Another Holiday Weekend

A Gerbera daisy, last weekend.

It is, today, Victoria Day. Which means little to anyone who isn't currently living, or hasn't lived in the past, in any country that at one time might have been part of the British Empire.

My country, however, qualifies, and we Canucks reap the benefits. Which, this weekend, included:

1. Fireworks, banging and whistling outside, even as I'm typing this. And every other day this weekend, including Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights. It seems there's either no consensus as to which is the right day, or a vast surplus of explosive devices around here.
2. Freezing cold weather, just right for the tradition of working like a dog to get all the gardens in order, beds dug out, and flowers planted. Me, I was wearing jeans and a T-shirt. And a zip-up fleece. And a lined shell jacket. And a hat. And gloves.
3. Rain, and lots of it, meaning that all the gardening had to be done in a single day (today). I am, as they say, le tired.
4. Lots of chaos in the house, as it was for the most part far too cold and miserable to let the Junior Ricardipi out of doors.

However, it all got done, and as the weekend winds down and I listen to the fusillade outside, I feel as though I actually accomplished something.

I've put the obligatory flower picture from the back yard at the top of this post, so I'll leave you at the end with a few local barns that I snapped during a quick foray into the countryside this afternoon. A worthwhile exercise? Probably not, but it makes me happy nonetheless.


A barn, and a building.


A big fancy one.


And an old, beat-up one with an antenna.

A lazy Sunday Springy morning

A weed.

The tell-tale green haze on the willows, tiny leaflets on the rose bush and clematis, the sweet smell of manure from nearby farms hanging in the air. Another sign: I sighted the first Ferrari of the season yesterday - a 355, freed from its winter lair, shamelessly downshifting for no obvious reason other than to make a cheerful noise, flaunting its 8-cylinder muscle at the record-high gasoline prices we seem to be saddled with in these parts.

Spring, it seems, is here, as is the annual post about it, I guess.

And with spring comes grant deadlines, unfortunately. I have a string of them on my whiteboard at work, stretching out through mid-May (and a few long-range ones into July, and even October). Which goes a long way towards explaining why posts here have been thin, to say the least, even taking yesterday's exceedingly lame effort into consideration.

Of course, the deadlines really have the effect of feeding my procrastination engine: weekends are now so nice and sunny (although still cool, with a crisp breeze blowing today) that I have no problem at all in finding multiple things to do instead of grant-writing (or blogging, for that matter). Even mundane tasks, like dismantling the ageing composter, or picking last year's ivy leaves out of the flower beds, take on a remarkably romantic appeal when compared with sitting and typing about this piece of equipment, or that budget line item, or trying to articulate in 2,000 characters or less why we need great gobs of government money to do our research.

I would type more now, but I need to pour some more coffee, and maybe barbeque some lunch. Having already been roped into playing a couple of rounds of a Scooby-Doo boardgame, after watching the red cars dominate the Spanish Grand Prix, I'd say that this Sunday, like many others, is shaping up to be another less-productive-than-anticipated day. Ah well. At least there's a blog post to show for it.