Foods of yesteryear

When you look at today's foods, the ethnic cooking, the diet cooking, the cosmopolitan choices of ingredients available, the prepared foods, the restaurant meals, the foodstuffs of yesteryear are frequently forgotten ! The things we ate during the 2nd world war and the pioneer food and the poor person foodstuffs are of some interest,at least to me. I have tried some of these recipes to take a fresh look at what we ate in those days. Raisin pie was as common as apple pie when I was a kid. No one I know eats raisin pie today but it is an old taste and a good taste, as I found out when I made one. The danger is the pounds it will add. How about Shoo Fly Pie! The pianist and I tried it once. Brown sugar and molasses! When that was what you had, that's what you used. I tried Irish Soda Bread once and cooked it in the fireplace on a grate insert over wood coals. It wasn't bad for someone without yeast. Just a bit labor intensive. Colcannon, I never tried, but I grew lots of kale one year and mixed it in with mashed potato. Delicious. Mock apple pie my mother made a few times. Soda crackers with lemon juice and sugar,a substitute for apples. I made that as well, experimentally . It's a poor substitute for apple pie, but it is surprisingly deceptive. If we were still hungry after supper my mother would say we could have bread and milk. I remember eating bread and milk laced with sugar. It was filling and I liked it. I never had Brewis till we went to Nova Scotia last year and ordered it at a restaurant. It wasn't too bad. I can't make it here on Lotus Island since salt cod is not readily available . I guess when some people talk about plain cooking, at least in those times the plain cooks cooked, which may not always be the case today. Seems to me the more shiny copper tools hanging from the show kitchen rafters, the less cooking is being done. Maybe this inverse assumption is my hangup! I admit it! Let's just say that a standing rib roast with gravy, tarragon roasted potatoes , broccoli cooked "al dente", and deep dish Gravenstein apple pie, cooked in a country kitchen, is not plain cooking by any definition!

Whither Fritz Perls?

I often wonder what remnants of the sixties still can be found in the litter of today's world and its ethos. If you throw enough mud against the wall, will some of it stick? Was it all in vain? Did anything that Fritz Perls talked about at Big Sur result in any long term influence and change our present way of looking at relationships, or was it just jargon? Did Easy Rider or Fellini Satyricon or Blowup strike anyone with a sense of changed perception that lasted? Did Alan Watts, poor man, make any sense to the world, grappling with his identity issues and ours? What about Robert Bly and his male concepts in Iron John? Did this speak to any males seeking to redefine themselves? Is it only Leonard Cohen that is left carrying an old torch? I think not. He still speaks to many. Are there still subversives in the underground that see a way out of today's polarized and hugely structured, in the box thinking? Yes! What ever happened to love when success took over? What ever happened to peace when gratuitous violence took over? What ever happened to freedom when regulation returned? Sure, there was lots wrong with all that earlier stuff. Some people would say, "You must be an old hippy." It was often impractical ,but it had some of the right stuff. It included seeing the divine in your neighbor for all his and your own warts, and caring about it. I hope we can look at the mosaic that is the world and pick out bits and pieces of it that we can say," Here is , 'I have a dream!' " and another that says " Ich bin ein Berliner !" 'The church I go to is trying to get out of the box and seek the core values of loving your neighbor as yourself, and the neighbor is the world and the whole community. It's a start . We want to be part of the mosaic. We are beset with naysayers these days. Whether we can work out of our packaged ideas and open up to life hinges on blind exploration of all parts of the elephant!

Tickle your bum

When I was five years old, my brother Ken had been born, and I went from good, to naughty. I was no longer the center of my mother's universe. We lived at that time, in 1939, in Melfort Saskatchewan, and my father was mostly out of town at work. My mother had a daytime girl to help with the household. At the back of our lot was the outhouse where we did our "business". The outhouse was a one holer and not over a pit but rather over a can that was emptied by the frequent visits of the honeyman. The access to the can was a flap that lifted up on hinges, at the back of the outhouse. The daytime girl who helped my mother came out to do a bit of "business" herself when I and my small friend were playing in the lane. The scene I am about to describe is as vivid now in my mind's eye, as it was at the time! When the day girl was in the outhouse, my little friend and I lifted the back flap, and he held it while we inspected. I can see now, that big bum hanging through the one holer, as if it was yesterday. I tickled it with a long piece of grass which was within easy reach. Then we ran. I can remember her racing out of the outhouse and yelling "I'm going to tell your mother! " I don't remember the outcome. Memory is selective.

