It Grew In My Kitchen!

 

             

                                                     

If you haven't watched mushrooms grow in your kitchen (on purpose), you have missed one of the good experiences                    of life. 

I have always wanted to grow my own mushrooms. At Christmas, my dream  came true. My gift was an oyster mushroom growing kit! It is from a company called Back to the Roots and—none of this waiting till tomorrow business—I started it off that very evening.            

Just to be clear:  this interest in fungi didn’t just pop up overnight like the fairy rings on my lawn. The line, “Boys, grow giant mushrooms in your basement” , from Ray Bradbury’s science fiction story “Come into my Cellar” has stuck with me since first year university. 

And toadstools with the red caps and white speckles are a symbol of good luck and have been featured in our garden for several years

                                         

When we first moved to Stouffville, we were amazed to see soccer ball-sized puffballs growing in the back yard. A few years later we leaned a couple of shiitake mushroom logs from the Fun Guy in Goodwood against the house, and got several harvests. We even picked a few crops of clitocybe nuda (I have no idea how to pronounce that) AFTER  checking them out with an artist friend, Abel Lee, who used to pick mushrooms in Estonia.

So with all this leading to that Christmas evening, I read the directions on the package: I made a couple of cuts in the plastic bag holding the growing medium. Then I raked it up with a fork (reused plastic fork, natch), and put the kit on my buffet. All I had to do for the next week was spritz it a couple of times of day with the cute little sprayer that is included. 

Then I waited. I made sure to pass the buffet several times a day—even if it required a detour. It drew me like a magnet. As the days neared the one-week mark, that stuff inside the box appeared a little lumpier. Then it  began looking sort of alien, like something out of a science fiction movie.

                                                

                           

On the seventh day, that alien stuff turned into wee baby mushrooms. My farm had started to ‘pin’!

Four days is all it took for those ‘pins’ to  turn into full-fledged oyster mushrooms. You could almost see them grow.

I picked a couple of handfuls and sautéed them with red peppers and onions. Delicious!

Better yet, I had become a mushroom farmer! The information pamphlet is written for school-age students and includes a word search (did that successfully), a quiz (probably got a passing mark) and an on-line curriculum (learned a few fun fungus facts). Did you know there are around 10,000 kinds of edible mushrooms?  I didn’t either. I haven’t completed the curriculum yet, but don’t worry, I didn't have to pass a test. 

So until I receive my next mushroom growing kit, I will head to my local supermarket to do all my mushroom foraging--and see if I can complete my mushroom growing curriculum.

I found the curriculum and other information at www. backtotheroots.com

Demoralized Pantaloons and Christmas Carrots

 

So this is my spring gardening blog.

No my sundial didn’t break: I had really good intentions to sit down and write, but the garden got in the way and time marched on. All our produce is now picked, packed, jarred and bagged. 

Except for the Christmas carrots. They are cold-stored in a couple of large plant pots. The garden also gave us cabbages, onions and potatoes for our Christmas dinner and part of the winter, too. 

I find it mind-boggling that these veggies were once just a tiny handful of seeds. The other flowers and vegetables were just teeny-weeny seedlings. The potato plants were, well, potatoes.

There must be some life lessons in that garden somewhere. Despite hair-raising events broadcast on the news every day and a pandemic with no visible expiry date, the plants weren’t fazed. They grew. They had their work to do as they had for millennia.

So did my husband and I. While we hoed, raked, weeded, watered, and prayed to the plant gods, I couldn’t help thinking about something an old Upper Canada gardener wrote in 1884.  All his hard labour that year, he opined, resulted in “…one case rheumatism, one ditto lumbago, one pair demoralized pantaloons, two pairs second hand shoes .…, half-a-dozen sickly onions, two bunches lettuce, five stalks of rhubarb, and a half-bushel of potatoes.” *

Although we did a little better than that, I’m sure I was channelling that stalwart early pioneer as I picked what I thought were 8,634 weeds out of the carrot patch. Weeding the carrot patch is urgent. Otherwise weed roots become like steel cables, and it’s ‘hasta la vista, carrots”.

Then there was that dry spell in August and we experienced the ‘droops’. That is, I turned my back on the hanging baskets for more than an hour and they wilted; a little longer than that and “crispy” would be a fair description—which was two small steps removed from “dead”.

