PHEW!

Do people still say, "Phew!" to express relief? Or am I once again advertising my extreme age?Anyway, thank you, Ontario voters, for ignoring the ignoble Hudak. May he vanish into the mists, along with his wife, once assistant to the hideous Mike Harris. And I thank Rob Ford, the ham-fisted, ham-faced mayor of Toronto, whose right-wing blunders I'm sure were extremely helpful in making sure the same thing didn't happen on a provincial level.

I don't envy McGuinty his minority for the next few years, as the world economy teeters on the brink, and the divide of rich and poor, of right and left, becomes ever wider and more acrimonious. But at least we won't have chain gangs on the highways, one of Hudak's better ideas.

It's absolutely heavenly out there - 22 degrees today, Sunday going up to 26! - and continuing all next week. I spent the morning in the garden, cutting back and pruning, with the birds waiting impatiently for me to go away so they could get back to the feeder. What bliss, the birds and I in the hot sun. W*son just came for lunch; we sat eating cauliflower curry in the garden and discussing the lawsuit that he and fellow Chinese-Canadian writers have launched against a writer who, they claim, has stolen from their books for her own. Exciting - newspapers are calling him every day for a quote.

And now - to my other work, the one that doesn't use secateurs. Well no, writing does indeed need lopping off and judicious pruning, no question, and sometimes, the cuts go deep. Invisible, but deep. The back door is wide open, with the crabby cat somehow, mysteriously, parked beside me, Steve Job's beautifully sleek computer on my lap - thank you so much, Steve, you have given the world a great deal and will be missed. The cat and I survey the tidy garden, the busy birds. And now, time to delve into my soul and coax something out.

It doesn't get better than this.