In her garden, Lori’s got the white spring flower that the English have given the very complicated name lily of the valley (or as us Swedes call them: liljekonvaljer). They smell like heaven.

I guess the forest between Skaprnäck and Bagarmossen are full of them now, too. In primary school, I used to pick a bouquet of them as a gift to my teacher on the last day of school.

I’m too old for that now. Not to mention that I am in Canada, one ocean and one continent away.

On Friday morning, the sun was shining so nicely that Lori told me to go to the nearby park Little Qualicum Falls for the morning. I gladly put on my hikikg shoes and jumped into the car.

Impressing me when it comes to waterfalls is not easy, considering the first waterfall I ever saw was Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe when I was five. So everything after that is kind of measured against that standard. But it was a beautiful little park, and the water looked so fresh and inviting. It’s amazing, how much power there can be in water. And do you see the rainbow coming out of the foam? It was a beautiful morning.

And all the flowers! It was obvious that summer is fast approaching. These cute little pink things.

<i

But what impresses me the most are all the orchids. Growing wild! Aren’t these tiny little things beautiful?

I saw the season finale of Grey’s Anatomy. It’s been going on for so long, I can’t remember which season it’s on. Eighth maybe? Well, anyway, I’m a firm believer of guilty pleasures. I’m certain that everyone has atleast one thing that they love either watching, listening to or why not eating, that they’d rather not tell anybody about. My guilty pleasure is Grey’s Anatomy. Even for a TV show nerd, it is not cool. Game of Thrones and Community and The Big Bang Theory are neat, but absolutely not Grey’s Anatomy.

I’ve followed this hospital show more or less ever since they started showing it in Sweden, which means about seven years. And it has become more twisted and more melodramatic and unrealistic for every season. Atleast four of the main characters have been shot. One was hit by a bus. One got an inoperable brain tumor but survived. One was in a car crash while she was pregnant, but both the baby and mom survived. And now, in the season finale, half of the main cast, who were on their way to help on a surgery in another state, were in a plane crash and the episode ends with them sitting by the fire in the middle of a forest, they have no idea if the rest of the world even knows that they are missing, and atleast three of them are in serious need of surgery. One is already dead.

And, you know, for every season I promise myself that this was the last. I won’t continue to the next season, they have gone over board this time, it’s far too unrealistic.

But now, sitting there watching the black screen after the last scene, feeling the craving to know what happens next, I thought: Why do I watch TV shows? To be entertained and touched and get a short break from reality. And that doesn’t necessarily mean it has to be realistic. My life is by no means uneventful, and it is as real as it can get. Isn’t drama exactly what we look for in TV? Why not let the TV shows be melodramatic and unrealistic.

So I’ll probably see the new season premiere in the fall, as soon as I can get my digital hands on it, but hopefully without the feeling of shame this time. Because, what’s really the difference between Grey’s Anatomy and Game of Thrones except the costumes? They are both soap operas in fancier disguise.

(That I’m on my way to Seattle, the city where all the drama at Seattle Grace-Mercy West takes place, might just be a huge coincidence…)

These chocolate cups filled with peanut butter are sinfully delicious. There’s something with the mix of sweet chocolate and salty peanut butter that is just mouth watering. Both Mr. P and I agree on that.

Being a real cosmopolitan, Mr. P doesn’t see the point with buying a bag of candy just because it’s called “Swedish Berries”. It just isn’t a guarantee for good taste to give sweets a nationality. And I guess he was right on this one. The Swedish Berries weren’t good. They were exactly like our geléhallon, and I’ve just never liked that extremely artificial sweetness that they have. I’d prefer eating pure sugar.

But there aren’t only birds at Whiskey Creek Farm. There is a dog, a cat and a horse. But, in addition to them, there are also some reptiles.

In the pond, there’s a turtle living. He likes to come out of the water to enjoy the sun i. The afternoons, but the second the realises that you are approaching, he jumps back in again.

And there are snakes. Oh, so many snakes. The other day, I had loaded weeds into a wheelbarrow and was taking it to the compost, when I saw a snake haning out from the weeds, just bellow the handle. It seemed to be stuck, this tiny little snake. So I quickly ran and got my camera and took a couple of pictures. But, just when I was done, the snake turned its head back into the weeds and disappeared. It wasn’t stuck. It just wanted to get photographed.

Tuesday is cheap movie day here in Canada. So, to round off our shopping trip to Nanaimo, Lori treated me to a visit at the movie theater. We saw “The Avengers”, 3D.

It’s an impressive movie, mostly maybe because it’s got most of the superhero stars of the recent years starring in the same film. It reeks of money. But it’s also kind of amazing, how they’ve built up to this one. All the superhero movies, independent, but also prequels to this one in a way. And I’ve seen them all.

The first Iron-Man movie, I saw at the theater with Natalia. We both have a thing for Robert Downey Jr. The second I saw by myself at home, because Natalia was in Bolivia when it ran in the theaters. The Hulk movie I also saw at home. I like Edward Norton, I think he did a good Hulk. I guess they had a good (financial) reason for changing the actor.

The Captain America movie I saw at the theater with my baby brother Aron. He’s at that age now, when he starts to enjoy the slightly lighter adult movies. I think that’s cool. If I’d been home, I probably would have gone to see it with him (or Natalia, or both), and I’m pretty sure he would have claimed it was the best film that he’s ever seen. He does that, sometimes, especially if the special effects are cool. And that they certainly are in “The Avengers”.

The Thor movie I saw on the flight over from Frankfurt to Calgary. I liked Natalie Portman’s character. I think she should have figured in this movie too. But I guess it isn’t as easy as that. They just can’t afford to have too many superstars and super special effects in one movie. But maybe in the next one?