My husband has always tried to handle the insect residents in the garden in the most ecological way. Take potato beetles. Please take them!

So he tried hand picking, washing them with a soapy mixture (I think I heard them laughing), and then finally he had to resort to higher technology. It involved a dead ringer for R2D2’s older cousin, circa 1973. It had been abandoned along a roadside in the form of one of those loud metal canister vacuum cleaners.  My husband diligently vacuumed the garden several times a week for quite some time. Our neighbour kept looking over the fence. I was afraid he might phone someone in authority to assess the situation (and my husband). However, we have been potato beetle-free for at least a decade. 

The local deer enjoyed eating the top off our young red maple tree. It stayed unnaturally short for several years. What I took to be a relative of Wiarton Willy liked to upend a wire enclosure that we had around the eggplants to protect them. He ate the eggplant, left the purple rind, and put the enclosure down. At least he was neat, if not polite.

And don’t get me started about the bunnies. It’s amazing how fast a man can run to try to shoo them out of the veggie patch. One year we were helped out by a neighbourhood fox. One fox equalled zero bunnies, for that year.

Now with Christmas approaching, I look back on our gardening adventures and think, “Are we nuts?”

But here we are looking forward to having homegrown fresh vegetables as part of our Christmas meals and have a supply of homegrown food in our freezer to boot.

Since we haven’t done any garden chores for awhile, the pantaloons appear less demoralized. I have already started to see seed catalogues on-line. Everything looks so great in them, so perfect, so bug-free.

Maybe tending a garden is like giving birth:  we have short memories when it comes to pain. But what a reward!

Merry Christmas, everyone. Have a great holiday and try to help each other—and keep looking forward to the seed catalogues of the spring.

**the ‘demoralized pantaloons’ quote is from a book called Consuming Passions, Eating and Drinking Traditions in Ontario. It was published by The Ontario Historical Society in May, 1989,

Will you advocate for Jason Rumball and organ donations?

 

                                                               Photo credit: Jason Rumball

 Jason Rumball, who is from Stouffville, is keeping his fingers crossed that this time he can find a new life-saving kidney—pronto. Although pronto hardly describes how things work in the world of organ donations and transplants.

So how is Jason doing? Right now, it’s still back to the past for the local Whistle Radio DJ/producer. Back to the restricted diet, back to not being able to do everything he wants, back to operations and back to that dialysis clinic three times a week. He’s at the clinic for four hours each time, hooked up to a hemodialysis machine by all kinds of tubes to clean life-threatening toxins from his blood. An AV fistula where a surgeon will connect a vein and artery in his arm is needed. It’s not an easy thing to endure. To get a small glimpse of Jason’s life with dialysis, check out the trailers for a documentary called “8: The Gift of Life”  produced by Toronto film maker Nadia Zaidi, of Reel Voice Productions. The "8" refers to the up to eight people who can be helped by one organ donor. You can find the trailers on his Jason Rumball Needs a Kidney Facebook page (click “Discussion”). Keep checking back to see when the documentary will air.

 

Jason has been undergoing dialysis for one year and nine months already.

This time around he’s looking for someone to help him: to help tell the story of the triumphs and the camaraderie, the frustrations, the wait times people have to endure to save their lives or at least make them much more livable, what donors experience and more.

And the advocate (or advocates) would help not only him, but “…I also want these actions to help others waiting for lifesaving organs,” he shared on Facebook.

Through the years, he has been doing his utmost to bring his story to as many people as he can through social media, including his Jason Rumball Facebook page, Jason Rumball Needs A Kidney on Facebook, and on Twitter. He tells his story with organizations such as the York Region Gift of Life Association and the Transplant Ambassador Program (ambassador.ca), which connects people undergoing the transplant journey with those who have been there.

Jason hopes that raising awareness of organ transplants may encourage people to get tested to see if they are a match. “The more awareness the better,” he says. 

He is again seeking a living donor. Why? He told me the wait for a kidney from a deceased donor is six to nine years!

“I do not want to be on dialysis much longer…I want that kidney asap!”, he says

He has already waited the same length time he did 21 years ago when he received that first marvellous kidney from his sister, Rachelle Nurnberger. It served him well for almost 20 years. She made her surprise announcement at his 23rd birthday celebration.

