17 - Mucky Boots and Magical Memories

Spring is my favorite season. Sunshine relieves achy joints;  new blossoms remind us of growth and goodness. A change of season brings back memories of another time, another life. From getting stuck in the garden to ice fishing in spring, lots of simple and fun reflections. I hope you enjoy my anecdotes.

Thanks for listening!  This is a hobby podcast, with a positive vibe. No legal or medical advice is provided in this podcast, it's recorded for entertainment purposes only.  No cooking advice either - some things are best left for the professionals.  Have a great day! 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:42

Grey roots and chicken boots. That's all right by me. In a world where smiles are needed, I'm happy to be free. A simple life is all I need. A place where all are kind, with love and laughter all around, to soothe the busy mind. Relax, sit back, enjoy the show. Thanks for tuning in. I hope this brings a smile or two. Okay, let's begin. Alright, there we go. A little teeny poem to start our day. So I guess I'll really get going by saying, hey everybody, welcome back to the podcast. It's really great to be back in the old podcast chair. I was feeling a little creative this morning. The sun's shining, it's beautiful out. I'm gonna do a quick recording here, post it later because I need to get outside, but just had the urge to be creative and record. So that's how this works for me with podcasting. It's my creative side, it's a fun side. Um, geez, it really does feel like spring now, okay? So we're at the very end of March when I'm recording this, and uh I just love this time of year. Really, spring is my favorite time of year. It always has been. For me, it's I don't know, it's about new growth, it's a new beginning, sunshine, something to look forward to. And that for me is a positive, okay? And this this journey that we call life, it's a bonus when we have something to look forward to. I love that. Uh, seasons for me often bring back memories. I've talked about this in other podcasts, and it's no different in the spring. And uh for me, it's like all these things, the different scents, the different smells, they just bring back memories from years gone by. No matter where you live, memories from the past can come to the surface with just a simple kiss of the breeze on your back, or maybe the warmth of the sun, you know, on your face or on your neck, or the simple scent of blossoms. Yeah, it sounds really beautiful, doesn't it? And it is beautiful. Life is beautiful when we're able to enjoy those things. Uh yeah, attitude or gratitude, it's a good thing. I was thinking back on springtime this morning, you know, with lots of memories from spring. And I when I was living in the Yukon, which uh if you're new to this tuning in, um I did grow up in the Yukon, lived there for 44 years. And when I was living in the Yukon, spring could get kind of messy. You know, think about it. Months and months of snow. Uh, when it starts melting in the spring, it could cause some water and some muck. Especially where I grew up, because uh the road that I grew up on when I was a kid uh was a gravel road. We didn't have pavement on our road, so it could get really mucky back then. And I remember one year when we were kids, we had runoff that came in from a nearby hill. Okay, our house was just a few houses down underneath a hill, and the water was flowing in full stream down our alleyway. I remember that year, and my gosh, my mom was so worried about that water. In our poor old house, it already needed foundation work. We had a front door that didn't close right, and the front doorstep was sinking in towards the house. Friends would come over and they'd say, like, how come your house is crooked? Poor mom. I think of it now, and you know, in a house with four kids and a sinking doorstep, that was a lot for one person to bear. I remember her coming out the backyard that year, though, and all the water was running down the alleyway. She was standing at the fence line and she's just watching that water coming down the alley, and she just kept saying, No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. And then it just seemed like she breathed a sigh of relief when it stopped running down the alley. Well, for days after that, you know, I remember our water would be yellow in the bathtub. It was a really dingy yellow. And we had to share bath water in those days, and I remember us kids laughing and yelling, who peed in the tub? Good thing the mud didn't come in. Oh well. Anyway, when I go back to my hometown now, my old house looks a lot different. The front step is no longer sinking in. Oh, mom eventually sold the house to a guy who had the resources to get the foundation fixed on it, and that little house is still standing. Oh, and as for the water in the alleyway, I doubt they have those problems now. Years after that, the municipality installed a drainage system at the bottom of that hill area, so I don't think runoff is an issue for that neighborhood anymore. But gosh, yeah, I can just still remember that yellow water in the tub during the springtime. That was definitely different. I remember one year when I was a little kid, I got stuck in my mom's garden. Gosh, I don't know, I