Witching

The phenomenon of mind- body interaction is mysterious. When the pianist and I bought our piece of ground on Lotus Island the first job was to look for water. We had use of a jointly owned well but we needed a backup plan. We hired a witcher. There is a reason it is called witching. Moreover, I had seen, " Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House." The dowser came with a witching rod of willow and dowsed in the most likely of places. I expected the process to be amusing and primitive. Sure enough, his dowser dipped and water was found near the surface. Actually, too near the surface to be of use other than a cribbed shallow well for watering the plants. We never bothered to crib it. However I was intrigued and started to dowse myself. I tried forked willow, forked vine maple and a wire coat hanger. If I approached a likely part of the lot where water was possible, all of my witching tools would dip easily and strongly. What was this phenomenon? I do not know. As a scientist it is easy to be skeptical, particularly about other people's inexplicable experiences.One can say,"What benefit will accrue to this person if they are convincing, and is it worth their while to fudge the truth?" Or, one can say, "Is this person sincere but credulous?" Or one can accept that there is a realm of phenomena that appear for which we have no logical explanation. Speculation is not a substitute for explanation. It may be like the Ouija board. A mind-body phenomenon. I am convinced that though my mind said this was nonsense, the body responded as if it wasn't. Cognitive dissonance!

Mother Nature's Garden

In the more bucolic parts of Lotus Island, Mother Nature's handiwork is in full display this morning. The Indian Plum (Oemleria cerasiformis) is in full flower. This small tree or shrub is the first of Mother Nature's to flower. The plum is widespread throughout the island and like us, is not spectacularly beautiful, but is plentiful, durable and fruitful. The Red Alders are abundantly present throughout Mother Nature's plot and the red male catkins are in full bloom. Though the Red Alder (Alnus rubra) is so named because of its red bark, the catkins, when a grove of Alders is seen from a distance, give a beautiful red hue to the landscape. The westerly view from the Fulford harbour ferry is fantastic. Once the leaves emerge the red hue goes. The wild American plum, (Prunus americana) is also in bloom,white flowered,beautiful and abundant. It maybe more of "an escape" rather than Mother Nature's baby. But then, in a way, I suppose we are all "an escape". Over our painted deck the three Western Red Cedars (Thuja plicata) have been dropping their pollen cones for the last two weeks as the little cones detach from the leaf tips. The tiny cones stick to the deck because of the little irregular scalelike shape. They don't seem to provoke much interest from the Oregon Juncos that are making the rounds right now. The cones are so adherent to the deck I can't blow them off with the blower. The air is thick with pollen, the pianist commented to me on the walk yesterday. It has to be the Alders and the Indian Plum as the Maples and Cottonwoods are not in bloom yet. Last year's maple seed cases winged their way onto our shingle roof in the fall and have split and produced hundreds of seedlings growing in the shingle intervals. I hate to disappoint them but the first few dry sunny days and it's curtains for them. Thank goodness!

Knowledge and Judgement

When I was a young man and came to Lotus City to work, I was singled out by some older men after a while ,who told me that I may have current knowledge but that was no substitute for experience, from whence comes judgement. They, of course, had experience! I toiled away and by hook or crook got experience. We surely learn more from our mistakes than our triumphs and it is a leavening experience if you avoid operating by denial. Now that I am old, the young men that surround me are kind, but insist that experience as no useful substitute for current knowledge. What goes around, comes around! At the moment I am reading Harvey Cushing's "Life of Sir William Osler". It was a labor of love since they were contemporaries in the late 19th and early 20th century. The detail of Osler's professional life in the biography is profound. Osler addressed the relationship of knowledge and judgement in this aphoristic style. He said," To study the phenomenon of disease without books, is to sail an uncharted sea, while to study books without patients, is not to go to sea at all". You can substitute patients with farming, building, designing or any other work. We used to say in assessing physicians for registration that they should, " have the skill and knowledge necessary for the practice of medicine". At some point in order to assess judgement as well as knowledge it became necessary to change the phrase to read " bring the skill and knowledge necessary for the practice of medicine". A subtle word change but immense in application. I can recognize the point that Osler has made for me at this stage. I need now to sit on the sea shore, and watch the sailboats negotiate the charted seas.

A place for everything.

