My parents live in England, and I live in Canada. I don't see them often. They used to come and visit on a plane, and we would pick them up at Toronto airport. But now they are older and say the flight is too long for them. I went to visit them last year, with my son, their grandson. They live by the ocean, and we could hear the sound of the waves through the bedroom window and see the blue water of the English channel. There is an island with a castle on top in the bay. We walked many times on the beach and picked up pebbles and feathers. We visited the island and walked up the steep hill to the castle. My mother likes to cook. She makes delicious cakes and pies. We went for a hike and picked wild blackberries. She made them into a pie that smelled so good coming out of the oven and tasted so good on our plates. She has many cook books with recipes from all over the world and likes to try new things. She can make pastry very easily and rolls it with a rolling pin quickly. When I tried to make pastry, it sticks to the rolling pin, it has holes at the bottom of the pie, and it tastes like a rock! Her pastry is crisp and tender. My father likes to garden. He grows lettuce, carrots, potatoes, tomatoes, cucumbers and many flowers. When my mother was very ill last year, she had to stay in bed. He planted roses outside her bedroom window, so she could open the curtains and see them. Their house has small room with windows all around, and they plant seeds there in winter in small pots. The warmth from the sun makes the seeds grow, and in spring they are a good size to be planted outside. In the house beside them and in the house in front of them, there are older ladies whose husbands have died. These ladies do not drive, so my father takes my mother and the two ladies to the town for shopping every week. He helps one find her groceries because she cannot see well. He helps her take tapes of books from the library so she can listen to books instead of reading them because of her eyes. He helps them cut their grass and fix anything that is broken in the house. I am very proud of my parents; they are over eighty years old and often hurt when they move around. But still they help other people, and they help each other. They have been married for over fifty years, but still my father loves my mother enough to plant roses for her to cheer her up when she was ill.
