No Mo’ May

And then it was June. Hard to believe it, given how very cold it is this evening - so cold that I was driven to make a fire in the wood stove for the first time since March Break! But tomorrow - oh, tomorrow! - we are expecting the sort of weather that inspired those epic lines from The Vision of Sir Launfal:

And what is so rare as a day in June?
Then, if ever, come perfect days;
Then Heaven tries earth if it be in tune,
And over it softly her warm ear lays;
Whether we look, or whether we listen,
We hear life murmur, or see it glisten;
Every clod feels a stir of might,
An instinct within it that reaches and towers,
And, groping blindly above it for light,
Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers;
The flush of life may well be seen
Thrilling back over hills and valleys;
The cowslip startles in meadows green,
The buttercup catches the sun in its chalice,
And there's never a leaf nor a blade too mean
To be some happy creature's palace;
The little bird sits at his door in the sun,
Atilt like a blossom among the leaves,
And lets his illumined being o'errun
With the deluge of summer it receives;
His mate feels the eggs beneath her wings,
And the heart in her dumb breast flutters and sings;
He sings to the wide world, and she to her nest,
In the nice ear of Nature which song is the best?

Tomorrow marks twelve days since I sallied forth from Toronto, our Subaru stuffed to the gills with my seedlings, and since then I’ve been the busiest version of this particular Bee (yes, that’s what some call me) with hands too full of dirt and a head too full of urgent to-dos to sit by the fire and, finally, write. But here I am, now, and… now, let me put another log on the fire; let me pour a splash of blueberry liqueur into this slightly-too-sour red wine.

When, as a writer, one has been negligent, and when so much has piled up in terms of tales to tell and lessons gleaned in such a very short time as less than a fortnight, one is compelled to consider one’s reader and the need to condense for the sake of time and flow. I can not make the last twelve days into any sort of neat package; this time resists being tied up with a bow. So I might do as my childhood best friend’s mother did last night at her daughter’s wedding: make my speech in a series of random memories, numbered one to ten or so. Let’s say twelve. Alright, here we go!

1. No Mow May. How do you feel about it? I like it in principle, and there’s no doubt that the pollinators do, but when I arrived on the 21st of May to find a “shire” that was knee-high in grass and tens of thousands of dandelion pom-poms (they’d already gone to seed) and a good slathering of mustard garlic, I knew I would not be waiting for it all to grow another foot or so in the ten days before May would be over. You see, we don’t possess a very good mower - she’s alright, but she’s a cheap one from Canadian Tire - and every five minutes she sputters out and has to rest for another thirty before I can rev her up again when she has to deal with a big job like that. So mowing was really my first order of business, and for a few days I green-knuckled my way through being sure that the inconstant on-and-offs of my noisy occupation were hell to bear for my poor neighbours, and worried that they knew that I was unleashing an unholy army of dandelion spawn with every meter I mowed. But whatever, we got through it, and what’s done is done now. And wherever I saw Forget-me-nots or wild violets in sufficient profusion, I simply mowed around them. Did you know that very serious anti-dandelion lawn people say that if it’s gone to seed you ought to take a battery-charged vacuum-cleaner out and hoover up the puffs before you mow? I didn’t do that. Oh, forgive me! For I do know what I have sown!

2. PFFFDTPFFFDTPFFFDT! The sound and physical sensation of a lovely dovely I hadn’t seen was roosting there when surveying the rose arch that had been pruned in late winter, just a few short months ago, and that is now (and still, because I’m afraid to disturb Ms. D) already overgrown. Do not even try to compare her to that self-sacrificing bird in Oscar Wilde’s The Nightingale and the Rose. That lovely b*tch is far too self-respecting to die for the sake of any human from a self-administered thorn wound to the chest.

3. One word: lilacs. And you thought that for every number on this list I’d be going on and on like I have above for the first couple. Pfft! I try to know when to give it a rest ;)

4. There were daffodils, too, still in bloom when I arrived, although the big yellers were fading. That was okay, though, because I’ve decided I don’t really like them in the garden colour scheme. I have beheaded them and will allow them to finish maturing their bulbs before I move them to the forest path where they’ll be more welcome. What I did get to witness was the blooming of the type species of Narcissus, Narcissus poeticus, aka the poet's daffodil, pheasant's eye, findern flower or pinkster lily. And I quote from Wikipedia: this flower “was one of the first daffodils to be cultivated, and is frequently identified as the narcissus of ancient times… often associated with the Greek legend of Narcissus.” The scent of this more refined white flower with its scarlet and saffron eye is heady as f*ck - less daffy than her Big Bird counterpart - and she’s more than welcome to stay put where she is.

