A Walk on the Mild Side

I woke up this morning to a beautiful day, and though I had lots of things I had to get done today, what I really wanted to do was go for a walk around the park next door to enjoy the last moments of golden light and shirtsleeve weather before autumn refuses to release its hold. I've been so busy since moving in, and I've been longing to explore the neighbourhood more.

But I didn't. Deadlines are crushing in, I have way too much going on and am getting so little done because I am absolutely wiped. So I got up and started my day.

Since last night, though, I have been feeling very yukky. So tired I feel ill, and so ill I feel very tired. Naturally, this is a perfect combination for neither being able to sleep nor able to work. After dragging myself around and feeling increasingly unwell, trying to figure out how to stop feeling sick to my stomach and get some real work done, I phoned Susan, She Who Knows All (except when I know better). After a careful assessment she prescribed rest.

So I lay down for almost a minute, in which time I felt even worse because of the pressure on my body, and decided, what the heck. One little walk. How long can it take to walk around the park?

A very long time, apparently.

I started by going into the courtyard, something I seldom do because I still feel like it isn't my yard to walk in, and I smelled the ripening pears where they hung unblemished from the tree. Then I went across the yard to the extended care wing, because my neighbour told me today that there is a chapel in there that we can use, and I wanted to check it out. I eventually found a way in, and was shown the way to the chapel (no holy water in the fonts!) where I spent a few minutes looking around and then sitting quietly. Unfortunately sitting did not help my nausea, so I travelled on.

Out to the front boulevard where the bus was pulling out with residents seated, on their way to some adventure. Past the gardeners mowing lawns and bagging up leaves. Off the sidewalk and onto fresh green grass, speckled with late flowering plants. I was already in a different world. Such a pretty park, undulating up from one playing field to another, gulls squawking as they landed on the towering playing-field lamps. The upper field extends out to a lane behind a row of houses, several with old garages or tiny caravans. Tall trees grow across the rising land from west to east, and more fringe the fields. In the lower part of the park on the eastern side, instead of a playing field there are well-ripened, raised community garden beds. I walked among them to enjoy the company of the plants and earth and wood and string, making mental notes of things I might do in my own garden next spring.

A hummingbird, smaller than an Anna's so I am guessing a Rufous, landed in a sunflower next to me. When the hummingbird left a chickadee took its place, burrowing its face into the seedhead for a coveted treat. Mental note: plant sunflowers. I don't want to eat them necessarily, but I do want birds in my yard.

One of the plots belongs to a Montessori school group--a new revelation. The Italian Cultural Centre is not only responsible for starting the community garden (whose first rule is "Be excellent with each other") but it has a Montessori school (0-grade 7) within its walls.

Having spent this wonder-filled time in the park, I was feeling less sick. I stopped a woman to ask if she recognized the structure I was looking at. Was it a kiln? Was it a pizza oven? (It was a pizza oven.) She had just picked up her Fresh Roots vegetables for the week from the Italian Cultural Centre. These are grown by students at Van Tech, just up the street. You pay in January and pick up your veg all summer long (till 10 October). The kids are totally into it and she figured it worked out to about $20 a week for veg. Not organic, she thought. But good. She also buys her grains from a farm in Agassiz--whole, organically grown grains--on the same basis: pay in January, pick up through the summer. If the farmer loses the whole crop to bad weather, you lose your contribution. Fair enough. (This applies in all three cases. Makes the whole food thing more real, it seems to me.) She has the same deal with a woman at Trout Lake Farmer's Market. Unfortunately my memory couldn't hold all of that.

By the time we were done talking I felt gross again. But I still took time to look at Women’s Work : Reflections upon the History of Women in Textile, the exhibition on at the museum in the Italian Cultural Centre from 12 September to 30 December. There are a couple of pieces I quite like, and most of them I at least enjoyed contemplating. And a few more minutes to peek in at the Bocce rink and the Osteria (both closed) at the Centre. This is such a happening place, and so much of it comes down to the Italian Cultural Centre. Who'd have thunk it?