If my father said it to me once, he said it a hundred times ," A place for everything and everything in its place!" Since I am now old and haven't much to do,I am able, finally, to follow his advice. In fact, I am now able to deliver the same message to others without a scintilla of shame. "Too soon old, too late smart. " as some crusty sage said. When I was young and busy I never finished a job fully, since the subsequent demands seemed more imperative.I thought I was doing everyone a favor. Things and objects got left behind or lost and the efficency of my work suffered accordingly. No one was getting a favor! The very tool you needed, the essential report that needed finishing, disappeared into the woodwork. Once you found it you didn't need it. The ability to lay your hand on any object, at any time, gives a head start that is invaluable. It can only be done if you avoid fragmentation, learn to say no, and value your time and output. We can only do so much well, and that requires focus. Work habits are as important as knowledge. They go hand in hand. That means work smart. That means " be prepared ". Lord Baden-Powell told us that. Prioritization and finishing the job, at all cost, will give great success. I have seen executives with a desk top full of papers that look like hurricane Katrina has gone by and they seem pleased to display how impressively busy they appear. I know how busy they must be just sorting out what they should have already done. I have seen many an Emergency Room Physician so burdened with competing demands that they become fragmented and make mistakes. In that situation the answer is to slow down, not speed up, triage and keep your cool. Don't let yourself be pushed where you don't want to go. You will end up being the fall guy and no one will thank you.My dad was a railway telegrapher and there were no train crashes on his watch, in his lifetime!

Rags to Riches

When I was about thirteen my father gave me a copy of " Jed, the Poorhouse Boy ". He found it in his father's possessions after the funeral. Horatio Alger Junior had written dozens upon dozens of similar formulaic stories with the theme of rags to riches, or at least, rags to wellbeing, achieved because of goodness and decency. The modern equivalent of "entitlement to advance" is the antithesis of the Alger tale. The Alger theme is embedded in the human psyche, deeply evocative of justice and reward. Many of us are moved by rags to riches stories and want to identify with them, parlously close to fibbing about our origins in order to connect. I remember competing with my colleagues about who came from the most straited circumstances, as a badge of honor. Who walked the furthest through snow to school and who had the most spartan lunch, or for that matter who had lunch at all. Who struggled despite adversity and conquered. It was all more or less sham. There were few Abe Lincolns amongst us. Living in this country, Canada, the adversity is only relative. Horatio Alger's heros were always assisted by a kind and interested older gentleman, an avuncular father figure who selected, our little lad, out of all the other, more ragamuffin, newsboys. One might have considered,given the thematic nature and repetitive story line of needy boy, generous older man, no girls allowed, that Horatio Alger Junior may well have had pederasty as a unconscious subtheme. Living vicariously! We know he took Greek at Harvard. It is pretty certain that he battled his own demons! Still ,at thirteen, I loved the book!

The Talisman

In the Middle English poem- saga Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Gawain is given a sash which purports to guard him from death. A form of Talisman! It corrupted the pure honour to be expected of a knight of the Round Table in the encounter with danger. In their early childhood all three children of the pianist and I had little blankets. Each child reposed in safety only when the blanket was in place. A form of Talisman. Each child had a unique ritual with the blanket which was required to give it power. The first born carefully wrapped the satin edging around his index finger and massaged his upper lip, with the opposite thumb in the mouth. The second born massaged the nostrils with the satin edging, and as well, tickled her nostrils with her hair. The third born tickled her nostrils with a frayed edge of the satin border, and up to age six had one of the pianist's slips later subsituted for the satin lined blanket, often provided by her older sister or the pianist. The ritualistic application of the Talisman provided a refuge from evil. Think of it! We all have a Talisman in some form. Sir Gawain was not immune to his own human nature. There is always a visible representation to an invisible part of us. When I was a little boy my blanket was a part of me I am told.It was ,like the others, an extension of my body; an integral part of me. My mother went on a holiday when I was three and left me in the care of my father's sister Mildred. She apparently said, "You are a big boy now Jim, and you don't need your blanket." Mother gone, blanket gone, I must have grieved and faced the danger alone!

