Our Grizzly and other things that happened today

Our wedding anniversary — which I wrote about yesterday — was an interesting day.

I was left speechless by the bouquet; My Mother's Bloomers, with a bouquet called An English Garden, outdid themselves:

Dan also gave me a selection of coffee mugs, to see if one of them will suit me. I got in the habit of enjoying my coffee in one of the Christmas mugs and I've been using it ever since. Maybe there's an ancient belief that bad luck will befall the household if the Christmas mugs are used until well after Easter. Dan apparently wants to help me break my Christmas-mug habit so I'll try my best. The first one I tried was quite a tall designer mug from William Morris. It was nice. We'll see.

This, meanwhile, is Grizzly.

Grizzly has been feeling fine, eating, playing, having adventures etc. but has recently been having a problem with weight loss and hair loss. He's 14.

We put off taking him to his vet because it's such a nightmare to get him there. I had considered trying to get the vet to do a phone consultation. I thought about remortgaging the house to have a vet pay a house call but, in the end, Dan just phoned and made a straightforward appointment. We decided the day had come and today was the day.

I sat with my back to him and practically covered my ears while Dan and William imprisoned him in the carrier but, I'm happy to report, it wasn't nearly as bad as it could have been or as it was last time. I could tell as soon as he was in the carrier because his voice changes and he makes a true sound of distress. We loaded the carrier into the car and off we went and the distress calls never stopped. The vet is only a few blocks away, thank goodness.

Grizzly got a lot of attention as we walked across the parking lot, into the lobby, up to the second floor. There was tremendous reverberation in there and Grizzly must have impressed himself.

To make a long story short, he's been diagnosed with hyperthyroidism and he'll start medication tomorrow morning. It's a liquid medication which led me to ask, why can't kitty liquid medication taste like tuna juice?

He behaved well at the vet and his doctor was very nice to him. She assured us that hyperthyroidism is not uncommon in older cats and she's hopeful that the treatment will be effective.

He's back to his old self by now and has probably already forgotten that he went to the vet!

After we got Grizzly home and settled in, we went out for dinner.

Ristorante a Mano has very good food and it's fun too. It's right at the waterfront and the patios were open back and front but it was breezy and not hot so we opted to sit inside. We had a table for two right beside one of the windows you can see in the picture.

I had some freshly baked flatbread with a dip made from roasted garlic, red pepper and eggplant. It was delicious. Then I had:

Pollo alla Parmigiana

Crostini crumb-crusted chicken scaloppine topped with tomato, prosciutto, fresh mozzarella

(not exactly as illustrated)

The ristorante is well-known for its homemade gelato and sorbet and I had the most amazing refreshing tart lemon sorbet. The perfect dessert.

(photo borrowed from the Internet)

And then we came home to the flowers. Here are some flower details:

Flowers, cake, good quotes: a happy birthday for me

I've had my birthday so I'm a little bit older today than I was yesterday. I suppose that's the case every day; it just seems more obvious on one's birthday.

I love my birthday. I feel I can do as I please — or not — and I can say, "Well, it's okay I did that because it's my birthday." I let myself get away with so much. The day after the birthday is such a let-down. Back to best behaviour, as much as I can manage.

I looked at my daily horoscope in The Globe and Mail:

IF TODAY IS YOUR BIRTHDAY

A Venus-Pluto link on your birthday means no one will be immune to your charms. Both in your personal affairs and in your work you will find it easy to persuade others to hand over what it is you desire.

It reminded me of a conversation I had with my hairdresser this week. I can't even remember the context but during our chat — and there were others around in the salon — she said, "Sharon, I can't imagine anyone not liking you." I told her she might be surprised. There are people who probably don't like me, I said. "But why?" she asked.

"I'm a bit if a know-it-all," I said.

"But we learn so much from you, "she said. "Who wouldn't like that?"

"Other know-it-alls," I said.

It was my best line of the day.

William worked the night shift last night and brought the beautiful tulips home with him. They were awaiting me when I came down and I thought they were spectacular.

They've been opening as the day progressed.