So here I am. Feeling vile and not having accomplished a thing today, with those deadlines not getting any further away. But what a lovely walk I had, and how amazing to live in such a place, where there is beauty right outside, and so many threads between the people here--a real community.



Images: Beaconsfield Park, City of Vancouver site.
Il Forno Community Oven, Italian Cultural Centre site.

Glum Facts and the Power of Song

As you may know I have been contending with a few glum facts lately, in amongst the riches of life. The struggle to find new and welcome housing, a few private matters that are weighing me down, and now the love of my life, our community garden, is being torn up to make modular housing for homeless folk. The city says they will relocate us, to which I muse, why not put the modular housing in this new location and leave us be? You can't really "move" a garden. You can destroy one and start another, but the soil carefully tended takes a big step backward, and the soil they supplied last time was riddled with horsetail spores. But all that could be handled--who am I to begrudge the homeless?--except for one abiding concern. If they move it away from the Skytrain station, I may not have easy enough access to carry on there. So again we wait, this time for the eventual announcement of our garden's fate. In the meantime, I am mourning another loss.

However.

I have also been trying to inject a little singing into my days, the last few months. When I am away or horribly forgetful or horribly busy, that ends up just being me tweedly-dumming through the day. When I am home and see my "SING!" notecard on the counter while busying myself with other things, I run through a bunch of vocal exercises and when I really get it together, like today and yesterday, I pull out my big black binder of Irish songs and run through a few.

Today was "M" and "O". I admit there are still a lot of songs in the binder that I haven't learned (but with the internet I have more hope of finding their tunes), and too many more whose melodies I have forgotten, in the long interregnum between the days of yore when I learned and sang songs galore, enjoying them at Irish music sessions with the likes of Ken Howard and Michael Dooley, and the days of now, when I almost lost my ability to sing. I have missed that music-making very much.

So what good does it do to limber your vocal chords up and sing a few tunes on your own in your room? Isn't that a little pathetic? Isn't music made to be shared? Look at all those eager folk on Britain's Got Talent. To them, singing at home is only the beginning. For me, it may be an end in itself.

When I take an hour, or half an hour even, out of my day and offer it up to song, I feel as though I have repatriated myself in the country of my heart. My body, inside and out, is completely involved, with the workout of breath, posture, and so much more. My emotions are engaged. I strive to do the best I can vocally but also to feel the song in its fullness. The result of all of this is a wakening from at least some of the weight and dullness that come with constant worry and self-criticism, coming back from fear and regret to a complete moment in which the song and myself are the only things in the world--and that is joy.

So delight with me in the full throated strains of another dedicant of the gods of music. And then, taking his inspiration for your own, open your heart and sing.

Image: 'Rufous-naped Lark, Mirafra africana at Pilanesberg National Park, South Africa' by Derek Keats from Johannesburg, South Africa [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
Video: English: "Singing seriema (Cariama cristata) at Areia city, from Brazil's northeast state Paraiba (PB).

Português: Seriema (Cariama cristata) cantando em Areia, cidade da Paraíba, Brasil" by Rhalah. Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.

Putting the Garden to Bed; Waking up to Community

What a blissful yield from today's community garden workday, the last of the year.

I weeded, wheelbarrowed, and wandered around (sorry--needed a third W). I signed up for several jobs, most of which I have already been doing (minding the lupines and blueberries, for two, but also helping paint some doohickey). Of course, there was also the occasional chat with friendly folk, some of whom after (four?) years are familiar, one of whom (Clélie!) is a dear friend.

A couple of hours later, I got to work on my own garden. Harvested all the beans and tomatoes and leeks, (inherited some carrots and tomatoes from other beds), pulled up old veg of various sorts, and then added back a lot of material to the beds so they can snooze all snug and happy.

After a few errands I got home and contented myself with shelling a LOT of scarlet runner beans and white pole beans—I even found a few young enough to munch down while I was working. It looks like I can supply much of the garden with bean seeds next year. (Hint, though you wouldn't want to do it with some seeds, beans can be frozen and used in the spring.)

