A Flock of Seagulls, Glass Tiger, and Corey Hart

Last night my husband and I went to a great concert at Ontario Place. We had seats right in the middle and just outside the roofline, so we got a little rain but not bad. We huddled in our sweatshirts under a spread-out rain cape and had a lovely time. A Flock of Seagulls opened, followed by Glass Tiger (which was fantastic), and then Corey Hart. It was a fun evening, surrounded by thousands of people all bobbing and dancing in unison and holding up their cell phone lights like lighters. Women in their sixties screaming giddily like teenagers when Corey Hart went into the audience to shake hands with fans. People going practically hysterical when he brought out surprise guest Jim Cuddy.  I find it interesting and endearing how humans all seem to head-bob the same way to a good beat. We think we're unique, but really we're all the same. A lot like the flock of little birds in the trees behind us who spent the evening dashing around after mosquitoes.

At one point the sound system died and Corey Hart was plunged into silence. And -- typical sweet Canadians -- the audience merely started singing (mostly "Go Raptors!") to fill in the gap for him until his microphone came back on a few minutes later. And Corey said simply, "Sorry about that" and went right back into his program. It takes a lot to upset a Canadian.

It reminded me of the time the singer doing the American anthem at a ball game lost the power to the microphone too, and the Canadian audience simply finished singing the anthem for them. Polite, kind, no fuss.

Gardening at a Whole New Level

The garden has been elevated, quite literally, and I'm done except for planting the twelve new asparagus crowns. The beds are in, the plants are planted, and the summer can now officially begin.

I think I will enjoy not having to bend so much. Or weed so much. Or fend off rabbits to the usual extent. I can see the benefits of the beds already. But I sincerely hope I never have to do that big of a project again. When these boards rot and it's time to start over, I will quietly sell the house and move away. My body will never forgive me for what I put it through this week.

At the same time my body is protesting, I do admit a tiny sense of self-satisfaction. I am Boadicea, Joan of Arc -- conquering against all odds! I am warrior woman -- no task can intimidate me! I speak and mountains are moved! (With a little help from a shovel and two buckets.) My husband says he has never met a more stubborn woman. That's not always a good thing, but this week it is a trait that came in handy.

My husband says I'm God

So my husband and I (poor, long-suffering man!) moved the mountain of soil yesterday, all by ourselves, with one shovel and four buckets, and finished before noon. The wheelbarrow tire developed a leak so was of no use to us. But the sun held out, no rain came, and neither one of us threw our backs out. Even had time to do some weeding, take the pool cover off, and I mowed our yard and the neighbour's. And still had time last night to watch an Australian crime show and eat ice cream. A successful day! But I under-estimated the amount of soil we'd need (I now have eight raised beds to fill!), so I've ordered another 5 cubic yards to be delivered on Tuesday. Which is probably now an over-estimation. Oh well, there's always somewhere to put dirt.

As we laboured together, I cracked that my husband would never need to pay for a gym membership, being married to me. Think of the money he'd save! (Nevermind the $435 spent on soil.) And my husband said solemnly that he thinks I'm God. God gives us challenges to strengthen us and help us grow. And I do indeed challenge him... Tee hee. Thirty-two years of marriage, of me keeping him hopping and guessing and on his toes, and he's still in the trenches with me (literally), scooping dirt. Gotta be love.

Digging Out

The floor loom has sold to a really nice girl I met on Facebook and then in person at the highland games. She's a farmer/forager/craftsperson/earth goddess type who will give the loom a loving home and put it to good use, so I'm content.


The soil arrives on Saturday, and before then I need to move a miniature mountain of compost into the raised beds. I've been chipping away at it, but it has rained nearly constantly since I got back from Utah, which has slowed things down considerably. The compost heap never ceases to amaze me -- how all that muck and waste and cast-offs can become crumbly, sweet earth full of worms. It's like discovering gold in your garbage bin.


We purposely built an extra-wide gate into the fence so that trucks could bring soil straight into the backyard...but then found out that no delivery men are willing to drive over the boulevard to get to the gate. So it means schlepping three cubic yards of earth by bucket and wheelbarrow. I fear Saturday will be a very muddy day, but it's all got to be moved quickly because I can't leave a hill of soil on the boulevard overnight. Even if I can get it all scooped into the backyard and piled in a heap on Saturday, I can then take a bit more time to get it into the beds.


