Two things

No, three.

First, thank you for your assist with books that might be cheery and funny, and if any more thoughts come to mind, I'd be happy to hear them

The second thing.  I was gardening today, and well aware of the glory of the opportunity to garden on January 30th.  JANUARY gardening!  In a long-sleeved shirt and no jacket!

Life is sweet.

This gardening job wasn't so sweet though.  The lady who lived here before us planted a lovely garden plant.  Green year round, excellent as a fence as every single solitary leaf was COVERED in prickles, and so aggressive that it would stop and avalanche.  Seriously, if you have a slope you're worried about, I have the plant for you, plant three, and two years later the entire slope would bring a modern tractor and plow to its knees.

I was using an axe.  I kid you not, I'm not sure how many people have had to use an axe to cut a hole to stick a plant in.  It takes about half an hour to get a whole a little bigger than a coffee cup.

I am a wee bit achey this evening from the three hours I put in.

Back when we got our house in TO, the first we had owned it had a lovely garden, somewhat neglected when we inherited it.  The first year I pretty much let things grow and see what appeared, only removing the worst of the weeds. The second year I was a little more aggressive and by the end I was con.fi.dent.  I was, however, used to gardening with packs of little kids around.  Everywhere I went there were packs of little kids.  It is a lovely way to garden, you putter a bit here, chat a bit there, putter a bit over there, chat over here.  No intensity, no chance to get bored.

I wasn't sure I would like gardening without a pack of little kids.

Glad to say I do.  Though I did gather up youngest who came out to watch the excitement, and the man for a while, who eventually couldn't stand to watch me swinging the axe anymore and left, plus a little kid down the street who joined me for a bit.  She seems entranced by the garden, which is lovely.  I should get her to help me in a bit.  Give her a little patch of her own to work.  I'll have to dig all those darned roots out before I do or she'll weep.

The third thing was about images.  I had a lovely time talking on Skype with a couple of people today, but was frustrated at times.  I was frsutrated because when the signal weakened, or if they moved fast, the most astonishing and fascinating images appeared on the screen for nano-seconds.  Weird alter images, some nearly monsterous, at one point there were double images one in colour and the other in a sort of wiggled line drawing like a creature from another universe.  The lines being bends in the image of the items behind where the person was (not).  I SO want to paint with some of those images to begin from.

Here and now, I have to figure out how to record skype video conversations.  Here and now.  Then I can freeze at the cool bits and work onwards from there.