OF PEACHES and a change of date

Dear friends, these are hard days for a lightoholic like me - even though it's gloriously hot outside, I sense the dimming that's around the corner.  At the Riverdale Farmer's Market today, there were almost no peaches - we have moved on to apples and pears.  I'm not ready to say goodbye to peaches!  

Oh well, apples are good too.  But the end of this flood of light - that's the hard part.  Not to mention watching the garden shrivel, bit by bit.  I want to be out there all the time, drinking it in, light and colour and scent, because in a few months ...  

Mon dieu, enough of this mournful talk.  I have made a terrible mistake in the scheduling of my next Write in the Garden workshop.  It was the same day - Sunday September 28th -  as Word on the Street, one of my favourite events in the Toronto calendar, and I hope yours too, Toronto-ites.  An entire day dedicated to celebrating writing and publishing, when Queen's Park is taken over with talks, readings, tons of books and magazines for sale in great special deals, and small stalls where you can actually talk to publishers, editors, and writers.  

I don't want to deprive my students - or myself either - of this uniquely literary event, so I am changing the workshop date to Sunday October 5.  I'll personally contact those of you who have registered; this is for any of you thinking about it.  I say, come to Word on the Street and be inspired, and then come to my workshop and feel the joy of pen on paper. 

I went this morning to the warehouse where the Toronto police are storing all the recently-found stolen bicycles. There are thousands, arranged by alphabetical order, so I looked, not for my lovely Bluebird that wouldn't be there yet, but for the three other bicycles that have been stolen in the last ten years - the Sekine I bought in Vancouver in 1975, and the two Raleighs, gifts from my dear friends Ben and Sarah after my first bike was stolen.  They had stopped riding theirs, so I rode Ben's until it was stolen from this house while it was under renovation after the fire, and then Sarah's until it was stolen, ironically, from outside Ben and Sarah's house while I was visiting them.  But those fine old machines weren't there.  

What was really disgusting in the warehouse were all the children's bikes - stacks of them. People who steal a child's bike are in the same category - schmucks - as people who don't pick up after their dogs in parks where children play.    

Okay, I've stopped ranting for today.  Now I suggest you go and eat the last local peaches. Drink in these last days of summer.   And unroll the bottoms of your trousers, while you're at it.