As always, even when I am in pain and tired and reluctant to go, it was very rewarding being in the garden. Particularly with the uncertainty around my housing, having this one piece of "home" that I don't expect to part with soon is very comforting, and as I lose my neighbours one by one (or two or three at a time, in some cases), these garden neighbours grow in importance. I have a keen need to have stability in my community. Sharing the work and pleasure of growing food is an amazing way to nurture that.

I left my writers group this year, one I have enjoyed being a part of for many years. The leader, Eileen, my dear friend and the reason I joined it in the first place, was retiring, but also it was getting to be too much to get out to Port Moody once a week, plus do all the prep for it with the diligence I demand.

Apparently, though, I have found a new activity to replace that. A call for new board members at the garden came out and I found myself thinking I might actually like to do that. (Normally I run like the wind.) It would be a concrete service to the garden, and an opportunity to become more invested in it and to know some of the other gardeners better. After a few preliminary questions, I decided to join up, if they will accept me with my various limitations. I am feeling quite happy about that, about stepping out into the world a little in a realm that gives me great joy. Also feeling happy about my beans.

One weird thing: my potatoes have disappeared. Only found one little one, and all the the leaves and stems were gone. Odd and disappointing. But hey. I have bundles of garlic, trays of beans, and all manner of lovely things. Maybe next year I will get to keep my potatoes, too.


Image snitched from Still Creek Community Garden Facebook Page.

Feet in the Earth, Head in the Sky

Still Creek Community Garden 2015

I lurched home, dress drenched and sticking to my calves, groceries bundled protectively in my arms, garden paraphenalia and leftover seeds stored soaking in my pack. Stripping at the door, I emptied my pack on the floor, left the food where I dropped it, pegged the pack up on my Get Kist Here! corner-grocery door-push, hung my coat and hat to dry, and climbed into the shower to rub down my chilled torso and my beet pink legs. When I could bear the torment of my attentions no more (that skin is sensitive when parboiled by rain and friction), I rubbed down, put on two long dresses, thick-knit wrist warmers, a shawl, a cable knit sweater, and a pair of thermal socks. I couldn’t stick my socked feet into my wooly slippers, or I would have done that, too. Two prophylactic vitamin C tablets later, I put on the stove the last of my homemade black bean and barley soup (featuring hunks of my winter parsnip, still delicious and hearty despite their months under snow), and started peeling open seed packets to dry—soaked through, most of them, despite being kept in a ziploc bag and under an umbrella at the community garden through the four hours I worked there today, because the hands that kept going into them were undryable.

That done, I planted the accidentally remaining scarlet runner beans (two) in one of my balcony pots, threw my dress in a soapy sinkful of water to soak, washed my garden tools, set my muddy gardening gloves and sleeve protectors aside for later attention (triage!), cleaned the mud off my boots and left them to dry for later application of mink oil. Peeled apart the leaves of my notebook so they wouldn’t dry glued together, redid my sketch of the new plantings on a fresh piece of paper, divided my groceries into that-which-is-coming-with-me-to-Bowen-Island-tomorrow and that-which-stays-in-Vancouver-to-get-the-homefires-burning-when-I-return, boxed, bagged and put away, and at last sat down with my bowl of hot, wonderful soup.

I have not had so much fun in a coon’s age.

My limbs are trembling. I keep mistyping because my fingers are ungovernable. My back swears vengeance. My skin threatens to peel off, dessicated from the continuous rain and being plunged repeatedly into the earth. (There’s only so much you can do with your hands protected. Sooner or later, if you will pardon the expression, the gloves have got to come off.)

What did I do today to cause such heartiness in the face of apparent discomfort?

2015

I tended my gardens. I tended our garden. I met new community garden members and talked with old, learning more about them and loving them all.

