Anyone who loves music surely appreciates the songs and sounds of Joni Mitchell. Any musician and songwriter who knows of her work respects her genius. It’s unique, it’s beautiful, and it’s true.

Joni spent some of her growing-up years in Saskatoon, and when she began to sing for audiences, she sometimes performed at a little place on Broadway Avenue. That place is still there, though now it’s a coffee shop called Calories, and specializes in rich, dastardly desserts.

This card, which I just received in the mail from a friend who lives in Saskatoon, is a stylized version of the street. Joni’s former venue is directly right of the Broadway Theatre, which stands out with its yellow marquee.

This road is half a mile from our driveway and beckons me to walk the dog and ride a bike down it.

It is a quiet road, with hardly any traffic. Most days, probably no one drives there except Bachelor A, to get to his house.

[Bachelor Brothers Bed and Breakfast, by Bill Richardson. Homey book. Loved it.]

Here in my world, Bachelor B lives down the road and the two of them are not brothers.

xoxo
Kate

My family ancestry contains both Swedish and Norwegian bloodlines, so lefse (pronounced leff-sa) has always been a traditional treat at Christmas and Easter. As I was growing up in these parts, our holiday celebrations were either at our place, where my mom would make the lefse, or at Grandma’s or one of the uncles’, but no matter where it was, someone would make lefse.

It is not a favourite with everyone, but those who love it love it well. The first time I tried my hand at it was at a cabin in southern Alberta where there was a woodstove I could fry it on. After lifting the first piece off the black castiron top, I buttered it and sprinkled it with a light layer of white sugar, then rolled it up and took a bite off the end.

“Mmmm...” I moaned, “this is delicious.”

My estranged husband, of German ancestry, had tasted lefse before when visiting with my family, and said “I’ve never understood what you guys see in that stuff, but you’re enjoying it so much, I’m going to try it again.”

I doctored one up for him and he took a bite, chewed, swallowed, and shook his head. “Nope, still don’t get it.”

What can I say. You love it or you don’t. I do, so a couple years ago I followed Mom’s recipe and made a batch. Probably it is impossible to fail at lefse-making, or it’s a rare enough treat that no matter how it turns out, no one complains. I certainly didn’t.

Last year Loverboy helped me make up a quadruple batch to bring home for Christmas, and then we both got too sick to travel and had to send it out with my brother. This year, I made a triple batch. L was too tired to help me and although he made a valiant effort, I sent him to bed for a couple hours of much-needed sleep while I spent four hours washing and peeling and boiling potatoes, then putting them through the ricer, adding flour and oil and a tiny bit of sugar,

and rolling and frying them:

Hot off the grill, the lefse I ate for supper had only butter on it and was so stellar that way, I may just eschew my past habit of putting sugar on it.

Once it’s buttered, my family sprinkles it with sugar (“Your family is spoiled!” Loverboy’s dad exclaimed), rolls it up and eats it from one end to the other. I am not sure how all of L’s family eats theirs, but his dad loves it and eats it with only butter. L likes to fill his up with meat (yuk! -- not that I’ve tried it that way, but the thought!).

8:21 a.m.

All’s quiet but for the hum of the computer. The only light comes off the screen and through the window from a blazing bulb over the deck. The sky has become a grey-blue so the bare branches of the trees surrounding the house can be seen against it.

I took a wrinkled, stained Christmas tablecloth out of one of my trunks, which have been brought into the porch for now, to be emptied. I wanted to put it on the table to enhance the Christmas season for the kids, but seeing the stains on it, I said to Loverboy “I don’t want to use that.” He said “What does it matter? Any tablecloth will get stains on it if you use it, anyway.” I conceded, and spread the cloth over the table.

When Barney saw it, he was excited. “We’ve got a Christmas table -- cool!”

The little things matter a lot.

I am a collector of visual images. I like drawings and paintings even more than photographs, and often I hang onto cards people send me as well as to things I cut out of magazines and such.

Something I used to do was pick a wall and collage it. During those years, I often had an outhouse I could “paper” and that was the ideal place; it made for eye-catching scenery while one sat on the wooden bench on a mellow morning.

From there I moved on to electricity and thus fridges. I’d collage them with pictures of food at its best. Afterwards, seeing the collage reinforced my intention to be attracted only to healthy, life-giving food and drink.

Once I did my bedroom ceiling with erotic photos. It was lovely to lay abed and gaze up at them.

I’ve always wanted to do more, but never felt I lived anywhere permanently and was tired of leaving them behind when I moved. Eventually it occurred to me to put them on large sheets of bristol board so they will be mobile. That’s what I intend to do next.

Here, we have a long hallway with one ugly wall. It needs to be covered with something, and I am tempted to do a collage for it. It’s nine feet long so I can go crazy! What stops me is the thought that it might be overwhelming. There’s no window letting light directly into the hallway, and I don’t want to darken it up or make it too busy.

Still, it’s the ideal candidate for something that I have always, in the past, taken so much pleasure from.

Here you see the window in the porch where I stand to look out at the stars or watch the kids go to the bus. There are steps from the hallway down into the porch, which is quite large. The photo is taken from the kitchen doorway, and the bathroom is off to the left near the end of the hall.

What I have never done to my collages is make them washable by varnishing them, either, and I think that might be a smart idea. Gotta find out what there is to know about that.

Previous Entry

Loverboy and I are supposed to reshingle Grandpa’s shop, where he kept all his antique tools and collectibles.

Grandpa had an old tractor seat he'd converted to a stool, which stood in the centre of the shop. He could often be found sitting there having a smoke or just sitting. On the day of his funeral, I went out there. A group of men was standing all around the chair, as if Grandpa was sitting in it. I believe he was.

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I’ve just finished reading Strong Voices: Conversations with 50 Canadian Authors.

They were interviewed in the late ’80s so it’s not an up-to-date book by any means, but it is still inspiring.

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