Our first family vacation

This past weekend, we undertook our first family vacation (trips to Little Rock or Toronto to visit family do not count as "vacations" in my book). And I'm happy to report that despite the rain, there was a superfluity of beautiful vistas, a minimum of tears and even a little relaxation to be found.

We chose to go to Jasper National Park because it's only a four-hour drive from Edmonton and as such was the only vacation destination that didn't require taking a toddler on a plane. Also, we'd lived in Alberta for two-and-half years and had yet to see the Rockies, which, I understand, is the main benefit of living in Alberta. And true to its reputation, Jasper was the most pristine, awe-inspiring landscape I have ever seen. It also turned out to be a great place to take a toddler.

Colin had a blast hiking the nature trails all by himself--although he did keep trying to jump off the cliffs (oops). He loved soaking in the Miette Hot Springs and throwing rocks into the crystal-clear waters of Patricia Lake. He was even on his best behaviour when we visited the tony Jasper Park Lodge to catch the final minutes of the World Cup.

I think what made the trip such a success--rather than the tantrum-soaked disaster it might have been--was the fact that we rented a well-equipped bungalow at the centrally located Patricia Lake. Jasper is a big park--I mean big--but we were never more than 45 minutes from any destination, so we spent a minimum amount of time in the car. The resort itself offered a quiet lake and lots of beautiful trails, so we were able to do most of our hiking right outside our backdoor. And because our bungalow had a fully-equipped kitchen, we were able to eat all our meals "at home." Colin's not so great at restaurants right now.

Needless to say, the trip was not the rugged wilderness experience that draws most vacationers to Jasper, but it was perfect for our family right now. I'm sure that we will be heading back next year, if not before. However, Kevin and I already have our sights on a date sometime in the future when we can explore the more rugged outback of Jasper on our own, without kids in tow. But first, I may need to brush up on my wilderness skills so that I will stop mistaking every loon call for a wolf's howl and every tree stump for a grizzly bear.

For more pictures and their descriptions, check out my Flickr set.

Westmount

It's the time of year that Edmontonians love the most -- high summer! (And perhaps the only time of year that it's possible to love Edmonton.) The temperature is a perfect 75 degrees. The sun stays up until 10:00 p.m. And every flower in every garden is in full bloom: roses, daisies, petunias, peonies, delphiniums ... I try to take as much advantage of the good weather and the blooming flowers flowers as I can, so every evening after dinner I tie Colin to my chest and take Remy by the lead, and we go walking for an hour or two to enjoy the beauty of Nature and of the City.

If you had asked me this time last year what I thought of Edmonton, I would not have said anything remotely positive. In fact, I said some pretty nasty things (not that anyone was asking). Although I stand by my general critique of the city (that it is sprawling, has no trees or street life, and its houses are all ugly and overpriced), I am a little embarrassed by such an attitude now, because, in fact, there are few places in the city that are lovely, and I'm now lucky enough to live in one of them.

Westmount, as my neighborhood is known, is a little neighborhood of just six square blocks, with old houses, tree-lined streets, three playgrounds, an elementary school, and lots of lovely neighbors. That may not sounds like much, but it Edmonton it's pretty rare. Unlike the new subdivisions, where most Edmontonians live, Westmount has on-street parking, so the houses look like houses, instead of enormous garages with some living space tacked on as an afterthought. And unlike the new subdivisions, Westmount has sidewalks, so there's actually a lot of foot traffic. We know most of our neighbors because we meet them every evening when everyone goes out for a walk. And unlike anywhere else in town, Westmount also has trees -- old, leafy, hardwood trees -- perhaps the most sought-after feature in a prairie city with sunny, cloudless skies.

But my favorite thing about Westmount is the old architecture: noble, two-story Victorians with open-air porches and real glass windows. (That may sound like a strange detail to fixate on, but most houses in Edmonton have plexi-glass windows, which make them look like cheap plastic dollhouses.) In particular, there are two streets, 125th and 126th streets, that are zoned the "Westmount Historical District," and if I squint really hard, I can almost imagine I'm back home in Little Rock's Quapaw Quarter.


