Snowy Speculations

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If I could paint, I would have tried to replicate the landscape very early this morning. Illuminated by the faintest hints of light and hours before sunrise, the cold, stark landscape lay completely still in its snowy blanket. Naked trees stood proudly and quietly against this backdrop, this palate of pure white an unforgiving place for any creature, big or small, to attempt to cross without drawing attention to its existence at this time. Even our ancient tire swing looked sleepy and droopy, suspended precariously close to the ground, as if the effort of hanging from a tree limb was too much for it. To the east, the only rays of light visible were the ones coming from the across the river, and even those seem hushed and muffled, like a child tired and murmuring not to wake them up just yet.  The young families down the road have gone all out with Christmas lights this year. Bright colours adorn the night skies and my neighbours even have a Christmas Cat and a Christmas Dinosaur that i
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Bugs on the Table....

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 Bugs on the Table



A few weeks ago we celebrated Thanksgiving. It was a beautiful weekend and we hosted two dinners, one on Friday and one on Sunday. The menu consisted of a German dinner for my side of the family on Friday and a traditional Thanksgiving dinner on Sunday for Jim's side.

Last year's Thanksgiving weekend was much different from this year's. This year we were missing one person. My sister-in-law, Kari, had really been the one person who had relished family dinners. She was the one who would be at our dinners without fail, regardless whether she had just been through a gruelling round of chemo or spent the last month in the hospital. But sadly her battle with cancer came to an end this year and our Thanksgiving dinner with the Hale side was a little quieter without her constant chatter. 

I've always gone a bit overboard with my Thanksgiving table decor, so much so that there usually was no room to put the food on the table. So we ended up setting up the meal buffet style in our kitchen and the family would serve themselves. But this year, with parents experiencing increasing mobility issues, we decided that we would be traditional and make sure that the food was accessible on the table, just as we used to do. So my centrepiece consisted of a few pillar candles surrounded by cut grasses and pine cones. But it looked so boring! An hour before my family was to arrive, I walked around the edge of the forest in search of what I could possibly use to spruce the table up a bit. The bright red fruit of a wild crabapple tree caught my eye and I walked over to it to see if I could pick a few without getting caught in brambles and bushes. As I reached up to the lowest branches, something crunched under my foot. I glanced down and saw a ton of little crabapples that had fallen to the ground, most of which were slightly buried in the tall grass and weeds. Well, that made my job decidedly easier. I scooped up a handful of these baby apples and quickly sorted through discarding the ones that weren't table-worthy.

At dinner, the muted glow of the candles reflected the redness of the little crabapples so nicely, I was quite pleased with the effect. We sat down to dinner and started the first Thanksgiving feast. We had turned off the dining room chandelier and just left the kitchen light on to give us enough light to see what we were eating. I looked around the table and gave myself an imaginary pat on the back. It was perfect!

Then something caught my eye. A little bug was running with all its might toward my plate. I quickly squashed it and looked around to see that no one had seen it. Phew! I continued eating and then noticed a few more making their mad dashes across the light grey tablecloth. Oh no! My grey cloth Thanksgiving napkin put a quick end to their race. I looked around the table and if anyone noticed, they had quickly averted their eyes and continued eating. I have no recollection of what I ate that dinner and I was very conscious that I couldn't use my beautiful napkin to wipe my mouth as it was full of the remains of our uninvited dinner guests!

As soon as the main course was over, I got my kids to quickly help clear the table. But everyone continued to sit and so I had no choice but to start on the coffee and dessert. I discreetly picked up the pine cones and threw them out the sliding door onto the deck, in case they also were housing some living things. Then I gathered the crabapples, once the source of my centrepiece joy and obviously the vehicle for these bugs to come into my home and piled them outside as well. Before I set the dessert dishes and coffee things on the table, I did one final scan in the muted light and saw a few more waiting on the cusp of the grasses, ready to start their race across the table. I quickly took care of those too!

We got through dessert without anymore surprises and dinner was a success, bugs and all! For Sunday's dinner, I gathered these same crabapples and froze them into a large ring of ice in which I placed a pillar candle in the centre. It was such a hit! The flame of the candle shone through the ice and the redness of the crabapples was a vibrant contrast to the rest of the decor. In their frozen beauty, there was no chance of any unexpected visitors racing across the table. 

So Thanksgiving 2022 was one for the books, bugs and all! I know that Kari would have gotten a kick out of the bug story! Lesson learned. If you pick up fruit from the forest floor in the fall, it is probably not the only thing you will be bringing into the house!

Lolita Schimann Hale

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