Lavender and Honey

I write to you while traveling by Via rail from Kitchener to Belleville on my way to a month of "wwoofing" at Millefleurs Lavender and Honey farm.
I spent four hours in Toronto between trains in the sun. People were staying at a distance and walking, biking and running. Praise again to all those who help people travel safely!

I just spent over 5 weeks in isolation at my Mom's camp. I was very good and didn't come within two metres of anyone that whole time. I talked to my mom a couple of times a day on the phone which was an interesting way to visit and kind of fun!
I probably say it too much, but Tilton Lake is beautiful. When I arrived on March 26, the lake was completely frozen and neighbour Rob was on it with his young children "ice fishing" with sticks and strings. This last week, Rob and Sarah were on their paddleboards with passenger-children and Rob and passenger-child went out on their little sailboat. Their enjoyment of the lake from frozen to thawed and the cheerful sounds of their children gave me a great deal of pleasure.

The geese, ducks and loons returned. Man, I love the sound of a loon! Robins sang cheerio cheerio. The stream trickled. I went to Lost Lake quite often and recorded this the day after the ice melted.

Lost Lake

A few years ago, I was walking around Lost Lake and met a man going the other way who was very enthusiastic about a well worn trail around the lake. I explained to him that I came often as a kid and teenager when the trail wasn't so well worn. He told me that he had discovered the lake when he was a teenager (we are peers) and has called it "Hidden Lake". I gently explained that I (and my brothers and the other kids of Tilton Lake) discovered "Lost Lake", so named by our parents. Another discoverer has named it "Little Lake". So the real name is Lost Lake, but technically, on maps, it's called Swan Lake. I love that it is almost untouched and that it is treated with respect by all those who use it (even when they call it by funny names--Swan? Seriously?) and that environmental researchers can study its wonderfulness. When I was a kid, there was a "hermit" that lived on Lost Lake during the summer. His shack is now so disintegrated that you wouldn't know he was ever there unless you knew. His shack ruins are near a really great blueberry patch.

There is a beautiful rock of white quartz along the path that has peachy-pink veins running through it. I am often tempted to take all the manageable-to-carry pieces that break off. Here's a not-quite-small-enough-to-carry piece.

I went around Lost Lake quite a few times during April, watching the snow melt and the ice melt and the ducks taking up residence. I thought about one of my fondest memories of going to Lost Lake with Fraser when he was 9. We had such a nice day together.

Years ago, when I bought some Tom Thomson prints for my livingroom, and Fraser was in university and over for a visit, I asked him if he recognized the painting called "Spring 1914", and he immediately said, "Yeah, it's Lost Lake". I knew that he saw it too! It was actually painted when Tom Thomson was in Algonquin park and not Lost Lake at all!

Tom Thomson is my favourite painter of the Group of Seven-of-which-he-is-not. So many paintings from Algonquin park look like the rugged wilderness around Sudbury which is pristine on Lost Lake. I love his paintings, not because of their accuracy but because of the way they make me feel. He has captured the way I feel about the Northern Ontario wilderness. R. Murray Shafer also captured this feeling in "Princess of the Stars" which I was fortunate enough to hear in early October of my first year of university on Heart Lake near Brampton.

The Case of the Big Bad Mouse

I was yakking on the phone when a mouse scurried by in the kitchen. I'm not good with mice. You know how you've heard that someone thinks mice are rather nice? I'm not her. Although this mouse, being a country mouse, has pretty white undersides and extra big eyes.
I contemplated how a person puts out a trap, and that if it catches a mouse, then the person must then get rid of the dead mouse.
I'm not good with mice.
I became brave however and set the trap. It is a fancy plastic trap.
That night, a giant, noisy mouse (maybe it was a bear or raccoon or sasquatch?) woke me with rattling and crashing. I turned the lights on and investigated the spot where I laid the trap. It wasn't there. It wasn't under the counter, table, fridge or stove. I thought, "Perhaps I've been alone too much and have actually lost my mind. I thought I laid the trap, but perhaps I imagined it?"
The next day, I was determined to find the trap. It was the only way I could prove that I hadn't lost my mind. While I checked every corner, every possible inch of the place, I thought I might as well vacuum. As I went through every corner of the places I thought the mouse could possibly have dragged the trap, I began to lose heart. My mind was probably gone...
That's when my Mom's neighbours Carol and Brian came by. Carol told me that she set a trap and never found it again. She assured me that my mind was intact. My Mom called just then, when I only had one room left--impossible for a mouse to have reached. She told me that there is a spot in the corner of that room where mice sometimes get in and I should check there. I went armed with a flashlight to that very far corner and found the trap, without a hair of mouse in it.
This was war.
I set the trap every night after that and saw the mouse run by most nights without going near the trap. In the end it stopped coming, which you might assume means that I won the war. I think the mouse is still trying to convince me that I've lost my mind, by pretending he never existed.
I guess I'll never know.

Lori
I heard sad news while I was at camp. My dear friend Lori has stage 4 cancer. She has a fight ahead of her with chemo and radiation. With the covid virus, the rest of us can't be with her. Love and prayer are not in self-isolation however and don't need a two metre distance. She will receive plenty of love to support her through this fight.

Tom Thomson
"In the Northland", Winter 1915

I said goodbye to the neighbours, Sarah and Rob and their kids, Today I head to beautiful Prince Edward County. I will spend another two weeks in isolation there before I will join the family a little closer. Meanwhile, I am promised plenty of work at Millefleurs farm, being situated on Lake Ontario and smelling of lavender and honey. Sounds like a good place to breathe doesn't it?
As I think about Lori and about the weird and interesting pandemic we are all participating in, I will look for inspiration.
millefleurs.ca

I am also planning to read the entire Quran during this month of Ramadan in imitation of one of my Muslim students. He has been reading the entire Quran since he was nine! He reads it in Arabic--I will read in English, my Arabic being a little rusty!