was around three years old. And we had these big garden beds out front, and they weren't dug up yet. There was a light layer of snow and a bit of ice remaining on portions of the beds, but I remember it was a really sunny spring day. And uh, for the most part it had melted, but there was still a bit of ice, a bit of snow, and there was this one big mucky pit. Well, typical kids, you know how it is, we put on our rubber boots and we went trucking out to the muck. We were all out there, you know, mucking through the garden and laughing and giggling, and I was the smallest one, and I sunk in and I couldn't get my boots out. I remember being stuck in there, my feet stuck in the boots. And I got really scared, you know, because when you're only three, that little garden that we had seemed pretty big to me. Probably wasn't so big for the older kids, but it looked big, based on my size. Yeah, it looked kind of big. I remember one of my sisters yelling out, rescue Lindy! She's stuck in the quicksand. I don't even think I knew what quicksand was. And then one of the neighborhood boys yells out, Hurry up and rescue her before she dies. Oh, great. When you got a bunch of kids between the ages of three and ten, who knows what's gonna come out, right? Yard full of kids and imaginations, but this little three-year-old was absorbing what the kids were yelling, and I remember I just started to bawl my eyes out. I was so scared. Quicksand, am I gonna die? No, I'm stuck in the mud. And of course I could count on my older sister Dee to come and pick me up, and she carried me back to the lawn area. My boots were still stuck in the mud, and my other sisters went in and pulled them out and brought them out to me. The boys that told me I might die in the quicksand appeared a little bit sheepish. Yeah, I was like the baby of the family and their family too, because in those days, close friends really were family. Hmm, that's the day of the mole. Yeah, I'm sure if I bring it up to my sisters, they would remember this. Okay, so that same day one of the boys dug up a big, dead old, rotten animal from our garden. And I think it probably met its demise in that little pit during the winter, and who knows, you know, maybe a loose dog had killed it and buried it there or some other animal. I don't know. I just remember this boy holding this dead mole in one hand and he went up to our front door and rang the doorbell, and my mom came to the door and he's like, Mrs. Al, look what I found. Mom let out a terrible holler. It was just like unlike a holler I'd ever heard, and get that damn thing away from me. All the kids are laughing and yikes. She even said the word damn, and my mum was not one to swear. Damn was a naughty word in those days. Yeah. Well, the kids are all giggling and the mole got removed, and I don't even remember what they ended up doing with that old dead animal. But 57 years later, when I'm in muddy boots in the garden on a spring day, I think of the day I got stuck and the boy who took the rotten old mole to show our mum. Funny how those things come back. Yeah, my mom had an amazing little garden. It it looked like something you'd see on Vancouver Island, and it was amazing for our little northern yard. We had an old greenhouse in the backyard, and mom started all her plants from seed. There was no going to garden centers and buying plants in a pot. Gosh, no, she would have never had a budget to that for that kind of thing. No, not at all. But um, to this day, when I see flowers like asters and delphinians, sunflowers, pansies, especially pansies and daisies and zinnias, poppies, all those beautiful floral arrangements, I just think of my mom. Oh yeah, and she had those big old cosmos, you know, those big, beautiful flowers, they look like daisies, but they are huge. And I just look back and think, yeah, in that little northern garden, she really did a good job with it. I wasn't much of a gardener for years, but now I put a lot more effort in, probably because I'm not working full-time anymore, so I have a little more time on my hands. Yeah, I've already started geranium seeds in my greenhouse, and heck why not? I can buy a pack of seeds for$6.99 versus buying one plant for$6.99. Darn right, so I'm gonna try to start those seeds a little bit earlier. They take a good three months to get to a decent size, so I start them early. Um, and when I first got together with my partner, I tried to explain how our growing season was so short in the Yukon compared to here on Vancouver Island. I mean, when I lived there, I didn't plant outside until early June, and usually by the end of August, frost was coming in. Well, you can still have beautiful gardens there, but it really does help if you have a greenhouse or covers for the garden beds at night. Well, my partner is an island boy. He grew up on the coast. And a couple of years ago we visited my daughter in the late spring, and Randy picks up his shovel and he's trying to help turn the dirt in her garden beds. We were just helping them do some spring cleanup. His shovel could only get in a few inches and it would stop. What the heck? he says, poking around with the shovel. What's going on in here? Must be a big rock. And then he pokes around some more, pokes around some more, and he scrapes back