It is summer…I sit out on the deck enjoying the heat. No complaints from me. As a previous travel agent’s wife, I know that in months people will be paying thousands of dollars to sit in Florida, Arizona or Hawaii, to have a day like today.

I visited my friend Anne recently. She is the one who is such a good cook and has a spotless kitchen. We talked about our school years and the things we loved best about those long ago days. She said she liked Chemistry. Ah, so that explains it.

I have some photos of myself as a young girl, standing in the back garden. I liked the garden, there was always something to eat there…fresh peas, new carrots and raspberries.

I just finished cleaning out the pantry! To many of you that means nothing but to most homemakers (men can be homemakers too) cleaning out the pantry is a full day’s job.

Contrary to popular opinion, most of us spend our days looking down on things. From the first time our rounded, chubby limbs lifted us upright, we have viewed the world from this perspective. Sometimes there are advantages to reversing that process, even for a few minutes.

Baby oil, to wipe down that dry, dry skin that comes with the passage of years, face moisturizer to keep the wrinkles at bay, deodorant to ensure I don’t offend anyone, mousse to mock the prairie winds, that can make me look like a witch without a broom…and I haven’t even got dressed yet.

Being a writer is not a career choice for the faint-hearted. There is a lot more to it than putting words on paper (or your computer screen). It takes courage to share what your ideas are and then there are all the extra crosses you have to bear…with computers there is help with spelling and grammar but I still recall that writing course I took years ago and the red comments at the top of my typewritten assignments…humbling, so humbling.

Unlike my husband who lived to eat, food is not high on my priority list.

My computer tells me that Ingestion is “to take in and absorb.” The other day I read that someone had complained that a book was just full of words. Equally so, a church is just full of people or a grocery store is just full of food.

I tend to read the paper online and find it works for me and I no longer have to recycle all that paper. Today one of the articles mentioned a Golf Tournament being held in remembrance of an old friend from the past.

Coloured Easter eggs fill my Facebook. My grandson’s family is Ukrainian and this is the season for all those beautiful eggs to appear.

Most of us have a pretty good idea of what we want out of life…our destinations are there, but how we get there is often a mystery.

“Is that the boat we are taking to Europe?” I asked my husband. He glared at me. “It is a ship, not a boat,” I was informed. Regardless, it didn’t really matter for I was deadly sea-sick for seven days.

My father died when I was 15 years old. He had spent a good deal of his life away from our home as he worked on the C.P.R. After his retirement I had little time for him.

Most of my associates these past few years have been widows. Long gone are the together times I had with Harry and probably didn’t appreciate near enough. But my glass is half-full (rather than half-empty) because of these wonderful ladies who keep in touch. They care and they understand.

Ah yes, ”Far away places with their strange sounding names,” were a part of my life for 20 years. I think I have been to 26 places in the world. I wish I could remember accurately what I really saw. In checking my old photos, one beach looks very much like another. Yes, having a travel agency kept us on the move.

“Bereft”…isn’t that a lovely word? A bit old fashioned but sometimes the “old” words speak more plainly. And yes, I am bereft. My dear friend Mary is moving away.

After our church renovations the congregation put in the very special glass-stained window that had been originally installed in the old church in 1940. It is of Jesus knocking at the door and is beautiful!

I lifted the heavy, black binder from the box and set it on the table nearby. I hadn’t looked in it for years. It holds love letters…no not from my husband, they are in another place. These are love letters from my granddaughter.

‘Of the making of many books, there is no end’, so states Ecclesiastes 12:2. And I am so glad there is no end, for as long as there are people there will always be stories and as long as there are stories there always will be books.