From Anonymous Rhubarb to Deranged Nuns


All week, the sun shone. It was beautiful and heartwarming and ever so Spring. Yesterday, I had the day off, and the Nanaimo Community Gardens Society was holding its Rhubarb Festival. Wilson and I went. I planned to take his picture there. It rained. So I took his picture anyway, along with pictures of some of the tulips and other plants.

There was a coffee stand, where a local vendor sold organically grown, shade-grown, fair-trade or co-op coffee by the cup or by the bag. I grabbed a cup of coffee and headed for the plants, but I was distracted by music. A local couple were playing and singing, of all things, "How much is that doggie in the window?" to entertain the children. We stopped to listen, and Wilson had a go at the recorder. Then we went to the main display, where I bought a rhubarb plant and some raffle tickets.Later in the day I got a phone call to say I had won a big tub of herbs. It's sitting in my living room now, because Spring hasn't sprung so thoroughly that I can leave it out for the night, not just yet. I also bought packets of seed for sugar snap peas, snow peas, and something called Purple Peacock pole beans.


Earlier, I had gone out to my back garden to pick some rhubarb. I wanted to donate some stalks to the festival. All my rhubarb was gone - or so I thought. That's why I bought the plant that Wilson is sniffing in the Local Rhubarb photo.

Then I came home and carried the plant out to the back garden, where I discovered that my old rhubarb wasn't gone, it was just hiding behind the daffodils that I don't remember planting. Now I have two rhubarb plants. I know that the one I bought yesterday is an old variety (donated to the society by an elderly man who says he got the plant from his mother), but I have no idea what kind I already had in my garden. I've had it for years. I may have to post a sign reading Sandra's Home for Elderly and Anonymous Rhubarbs.

Meanwhile, I still have some of last year's rhubarb in the freezer, so last night's dessert was rhubarb-raisin crisp, oh yumm.

Dessert came only after I went to the theatre again. I went to see Agnes of God at Nanaimo Centre Stage. Three actors this time, playing three characters. I enjoyed the play, but I suspect it will take a long time before anything impresses me the way The Syringa Tree did.

Meanwhile, I see that the Chemainus Theatre is putting on Eugene O'Neill's Ah, Wilderness! later this month. We'll see if O'Neill can come up to scratch. ;>)

Here is the trailer from the movie Agnes of God. They had a lot more actors, a lot more characters. I think I prefer the spare quality of the play. I like being able to use my imagination.