the dirt and it's nothing but ice underneath. Oh, he says, now I know why you didn't plant till June. Yeah, different climate. Anyway, here's something that really warms my heart. Okay, so my daughter took up an interest in gardening and she includes her children. It's a family event. They all plant together, they look after the gardens together, and of course, where there's edible plants, you can count on my grandchildren to be the chief supervisors and official testers. Yeah, they do a lot of testing when they're here in the summer and the berries are in full bloom. Yeah, it's great. It's actually pretty cool. Anyway, it's really neat to see how children learn from seasons, and I really hope to be part of my grandkids' memories when they are older, even if we do live far apart. The time that we do get to spend together, yeah, I hope that I help create seasonable memories for them. Seasonable. Seasonable? Seasonal. Okay. Yes, this is not totally scripted. I am winging some of this. Anyway, uh my my grandkids came for a visit in the spring this year, and normally they come in the summer, and we have a huge patch of raspberries, blueberries, and usually when the kids come, they just dive right in and they eat as many berries as they can, and and it's like a free-for-all. I just say go for it. We're not gonna run out of berries, you guys. Just have as much as you want. Uh anyway, seemed different for them when they came this spring because the raspberries, they're just little sticks in the ground, nothing on them yet. The leaves are just starting to bud, the buds are starting to poke out on the blueberry bushes, and it was kind of neat because these little guys could now see the cycle of growth. And in a small way, yeah, it was a learning experience for them. Now Easter weekend's coming up next weekend, and that was usually a time when the snow was melting in the Yukon when we were growing up, and we were always itching to get our banana bikes out. Yeah, banana bikes with sissy bars, those were the days. If you're my age, you're gonna know what I'm talking about. I had a yellow banana bike, and I think I had a green one too. It was pretty cool. Used to be able to put your friends on the back seat and double ride with people. We didn't wear helmets back then either. We had a lot of things different back then. Anyway, it was it was really cool. So I I just remember at Easter time we were always just itching to get out there on those banana bikes, go riding through the mud puddles, just so happy to be out. You know, those bikes had been tucked away all winter and we wanted to get out. But it was also a time when mom would take us to more church services. Yeah, that was just kind of part of the faith I was raised in. So Easter weekend we spent a lot more time in church. And I can remember when the sun was shining and the ice was coming off the mud puddles, all I wanted to do was get outside and get back on my bike. I remember us going to church and be like looking at my watch, going, Ah, how long is this? I just want to get outside and go bike riding. Hmm, some things don't change except I no longer live in a climate where I have to contend with the melting snow at Easter. I'm pretty lucky. The moment that sun's out, I do want to be outside. I want to be in the fresh air. It's like soul vitamins for me. I went for a bike ride yesterday morning and then I spent six hours working outside in the yard. Gosh, yeah, it was around nine degrees Celsius, maybe a bit warmer by late afternoon. The sun was shining and oh my gosh, I had such a hard time getting myself into the house, you know, I just couldn't. And the only time I would come in is if the other kind of mother nature called, otherwise I wasn't coming in the house. Eventually I had to because I had made some commitments for dinner last night, and I remember even us coming in the house and having a shower, going, hmm, if I didn't have commitments, I'd probably be out here till seven at night. Yeah. So we had to put the chickens down. Not put them down, put them to sleep. Oh boy, I'm having to do a lot of backtracking and clarifying on words here today. I we did not put our chickens down. We put our chickens down to sleep. Tuck them in. Okay, clarifying. Anyway, this is the time of year when lots of people are burning old brush and weeds and debris from all over winter. You know, I'm out riding my bike and I ride a lot in different rural areas. I can smell little hints of backyard fires before I even see them. And they're not overtaking. It's not offensive in any way. I actually be riding along going, hmm, smells like we should have a hot dog roast. Funny how that goes, but typically it's just a sign that people are cleaning up, you know? It's only gonna last a few weeks. In another month or so, we're gonna have burning restrictions. But it just reminds me of my mom. You know, I'll be peddling along those roadways, I feel the sun on my shoulders, the little smell of backyard fires, and it all just reminds me of my mom. Yeah, I think I got an old photo of her somewhere with a rake, and she was burning all the weeds on the side of our driveway. She used to do that every year in the spring. Oh my mom. And those darn fires, yeah. When I was a kid, we were allowed to have backyard