The book is new poetry by my old friend and former co-worker, Sue MacLeod. She's a wonderful poet and I look forward to reading her new work.

I had lovely/funny cards from friends and family. The one in the photo is from Dan who manages to out-do himself every time. Look how sweet it it, with the little bows. This wasn't a milestone birthday for me but he checked around, looking for something special to relate to my special day. He found this quote from Dr. Sheldon Cooper, the genius theoretical physicist from The Big Bang Theory.

“The best number is 73…. 73 is the twenty-first prime number. Its mirror, 37, is the twelfth and its mirror, 21, is the product of multiplying (hang on to your hats) 7 and 3…. In binary, 73 is a palindrome: 1-0-0-1-0-0-1, which backwards is 1-0-0-1-0-0-1.”

It was the perfect quote for my birthday — and I sometimes identify with Sheldon too. Not with the genius, more with the compulsive control freak.

Dan had printed out the quote and placed it over the quote that came with the card. He made it so I could lift the Sheldon quote to see what was underneath. And underneath, there was:

Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life. Picasso

Dan thought that after I'd just written two blog-posts about misogynists — here and here — I might not want to be confronted with Picasso at the very beginning of my birthday. The quote is good though and I did acknowledge that, in spite of everything, Picasso made some fine art so it all worked out.

Cousin Dale joined us for dinner. We went to Eliot & Vine, a newish restaurant in Halifax, right in our own neighbourhood. We had a lovely evening and some tasty, photogenic food.

Dale and I both had the scallops as a first course — with leeks, prosciutto and bacon dust(!), with a fried quail's egg.

For Dan, it was the salad with fried haloumi, apple, pine nuts, micro-greens, with a lemon-thyme vinaigrette. He loved it.

William went with the carpaccio with horseradish aioli, pickled radish, arugula. It was supposed to come with nasturtiums but I notice William didn't complain at their absence.

The main courses in a restaurant are like the second and third born children in a family — there are never as many photos of them. By that time, there are too many dishes on the table and the novelty of photographing the food has worn off. Suffice it to say, we had more food and we enjoyed our evening a lot.

We came home for dessert because, along with the flowers, William had brought home a cake — a luscious Black Forest cake. I was serenaded and then invited to blow out the candles.

And did I make a wish?

You bet I did.

The joys of Easter and the rites of Spring

The caption on this picture says, "Sharon and baby screen-saver, Easter 2014." So that was two years ago and you'd be amazed how much my desk today looks just like this. A couple of small differences but not many. There's nothing to identify it as an Easter picture except the caption but I'll take it at its word.

I was looking at Easter photos to get my thoughts in order for a quickly approaching Easter 2016. I found pictures of the eggs I decorated in 2010.

They're not very nice but as with so many other things, if you make them part of a bigger picture, they can look quite lovely:

Those eggs were punctured on both ends and had the innards blown out of them. That was fun. I think I may have to do it again and colour some more eggs this year.

The 2010 eggs are still in use though. This was 2014:

Junior always enjoys settling in on a festive table and didn't mind sharing with the eggs and the bunny:

Some things are part of Easter every year. We always cut a branch of forsythia and bring it into the house about a week before Easter (depending on when Easter is, of course.) If our timing is right on, the forsythia rewards us on Easter Day:

We always bring home a beautiful Easter lily:

We always have some devilled eggs (and lots of other good things too — that's smoked salmon with a bit of herbed cream cheese and cucumber):

We're Catholic so we do a lot of Church as well and we manage to reconcile the bunnies and the eggs with the greatest feast of Christianity. We accept that a lot of what we celebrate are the pagan rites of Spring (and we often celebrate them in the snow) but just as Santa and the elves are happily bound together with the birth of the baby Jesus, so do all the signs and symbols of Easter — pagan and otherwise — make for a joyful and traditional festival.

It all gets underway this coming week!

What a difference a year makes

Today is March 4, 2016. Here are some photos (don't forget to click on them) taken in our backyard in Halifax earlier today:

Daffodils

More daffodils

Crocuses

Irises

Lilies

Chives. There are lots and lots of chives.

