Welcome!

Here we have it: feisty Winnipegger starts new blog.

Nice starting, I thought, and more creative than just pasting in "Abandon every hope, all ye who enter here." Besides, if you read something here, I hope it'll provoke a reaction other than hopelessness: engagement, enthusiasm, tears, laughter, anger, 180-degree political realignment, etc.

That reminds me: you can expect to read plenty about politics. Being in the midst of a provincial election, there's hardly a better time to join in the punditry. I tend to be a stellar seat-by-seat predictor of elections (with some humbling exceptions). However, unlike a number of other Manitoba bloggers, I'm not a professional policy hack/wonk, spinster, or Blackberry addict. I do work in the private sector, though you'll soon see that hardly makes my political views predictable.

I really don't intend to be single-mindedly political: no, I hope to keep the politics down to a dull 90% or so of all blogging. Maybe we'll tone it down once the election is over - make that once both elections are over. Then maybe we can talk art, Winnipeg's best breakfast spots, and other fine yet less horse race-like topics.

Why "Prairie Topiary"? Topiary is one of those rich words I've always loved. Another is sluice. Everyone's heard that pictures are worth a thousand words; for me, the best words are those that are worth a thousand pictures. "Topiary" tends to invoke a garden scene made up of an alluring cast of intriguing characters, usually animals. Add the topiary and its cast of characters to a prairie setting and you net an image that seems somehow perfectly appropriate for Manitoba.

This is all for me today.