If you want to help advocate for Jason and the organ donation cause, contact the Reel Voice production team at 

Reelvoiceproductions@gmail.com

If you are considering organ donation or have questions, you can contact Jason through Facebook. 

Jason Rumball: On the Lookout for a New Kidney

The search for a new kidney is on for a second time for Jason Rumball.

The Stouffville volunteer and radio host is keeping everyone up to date throughout his sometimes hair-raising, sometimes emotional quest on his Facebook page at Jason Rumball Needs a Kidney. He is looking for someone to make a living organ donation. There is information on what is involved and you can learn more about all types of organ and tissue donations on his page. 

Right now, Jason is among the 1,600 people in Ontario waiting for organ or tissue transplants, which are overseen by The Trillium Gift of Life Network, a part of Ontario Health. 

Jason has already had one wonderful donated kidney make a big change in  his life. He loved it very much. It gave him freedom for 19 1/2 years. During that time, there was no need of life-saving dialysis three or four times a week, no more things like fistulas, no more watching like a hawk how much and what he could eat and drink. 

“I could travel and be able to work and go to the cottage,” Jason said, gratefully.

Af first he was told his donated kidney would function for about a decade. But it defied the odds, steadily filtering the toxins from his system for almost twice that long.  

In a stunning move, that first door to freedom and health was opened on Jason’s 23rd birthday, when his sister, Rachelle Nurnberger, announced she was willing to give him one of her kidneys. That had to be the ultimate in birthday gifts! Jason was born with only one kidney and spina bifida, so when the organ began to fail when he was in his early 20s, he had to be on hemodialysis to stay alive—for one year and ninth months, as he recalls precisely. Then came the miracle of that first kidney transplant. 

You can watch Jason and Rachelle describe that birthday announcement in a documentary, The Gift of Life, by Toronto film maker Nadia Zaidi. There were not many dry eyes as the cameras rolled and an overcome Rachelle said, “There is no greater gift”, and Jason found it hard to speak. 

Fast forward to now in the second teaser for the documentary. It shows Jason hooked up to the machine, his blood circulating through all kinds of tubes. It made me think: “Why does this young guy have to endure that?”

The documentary will air soon on social media and you can find out more at his Jason Needs a Kidney Facebook page.

But 20 years is a long time to be free and being back on dialysis again was “… a whole new learning experience all over again”, he found. You don’t have to talk to Jason long to realize he works from a position of quiet strength. “I make the most of it…I get to know the nurses”, he said of his dialysis experience. And because he sees them so often, they are “getting to be like family!”

During April’s “Be A Donor Month”, the push is on more than ever to have as many people as possible registered as organ and tissue donors.  It’s pretty easy: log on to beadonor.ca and sign up. “The whole process takes two minutes!” said Jason. The wonderful thing is that eight lives can be saved by one organ donor. Seventy five people can be helped by one tissue donor.

His 2019 Citizen of Character Award from York Region acknowledges his community involvement and volunteer efforts. One of them was serving as chair of the Whitchurch-Stouffville Accessibility Advisory Committee. When I heard him speak, I knew there had to be a radio announcer in there somewhere. Sure enough, he has been hosting the Block Party every Saturday night at 11 on Stouffville’s local radio station, Whistle Radio 102.9FM. At the beginning of this year, he hosted his 300th episode of the show which features “the Toronto underground dance music scene”. He is also the technical producer of the Freshwaves program with Bren Masson.

He also advocates for the York Region Gift of Life Association, encouraging  people to become organ donors; he himself is encouraged by the people he meets. Some of them have been living with successful transplants for decades, and are living full, healthy lives. Another of his endeavours is visiting schools to tell his story and highlight organ donations.

 “I see the kids light up,” he said. “It is very emotional.”

The youngsters who have had a parent, close relative or friend on dialysis feel a more personal connection to his story, he’s found.

“People need to realize that gift will help people live for many years healthy and happy,” he said.

 

Pandemic 1918: Double whammy--yet life went on

 

Photo Credit: (Left)Global News; (Right)Heritage Toronto

The sneaky Coronavirus was in our face on Friday, March 13 last year. That’s when the first lockdown started, bringing with it uncertainty and fear.