5. Another quick one: the pure joy it is to see the same dusky pink-brown blooms on the hellebores as it seems I had back in April when I was last here for Easter. The Christmas Rose, as she’s otherwise known (or, the Lenten) is the gift that keeps on giving, all spring and early summer long.

6. In April, if you recall, I declared this the Year of the Bean. We planted quite a few heirloom, bizarro varieties then, and I’m pleased to report that they’ve nearly all sprouted, and some will soon need me to go round with twine for support as they vine up. I can’t wait for the taste of those “Slippery Silks”, those “Urizun Winged”, those “Jade Fort Portal”. And the “Red Rat’s Tail” radish planted back then are coming up roses, too. And don’t get me started on the beets, the carrots, the garlic, or the fact that last year’s lost potatoes are currently breeding like the most devout Catholics, bent on parading out their progeny in next year’s St. Paddy’s Day stew.

7. Lu now has a patch of earth worthy of Lovejoy Mason in Rumer Godden’s An Episode of Sparrows (a novel right up there with Godden’s The Greengage Times in my list of all-time favourites). A couple of dear friends from Toronto visited me last week, one of whom is an avid gardener. He was keen to help me plant up the veg patch with my seedlings, and when I mentioned that Lu had expressed a wish to grow a few things in a space of her own, he also helped me to create a new bed that will be just for her. It has full sun and pride of place, right by the millstone.

8. Under the tarp that covers our compost heap, I discovered a garden snake who was so unfussed by my presence and my sh*t-shoveling that she stayed put for a quarter of an hour before making her retreat. I could have told her I planned to frack underneath her once my wheelbarrow of compost was full, and all she’d have done was stick out her tongue.

9. Perhaps she was happy with me in the knowledge of good and evil that was my fruit tree-planting saga this week. Perhaps that snake knew that it would soon enough be time to tempt an Eve with a peach, plum, or pear. I bought the trees en route home from my nephew’s bar mitzvah last Sunday - yes, this is an era of constant bar mitzvahs and weddings for us, and fortunately not yet one of funerals as quipped by my dear neighbours who had me over for a few negronis and the most wonderful chat - and their complete planting will only be done tomorrow as I’ve had to deal with Gummosis in the plums and to weigh the benefits and drawbacks of staking for support against the winds and source a mulch appropriate to them and to the Wine Cap mushrooms I’d like to grow atop it (we’re going to go with poplar). Anyway, tough as it is to plant a tree alone and have it plumb and all of that, this was the culmination of decades of dreaming, and I am grateful and humbled and joyful, and yet something tells me that the hard work of caring for fruit trees in a post-Eden context is only just beginning.

10. Deciding that Some Sort of Structure must be made (by me? Oh, boy) for vining grapes and kiwi. These things must be transplanted from their Hail Mary spots and given proper sun and support if they are to really do something, I’ve realized. But I’m glad that the blueberries and currants have found a shadeless spot and seem to be off to a good start this season. And the strawberries, once they were rid of their dainty, tight lace collar of lierre terrestre, started fruiting like mad. The first red ones are predicted to be here by next week this time.

11. Speaking of finding the right spots for things, of embracing conditions as they are and not flailing about against them, I’ve been leaning in hard to the utter delight that is making a shade garden. Originally, I created a quote-unquote flower patch by path down to the forest in the hopes of growing all manner of blooms, but several years of experimentation with things like dahlias and gladioli have taught me that they just do not get enough sun down there. The foxgloves are thriving - God bless them for being so tolerant - and I’m only now getting enthusiastic about just how many other flowers might be happy there. So: anenomes in profusion, Astilbe, Bugbane. Myosotis and ferns from the forest. In the “Sissinghurst Garden”, aka “Léo’s Garden” thanks to all his rock work there, we can enjoy the lupins, alliums, hollyhocks, et j’en passe… and different varieties of irises can tie the two worlds together. And I’ve moved the glads around to a few different sunnier spots: at the front of the house, in an old washtub in the original garden, in a line behind the fruit trees where they’ll catch the full brunt of the sun and fall back into the prickly embrace of the raspberry bushes.

12. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTns5EnMGjI. So very nice to be visited by The Divine Ms. O all week, and I hope she’ll decide that here’s a better place than Baltimore. Especially given the current American administration. But I digress.

Rhododendrons

Yesterday my love and I celebrated seven years of marriage. As we go about the city at this time of year when every day there is some new bloom to gasp at, I give his hand a squeeze and say again how perfect a day was ours to be wed. Just in time for my bouquet came the lilies of the valley. For our house guests who had flown in from France and L.A. and Australia (our place was, for a week or so, the happiest of hostels) we filled the kitchen with lilacs from the park*. Had I been aware of them, I would have insisted on taking my guests to see the rhododendrons under the magnolia at Kew Gardens (in Toronto’s Beaches neighbourhood - not the ones in London, England!)

Rhododendrons are, like hellebores, one of those plants I can’t believe how long it took me to properly encounter and appreciate. It’s silly, but I think it’s their names that put me off them before I could get into them. Silly especially since, now that I know them, I get a kick out of voicing the alveolar plosives that I used to dread in rhododendron, and I chortle at the thought that the hellebore is anything but hella boring. So: now we’re having fun!

Last night, when we came back from a celebratory dinner out at the Old York Tavern, my love and I sat on the back patio and he played guitar and I wrote some words - a sort of love song, of course, but the kind you can only write after seven years of ups and downs (ten if we count from the very beginning and not just from our wedding) - and it ends with:

To me you’ve given your best years

And too much patience

And all your goddamned gears

And we are tired

But are we stronger than before?

I don’t know

But I do care

Some future absence

I can’t bear

And on the seventh day, God rested

He was done

So let’s have fun, now

Let’s have fun

And that is what we intend to do, now: have as much fun as we can. Let ourselves rest, too, in the knowledge that neither one of us is going anywhere.

Neuroscientists studying love and the brain have a theory that there are four stages of relationships by months, which I’m copying below (taken from this site). Contrary to the seven year itch concept wherein love grows stale and boring after an initial period of delight, the marriage becoming a sham or a horror-show, the idea of a deep attachment stage, calm and secure, that couples can look forward to is both comforting and inspiring.

Stages of Relationships by Months

• Stage 1: The euphoric stage - 6 months to 24 months (2 years)

• Stage 2: The early attachment stage - 12 months (1 year) to 60 months (5 years)

• Stage 3: The crisis stage - 60 months (5 years) to 84 months (7 years)

• Stage 4: The deep attachment stage - 84 months (7 years) and beyond

Quoting from Abrams’ article: “The deep attachment stage is the calm after the storm. By this point, a couple knows each other well, they've been through the inevitable ups and downs, they know that they can deal with crises, and they've likely made a plan for handling future crises.”

When asked if it was love at first sight for me and my husband, I can’t say that it was, and that’s partly because I wasn’t looking for love when I met him. In fact, I was a single mom and, having been disappointed by men, sort of determined to stay as far away from them as I could. But we all know that it isn’t the love at first sight that really matters - it’s the love that comes after. Which brings me back ‘round to rhododendrons.

I never liked them because their name was clunky and because I had never really looked at them while knowing what they were called. That is, until this very spring. I’m sure I had seen them before - in bloom - and loved them, but never had the name and the plant been fixed together properly in my mind’s eye. And now I do love rhododendrons - especially the ones in Kew Gardens, Toronto, skirted in ferns and cream-coloured daffodils, in the lee of a grand Magnolia. You’ll find them just southeast of the Beaches Library, that perfect, red-walled, plush-carpeted confection.

To close: a little Sylvia Plath.

Fable Of The Rhododendron Stealers

I walked the unwalked garden of rose-beds
In the public park; at home felt the want
Of a single rose present to imagine
The garden's remainder in full paint.

The stone lion-head set in the wall
Let drop its spittle of sluggish green
Into the stone basin. I snipped
An orange bud, pocketed it. When

It had opened its orange in my vase,
Retrogressed to blowze, I next chose red;
Argued my conscience clear which robbed
The park of less red than withering did.