Pickwickian

Observing myself in the mirror, as I frequently do when going out, there are frequently food stains on my shirt or sweater or tie that I had previously overlooked. The pianist has a sharp eye for this sort of mussiness so I am careful to take premptive action. My shape over the years has begun to approach that of Pickwick, and as a result, the frontage I display has become more horizontal than vertical. As such, I rarely get food stains on my trousers because of the overhang. The value of the neck tie has been largely over looked as to its use to clean one's glasses, but more importantly to intercept food droppings on one's shirt. The tendency to avoid ties today amongst public men, who wish to appear like one of the "people", has unfortunately resulted in discarding a useful bib. Pickwick was a man of a particularly mild nature, as I find is generally the case in the plumper members of the human race. Dickens' genial characters in all his novels seem to me to have always been of a more rotund physique than the lean, hungry and intense nature of the villains or the troubled. Compare Mr. Tubman and the fat boy with Mr. Jingle. Reflect on Fagin and Bill Sikes and Daniel Quilp. Not one of them a fat man. Then recall sweet, plump, Mr. Brownlow. This proposition of course could be a rationalization on my part and on the part of Dickens. But, ask yourself, can a man who loves juicy food and eats with relish and joy and dribbles on his clothing be skinny and cranky? I think not! Food and satisfaction are aligned in the psyche!

Shred and Burn

Living as we do in a bucolic rural area, the potential to burn or shred the cellulose we accumulate is optional. The noise of my Bearcat shredder doesn't bother anyone and the smoke raised by the burning of larger wooden limbs and trash wood is not offensive to my distant neighbors. I usually do it on the beach. I like the shredded material because it returns fibre to the soil when composted and it also allows making little pathways which are A -OK on the wet coast. In the wet months I can burn all the paper trash in the incinerator and use the ash in the compost for phosphorous, etc. All told this is a pretty good system if you live in the country. I love power tools for gardening. I couldn't shred or use a blower or my weedeater or power washer in Lotus city without constantly irritating my neighbors who are mostly urban green. I hand turn my compost heap but also use a five horse power Honda tiller to mix it when it starts to return to black. I have to watch that I don't topple off the compost heap with the tiller on top of me. Having the capacity to turn most of the degradable junk back into the ground gives me a feeling of replenishment that is somewhat satisfying. I suppose there is a certain noise pollution and nose pollution and constantly dirty overalls but it's a labor of love. The family will not let me have a chainsaw because they think I will be careless and cut myself so I have given in on that subject with a bit of reluctance. Four fifths of a loaf is better than no loaf.

Sex in the Island

It's spring in Lotus Island and the harbour is abuzz with incipient love making activity! The Oyster Catchers have returned. They never are apart from one another and there is never, ever, group sex among them. They always announce their return with high piping whistling. The Blue Herons are battling for tree space for nesting in the same large Douglas Fir over our studio. My daughter and her friend counted six herons squabbling about which branch should be allotted to them. The pianist thinks some of them are yearlings longing to return to the nest and being kicked out. I'm not sure how many herons constitute a heronry. The diving ducks and mergansers are still waiting the herring return so they can fatten up and go elsewhere for nesting. In the meantime the herring that are on the way to this spawning harbour are getting ready to lay their eggs on the Eel Grass and then be eaten. The harbour seals are about to take pleasure in one another and eat all the herring and any other fish that think there is an easy ride here. If you have a dog in your walk on the beach, the seals follow you with great interest. The small birds in the hedgerow at the beach are busy nest building in the hedge and the little males stand a vigilant guard on top of the spent Black Bamboo stakes that I leave for them. The dabbling ducks (American Widgeons) will eat the Eelgrass with relish once the herring eggs are on it and the gulls and crows, the loose eggs lapping at the shoreline. The pianist is the eagle expert and tells me they are now in the process of nest renewal and refurbishing and will soon continue their connubial relationship. I don't have the time or inclination to subsitute watching Sex in the City.

collagen or cojones

The more euphemistic of us would describe a metaphor for the strong and resilient as in possession of "lots of fibre" (Collagen). It is not sexist and is a more rounded description of the inner toughness of either sex, a feature that many strong women have in spades. I don't just refer to " moral fibre", though that also, but fibre, that is Collagen, is what maintains and provides strength for our structure. It's what holds us together! How really, can " having balls or cojones" provide any quality in describing the strength of the beautiful gender, let alone men? I suppose "having backbone" is an alternative that is apt, as a similar expression, for both men and women. For the orthopedic surgeon, "collagen and backbone" are part of our language and are preferable to the urological terms for toughness or staying power. The orthopedic terms just don't have as much colour. How about "having good ground substance ?" Ground substance is the intercellular material in which the collagen lies. We could say the the strong and resilient have good ground substance. They are "well grounded"! The term "balls " applied to women seems to me a derogation or, if not generally considered so, it should be. Having strong daughters and an equally strong wife I wouldn't dare say they had "cojones". I do know there is always a time to speak and a time to shut up. That time is now! I don't have the cojones!