I didn’t even need to flip through my calendar to recall the lockdown date; it is seared in my memory. So what were we doing that day? What everyone else in Stouffville was doing—shopping and prepping for the unknown. That day there were 137,703 cases of the virus world-wide; now there are over 120 million. At the store, we took a photo of our shopping cart, heaped high enough with groceries and supplies to defy gravity. 

That got me to thinking about how things were during the 1918 Spanish Flu Pandemic which lasted till 1920. A look through some early editions of the Stouffville Tribune and other sources painted a fascinating picture of those times. Like many places in Canada, Stouffville and Whitchurch were still farming communities. The Stouffville Tribune carried ads for farm machinery and ran articles on good farming and planting practices and gardening tips. People skilled in the art of shoeing horses were becoming scarcer, as more newfangled motor cars were seen around the area. While most of us are used to full grocery store shelves, rationing and food shortages were a reality in 1918, after almost four years of war. People must have rejoiced when they opened their local paper to read, “The Food Board announces there will be sufficient sugar in the country for the preserving and canning season….To make sure of this, however, strict conservation will be necessary in the meantime”.

The flu was termed “Spanish” because that country was neutral during the First World War and was free to report on the new illness. That gave the impression that it was most severe there. Other countries minimized news of the flu to keep up morale.

Like today’s COVID-19, the Spanish flu came in waves. The first milder wave started in the spring of 1918; the most severe one was that fall, followed by another wave early in the New Year. The virus had one last hurrah early in 1920. It was one misery heaped on another. When the flu began its destruction, people had already been rattled by almost four wartime years, losing about 16 million loved ones. Then the flu took an estimated 100 million more lives. In our young Canada of under nine million people, 50,000 lost their lives to that virus. The flu hitched an unseen ride with troops as they headed overseas and moved throughout North America and Europe. Most of the people it killed were in the prime of their lives. Many children were left orphaned. There was no vaccine or effective treatment. 

And what about the first pandemic Christmas? With 60 cases of flu recorded the week before Christmas Eve in Stouffville, health officials urged people not to do last-minute Christmas shopping. They were also encouraged to not overcrowd the local post office. Although they didn’t call it social distancing then, it does sound awfully familiar. Contrast that with this past Christmas which saw us giving up festive gatherings and instead pushing our dinners onto our front porches or back decks to be picked up by family and friends. Then they went home. But we could feel less lonely just by opening our computers and ZOOMing our meals and gift-opening together.

It is interesting to see that schools sometimes had to be closed. The attendance register from Whitchurch-Stouffville S.S#10 (Bloomington) had no entries except the word FLU, written in large letters, during the weeks from Oct. 21st to Nov. 11, 1918. 

                                                                                                                         Photo Credit: The Globe and Mail

Mask wearing became part of the human landscape then as now. Old photos show rows of masked soldiers marching along, and doctors, nurses, farmers and fashionable young women wearing masks, hoping to protect themselves from the contagion. Many people complied with mask wearing, lest they be labelled a ‘mask slacker’. Others refused and anti-mask leagues sprang up. Cases rose alarmingly near the end of 1918, probably spurred on by all the crowded celebrations marking the victorious end to the First World War. 

News of the war dominated the Stouffville newspapers. There were articles on the usefulness of keeping on the cavalry for war and the extent of enemy spying in Allied lands. One story titled “Seagulls detect U-boats”, explained how seagulls gathered around the ripples left on the water by U-boots which came too close to the ocean’s surface. Well into 1919, there were stories on the bravery of the troops, the defeat of the enemy and the slow road back to peace.

The “boys” overseas were on everyone’s mind. Various fundraisers were held for them. In the June 6, 1918 Stouffville Tribune, residents were encouraged to attend “A  three act drama, Miss Fearless & Co.”, with the proceeds from that June 14 presentation in the Auditorium, Stouffville, going “…to purchase comforts for our boys and your boys.  Admission 25 cents. Reserved seats 35 cents. Do your bit.”

When the boys came home, there were celebration evenings for them in town. 

Social notices chronicled who visited their mother, who invited their friends for Sunday dinner, and  who bought a car, as well as births, deaths and weddings.  Sometimes the pandemic was mentioned: “Mr. R. P. Coulson, who is recovering from a severe attack of “Flu” has moved back to Stouffville for the summer”. Then there was this gem: “Mr. and Mrs. J. B. Hoover, Mr. E. Lehman and Mr. T. Nighswander motored to Toronto on Friday last,” (from the May 1/1919 Stouffville Tribune). 

