First Anniversary

September 16th was mine and Lee-Anne’s first anniversary. We rented a hotel room in St Jacob’s for a weekend, which is a small settlement basically attached to Waterloo. Not very far from home, but still kind of nice to have a change of scenery.

Our room had two framed pictures of birches.

It seems to me that artists love these trees specifically. I can think of a handful of pieces hanging in the homes of various people I know. We even have one in our house.

It's the sole survivor of my "buy nice looking things from the thrift store and throw them on the wall" era. Lee-Anne did away with everything else from that time. You might notice it's not hung up right now. Almost all our decorations at this point have some form of sentimental value, but the birches keep hanging in. Even though we don't have a use for them, they're just a little too nice to get rid of.

We recently came back from my grandparents and they definitely had at least one example of birch art. I'll be writing more about that experience in consecutive updates.

These trees also seem to pop up frequently in events hosting local artists. Maybe it’s because the black and white scarring on the bark is high contrast and can pair with a variety of background colours. 

Looking it up, their prevalence in art appears to not be a common observation. I think it might be a region-specific thing, with birch trees making more frequent appearances in Canadian works because they’re more common in Northern climates. Apparently Russians like them too, which tracks with this theory.

Saturday morning we went to the St Jacob’s farmer’s market. Being closer to the country makes it convenient for local agriculturalists. We got  sweet potatoes and zucchinis from someone yelling that the latter was “good for your weenie”. That’s not why we got them. I’ve since wondered what she meant by that. I have a few guesses.

We got Brussels sprouts, green beans, and some oddly coloured bell peppers. I’m used to seeing green, red, yellow, and orange. This was the first time I’d seen purple. We later learned that they may have been that colour because they were so close to turning bad. Even the very next day they seemed over-ripe.

We later cut them up to bring as snacks for our trip up North but wound up leaving them at Lee-Anne's parents' place, which we used as an intermediary step. I will never know what a purple bell pepper tastes like.

At the market, we also found oddly coloured carrots. These would hold their integrity better and were exciting for Lee-Anne because she’d been wanting to find red ones ever since they were served at my cousin’s birthday party. She believes they have a different taste, but I can’t tell the difference.

We stopped by an African artist and bought a couple of spoons with handles fashioned after giraffes.

It just seemed like a good idea to get something non-consumable to commemorate our first anniversary, and Lee-Anne likes giraffes.

The Shea Butter Man was there. He used to own a shop in Guelph but mostly does markets now. We were already stocked up and couldn’t justify a top-up, though.

For lunch, we had empanadas, churros, and strawberry lemonade.

I always forget how good fresh lemonade is.

I knew one of the buskers and we got to catch up. It was someone that has used our services before, who inspired one of our key phrases, who’s been in the newspaper multiple times for his music, and has toured cross-country with his band. After we left, Lee-Anne said that I always get star-struck when I meet people that I used to work with. I countered that this person is a legitimate star.

Apparently there's a tradition of celebrating with a different material each year of marriage, and for the first its paper. We didn't plan anything for it, but Lee-Anne got a paper bill in change which we're counting as fulfilling the ritual. For those that don't know, Canada stopped producing paper bills in favour of plastic some years ago. The paper ones are still in circulation but are increasingly rare, making it exciting whenever you come acrosss one.

We followed the tradition of preserving part of our wedding's key dessert to eat on the first anniversary. For most people it's a cake, but for us it was a tart tray. When we got back home, we pulled them out.

I took this pic after Lee-Anne had already eaten one of the blueberries. They were freezer burnt something mean. There was no fruit flavour coming through at all, and somehow the crust tasted raw. There may have been a better way to preserve them. We both managed to eat one of each, purely for ceremonial purposes.