Alas, we do not live on either of these streets. We rent a few blocks over in a tiny little flat-faced house that was probably built in 1948. In fact, most of the houses in Westmount look like ours, and on our street there are no less than a dozen such houses with the exact same exterior and floorplan. In earlier times, I would have turned up my nose at such architectural monotony, and I would have thought houses like ours cramped and dismal. In fact, the rooms are a little cramped, each about four feet shorter on either side than they should be, but that is neither here nor there.

Had I been offered a house to rent in our neighborhood on first moving to Edmonton from Germany, I'm sure I would have echoed the horror uttered by of some of my favorite authors upon seeing North America after long sojourns in Europe: "Oh, the wild disheveled, backwoods look of everything when one firsts comes home" (Edith Wharton), "What monstrous ugliness!" (Henry James), "The Americans have an unequalled genius for making everything hideous!" (Vita Sackville-West). But I suppose it's a testament to just how beat-down I was last year, that I now look at my tiny, flat-face little house, and all the other, identical flat-faced little houses in my neighborhood, and I feel that I have died and gone to heaven. I mean, it could just be so much worse...


The only bittersweet note in my otherwise unqualified rhapsodies about Westmount is the fact that Kevin and I could never afford to own a house here. Not even our tiny, flat-faced little house. Although very few people in Edmonton seem to share our preference for tiny old houses on leafy streets close to the city center, enough of them do that they have bid up the prices in our neighborhood to exorbitant rates. The houses on 125th and 126th Street sell for $600,000 to a cool million. Little houses like ours start at $400,000 -- that's $400 a square foot ... starting price -- and most of them need extensive renovations on top of that. We've run the numbers every which way, and under no circumstances--short of a windfall like Kevin winning a Nobel Prize or me writing a best-selling novel--could we make a mortgage on such a house and still be financially responsible. And after watching the heart-wrenching housing bust in the U.S., we are committed to only buying a house if it's truly financially responsible for us.

So, we've looked into other neighborhoods, "younger" neighborhoods with no trees and no sidewalks, neighborhoods where we don't want to live anyway, but even there the starting price on a three-bedroom house is $400,000. $400,000 just seems to be the magic number in Edmonton; and it just seems like an impossibly high number for a city where we don't really want to be living in the long-term. It's difficult, though, to pull back from a decision -- buying a home -- that everyone else at our stage of life seems to be making. Somehow they can make the numbers work, why can we?

But every time I start to feel sorry for myself, I just try to remember that we live in a beautiful little house, in the greatest neighborhood in Edmonton, and we pay half as much in rent as we would for a mortgage on it. What's so bad about that? And just to strengthen my resolve, I repeat a little mantra I learned from a friend of a friend, a very successful artist who could buy any house he wanted but instead chooses to rent: "Home ownership is a Western construct." Then I say it again for good measure, and I tie Colin to my chest, grab Remy's leash, and we head out the door.

Remy, Colin and me on the trail...

A "pretty-ish sort of little wilderness" near our house ...

Turrets and delphiniums on 126th street ...

A path "littered" with roses...

Red beebalm and blue delphiniums, a perfect combination...

A wildflower garden...

The branches of the birch-willow...

I had never seen a red house until I came to Edmonton, but there are quite a few of them here. I think it's because the red is such a cheerful soldier against the long, white winter...

Remy is afraid of this cat...

Remy thinks they built this obstacle course just for him...

Another colo(u)rful house...

You can't buy canopy like this... or maybe you can, for $400,000+

The winner of the "Best Garden" contest ... Can I tell you how much it means to me that there is such a contest in Westmount?

Flower Power

Nothing improves a bad mood like fresh flowers. It's been a rough couple of weeks here, in terms of the good ole work-life balance, but nothing lifts me up like coming home to see a vase of fresh flowers on my dining room table -- that and the smiling face of my little boy, of course!

Last week my vase held roses, and the week before that it was lilacs, but this week, peonies were in season, and every flowerbed in Edmonton seemed to sport at least six dozen of them. This amazes me, as they can't be grown in Arkansas. Even in Boston, they were $5 a head, so I could never afford more than one. Well, last week, I bought a dozen for $10 at the St. Albert farmers' market -- such riches! No doubt they'll be gone in a few days, their gaudy pink heads having toppled over under their own weight and crashed onto the dining table in a shower of confetti, but what a show it will be!

Next week, irises, perhaps?