Saltpetre,gunpowder and libido

I remember from my youth, two brushes of a totally different nature with saltpetre ! There was an abiding mythology in the residences at the university that the food supplied to students in residence was adulterated with saltpetre. That, coupled with the equal myth that saltpetre reduced the libido of the young, was enough to foster a seasoning of mistrust! I was so shy in my first years of university that I would not have recognized saltpetres effect, real or fanciful. Moreover there is no scientific evidence of saltpetre producing a diminution of libidinous height or its implementation. More likely, worry, late nights, loneliness, maladaption and culture shock of the young, were the proximate causes. We never talked much about the suspicion because, in the early fifties we all still did exactly as we were told by our teachers and the institution and believed that they were always right, at least on the surface. The other contact with saltpetre and a more exciting remembrance, is making gunpowder in grade eight with my friends. We mixed saltpetre , ground charcoal, and powdered sulfur in equal proportion 'til the color was a dark and dirty green. I can still see in my mind today the color of our recipe . Little boys blowing up things in the town garbage dump ! What was the druggist,as he was known then, thinking of when he gave us those ingredients? In some ways it must have been a much freer time with less supervision. How we could have avoided blowing ourselves up is even more mysterious. Saltpetre and Brimstone, Sex, and Violence in the dump, Naivety and Innocence in the pediatric age.

The hockey referee

My dad in the 1940's was a hockey referee for intermediate hockey throughout the Province of Saskatchewan, one of the cradles of hockey excellence. He was busy with this job every winter through this period and, though the war was on, there were still first class hockey players of an older and largely, farm generation, that were exempted for various reasons. You can't farm in the winter in Saskatchewan but you can skate, curl, play hockey, listen to the wartime radio news and watch the Movietone News. We lived for sport in the winter. My dad knew the hockey rule book backwards. We lived in Kindersley which was a hotbed for sports. My dad was one of the smoothest skaters I ever saw, and you could see it when he went back and forth following the play. He was totally impartial and on the face of that, his counterparts developed the same degree of resistance to being a "homer". He played hockey as a young man but I don't think he was particularly good, though he would never admit it. Having said all this,if you watch hockey on TV these days, the referees are usually invisible unless they are enjoined in some sort of dispute. Watching the referees when the game is particularly boring; if you focus and make the players invisible, is an interesting gestalt. There is a parallel activity going on, with a novel content, that no one short of the supervisor of referees probably ever sees. The whole is greater than the sum of it's parts. This applies to most stuff! Peripheral vision! Try it! I don't recommend it as a steady diet, but it is an eye-opener. In every job there is an undergirding that performs a unsung and rarely noticed role!

Madonna

She had been sitting for a fairly long period and had to go to the bathroom and her leg kept going to sleep. "Can we take a break?"she asked." " Just a couple of minutes." he said, " I'm tidying up something." A trace of amusement passes her face and she shifts slightly to wait. He looked up just as the wisp of amusement was there and it was imprinted on his unconscious memory. He painted it in. He later showed the portrait to the Pope. "Very average painting " the Pope observed, " but there is something intriguing about the face". Then later he made a fuller comment on the portrait and observed that the enigmatic smile was significant as it reflected a deep, both sorrow and joy, that life and death and goodness and sin were omnipresent as part of the human condition. Centuries later the enigma of the smile continued to confound as gallery travelers marveled at what they were told to see. So, dear Brutus, let us not be airy-fairy, if you hear a chirping in the bush, it's probably a sparrow and not a canary.

Fly Fishing Fiasco

A number of years ago I was captured by the idea of the romance of fly fishing. The thought of immersing myself in the wilds of nature ,wading a small stream, with the finesse brought by casting a dry fly to a rising trout, seemed an experience "du jour" for one of my precious sensibility. Accordingly, I purchased fly fishing tackle for dry fly fishing including the recommended flies for our area. Since I had not done any such casting before, having only experienced trolling a wet fly behind a row boat in the high lakes of the B.C. interior, I resolved to practise casting on our lawn. After several weeks of diligent work I was pleased with my progress and no longer wrapped my line around my head or snagged myself in the trousers. I could cast a fair length and hit a modestly small target area. The pianist and our children arranged a picnic at the Sooke River where trout were known to lurk. Before the picnic meal I donned my gear for wading and proceeded with my tackle and flies. Resting against a tree in the little park were two farmers in coveralls watching me as I cast to and fro with considerable aplomb. I thought they were probably admiring my technique and, perhaps it was, for them, a learning experience. It was clearly a poor fishing day and my efforts were not rewarded. I repaired to the family for our picnic. As the sun started to go down one could see little circles on the smooth flowing river appear. The farmers took off their coveralls and waded into the river under the observant view of my children. They cast hither and yon with practised skill, rendering my feeble efforts a dash of reality. They left as it got dark with several trout each. I was properly chastened, and on a practical note, abandoned further fly fishing to my son.

