Mea culpa – it has been a long time since I did the 21st century equivalent of putting pen to paper. I’m not sure that having all this instant technology is helping matters much, actually. It’s not as though booting up the computer takes any longer than uncapping a pen, or that the process of writing is any quicker via keyboard than it is in a notebook. Not at my typing speeds, at least, and I find that the ends of the three fingers I actually use prefer me to be using a pen anyway.

Writing is a slow process at the best of times. I find it difficult to record things at a speed that outstrips my ability to think, irrespective of the medium I am using. There is also the question of brain capacity, which I am convinced reduces with age! I used to be able to handle thinking about ten things at once, now I’m lucky if I can get to half that number.

And that’s my excuse for such a length of time between blog posts! The Cat Days of Winter continued through until the beginning of March, which followed tradition and folklore to come in like a lion and leave like a lamb. If you’ve been following Grandview Gardens on Facebook you’ll have seen my photographs of the early spring flowers starting to break through.

At the beginning of March, I went to Montreal for a conference, which was good, and then from there to St. John’s in Newfoundland. I was part of a panel put together to conduct a review of the Faculty of Education at Memorial University. The first day went okay but then we got hit by a massive snowstorm that dumped 80+ cm over 48 hours. Everything shut down, not only for the storm but also for the digging out, and so I spent three days in a hotel room talking to people by Zoom. Sigh. Eventually I got home, and then spent the next month doing make-up interviews with all the people we hadn’t met during the site visit.

We had a couple of snowstorms here this winter, but nothing too extravagant, and like most of the planet each month has been warmer than the last, and often the warmest on record. That’s probably the reason we’re having our spring flowers so early, at least by PEI standards. It doesn’t bode well for the fire season, with the debris from Hurricane Fiona still piled up all over the island. We might have a good warm summer, though. Which would be nice.

April came with showers for many places, but the clouds were absent on Monday 8th, when we experienced a solar eclipse. The western end of the Island was going to experience totality, so Victoria and I drove up there with our special eclipse glasses held carefully in hand. The road was great until we got to Summerside, where we joined a massive traffic jam of other solar seekers. We left the highway and made our way along smaller roads to the small port at Cape Egmont, about 30 km from Summerside. Approximately 100 people joined us on the beach or jetty, with a glorious view over the Gulf.

Words can’t really describe the event. Think of every superlative you can and apply it to the experience. Just wondrous.

I’m still failing retirement, I’m afraid. My interim gig as Dean of Education at Yorkville University, which started last summer and was supposed to be “just for a couple of months while we get things sorted out,” continues to this day. There is a new Vice-President now, to whom I’ve expressed my concerns, so hopefully I’ll be able to get back to writing my novels soon. And planning this year’s garden party.

Amazingly, July marks the 50th anniversary of when I graduated from teacher’s college and started out into the world with the vague idea of trying to make it a better place. I’m hoping to celebrate my ‘final retirement’ to coincide with the anniversary of my first job. I think that’s something to celebrate. We’re not getting any younger and have all had the unfortunate experience of losing good friends and family suddenly and without notice. It seems appropriate to take full advantage of what time we have left.

July is high summer here on Prince Edward Island and for the last 7 years I have hosted a garden party on the last Sunday in July. It has always been a fun afternoon, with music to accompany the tours of the garden, and sixty or seventy people usually turn out for it. This year I am going to ramp it up a little, rebrand it as they say, and host a 50th Anniversary Party.

I am hoping to have people from all parts of my life as an educator and so far I know that there will be guests from England (with whom I went to Teacher’s College), Australia (with whom we taught in Papua New Guinea), Ontario (with whom we taught in northern Saskatchewan and Baffin Island), and Calgary (with whom I worked there and in Kosovo). I’m still working on trying to find people from the Afghan project, and all the other corners of my life … If you’re reading this then you’re one of them, and if you are able to join the party, let me know – you’re invited!