More Gardening...

Every year this front garden grows bigger...

This is what it looked like four years ago when I started it:















And this is what it looks like now:















And from another angle:














It looked so tidy four years ago, but like all living things, it has taken on a life of its own - and I have a hard time controlling it!

What else is happening in my flower garden?

Gardening has taken a lot of my time this week.

I have added a few hosta and sedum plants that a neighbor gave me. I also added a red cedar mulch to keep away dandelion seeds. Now the front bed is ready for the summer. I just have to water it and wait for its magical growth.

But there is more yard work to do. I still have to rake the back yard. Every time the wind blows, dead branches and pine cones fall to the ground. Nature's way of pruning!














In the front garden bed, the bleeding heart is blooming ... (or should I say, bleeding?)

More tulips are blooming too... And the squirrels are still enjoying them! Do they eat the flowers or plant their seeds? I don't know... I spotted this hole in the red mulch near another decapitated tulip plant. What - I wonder - did the busy squirrel bury in the hole?














One neighbor suggested sprinkling the tulips with paprika to keep the squirrels away. So I plan to try that... I hope it doesn't kill the tulips!














This is a plant I bought last year at a church bazaar. It was tiny then. I don't know what it's called, but it's spreading... I wonder where else I can plant it... It could be divided...

So much to do.... I hate to be indoors!

My Report Card

I am at that stage of life when I need to watch what I eat - and exercise more. A while back, I promised myself that I would start walking for 45 minutes every day. My doctor advised using a pedometer to make sure I walked 10,000 steps - or about 45 minutes.

I haven't gotten into the habit of doing that yet... the problem is I hate boring walks - I want to see new scenery. So my plan is to drive to different neighborhoods in the city and discover them on foot... but so far that hasn't happened.

One thing I did start to do, about three years ago, was to begin exercising at Curves, a fitness center geared to women. It isn't a gym - it's a room with a dozen or so resistance machines in a circle. Music plays and members go around the circle twice, staying on each machine only 30 seconds at a time. A recording calls out: Change stations now - every 30 seconds. The idea is to go around twice, using each machine twice for 30 seconds, then stretch for 5 minutes. This should take only half an hour. The designer of the program (a fitness coach) claims three half-hour sessions a week should keep women fit and strong. I do go three times a week most weeks. The benefit is that I feel markedly stronger - and I have experienced no muscle soreness, as I often have at the beginning of other exercise programs.

It's my kind of work-out: I'm not a fan of exercise classes or smelly gyms!

I try to go in the early afternoon, when it is pretty quiet, so that as I can sometimes linger a little longer on a machine if I want to. If it's busy, you have to move when everyone else does and stick to the 30 seconds... But time passes more quickly if there are more people chatting while they exercise! So there are benefits both ways.

The program works for me - and I have noticed a difference. I haven't lost any weight, but I no longer get a sore back from lifting a garbage can or heavy grocery bag. In fact, my back has been great ever since I started the program...

I recently celebrated my 400th workout, so I got a new shirt to mark that event. I view it as a kind of "report card":














In our club we can get a shirt to mark each 100 workouts. These t-shirts serve as goals and inspiration: I find it inspiring to see a shirt that says 800 workouts on somebody else... It gives me a goal to aspire to!

It works for me!

Practical Jokers

I'm not a fan of practical jokes - probably because I really hate to have them played on me. I am not alone. When my children started school, I tried to "teach" them about April Fool's Day by saying something like, It's snowing out so there is no school today.... and when they would look out the window in surprise, I'd say: April Fools!

When I did that to my daughter, I remember her looking at me in annoyance and saying: I don't like it when you do that.

But my youngest son loved the concept - and he still plays practical jokes on friends. Sometimes I hear about them.

I usually laugh - because they are funny - and warn him: Remember the boy who cried "Wolf!" Soon nobody will believe anything you say!

He told me about a recent road trip to Toronto when he and his equally-impish travel buddy decided to call up one of their friends and pretend that they were participants in a game show. The long drive - 5 hours each way - no doubt fueled their imaginations.

We're in the Quiz Cab, they told him, and we have to answer 3 questions. We can't get the answer to the third question, so we're calling you to help us. You have 30 seconds to give us the answer: What causes accidents in the summer that never causes accidents in the winter?

The Quiz Cab? What's the Quiz Cab?

Never mind! We have 30 seconds to get the answer...

Well, I don't know. Drinking?

No, we already guessed that. Oh-oh, we only have five seconds - five - four - three - two - one! Bye!