If I had the time and inclination to ponder it, I'd see all this as a metaphor of digging out from the winter's depression, digging out of my inward-looking self, moving out from under bad habits or unhelpful thought patterns, turning over a new leaf, new spring beginnings... but no. It's a literal ton of earth, and it's all mine to move. I may get a little sporadic help from family or volunteers, but in the end, it's going to come down to me, slogging for hours...days... And you know what?


I love it.


I can't wait to dig in, to get my hands into rich soil, even if it's soggy. To smell that indefinable scent of wetness and spring and good things growing. To feel it clump on my boots and work itself into my skin. To pile it into the raised beds and bring out my tender little seedlings (which aren't so little anymore -- I planted them way too early!) and get going on my garden for the season. Now that's a metaphor that rings true for me -- I'm always yearning for the next season of life to begin, instead of being content with where I am. But spring does that to me -- an inner straining to get on with life, to move forward. To grow.

Zipping Along

Wow, it's been a month already since I last posted. My apologies! Life seems to have escaped me lately.


I just got back from a great trip to Utah and Idaho for two family weddings, which were lovely. My sister-in-law Carrie (two of whose kids were getting married) had everything so amazingly organized that it all went smoothly. She remained so calm and serene through it all! Maybe she was like a duck, perfectly still on the surface but legs paddling madly below water---but if so, I couldn't tell. I told my mom I wanted to be like Carrie when I grew up. My sister chimed in,"I'll never be that grown up!" Anyway, it was a heavenly week filled with family, food, fun, and my beautiful, much-missed mountains. And sunshine! Utah is about a month ahead of Toronto in weather.


This past month has also involved turning in a manuscript to the publisher (who rejected it...another post for another day), teaching a gardening workshop, and planting seeds to start under my grow lights. My wonderful husband kindly built me four big raised beds for the garden, so now I need to order soil and get it all in place before planting out at the end of the month. The tomatoes are already about eight inches tall and craning toward the light with great promise. And my lemon is almost ripe.


I have decided I need to concentrate my energy better on the things that are really important to me. My neighbour's husband died recently and I'm going to try to pitch in to help her with her yard in addition to caring for my own. I want to spend more time with my grandkids this summer. And I really need to focus more on my ministering responsibilities at church. Life is short and I need to ensure I'm not neglecting the important stuff. With all that in mind, I have decided---reluctantly---that I need to sell my big floor loom. I don't have space for it, and it's a sort of expensive hobby that takes up a lot of time. Anyone want a 45" countermarche, rather unusual loom? Going cheap.


Other than all that, life continues apace. There is a hint of spring in the air and my spirits are lifted, anticipating warmth and greenery. I am waking up along with the crabapple blossoms.

Starting Seeds

There's the hint of spring in the air. The hyacinths are an inch tall, just poking their noses out of the ground, and the snow has melted off to reveal surprisingly green onions still left from last year's garden. If you don't harvest all your onions and leave some in the ground over winter, they'll go to seed the second year. Sometimes I collect the seeds, and sometimes I let them fall wherever they like, and I get baby onions springing up all over the garden. Who says things have to grow in tidy rows? I do the same with cherry tomatoes, radishes, and garden huckleberries, letting some fall, and I always get vigorous volunteer plants the next spring that produce as well as the ones I nurture tenderly and transplant out. Why go through the work of starting seeds and planting out if the garden will do the job for you?

Having said that, one of my favourite things is to start seeds in the early spring. There's something about the scent of damp soil, the finickiness of planting in tiny pots, that energizes me. The trays of seedlings sitting happily under the grow lights make me feel proudly maternal. After a winter of drooling over seed catalogues, I make my selection (or dig out the seeds I harvested and saved from last year) and get down to...pardon the pun...plotting. How many pots can I fit on my counter? How many extras should I plant just in case some don't survive the rabbits? How many tomatoes can we really eat? How much should I grow extra for the kids or to give to my ministering sisters at church?

