Tag Archives: writing

Happy New Year

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I just wanted to take the time to wish you all the best for 2023. We are heading into a brand new year and all things are possible. I spent part of the last day of 2022 going through what I had accomplished throughout the year. The list was good, it buoyed me up to read it.

Then I turned a page and tried to list all that I hope to accomplish and finish in the new year of 2023. That list was no longer, but contained a few things that had been on last year’s list but never got complete. I’m okay with that. I feel I gave it my best effort, so if a few things fell off the table, I’ll just give it another try this coming year.

We went with our daughter and two grandsons, aged 5 and 8, to see the light show at the world famous Butchart Gardens for New Year’s Eve. Here are a couple of photos from our visit.

Lights that look like butterfly wings in the dark
Trees captured by the lights.

What did you do for New Year’s Eve?

First Skiff of Snow

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I can’t believe it but we’ve already had our first skiff of snow. It started yesterday, snowing, then raining (melting the snow), then sunny, and back again. We have the strangest weather that blows through. Then it snowed again, then stopped. Here is what I found this morning

The amazing thing is it didn’t melt overnight, because the ground is not frozen yet.

We have some micro-climates around us. Today it was pelting rain on the uphill side of the house. But when I looked out the window of the same room, toward the downhill side, it was sunny and clear. Rained like that for about an hour, but clear out the other window.

How do you explain that? I can’t. 🙂

Did You Go to the Fall Fair?

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If there is a fall fair near you, I highly recommend you go. It’s outdoors, so safer from Covid, the weather could turn to autumn at any time but right now it’s probably not as hot as it was, the animal pens are so much fun. And the food! Elephant ears, anyone? Plus handicrafts everywhere.

We went to the Saanich Fair on Vancouver Island yesterday. It is one of the longest running fairs, dating back 154 years. The local farmers all participate– draught horses, cows, llamas, goats, sheep, poultry of every kind from tiny quail to large crowing roosters! It was quite a sight.

Chainsaw carver creating an eagle from a chunk of cedar.

There were thousands of people. The rides ranged from a giant swing that would probably make me puke if I went on it, to cute bumper cars and ‘the sizzler’- seats that twirl round and round as they swing by. The craft tables hosted a lot of handmade shawls and scarves of angora. Some of that wool was so soft, you couldn’t even tell you were touching it.

Lots of fun. What fair do you go to? The summer isn’t officially over until you’ve been to the local fair!

The Last War- novella

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I’ve been working on a novella, AQATAIN, The Last War. I decided it was worth showing who the first Emperor was, and what kind of man. This will be the first book in the series. It’s fun to sort out a character who hasn’t appeared before.

He is the father of Emperor Aqatain the Second who appears in all the previous books, and I feel like I’m opening my eyes with this one. I know the son so well, having written his story already. Now I get to meet his family, his father Aqatain, his mother Ospina, and brother Amalric. Before I began writing this one, I didn’t even know Amalric existed! Amazing, as a novelist, what you can learn after the fact!

Alfie the Eagle has fledged

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When we returned from our road trip, the eagle nest had collapsed and was about a third of the size it had been. The rest of it was on the ground at the base of the tree. Alfie, the eaglet, was perched on a rock on the hill the other side of our driveway.

We were worried for him. The parents were still around. They perched in the tops of the nearby trees and screeched at us when we walked down the drive to get a look at their child, then flew low in swoops above us, twittering and screeching.

We talked to the wildlife people who thought we should feed him. They brought things for Alfie to eat. Here is what we learned. Alfie wasn’t in favour of herring, left it lying on the ground at the base of his rock. He liked quail okay. A parent would land and twitter at him, then lean down and rip off a bit of meat and feed it to him, beak to beak. Alfie likes rabbit quite well. He began to eat his own, pinning it to the ground with a talon and ripping the skin and meat off it.

His beak began to turn yellow, and his legs and feet. Then one day, he flew away. He came back the next day, landed in a tree to twitter at my husband, who had fed him all this time. DH twittered back, then Alfie flew off. He hasn’t been back.

(I told DH his eagle language might not be great and he might have said something that offended Alfie, we aren’t sure. 🙂 )