Project 2mm Terrain: Update 4

Well, I have now completed the hills on the extreme left of the battlefield, where the initial Confederate thrust came from.

I'll confess that my slow progress has mainly come from a lack of motivation, slow progress, and how fiddly the whole process has been. But last night, I had a brain wave. Since I am using foamcore and cork as my materials, I can just pin the terrain in place until it is dry. All of a sudden, the fiddliness has gone away and it's just become a matter of cutting the pieces out, gluing them, and pinning them in place.

Completing the western hills represents only a small fraction of the entire battlefield but doing something and having it come out looking really good has raise my morale and now I want get the rest done.

I was toying with the idea of smoothing out the contours but now I've gone the other way and I'm thinking I might keep them. I might do some experimentation before I decide.

Life and Death

Sometimes life sucks. Not long after I had posted my last project update, I received some bad news. My mother was in hospital and not doing well. I booked a flight for first thing the next morning. When I got into Calgary to change planes, I learned that she had passed.

The crazy thing is that I had talked to her a few days before. She had sounded a little breathless but otherwise seemed fine. She'd been having problems with swelling and severe itching. She was going back to the hospital the next day for a follow-up. She had had a full battery of testing and, while there were a lot of things that weren't quite right, she'd had them for a long time. We didn't have any indication that there was any immediate concern.

Two days later, she was gone.

Looking back, I'm glad that I saw her when we returned out East this last May. It had crossed my mind that it might be the last time I saw her. The previous May, she'd come to visit us in our new house. I found it concerning about how much difficulty she had in walking and, in particular, how she struggled to climb stairs. But she also displayed an iron will about getting to where she needed to go even though she would take some time to get there. Her only concession was to using a cane when she left the house.

My Mum's great joy was her garden. She came by her green thumb honestly. Her parents had created a prize winning garden in New Brighton, England, despite its modest size. In every house that she lived in, my Mum spent time creating and maintaining its garden. It's fitting that her final garden is her best. It's also fitting that she waged the same war against squirrels that her father did.

So what's next? We're planning a tree planting in Toronto on her birthday. Back here in BC, we're also going to plant a tree for her.