memory or money

The pianist and I are getting decrepit but not demented. We have "stuff" to unload eventually, whose value is memory, not monetary. Whose memory? Mostly ours. That is the trouble with "stuff". Our stuff becomes a legend in my own mind chiefly because it is a reminder of the events of our life ,ever present icons of the fragments of our existence. "How", someone might say, "can you worship your stuff as you do? You must be some sort of materialist, placing an inordinate value on 'things', rather than proper Christian principals." When we acquired the prized possession of old so-and-so, our relative, in the olden days, we wondered why she made such a fuss of this "thing"! Now I know. Most of the stuff the pianist and I will leave has little monetary value but it is difficult for me to part with it since it contains so many memories. Yet, it will have little value for others. In the mobile society we have today, and the disposable culture we have fostered, there is not an abundance of genuine heirlooms with intrinsic value that are one's own heritage. Sure, if you have enough money you can buy someone else's heirloom, but so what? It comes without your genes attached. I don't want to burden our children with the icons of my memory. I say "fuggedaboudit!" As I have recorded before and bears repeating, (paraphrased) "Don't be like as ass, whose back with heavy ingots bowed,you carry them but a journey, 'till death unloads you." Easier said than avoided!

Gladiolus and Mums

Thirty or forty years ago the gladiolus was a stunning exhibition flower that engaged the best of growers in producing, propagating and hybridizing a truly noble species! The demise of the exhibition gladiolus, and its retreat to third rate florist varieties, is caused by and accompanied with, the demise of the home vegetable and cut flower garden. The gladiolus was never a suitable plant in a landscaping scene and landscaping is now all the rage. Landscaping sells! Zeitgeist rules! It's too bad and the end of an era. Sure, the fall fairs always have a few little exceptions but they really do not rate. In the days of yore my dad could buy large corms of Red Charm from Milton Jack for $ 4.00 a hundred and Elizabeth the Queen for $5.00 a hundred. and so on. With that volume you could produce champion specimens. The range of varieties was huge. Now the only class bulb farm I know of is Summerville's in New Jersey and similar bulbs are that much each. That price just reflects the market and the paucity of fanciers. It's the same with the Chrysanthemum aficionados. The Mum group in Lotus City are a small and talented bunch who grow the most beautiful muted Disbuds you ever saw, but their ranks thin every year despite the extraordinary attempts to recruit new enthusiasts. Again the popularity falls short, due to the need for a vegetable and cut flower garden for champion mums rather than everything dedicated to landscape. It is sad to see a skill sacrificed to the altar of landscape cosmetics. Surely there is room for both styles. If more people were encouraged to grow these flowers again, the cost would be affordable, and the beauty pageants would flower, and the standards would be maintained.

Impetuous gardening

A man without a plan is like Don Quixote mounting his horse and riding off on all directions. A man with a bad plan, is even less better off! I had a wet spot in my garden that was marshy in the winter and so, some time ago, thought I would plant cranberries since they grow well here. The peaty bogs in the Fraser delta grow beautiful blueberries and cranberries and the fields are spectacular in the fall when they turn deep reddish orange. If you are on your way to "Olympic City" from the south, take a detour through the Delta side roads for a visual treat. I phoned a commercial grower to ask what to do to plant a bog and he said they mowed the plants after harvest and I was welcome to cuttings since they threw them away. There is nothing better than free, and he gave me two full garbage bags from his mowing. I built a bed with substantial soil addition in my wet area and spent a long time planting my cuttings in a bed 5 feet by 30 feet. The cuttings were about 4 to 6 inches high. Most of them took but so did the weeds . It was frightful. My little transplants were inundated. The task of weeding was daunting and after a half day of labor and scant inroads I realized I was defeated. Too impetuous. Bad planning. I should have summer fallowed for one or two seasons before starting such a project. Too big a hand in the cookie jar. Eyes too big for the stomache. Besides, I rationalized, "How many cranberries do you really need?" It was really just the idea! Another fruit to grow! Another idea to try! I transplanted my Gunnera into the erstwhile cranberry bed. It's much more user friendly.