In the picture of the chives, do you see the rose arbour – the lower part of it? Here's a photo of that very same rose arbour, mid-March of 2015:

The chives are under there somewhere.

For comparison, the rose arbour in March, 2014

It probably isn't a good thing but the weather is a novelty when we feel the warmth of the sun day after day – even before February is over – and then go outdoors to see all the little green shoots and flowers poking their optimistic heads out of the warming ground. We're expecting some snow tomorrow though so we'll hope for the best for all of them.

Meanwhile, inside the house:

I've told you about the poinsettias and how I've propagated them and they've lived with us for more than 20 years. After I wrote that, someone asked if they ever turned red, the way the poinsettias do at Christmas. I said that they never look like the ones in the stores (which look like they're on steroids anyway) but mine do grow some red bracts. I said it's usually later than Christmas, often more like February.

And here's what a few of them are looking like right now:

The colour is very vibrant. . .

. . .and cheerful

Finally, a cutting from a hibiscus, has been quietly working away upstairs, and has produced this gorgeous flower.

Her mother hasn't made a bloom like this for quite a long time. Perhaps this will be inspiration for her.

Celebrating the special days

We never need to be persuaded to celebrate special days at our house. Our mantle always has a display of beautiful greeting cards, OpenTable emails us regularly warning us that if we don't make a reservation immediately, we'll be out of luck, and we often have a lovely show of flowers on our kitchen table.

Valentine's Day is no exception.

(From 2013.)

I don't have a photo of us from today but here's one from last Valentine's Day. I was wearing a different top today but the very same jewellery. How often can you wear your pretty heart-shaped jewellery?

(From 2015.)

William took the photo. We were obviously heading out for dinner. I remember that we had tried very early on to get a reservation at Da Maurizio, one of my favourites, but they had been fully booked by mid-January and we're not that organized. We went to a restaurant called Fiasco which was lovely and where we'd been many times — and, sadly, it no longer exists. Its chef has moved to a newly-opened restaurant so that's something to look forward to.

We had, in fact, gone to Da Maurizio the year before, 2014. The photos weren't very good — it was romantically (dimly)-lit and Dan was using his phone — but you may infer from my expression in this one that the dessert took me by surprise.

This year, when I came downstairs, there was a bouquet of truly magnificent red roses — as only red roses can be, when they're good ones. I was delighted because they were from my son who had worked the overnight shift and brought them home with him at 7:00 a.m.

From my husband, lovely little earrings from the artist Michael Vincent Michaud who works in glass.

My new earrings are made of flowers like these but mine are put together in a cluster, not a dangling line. They're very sweet.

(My contribution, every year, is a handmade card. I take pride in my card which I usually make in the middle of the night, after everyone else is in bed. I save pretty things during the year; this year, from somewhere, I had a lovely piece of golden heavy paper — almost a light box-board. I also cut pictures out of magazines, trim pictures of flowers off little address labels, and usually manage to use a lacy paper doily. I sometimes get carried away.)

In the afternoon, we went to see Daniel MacIvor's acclaimed play, Marion Bridge. The Chronicle-Herald said of it:

“The production is honest in every sense, the comedy never forced, the frequent bickering and reconciliation natural, and the torment never deliberately melodramatic... don’t miss this delightful slice of Cape Breton Life.”

That seems accurate to me.

Because we went to the matinee and got out at 4:00 p.m., we had decided to have dinner at home. As usual (because we're secret Spaniards, apparently), we sat down to eat around 9:30 p.m. We had gorgeous steaks (medium rare) with potato salad and creamy cole slaw. I made biscuits and served them with small bowls of molasses, just the way Chef Craig Flinn does at Chives. William was with us for dinner and then left to see his girlfriend.

It's very cold out and the cats both snuggled here by the fire, near where Dan is working on a jigsaw puzzle and I'm at my computer.

So that was today. I hope you've had a good day too.

Putting on a show

The hanging plants and flowers at the front of the house always look their best this time of the year. They like to put on the end-of-season show.