After it was all over, the world had changed. The Canadian government founded the Department of Health. With doctors, nurses and many soldiers away at war, the provincial Board of Health formed an “Ontario Emergency Volunteer Health Auxiliary” in Toronto early in the pandemic. Volunteer nurses were trained at the Parliament Buildings in Toronto to work together with local people, mainly women, from neighbourhoods, schools and churches to bring medical aid, food and supplies to the sick. The role of women kept changing. Many were able to vote in Canadian federal elections and some provincial ones by 1918 and were on their way to entering the work force in greater numbers. 

                     Photo Credit: University of Waterloo

 I got the sense that no matter what was thrown their way, people kept on with their lives and thrived. As the economy grew, the Roaring 20s brought a renewed zest for life. Now we are in our own Roaring 20’s, with movements afoot to help us respect each other more. We look forward to vaccinations that will help the economy to reopen and allow people to again hug each other, have lunch together and play with their grandchildren—without looking over their shoulder in fear of the virus. We now appreciate what we have always taken for granted.

Sources:  Stouffville Tribune 1918 and 1919; YRDSB Museum and Archives Collection; Parks Canada; Archives.gov.on.ca; TVO.org, When the Spanish Flu Came to Ontario by Jamie Bradburn; A hardship of the merchants and the people alike during the 1918 flu pandemic by Jamie Bradburn; Toronto Daily Star, Christine Sismondo, March 13/20.

School at home: Kindergarten is a fascinating state of mind

Now that brick-and-mortar schools are slated to open for business tomorrow, I find myself reflecting on our at-home school journey. 

Kindergarten is a fascinating state of mind. I’m amazed at how much my grandson and I have learned in the past month after school buildings emptied out to thwart the dastardly virus. 

And we weren’t the only grandparents, either live-in or podding for the purpose, who were called on for “HELP!”

It all came down to this: no engaged adult sitting right beside the youngest students = no learning, despite teachers’ best efforts. But with many parents working during school time, a lot of arranging had to be done. That’s where grandparents, and sometimes friends and neighbours, were called to assist.

With my grandson, I learned to write the letter M, among others. I realized when you are first starting out at four years old, it isn’t as easy as it looks. You have to stay between those two lines. M goes up and then down and then up again and down again. That’s just the letter M. There are 25 more. Your little student is beginning an adventure that starts with a few letters and—presto-change-o—you get a whole word. Add to that a whole bunch more words and this little kid may use them in future to change the world.  

In one way, it is hard to learn at home when you are four. You are squirmy. Your attention span is shorter than you are. Is little sister playing with the Ninja Turtle Sewer Set? It is so tempting to go pick up Raphael, but as soon as you slip away from your seat, Oma calls, “Come right back here.  It’s still school time!"

This whole at-home school experience gave me some insight into a teacher’s in-school day, where  25 or 30 kids in the class are all trying hard to concentrate on their assignments and not leap up from their chairs and run around madly, hooting and hollering. You see the wide range of ability in each class, and imagine how hard it would be to do justice to each child to make sure they learn the best they can.

In our on-line class in the living room, we learned about emotions—It’s OK to be sad sometimes. What can you do to feel better? Can you ask your friends to help you? or What makes you happy?  or It’s nice to help your family and friends. The message is clear: when you help each other it makes for a better world. We can only hope these Kindergarten lessons carry on to the adult world more and more.

Before that we had gym class and got to practice our yoga, walking, running, jumping and the Chicken Dance. Chicken Dance? Wedding? We are good to go for any such celebration post-COVID. Our grandchildren will be the stars. And I’m proud to say Oma got pretty good, too, even when the music was really, really fast.

We carried out science experiments—will snow melt faster in a tub on the kitchen counter or in the freezer? Write down how long each took.

Let’s learn our numbers. With pencil and paper, we went around the house counting up the number of lamps, beds, couches, you name it. And then charted them with tally marks. That concept takes awhile when you are four. This exercise really emphasized the idea of not just looking, but actually seeing. Reminds me of the time Sherlock Holmes asked Watson how many stairs led up to their apartment, after they had clumped up and down them for years. Watson was stumped.