This morning I finally got the home garden sprinkled with organic fertilizer before dashing with Mary to StillCreek Community Garden for our first work party of the year. I got about an hour’s work in my own beds done before the “party” started: string strung to demarcate sections, seeds swapped with Mary, lupines inspected (I fear losses), potatos and garlic babies planted, and I forget what-all-else before my maintenance crew-boss Lucia arrived and we got chatting, then Clélie, bless her, and a big hug and introductions to new folk (whose names I won’t venture at the moment), and then the gathering up of fallen cottonwood limbs, the weeding of communal beds, (the chatting, the chatting), the back groaning, the back groaning, whispered love-words to horsetail and buttercup and dandelions as I dug them up, apologies to cursing earthworms, to sadly hacked back blackberries (though I defended them, I did, against complete removal: the birds need them more than we don’t), and hot Tim’s coffee and Timbits (ahhh...), till at last I declared myself done with the work party and returned to my beds.

Then it was figuring, plotting, planting, covering, and praying. Have you ever tried to plant a garden when you are dripping wet and the deluge continues all around you? I thanked India for those nice big nasturtium seeds (heirloom Indian, apparently), and mourned the frail tiny mixed lettuces, who glued to my hands in the sprinkling and were, like the rest, unceremoniously brushed off of me and onto the earth, roughly and lightly covered over with numb fingertips, watched by crossing eyes that were barely able to make them out through my bifocals, and left to fend for themselves with only a single defunct Adobe Acrobat CD turning wistfully from a string over the kale, the leeks, the spinach, and the chard.

Those words! Delicious. My tongue tastes them as I speak; my teeth feel their texture and their crunch.

I went nuts this year, perhaps with increasing confidence, as I manage to harvest something every Gardener’s Question Time while unable to do more but watch my hardy kale die mouldering in the snow and my hardier Gladiator parsnips unmoveable in the frozen ground. (Next year, my pretties, there will be burlap around you, or at least a little cardboard, so I can wiggle out a root or two in the Dark Times.)

Katherine Laflamme, 2017.
Still Creek Community Garden Facebook page

season, perhaps with increasing recklessness as I recall the many unviable or at least violated plants that never made the light, perhaps with the sap-lust of many months listening to

Back to the words:

Chard.

Kale.

Parsnip.

Tomato.

Lettuce.

Leek.

Nasturtium.

Garlic.

Potato.

Spinach.

Beans.

Have you ever heard such beautiful words in your life?

I know, then I forget, then I remember again, that I am never happier than when I am tending a wee plant or animal, or indeed a massive plant or animal. I don’t care what kind. There is no weed, no pest to me, although I do sometimes have to negotiate, if you get my drift, and urge other pastures on my associates. But I truly love them all, and when I am able to spend time with them, joy runs through me like sap through leaves.

A few years ago my neighbour Darnelle urged me to join a community garden, which she had done and which was bringing her such happiness. I thought I didn’t feel like doing that. Too much work, too many rules, and besides, I don’t know a thing about gardening. Then Darnelle died and I kept looking at her neglected plot and I kept thinking, I wonder.

The next year I faced cancer. I spent a while dealing with that and where it was not a mortal blow, gras a Dye, it scared the pants off me. After a few months of dealing with that I had the thought that I would like to grow something more life-giving than cancer cells, so I asked for and miraculously got a place in a community garden. I was very cautious at first, shy of the people and shy in my planting, because I knew so little, and worried so much.

Is it five years later now? Something like that. And that plot, now two plots, has sustained me in many more ways than gustatorially in that time, growing in importance every year, roots growing out from it, through me, into the community that welcomed me, so that the food I get from it is not only for my body, but for my soul, not only for me as an individual, but as part of a world.

One of the first things I planted was a purple tulip given me by my friend Kathy, who died of her own cancer three years ago. I see today their leaves strong and their buds on the verge of opening. (That one tulip is now two.) And they link me back to her and all we went through, all she went through, all the people who helped, who tended our garden of the heart along the way.

Parsnips, tulips. Marigolds, “weeds”. The earthworms I had to dig up from other places and slowly introduce. The rain. The cottonwoods. The peace.

It really is a community garden. And I am so grateful I have a place in it.

2015

Images:  Casey Wolf and Katherine Laflamme.