burning barrels in our backyard. You know, keep in mind I'm a whole bunch of generations later, so those things would definitely not happen now. But back in those days, yeah, like early 70s, we were allowed to do that. Lots of people used to have 45 gallon drums and they burned their paper rubbish in there. And my mom was a little bit stubborn at that time. I remember the city put out a notice that backyard fires weren't allowed anymore. Yeah, times were changing. Well, she just figured she could go out there and do it anyway, no one's gonna notice, so she did. And I'm kind of a rule-bound kind of person, you know, I just that's just who I am, and I think I was around six or seven, and I remember getting all stressed out and worried that we were gonna get in trouble because mom was burning in that barrel. Well, mom had a nice little toasty fire going on in the back burn barrel one day, and kaboom, the fire truck pulled up in the alley. Fire truck? Oh my gosh, I was so embarrassed. Now all my friends were gonna know that my mother was burning when we weren't supposed to. My mom was polite. She agreed she wasn't going to burn anymore, and after they left, she kind of grumbled about stupid rules that were a bunch of nonsense. The funny part about my mom was that she was really a rule-bound kind of person, also yet for some reason she just wanted to use that old burn barrel. I smile at that memory. I think my mom spent a lot of her life without a lot of freedom, and that was being a rubble for her. Okay, here's something else that I remember about spring and the Yukon. Dog crap. Gross. Frozen in the snow, you know, and when it melted, oh my gosh, it was just a nasty smell. And back when I was a kid, we used to have a lot of loose dogs, you know, running around the neighborhood, and those dogs would crap everywhere. And in the spring, you just got that whiff of a stinky poo. Yeah, or you stepped on a mud spot in the snow and discovered it wasn't all mud. And now you got dog poo all over your boots. Gross. And then the dog owners got mad when dogs couldn't run free anymore. Yeah. Nothing like this sweet scent of flowers, fresh air, and dog crap on your boots. Oh boy. Anyway. Uh if I take a real positive though, there is nothing more beautiful than the sight of ice breaking up on the Yukon River in the spring. Really. Big white chunks of ice pull apart, and you can see the tints of light blue and the thickness of the center. Like it's just really neat. Um, and I just love sitting by the Yukon River in the spring. It's so beautiful, like just simply beautiful. We used to go ice fishing in the spring when I was younger, and we we would do that when it was still safe to do so. And my mom had a friend who used to take us. I remember we had to wear these life jackets all the time when we were out on the ice. I remember as a kid I hated those life jackets. Well, they were bulky. They were big, bulky life jackets, and they got in the way of the fishing rod. My favorite part about those trips was the hot dogs that we had over a campfire on the shore. So funny, hot dogs always seem to come to the memory. Ah, but I do love fishing, and the last time I went ice fishing was probably about 35 years ago. Get this. I was six months pregnant at the time. I think I was around six months pregnant, and I got along great with a group of young guys that I was working with, and they were all headed out to go ice fishing. They invited me to come along. Um I was with somebody at that time who really didn't like fishing, and for me, I absolutely loved it, and they tried to include me as much as they could because they knew how much I like fishing. So anyway, I remember we went out to a lake just outside of Car Cross, and we were all just trudging along in the snow. Snow was kind of deep. I think it was probably up to our knees, if maybe not a little bit more deep. And uh yeah, I just remember us trudging along in that snow, we finally get to the fishing area, and one of the guys pulls out the ice auger and he tried and tried to get it to go through the ice. It was a manual auger, you know, it looks like a big corkscrew almost. And there's just no getting through that ice that day. They decided they were gonna go back and get a chainsaw or something. I don't know what it was. They were gonna get something a little bit more powerful, I can't remember, but after we tracked all the way in, now we did track all the way back out. It was a good workout, but I had quite the belly grown, and I was not up for the second track. No, thank you. Uh they were really worried about me feeling left out when I didn't go back out again. I just said, hey, listen, I'm fine. Believe me, belly like this, I don't need to go ice fishing. I'm just fine on the sidelines. I'll go again in a few more months. Ha ha. Funny. Yeah, and it's actually kind of good I didn't go back out. I remember it was about a month later I actually ended up having early labor after I'd worked two trade shows back to back. So um yeah, that was my little sign that I wasn't one of those people who could keep doing all these things. I had to slow down. And it's a good thing that didn't happen on that fishing trip. I don't know what those young fellows would have done if I'd gone into labor out there.

