I live across from an elementary school playground where they have a huge grass field that the kids play on during recess. When I opened my kitchen blinds on Monday morning that field was covered from one end to the other with all of that snow. It wasn’t deep, but it was adequate and it had stuck enough that it covered the entire field.
It snowed on Sunday. That’s not news though. Everyone knows that it snowed on the Ides of March 2015. It was made all the more memorable because of the ridiculously beautiful early spring weather we were enjoying just the week before.
The snow in that school sports field didn’t stand a chance. By the end of the lunch recess, the kids had the field cleaned off and that icing sugar landscape I’d seen from my window had been replaced by numerous snowmen standing in a grass lot that were going through various stages of meltdown.
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Many years ago I was looking through a real estate flyer and noticed one listing advertising a tennis court on the property. Another offering was described as a “tennis property.” I asked the real estate agent what that meant and was told that the lot was large enough there was room to put a tennis court in if the new owner was so inclined.
At the time I was partnering on an 81-hectare farm (200 acre) on the hill overlooking Rock Creek and I asked the agent if, seeing as we had so much open ground, we could list that as a tennis property.
Apparently not. I guess that’s why you don’t see a lot of farmers out playing tennis after the cows have been milked. That and maybe the ALC.
Both Midway and Greenwood have public courts, though. It’s not quite as convenient for the farmers as having their own court, but it’s only a short trip to get to one town or the other. People in the Lower Mainland think nothing of having to travel for 20 or 30 minutes to get to the doctor or the hairdresser or the mall with the sale. So realistically, those of us country folk who have an itchy tennis elbow can get in a game whenever we like.
Wintertime might be a bit of a hindrance, but what you can do for that is to invite all of the kids from the local elementary school to come over and make a few snowmen for you.
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You know how they say a picture is worth a thousand words?
I think that phrase originated in the newspaper industry, because if you print the picture big enough on the page it will take up the same amount of space as a thousand words. And filling up blank space on a sheet of newsprint is a lot of what this job is all about. “All the news that’s print to fit” is our mantra, you know.
So here’s a trick I use when taking a group photograph that I need to stretch just a bit.
I just ask everyone to give me a nice wide smile so that they take up more room in the frame.