This year I'm planning to build some raised beds and level off a sloped part of the yard to make room for more garden. I'm going to limit myself this year, though, and instead of planting a little each of forty varieties, I'm concentrating on only tomatoes, squash, lettuce, green beans, and cucumbers. (That doesn't, of course, include the perennials such as asparagus and rhubarb.) I ordered three new varieties of tomato from the University of Florida that are supposed to be disease-resistant and good producers. I'm also growing cherry tomatoes and Red Pear cherry tomatoes, making 21 plants in all. (That's nothing. One year I planted 55 Roma tomato plants and still ended up buying in some bushels. We eat a LOT of tomatoes.)

I'm also doing Armenian cucumbers, Ronde de Nice squash, spaghetti squash, and zucchini. LOTS of zucchini. Like, 18 plants. I know, I know, you probably think I've lost my mind. But now that we're cutting down on carbs, we eat zucchini almost every day, sometimes for two meals a day, and it freezes well. And I inevitably lose a few plants each year to rabbits, and the last few years it's been so hot the plants mainly produce only male flowers so I only get a couple of squash per plant anyway. I will fill in any gaps in the garden with green beans, my favourite vegetable, which can be frozen too. I'm still eating last year's harvest, which should last right up until the new crop begins to produce.

After watching Love Your Garden with Alan Titchmarch, I'm also contemplating putting in a pond. Just a little one, with a few bog plants, to attract frogs to the garden. And putting up bat boxes. And maybe some bee boards for wild bees to nest in. If I can't move to the country, I will make the country come to me.

There's a feeling of triumph, this time of year, at having survived another winter. I love the anticipation of gardening, the feeling of planning to feed my family. When the tiny sprouts are starting to rise under the lights, I survey them with great satisfaction...and try not to think about how my back will feel planting them out in May.

Tentative steps toward summer

My word, I can't believe how long it's been since I last wrote. My apologies. I feel like I've spent the winter curled up in a ball on the couch, and only now am I starting to emerge timidly into the light, like a mushroom, blinking in the unfamiliar sight of the sun coming up over the rooftops.

Today was glorious, though, and I was drawn out into the afternoon in spite of a wickedly strong wind and chilling temperatures. The sunshine was amazing, the sky was so blue and filled with puffy clouds like wads of quilt batt, and it was impossible not to whistle up Brio and stride out. We hit the path that leads through the woods to the library, Brio's ears flying back in the breeze. He waddles a bit now -- looks like a caramel-coloured sheep, plump from too little walking this winter. Me too, truth be told. Hopefully some of the excess weight will drop off as we increase our activity, energy levels rising with the sap.

The trees are still bare, of course, though the crabapples have just the faintest promise of hazy pink buds starting to form. Walking through the woods at this time of year is odd, really -- during summer you can't see a thing past five feet into the thicket, but in winter you can see right through the bare trunks, the scoured floor of the forest, to civilization beyond. In the summer you aren't aware there are houses around the edges, but in winter you're looking right into people's backyards.

There's no sign of trilliums yet, but in a few weeks they'll be thick and white on the ground. That will be followed by a gauzy veil of palest green as the buds begin to unfurl, the lamb's quarters will shoot up, and the houses will disappear again for a few months, like Brigadoon.

With no foliage on the deciduous trees, you're also suddenly aware of the tall white pines scattered sparsely through the forest. They stand out green and wind-swept like a Group of Seven painting, and the wind rushing through them sounds like the ocean. Sometimes in early morning, when I'm taking the dogs out and it's still pitch black outside, I hear that rushing sound and it seems more like an out-of-control semi truck roaring down on me, and I find myself jumping up the steps and darting back inside as if the truck's fender is on my heels. A silly impression, really, but that sound does tend to scare me just a little. Or "thrill" might be a better word. It makes my nerves jump and suddenly I'm very much awake and alive. A real ocean gives me the same sudden awareness. A feeling of being very small in an immense world.

Walking today, behind the waddling, tongue-hanging-out-with-joy Brio, I could feel the pores in my skin opening up to soak in the sun. The air flung itself against my face, and I was filled with a feeling almost of going back to my childhood. I don't know why it struck me that way, exactly. Maybe the freshness of the air reminded me of being up the canyon. The roar of the wind sounded like a cascading river. Maybe it was just the freedom of it, the clean, refreshing purity of it. The joy of wearing tennis shoes after months of clompy boots. The knowledge that at that precise moment, there was nowhere I needed to go, nothing I had to do, no one I had to be. It was just me, walking in sunshine. Glorious!

Brio, contentedly gaining weight on the couch.