Summer musings

My friends and I planned to go to City Cinema to see Little Lorraine, the drug-smuggling movie set in Cape Breton, but we waited too long and it was sold out. I studied The Buzzfor an alternative cultural experience and settled on a Sirens concert at UPEI. Excellent choice. 

These women can sing! Joni Mitchell, Fleetwood Mac, Adele… it was a great evening, emotional at times, for who doesn’t get caught up in “Come gather round people, wherever you roam, and admit that the waters around you have grown.” [Bob Dylan] As a bonus I got to sit next to my friend’s beautiful 92-year old mother from Newfoundland… which made me miss my own dear mother—music can do that—but that’s another story. 

I recently listened to the audiobook of Robinson Crusoe and enjoyed it so much I went on Libby [provincial library on-line] to burn my way through the written words. Published in 1719, possibly the first English novel ever written, this spellbinding tale of shipwreck and survival makes me want to re-read old classics that I devoured as a child: The Three Musketeers. A Tale of Two Cities. Pride and Prejudice. Summer doesn’t leave much time for this but I’m trying to read more books, less online news.

Still, like everyone else I’m addicted to the internet, and hated it when the router turned red and there was no quick fix. We briefly considered changing service providers. There are two choices in rural PEI, so I phoned the other one… and reached a call centre in Morocco. “Thanks anyway,” I told the gentleman on the other end. “I guess I’ll stick with what I have.” Somehow I can’t see myself solving the internet problems of Morocco; not sure they do it for Canada.

Walking buddy Kay saw on Pinterest that, when cleaning berries for jam or a Strawberry Social (we’re having one in the Cove next month), you shouldn’t throw away the strawberry tops. Keep your clippings, cover them with apple cider vinegar, marinate a few days, strain, and presto! Strawberry-flavoured vinegar. Think I’ll try this. 

I made elderberry syrup in early June. Picked some fragrant white elderflowers, made a sugar syrup, chopped up two lemons, stirred the whole business together and put it in the fridge for a few days to consider its fate. Now filtered and residing in attractive bottles, it has become a forest-flavoiured potion that raises soda water to a whole new level.

So much free food for the taking. What with brewing raspberry leaf tea, making lilac flower jelly, and adding nasturtiums and daylily blossoms to salads, I could be trapped in the kitchen experimenting and snacking all summer long. But these long days of sunlight are precious. I also need time to bike down sun-dappled back roads, swim across the Cove at sunset, watch a rousing ball game in Summerside, and sing with my friends around a campfire. The Sirens concert reminded me how music can reach right inside a person and tug at those heartstrings. It felt good; I want more. 

And of course I still want to see Little Lorraine.