They did this to several of their friends, who were all equally dumbfounded.

I shook my head: It's amazing you still have friends... By the way, do you even know the answer? Is there an answer?














Of course - sandals!

Another Sign of Spring PLUS Snow Mountain Update

Another sign of spring in our neighborhood is the soccer stadium near the snow mound. In winter it is covered with a big plastic dome.














Eventually the dome comes down... a big job!














And we are left with an open soccer field.

By the way, what has happened to our Snow Mountain?














I took this picture last night - so it won't disappear this weekend!

Tulips: Another Sign of Spring

The tulips are starting to bloom - a sure sign of spring!

Ottawa is famous for its tulips. We even have a Tulip Festival in May when visitors come from all over to admire the city's many tulip beds. The tulips in the city gardens are an annual gift from the Netherlands - given to thank Ottawa for providing refuge for their royal family during World War II.

I don't have many tulips - and those I do have risk being eaten by squirrels - so I have to photograph them quickly. Last year, I admired one lovely tulip, ran into the house for my camera, and by the time I was back, the flower had been snapped off and was gone!














Oops! It happened again! Those nasty squirrels!

The Bible: A Library of Books

When I was last in Jerusalem, it happened to be the Jewish New Year. I was invited to celebrate with a group of friends I had known in my university years, whom I hadn't seen in a long time. I had often spent Jewish holidays with them when I lived and studied in Israel, so it was a real homecoming!

After Brian, the host, led in the prayers for the New Year, I commented that there were a lot more prayers than I remembered. Yes, he said, he had added prayers from other Jewish traditions, prayers he had been unfamiliar with in the old days - when I had previously celebrated with them.

I made some comment about a passage in the Bible. Brian knew the passage I was referring to, and corrected me: That's not from the Bible, Marlene, it's in the Prophets.

I think that for him, the Bible consisted of the five Books of Moses alone. From his comments, I sensed that for him, the rest the Jewish religious writings, those Christians consider to be "Scripture" or sacred writings, did not rank equally with the Torah, the five books written by Moses, which in English are called the Law.

Our conversation reminded me that the Bible - Jewish or Christian - is not A BOOK but a COLLECTION OF BOOKS... a little "BIBLIOTEQUE" - to use the French word for "LIBRARY."

The Bible being a collection of books, not in chronological order, I have always been confused, about how the they fit together, from a historical point of view - in other words, what happened when? I also had other questions, like: What were the historical circumstances surrounding the various Psalms, the songs of the Bible, which I particularly love?



















A few years ago, I came across a different kind of Bible, a chronological Bible - where the various books, or even parts of books, are not presented in the traditional order, but in the order in which they occurred, historically speaking. I have been reading through this chronological BIBLE - or BIBLIOTEQUE, as I tend to view it, for several years now. Even though it is divided into 365 "parts" - if you want to read it in a year, I don't want to rush through it. I have a lot to learn.

Several things have surprised me so far. First, I didn't realize that the book of Job, which tells of the tragic things that happened to this man who tried to do his best, is really a very old book. In the chronological Bible it comes before the books of Moses. To me, the story of Job always seemed very modern. I could identify with it: it talked about questions, doubts and feelings. The five books of the Law, written by Moses, on the other hand, give us the Ten Commandments, but there are also large sections that deal with situations that I personally can't identify with, like surviving in the desert, touching dead animals, dealing with problems like lack of water and leprosy.

The second thing that has surprised me, so far, is how much of the Old Testament is about the Babylonian Exile, a time about 2600 years ago when powerful King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon (now part of Iraq) conquered the Jews, and deported them to Babylon. Prophets (including the lonely Jeremiah) predicted this would happen. Jeremiah wrote several books (found in the Bible) about it. Eventually it did happen, and several books in the Old Testament, notably Daniel and Ezekiel, were written in exile, after this mass deportation. Then other books were written about the Jews who returned to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem, which had been destroyed by King Nebuchadnezzar. The new temple, called the Second Temple - or Second House, in Hebrew - was rebuilt with the blessings of a new king, King Darius (also sometimes called Cyrus), king of the kingdom of the Medes and the Persians (two countries that make up present day Iran), who conquered Babylon.

That's as far as I have gotten in my Chronological Bible reading - I have yet to read about Queen Esther, who I would have guessed lived earlier than this, but apparently didn't. And of course Christianity is still several hundred years away.

But I am enjoying my historical journey, and would recommend the chronological Bible to anyone who wants to get a historic, chronological perspective of these readings that have been a major force , not only in the Middle East, but all around the world.