Generally, there were far too few women in the film. I was disappointed. I had expected better of director Joss Whedon, the genious creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a TV show from the wonderfully feminist nineties. But I guess he had to work with the Marvel characters, and couldn’t really create any new ones himself.

But really, for being a superhero movie, it was good. There are so many of them made now. A new Batman is coming, too, and a Spider-Man without Maguire. I remember when we had a couple of weeks of film history in Finnish class in nineth grade. I guess my Finnish teacher was a real cineast. Well, one thing I learnt during those weeks was that there were a lot of scary movies being made in the nineteen-thirties. There was a depression, and the film industry caught on to peoples need to get a break from their tough life situations. With the scary movies, they got to get scared in a very controlled manner, by monsters that weren’t real. It created a world on the screen where recognizing your friends and your foes was easy. And not like in the real world, where everything was wrong but finding someone to blame all of it on was impossible. The film history textbook said that in troubled times, like durng the Great Depression, movies like that thrive. People need the un-real.

And I’m thinking that maybe it’s the same now, only with all the special effects we can make now, the movie genre of choice is superhero action instead of scary. Those movies have heros and villains and the stories they tell are so far from our own that we can’t really relate. Instead, we get a break. There, most things are simple. While out in the real world, things just seem more and more chaotic, entire countries are on the brink of bankrupcy, the rainforests are disappearing, the food is genetically modified and the jobs are constantly being outsourced to some other faraway place. People feel lost, and in the superhero movies they can buy two hours of 3D clarity.

Or then it’s just cause its cool. Because if “The Avengers” is anything, it’s cool. Especially Robert Downey Jr. He will always be my favourite. No question about it.

Mr. P continued searching for someone to bond with. This bony fellow turned out to be a lot easier to hang out with than the uninterested chicks. That might say something about Mr. P’s social skills.

Friday: Today, Lori told me to just goof around. So I went to Little Qualicum Falls and sat in the morning sun, smelling the humid air and listening to a podcast about the drug politics in Portugal (they’ve de-criminalized drug use there, did you know that?).

I also baked three pies: an apple, a cherry and a strawberry-rasberry-blueberry, all with the traditional Canadian crust. I will be able to eat pie for breakfast, lunch and dinner until I leave on Tuesday.

And I’ve played with the new baby chickens that were delivered today. With the laying hens, they get their own babies and take care of them themselves, but with the meatbirds, Lori buys them freshly hatched from a farm in the mainland. The ones that arrived today were probably hatched late last night and they’re so small and yellow. Like little cottonballs. I showed them where to get water and food and watched them run around on their barely stable legs.

It was a good day. I will sleep well.

With a background as a pastry chef, Lori knows a lot about baking. And since there are few things I love more than baking, I made her teach me how to make a real Canadian apple pie.

It is quite different from Swedish apple pies. Half of the fat in the recipe should be lard, half butter, but I used duck fat from Lori’s butcher shop instead of the lard. So, the pie is not vegetarian. And there should be different sized chunks of fat in the finished dough, so that the crust becomes really flaky.

I felt like a real housewife from the fiftied while doing this. I’ve seen the rolling and the cutting and the filling been done so many times in American movies and TV shows that it almost felt surreal doing it myself.

Lori showed me how to do the edges all pretty and there should be holes on the top to let the steam from the apples out. Me, being a perfectionist and all, had to make it all symmetrical and precise. It is a meticulous business, baking a real Canadian apple pie.

But then, the result was amazing. Though I say it myself. I accidentally made too much dough, so I ended up baking three pies. They didn’t last long, though. In three days, the three apple pies were eaten, almost solely between Lori, Vi and myself. And they left an emptiness in me. I could have lived on pie for atleast another week. Canadian apple pie is amazingly good.

I’m thinking that maybe I should have a welcome home party when I return, instead of the goodbye party that I had to cancel due to that damned cold. It’ll be a pie and cake party out on mom’s LUSTHUS, the sun will of course be shining and I’ll make real Canadian pancakes, real Canadian apple pie and a few other personal cake favourites. I’ve almost decided I should. So be prepared. Sometime in the middle of August, I’ll demand you to come and eat my Canadian apple pies in Skarpnäck. Don’t tell me you weren’t forewarned.

Canadians love to supersize their stuff. Big cars, big houses, big burgers, big malls. And, of course, huge supermarkets. They are so big, that they don’t fit into the cities. As a carless tourist, finding a grocery store in the cities is a real challange. Most Canadians seem to prefer to take their car to the monster size shopping areas and malls outside the city.

One of these super large supermarkets is Cosco. Their thing is to sell stuff in bulk – buy alot and you get it cheaper. So here, even the raisin packages contain two kilograms. I went there with Lori, to help her carry the butter and the cereal.

The place doesn’t really create a nice atmosphere to shop in. It’s more: Buy and leave.

They had a book table though. And you know me, I can’t help looking when it comes to books. They had a box with all the this far published books in “A Song of Fire and Ice” (the books that the TV show Game of Thrones is based on). I had to use all my restraint to not buy it. I have no space for five extra books in my backpack. I still have to get to Phoenix before I can go back home.

But I found something else too. A Swedish crime novel. And of all the crappy crime novelists in the world, the one writer that they sell att Cosco in Nanaimo is Camilla Läckberg. The woman can’t even write! Her use if the Swedish language is so full of clischés that reading it made me litterally sick. I’ve only read one of her books. But then, maybe I shouldn’t express my opinion in the matter. I don’t generally like crime novels. I don’t get the excitement of the crime storyline. It just annoys me.

But Cosco was fun. Even though I prefer to do my own grocery shopping at smaller, cosier stores with slightly dimmer lights.