unknown 18:33

Ha ha.

SPEAKER_00 18:34

Oh boy. But anyway, that time that I did go into early labor, the doctor slowed things down, and then that beautiful little baby took her time arriving and showed up after her due date. Funny how those things happen. Hmm, yeah, memories that come up from a warm spring day. Anyway, I remember the crocuses on Grey Mountain, uh, just outside Whitehorse there, and our good family friend Barb used to take all of us out for a hike in the spring. She taught us to appreciate the little purple crocuses, and she told us that they were the first sign of spring. And to this day, I just love any crocus that I see because it just reminds me of Barb and reminds me of spring. Another memory from around Easter and springtime. Okay, one year there was this great big Easter egg hunt in Riverdale back in Whitehorse. I think it was at Selkirk School, it was somewhere in that area, and all the kids were going but me. Yep, but I had to stay home. No, I wasn't in trouble. Ah no, this time I was the only one that came home with lice from school. At Easter time. Yeah, oh that just was horrible. I had to stay home, and there was some nasty shampoo. I remember just it stunk and it stung so bad. Oh, it was awful. I remember sitting in the kitchen getting my head washed in the sink while all the kids were out, and it was just burning with the stuff that we used to have to put on our heads. Anyway, got that done. I remember Mum was home washing all the hats and mitts and everything else. So I don't know what it is, but rarely now, whenever I hear of a kid's Easter egg hunt, I think a lice. That's probably the only time in my life that I ever had the chance to go to a community Easter egg hunt when I was a kid, and the only time in my life I ever picked up lice. So, yeah, that's a memory I definitely don't want to repeat. Anyway, my childhood memories go beyond a mole in the garden, stinky dog poo, yellow runoff in the bathtub, and itchy critters in my hair. Definitely more memories than that. It's just funny how certain things stay with you. Now I feel like I need a trip back to the Yukon because I want to go back and watch the ice break up again, and I want to feel the cool, crisp air pushing against the warmth of the sun. I mean, blue skies. There's just nothing like blue skies in the Yukon. As my mom wrote many years ago, uh part of something she wrote one time, it said, uh, Yukon skies on a bright sunny morning are a shade of blue, possibly not duplicated on any canvas. She was right. Uh speaking of blue skies, I see blue skies out my window, and uh planning to hop on my bike today and ride as far as I can, or maybe as far as my hip's gonna let me go. I still have one hip giving me a bit of grief, and pretty grateful for that e-bike. And it's not about cheating, it's about adapting to change. And if that little extra help keeps me riding, well then woo-hoo, that's a bonus. Anyway, I might head to the water today as well, see if there's any sea lions out and about. My gosh, I just love sea lions. When I first moved here, I was so excited when I saw them in groups out on the boondocks. My first spring in the Comox Valley was so exciting. I remember standing out in the springtime at Fanny Bay, and I've got my phone in my hand, and I'm calling all my family and friends back in the Yukon. I'm holding up my phone and going, listen to this, listen to this, so they can hear the of the sea lions. And they're like, What is that? Is that a dog barking? I'm like, no, listen. And I'm going, it's sea lions. People are standing around me, probably from the valley, looking at me like I'm some kind of crazy person. You're like, who phones people to play sea lions for them in the background? I did. Anyway, I do love sea lions. And you know, sometimes we get them not too far from our house here, too, down on the rocks by the water. And and I was watching one day, they're all sitting on the rocks, and they were just kind of swimming around in peace or laying out in the sun, and they're just simply beautiful. I remember one day thinking to myself, look at all those sea lions. They all share this rocky area and they're all getting along.

unknown 22:20

Huh.

SPEAKER_00 22:21

People could learn a lot from sea lions. Anyway, that's it. Think I've chatted enough for one day. Wherever you are, I hope you're able to enjoy fresh air on a beautiful spring day. If you don't have a yard, I hope you're able to find a peaceful park or someplace where there's trees and birds and blossoms. Take a moment to close your eyes, smell the sense of fresh air, remember. That sometimes in life it is the smaller things that truly matter. If you enjoyed today's episode, a positive review on your podcast app would sure be appreciated. This is a hobby for me, but I do always appreciate positive feedback. Oh yeah, and guess what? There's also a new way that you can send direct feedback to me. Yeah, it's pretty cool. I just discovered this. Okay, so if you look at the show notes of this podcast, there's going to be a link that says share your comments. If you click on it, you can actually send me a voicemail message. That's new. Now, if it doesn't work because you see that in the app, but you can't click on it in your app, you can always go direct to my webpage. So you just go to uh it's www.grayroots and chicken boots dot buzzsprout.com. That's where you would find the direct web link, and I'm pretty sure that you can send the comments through there. Uh so it's greyroots and chicken boots.buzzsprout, B-U-Z-Z-S-P-R-O-U-T dot com. It's cool, and I just found out recently that our host provider has added this. Kind of neat. Anyway, um I do have to go. Uh, whatever you do, hope you have a wonderful day. Happy spring. And remember what I always say when uh I end my podcast smiles come in all languages and in all colors. Alright, take care everyone. Have a great day.