Rhubarb and Roses

Kevin and I have been trying to eat more seasonally and locally (no small feat here at Latitude 53), and there is nothing that says "summer" in Alberta better than roses and rhubarb pie. I plucked both the roses and the rhubarb from an obliging field near our house -- talk about eating locally (and cheaply)!

Another seasonable treat? Dining al fresco on our newly repainted deck!

The remedy for a bad day ...

... a crystal rose bowl full of lilacs on your bedside table.

Winter Walks

It may already Spring in Arkansas, but it's still winter in Edmonton. Just as my mother called to tell me that the jonquils were blooming and it was "shorts weather" back home, another six inches of snow began falling here. However, just because we're up to our ankles in white stuff doesn't mean we can't enjoy the out-of-doors. Indeed, one of the few things that's gotten me through this long winter is the joy of long winter walks. Most afternoons I head down to the river valley and walk some portion of its wooded trails. Wiley Mother Nature made the steep bluffs of the Old Saskatchewan inhospitable to development, and so roughly 200km of river front right in the middle of town remains untouched. (Otherwise wiley developers would have long ago dotted such prime real estate with shopping centers and strip malls.)

Except for the occasional hum of traffic in the distance you would never know you were in the heart of downtown. The woods along the river are dense with fir and spruce and birch and poplar, and their snowy branches muffle every sound but birdsong. Chickadees, magpies, and even woodpeckers are available in profusion. There are deer and beavers, too, although the only sign of their presence is a fallen tree or a set of footprints in the snow.

I never thought that my move to Edmonton, a city of over one million, would take me "back to Nature," but it has. So even if the city doesn't have art or culture or nice weather, at least there are some compensations.

The Color Purple

Epiphany. Twelfth Night. Dreikönigstag. Whatever you call it, the sixth of January is synonymous with the color purple. At least in my mind it is. Maybe it's because, as acolytes, we always wore purple robes on on this Sunday. Royal purple for the Christ child, or was it for the "three kings of orient"? I can't remember, but I remember that color purple. It was my favorite color when I was a girl -- the favorite color of all little girls, I suspect -- and consequently, Epiphany Sunday was my favorite Sunday of the year.

Instead of worshiping in a proper sanctuary this morning, I headed out to a garden center on the outskirts of town, my preferred place of worship. Back in Boston, Sunday was always the day my best friend Sarah and I would make our pilgrimage to Russell's Garden Center in Wayland -- the Mecca of garden centers. Sarah and I share a first name and a love of all things green, and so it was a little sad today to be making this trek without her.

To make matters worse, garden centers are pretty sad places in Edmonton in January. Few of them open their doors between October and May, when the greenhouses are all shut up, but those that do stock little more than a few forlorn houseplants and old Christmas greenery. However, after a week of seeing nothing but white, I'm hungry for a little green ... and a little red and yellow and blue if they have any.

Today I was on a mission for bulbs: red Amaryllis, yellow daffodils, Dutch blue hyacinths, etc. Bulbs are the miracle of winter: For an ugly onion-like thing to produce such a riot of color and fragrance during the darkest months of the year, with nothing but a little soil and some water, is nothing short of divine.

But the sales assistant told me I was out of luck: "All the bulbs were bought up back in December." December, when, if I had so much as thought about buying bulbs, it would have caused an international incident, moving as I was from Germany to the States and then to Canada. And so goes another year without bulbs.

Sensing my disappointment, the salewoman added hopefully, "I might have some dwarf iris in the back." And indeed, she returned a moment later with a little four-inch pot of dwarf iris, their pale green shoots barely poking out of the dirt. They're not much to look at now, but I know that in a week or two their buds will open up like "purple butterflies," as Beverley Nichols, another lover of irises, described them. "And the winged petals, so delicately folded, throbbed in the sunlight, that filtered through their green casings, and the purple deepened, and their myriad eyes of tawny gold opened wider and wider (A Village in a Valley, 1934)."

Irises, even the dwarf varieties, are one of the few flowers that bloom that deep, ecclesiastical purple, and so, consequently, they were my favorite flower when I was a little girl. Although my preference might have had something to do with the fact that they always seemed to bloom just in time for my birthday in late April, and my mother would always set out a big vase full of them on that day, just for me. Whatever the reason, it seems a miracle to have this token of spring on my desk all January long, while outside the landscape is a blur of white.