Learning at home put teachers under a lot more scrutiny from all those  parents and grandparents sitting beside their kids. Everyone was on a learning curve, but everyone soon got it. Kids got into the groove and were masters at teaching Oma how to log in to the classroom, how to mute the mike, how to raise your hand virtually. Most of all, it showed that, like much of life, you need a team to make the whole thing go.  What a thrill to see my little grandson master those letters, numbers and ideas and slowly get the idea that you have to practice, practice, practice. It made it all worthwhile.

We celebrated alone--but there's hope for 2021

 

                                               

              Our whole world shrank this year during the Great Pandemic Christmas.

                 But seeing how people coped during this time gave me hope for the New Year.

And it reminded me of the first time I was alone at Christmas, several years ago.

The door slammed shut, it was quiet. Quiet. That was a sound I hadn’t heard for a long time.

It was the first time I wasn’t part of our large family gathering of cheerful people, lots of food and Christmas joy.

But what a Christmas Eve that was! Nobody was clinging to my legs, saying, “Mommy……mommy!”

No one was drawing on the walls or upending giant containers of Lego blocks all over the 

freshly washed floor. The cushions were on the couch; they were not part of a kid fort.  Nobody was crying, or wailing (us or the kids) and no bottles were heating up on the stove.

Snow was gently falling. The manger scene beside the fireplace looked peaceful.

I made a cup of coffee and listened to Dylan Thomas’s “A Child’s Christmas in Wales”.

But after a few hours, I began to think, “When are they coming back?” 

I looked at the front door, waiting for my husband and our three little ones who added so much joy to my life to come back.

It was close to midnight. At last the door flew open and everyone tumbled in, snowsuits flying everywhere. They couldn’t wait to tell me what Santa had brought them at the family party (yes, he was there in person).

It’s funny that a bad case of the flu had forced me to stay home that year. 

And now the whole world has the flu and now the whole world has to stay home.

For another month, we’ll be following the edict that came down just before Christmas. Stay home. Stay out of other people’s houses. For Heaven’s sake, try to avoid shopping in person. Here we go again.

This year’s peculiar Christmas made me realize even more that we who have a safe place to live and are pretty healthy are really the lucky ones. 

Even with all the bad stuff coming from the Pandemic, it was amazing to see how people coped.

I look to my 92-year-old aunt for inspiration. In the old “normal” days she went out every day to visit her friends at her favourite coffee shop. That got taken away on March 13 when our first lockdown happened. She lives alone. And somehow she has managed to adjust and even thrive. Relatives and friends kept in regular phone contact throughout the year and she still went out to shop once a week. She keeps her place spotless, is interested in everything going on around her and has managed to keep her spirits up. On Christmas Eve, she lit the candles on her Advent wreath, and celebrated with a nice piece of Stollen (German Christmas cake) and freshly-brewed coffee. She got out her list of people to call and was on the phone for a couple of hours to share Christmas greetings with them.

In other parts of our larger world, people shared what they had. Researchers have been toiling to bring us vaccines against the virus. Local merchants and businesses bent over backwards to keep their staff and customers safe.

Christmas decorations and lights began popping up all over the place earlier than any year before, as if to say, “We will not be defeated by you, virus!”

I read that someone in Alberta left $250 gift cards to many people, along with a letter asking them to pay it forward if they didn’t need the money. Local food banks and charitable organizations have served more people than ever. In Stouffville, it has been a tradition for volunteers to prepare a Christmas dinner for anyone who needed it. It began as a large sit-down affair complete with Santa, but later changed to volunteers delivering the festive meals on Christmas Day. And despite the pandemic, the group was still able to provide Christmas dinners for people in need. 

In our smaller world, we heard about children making outdoor visits to their grandparents and opening their gifts at their own house by the shining light of their computers. This way, their grandparents could be part of the fun, too. We also took to the outdoors. Since we couldn’t invite anyone over, we exchanged festive food with another family while the kids played on the lawn and made snow angels. After dinner at our respective homes, we huddled by the computer to open our gifts with the other family, ZOOMing all the way. People made Christmas videos to tie their families together, and to say, “We are still here for you”. 

Maybe these are some of the things that give me the courage to say Happy New Year 2021 to all of you and hope that it will really be a better year.