baffin, Frobisher, Hudson and Mackenzie. Names like that certainly make the roses sound sturdy - probably bloom right through the winter! Did you know that on Mackenzie's trip to the mouth of the great river, he had his wife along with him? Her diaries make it all sound like a great adventure while it would all be an unendurable nightmare to modern folks. They were simply tougher. I think there should be a rose named after her, as well! Names always make the seed catalogues such fun to read, don't you agree? Blue Muffin Viburnum, Chocolate Cosmos and Raspberry Splash were favorites this year, along with Black Velvet Butterfly Bush, pink mist and wild romance. There is no need to go out to the library for the newest novel if you have a seed catalogue to browse through! However, seed catalogues, for all their creativity in naming, don't even come close to the imagination that goes into new paint colours. Now that is a job for someone with an imagination that never sleeps! Sometimes the name gives a hint; 'polished copper' and 'Chinook salmon', for example. Other times, you are on your own; 'Calcutta silk' could be anything while 'New Moon' turned out to be a navy blue! Who would buy beige when you could buy 'Blotting Paper' or 'Medieval Manuscript'? No one wants blue that could have 'Beautiful Fountain' or 'Parisian Sky'. All this choice makes decorating far more complicated, of course. To make it more confusing you can now mix 2 or even 3 different shades to make a faux finish! I'm going to wave the white flag and get help! And speaking of help, I want to thank the good people who answered my last call for jokes and poems. Some of the funniest jokes, of course, can't go in the paper, but we enjoyed them! The poems will all be printed, so send more! We only have space for a few each issue, so be patient. We also put them up on our website, so if you have lost a favourite copy you can always check there. This gives me the chance to answer some website questions that have come in recently, mostly about our games site. No, I don't have answers to the puzzles, and there is no 'cheat code' that I am aware of. (you obviously have grandchildren who play, don't you?) In the card games, it is possible to win spider solitaire (1 deck) 100% of the time, but with 2 decks my wins go down to about 5%. For Sheriff Tripeaks I am stuck on level 19, so I can't offer any help to those of you who are stuck on higher levels. To L.M, stuck on level 9, I was there for a long time, but you'll get it. Thanks, also, to those who sent in good sites to link to. We now have over 220 sites to browse, and more are coming, so keep checking what is new! - Pat Archibald, Editor -

 

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