Bag of spuds

Photo: the Pier at White Rock, low tide, CT

Summer is the time to enjoy fish and chips on the beach, while sitting in the sun under a brilliant blue sky.

After enjoying the best halibut from Coney Island on East Beach, I visited the convenience. Piled in the hall at the back of the restaurant, I saw something I hadn't seen in a long time.

Bags of potatoes. How wonderful to know that the chips that go with that tasty halibut are made on the premises, from real potatoes.

Canadian railroad era over?

Left:
sign for BNSF  RR Police. 

Right: BNSF engine hauls freight past White Rock Pier


Passing along White Rock beach, it's rare now to see these railcar markings: CPR, CN or VIA. The warning sign suggests the tracks are now controlled by Burlington Northen Santa Fe, whose cars, including this engine, we see passing along White Rock beach while walking or drinking coffee at Whitby's on Marine Drive.

Last time I watched a train go by, there was one lonely Canadian wheat tanker. It seems so recent that those formed the whole train.

Canada no longer has a cross country passenger train, but the Amtrak passenger goes by here in the early evening, heading for Seattle. The sound of its warning whistle evokes an ancient nostalgia.

Crocosmia

Crocosmias are pretty summer perennials that grow from corms. When properly mulched, they are hardy to Zone 5.

The flowers vary in height and can grow quite tall. Mine needed staking.

A native of South Africa, this plant was, according to Canadian Gardening, popular in the Victorian era.

Amazingly, in the Blue Mountains of Australia, it is called by its other name, montbretia, and classified as a noxious weed.

Long-awaited Hydrangea blue

This hydrangea began its life pink, in a pot. After a patient wait while the plant established itself in the garden, I was delighted to see that its first outdoor blossoms were a brilliant blue.

Hydrangeas are usually blue or pink, depending on what's in the soil. By doctoring their soil with different elements, the colour can be altered to suit the gardener's tastes.

I've always preferred the more common blue ones -- at least they are more common in our area, where the soil tends toward acidity, and thus promotes that colouration.

These flowers can be white and also pale green. They come in various flower patterns: lacecap, mophead, oakleaf and more.

Recently a friend received a red one in a pot. She plans to put it in the garden, but the colour may change there once it's exposed to the different soil from that provided by the growers. To keep the flowers red, the soil must be kept very alkaline.

In pots, these flowers are beautiful and long-lasting gifts. In the garden, they are beautiful late summer bloomers that continue to flower right into the fall.

The Assassin's Song by MG Vassangi

The Assassin's Song (Doubleday 2007) is enjoyable, educational and thought-provoking. This novel starts off slow and builds. Early on, I was bogged down by the foreign words the author chose not to italicize. These required effort, but they also added atmosphere; once I got used to them, the story flowed.

Karsan, the protagonist, grows up in the small town of Haripir in Gujarat, India. He is expected to follow in the footsteps of his father, the Saheb, hereditary keeper of the shrine of a (fictitious) Sufi mystic who came from Iran in the middle ages.

With his parents and little brother Mansour, Karsan lives at the shrine and mausoleum of Nur Fazal, the refugee mystic who died in Haripir after a long life of spiritual service. Just as Nur Fazal did, Karsan's father encourages the local people to practice their different religions freely and without friction. More than once, the Saheb defuses conflicts and prevents them from escalating.

But Karsan has other ideas than becoming a Saheb, a god-like figure. On the other hand, his Dad, more concerned with spiritual matters than worldly ones, refuses to let Karsan go to the next town to play cricket. He complies in spite of his disappointment.

But when he earns a chance to study at Harvard on a scholarship, he defies his father and leaves for the US.  He does not believe in his status as a hereditary spiritual keeper of the shrine, and though he respects his father, he rejects his religious destiny. He creates a new life in North America, far from his place of origin.

But life has a way of circling back upon itself. A chance visit to a church basement on Kingsway in Vancouver brings a surprise and evokes memories. Riots tear apart his home state in India, and his father the Saheb is unable to defuse the violence in Haripir.

Returning after long absence, Karsan seeks to discover the fate of his mother and father, and is disturbed when he meets the man his brother Mansour has become. His visit evokes shock, fear, grief and guilt, as well as the need to make decisions. Destiny also brings an ally who helps him come to terms with his past.

MG Vassanji deftly moves his readers from India to New York to Winnipeg to Vancouver. The reader glimpses the history of India, including the painful religious conflicts that led to partition, the spiritual ideals of Sufi mysticism, and much more.

Most of all, through the sympathetic and well-drawn character of Karsan, this story portrays the powerful tensions between tradition and modernity, individuality and family duty, self-determinism and fate.

Awww, they just love me

When the first waitress called me 'my love,' I thought she must be British, but she wasn't.

I wondered I'd done to deserve this effusiveness. Thought it was probably a slip of the tongue -- perhaps she momentarily forgot who she was talking to, mistook me for a friend or relative.

But no. By the time I finished my dinner, she'd used the same phrase twice more, and thrown in a 'darling.' This was beginning to grate: I finished my coffee and left before she could do it again.

A week or so later, the same thing happened again at a different restaurant. Aha, I thought, this must be something they have added to the curriculum at server school.

Decided it couldn't be. After all, this is not France. Serving meals is not considered a profession worthy of training, though we may sometimes wish it was.

But if these waitresses had been products of superior training, they would have been working at an upscale place. They weren't. 

I guess it's just a new meme, like the one that changed the common Canadian greeting "Hi," into the updated American style "Hey." Exactly how these things catch on, I'll never know. You just wake up one day, and they have.

As for these waitresses calling me sweet names, well -- it's all very well to be welcoming. But to call a customer you've never laid eyes on before "my love" or "my darling" as you fill the water glass sounds patently insincere.

In fact, I'd consider it a kindness if they'd restrict their expressions of affection to something a little more restrained.

Neeps and Haggis

Photo: neeps, haggis and tatties (potatoes) from Magnet
  
In Scotland yellow or swede turnips are called neeps. They are mentioned periodically in the books of Alexander McCall Smith, along with other dishes he apparently favours: pasta, halibut, and a special type of scalloped potatoes.

The mashes in the picture above are worthy of The Big Bang, a wonderful but alas now-vanished sausage restaurant in Oxford. The haggis, of course, is another matter, an entirely Scottish thing.

Or is it? For the past fifteen years, Todd Wong, a fifth generation Chinese Canadian and graduate of Simon Fraser University, has celebrated Gung Haggis Fat Choy, a combo celebration of Chinese New Year and Robbie Burns Day.

It's a very Vancouver thing, but Ottawa, Whitehorse and Nanaimo have now tried to imitate it. Incidentally, turnip cake is also a New Year's Food among Chinese, but that recipe is made with a different kind of turnip, a white one.