Tying Sticks Together

I have been working on our terrace garden as the weather permits. It is a real joy. We have one side pretty well set up the way we want, with some herbs, tomatoes, a plant (whose name I am blanking on) that has followed Veronica through several moves but is much happier out of a pot and into the "ground". We also have a bunch of Latinki (English name unknown) grown from seed that are quite happy.

I had taken out a bunch of ugly bushes and trimmed the remaining hedge. I am working now on a wandering path with some cement tiles. I imagine grandchildren frolicking on this path. The project in between was organizing trellises for the various plants on that good side. I built them out of bamboo sticks tied together with twine. My tying was somewhat arbitrary, but if you google "tying sticks together" (which I did) you will find a whole wealth of material! My next round of trellises will be superior with this knowledge.

Cycling for Fun

I have enjoyed cycling since I first learned at age five when I was living in Berkeley. The enjoyment came from the sense of speed from my own effort as well as the extension of the radius I could reach without public transportation or parental involvement. When I was in high school in Victoria, cycling in to school let me avoid the toxic dynamic at the local stop for the school bus. It became both exercise and my main means of transportation. It was a shared passion with my ex-wife and cycling together was part of our courtship. When I was working in Germany between MSc and Phd, cycling became a weekend activity with long trips on rural roads in the Pfalz with a friend, Utz Weber. Coming to work at UBC, cycling has become a main option for commuting to work. There were a few years in there with a break from active cycling: while I was a PhD student in NYC; my year in Toronto at the Fields Institute early in my career; about six years after an accident when my son was a baby. At that last one, I injured my arm and was unable to properly take care of my son at that age. It was a wake up call to my parental responsibilities. When I went back to cycling, it was almost exclusively for commuting and it has been that way for the last twenty years. I should say that its utility did not diminish the joy it brought me. In these "interesting" times, I have been working at home for the last few months. I have taken to cycling as a break and to get some exercise. Even if it is intended to improve my fitness (mental and physical), it is still fun!

Like many others stuck at home, I am baking

You know that many people have been baking at home because of the difficulty finding flour and yeast in the stores, at least in the early weeks of COVID-19. I am now able to find them most of the time here in Vancouver. I have a bread maker and made several loaves of bread. I have to say, the unnatural shape of the loaves that come out of a bread maker is a drawback. I made buns from scratch with my father, using a hugely powered mixer that he later passed on to us.

He came down to visit us for a week and we made oatmeal raisin cookies together. He was the first guest in our spare room in the new apartment. I also made focaccia from a recipe in my old Joy of Cooking and bagels. 

Having been a student in NYC I believe in NY style bagels while all the ones here in Vancouver are Montreal style (or just buns in the shape of bagels). There is something about the chewiness of a NY style bagel that has real appeal. People that have had Montreal style first seem to prefer them, but I find them hard rather than chewy, and too sweet.