Homemade

Homemade

This has been a fabulous summer. In all the time I’ve lived in Newfoundland I have not seen this much sun or enjoyed so much heat. We have had full weeks of sunshine and plenty of warm evenings.

It wasn’t always this way here. When we moved to the island in 1982, a day you could put on shorts was memorable. One sunny day, early in her career in the emergency department at the local hospital, my wife had to treat a number of patients with sunburns. It was like the people here had never seen the sun before.

This change in the weather may have something to do with climate change, but in the short term it has many positive effects.

Growth in gardens and in the wild has been more abundant than we’ve ever seen. It wouldn’t be unfair to describe my previous attempts at gardening as pathetic, but this year we have a profusion of beans, peas, onions, carrots, and cucumbers. The surrounding hills are lush with blueberries.

This wealth of fresh food has inspired us to new heights of collection and processing. Our freezer will soon be filled with blueberries and for the first time I’ve tried making pickles. We have enough cucumbers to keep us busy at bread and butter, mustard, and dill pickle production. We are enjoying the work and of course the results are tastier than anything we could find in the stores.

There is something about making and eating your own food that is special. As well as the fun of preparation and the transcendent taste, there is a feeling of self-sufficiency. Perhaps there is something hard wired inside us that makes us feel good about doing things by ourselves.

I think there are other areas of life where this kind of activity is important. Since I was young, art has inspired me to attempt making something of my own.

It isn’t uncommon for me to watch a play or a music performance and think that I’d like to do what the people on stage are doing. I sometimes get the same feeling when I look at a painting. If I really put my mind to it, I believe I could paint.

I’m sure that many people have similar responses, but for most of us the thought is fleeting.

What is it that drives us to really do things? No doubt part of the answer lies in how difficult the process we are looking at is. It isn’t that hard to pick blueberries or even to put together a few jars of pickles. Getting up on stage to act or sing or picking up a brush to paint is another story.

But with all these homemade efforts, the first step is to try - to do something about your fantasies.

There are many who read books and then dream about writing. When a story moves us, it isn’t unusual to feel that it would be wonderful to move others with our own words.

I think that’s how it starts for many writers. A big part of becoming a writer is moving on from this kind of thought to actually putting some words on paper or a computer screen. No one is born a writer. Every book you read was written by a person who at some stage only dreamed about telling stories.

All you need to do become a writer is to write. It’s as simple and as complicated as that. We may never get to be brilliant writers, but if we don’t move on from just admiring the work of others to making our own stories, we will never be writers.