Hello Blog Friends, welcome to July!
Here we are at the second holiday weekend of the summer. In recent years I have become more ambivalent about Canada Day, as someone who has cultural roots in one of the countries who “discovered” the Americas, I feel ashamed of the indignities and brutalities that were inflicted on the indigenous peoples who had populated these continents for millennia. I love this country and am proud to be a Canadian, although burdened by the weight of the past injustices inflicted by our ancestors.
One of the most special opportunities to practice reconciliation and to offer something tangible to First Nations communities has been, for me, the amazing privilege of sending our Day Camp teams to many Reserves in 4 provinces of Canada. These teams were trained to go and work alongside the elders of these communities, to be respectful, affirming, and thankful for the unique experiences they enjoyed and to learn from the children as well as to serve them. The many impactful stories brought back and shared by team members form such an important chapter in the history of Day Camps and I am forever grateful and humbled for having been able to be a part of building ties with these communities. All that to say, I have never been interested in attending flag-waving parades or shooting off fireworks to celebrate Canada Day 😊.
Of course this holiday always came smack bang in the middle of Day Camp training and caused various difficulties as some churches thought it pointless to try and run the program on July 1st since no campers would come. We no longer have that problem and so I have spent this week troubleshooting more issues around technology! I think we should start adding “ one nerdy teenager” to the Supply List for Day Camps, as it is obvious that the learning curve is too steep for some of the volunteers tasked with running PowerPoints or downloading PDF files, sigh (end of short rant 😊).
This week I also prepared the agenda for next week’s Day Camp committee meeting and, in so doing, took some time to revisit the questions posed on the grant application, which we will soon begin to tackle. And, yesterday we received another purchase of our Come Together e-book, this time from the UK, Yay! It had been several months since we had a “sale” so it was exciting to send another copy off to a church in Devon.
Outside of the Day Camps bubble, I completed sewing the first of my two new summer dresses and cut out the second one. Jessica has very kindly offered to find me some good quality thread to sew the second one as I was at the point of having to order it online since there is nowhere in this neighbourhood where one can purchase a spool of decent thread. She may be dropping by with it later today as she is out and about on errands 😊. Evenings, I completed the first of the shawlettes that are on my Christmas gift list, wound another skein of wool and cast on the second pattern!
There was only one lunch visitor this week, after last week’s flurry of activity. Committee member, Mikaela came on Wednesday and we enjoyed a platter of cold noodles in peanut sauce with mango green tea and chocolate cupcakes with orange icing for dessert. Mikaela was on a lunch break from work and so couldn’t stay too long but it was great to enjoy an in-person chat.
Thankfully we have had a bit more rain this week but also suffered through several days with seriously poor air quality resulting from the wildfires still burning in Northern Québec. The garden is looking nice and lush and there are many lilies just beginning to bloom, adding bright spots of yellow to all the green foliage. I love Asian Lilies but they can be tricky to grow here since the arrival of lily beetles, which chew through the plants, causing devastation. Fortunately they do not attack Day Lilies so those blooms are safe. It is quite wet outside today so it looks as if there won’t be much gardening happening, however there is a long list waiting for today’s Bake so I had better get started.
Last week I baked a really good rhubarb pie from the Simply Seasons Mennonite Cookbook. Since it is rhubarb season in the northern hemisphere I’ll share it with you:-
Rhubarb Pie
- 2 eggs
- 1 cup raw cane sugar
- 3 Tbsps. flour
- ¼ tsp. salt
- 3 cups diced rhubarb
- grated rind of 1 orange
- 1 unbaked, 9” pie shell
Beat the eggs and mix well with all the other filling ingredients. Pour into the pie shell and bake for 10 minutes in a preheated 425ºF oven. Reduce the temperature to 350ºF and continue baking for 30 minutes or until set.