Musk satisfied my nose, red my eye,
The petals' nap my fingertips:
I considered the poetry I rescued
From blind air, from complete eclipse.

Yet today, a yellow bud in my hand,
I stalled at sudden noisy crashes
From the laurel thicket. No one approached.
A spasm took the rhododendron bushes:

Three girls, engrossed, were wrenching full clusters
Of cerise and pink from the rhododendron,
Mountaining them on spread newspaper.
They brassily picked, slowed by no chagrin,

And wouldn't pause for my straight look.
But gave me pause, my rose a charge,
Whether nicety stood confounded by love,
Or petty thievery by large.

* Yes, I used to steal flowers sometimes - a bad habit I took a long time to shed. And I’ve been told, too, that some people don’t bring lilacs into the house for superstitious reasons (they are thought to attract faeries) and/or because their scent is “a lot.”

On Nostalgia

Nostalgia. One of those words whose etymology is relatively well known. A refresher for those who’ve forgotten: in Greek, nostos means ‘return home’ and algos, ‘pain.’

Lately I’ve been overcome with it. What started this flood of feeling, this emotional ache that arrived around the same time as my sore neck? (And that is three weeks ago, now, I see, consulting my squill post from April 14th!) And how much longer must I swim through these Aegean/aging seas of wistfulness and longing? I hope: not much longer. These are hard waters to tread. Perhaps the phase will end in tandem with the stiffness of my neck, much less stiff now than it was when I woke up that Monday morning in mid April.

And I guess I did a deep dive voluntarily this weekend, acting on a Friday morning impulse (the spark came while I was doing laps at the pool) and packing up the family early Saturday to go revisit Lindsay, Ontario, the small town where I grew up. And we would swim there, too, in the pool that has not changed one iota in twenty years. There was the same oversized poster hanging in the same spot: If you’re not within arms’ reach, you’ve gone too far. The same half-assed system for hanging the childrens’ life jackets (over the back railing of the therapy pool). The same cubbies for outdoor shoes, the same colour paint in the change rooms (a soft mint), the same strikingly pretty, neatly-dressed woman energetically managing the young lifeguards with the same fascinating combination of strictures and wit (though her dark hair, always worn in a bun, has, like mine, begun to go grey).

Was this nostalgic phase seeded on March 29th, the day I noticed my first translucent strand? That day I cried and consoled myself by buying white tulips and silver pussy willows for the kitchen table, as if to say: “achromatic colours can be beautiful, too.”

Saturday, before swimming, we went to the first farmer’s market of the year - the same market where my parents had their stand selling my mum’s baked goods and jams and flowers and produce and my dad’s handmade cedar furniture. And here it did feel different… all new vendors, no one I recognized. Perhaps unsurprisingly, because she must be in her seventies now, Barb Corner was no longer at her corner where Victoria meets Kent; gone are the tea biscuits and the warm bosomy hugs.

But we did bump into my childhood crush who had in tow his three beautiful children, immaculately dressed and, given how pure and Christian he still seems to be, probably immaculately conceived as well. And we did bump into an old bestie from ballet class who ended up marrying another boy I’ve known since kindergarten - the crush’s old best friend. But we don’t know each other anymore, and only in his timid, blushing reception of my boisterous hello did it all come back to me, the way the milk-white skin under all those gorgeous freckles goes deep dusky pink any time anyone pays him the slightest attention. And only when his improbable wife, my ballet friend, did a little développé in answer to my plié to demonstrate, for her tiny daughters, that we were bunheads once as they are now, did the ice break for a moment before it closed above us in our hasty, awkward farewell.

Is the nostalgia due to the books that I’ve been reading? Experience by Martin Amis, Humboldt’s Gift by Saul Bellows. The peculiar sadness of lives lived then ended, summarized.

And we went to the library - the library! That dear, redbrick building with its gable roof and four white pillars, its rotunda in the back where, preciously, they keep the childrens’ section. The internet tells me the architectural style is “Ontario Gothic Revival.” And nothing there has changed except for the addition of books published in the interim, and the absence of the lobby display of dashing kimonos in Astilbe hues of dark reds and sweet pinks.

Since 1969, Lindsay has had a twin city: Nayoro, Japan. I wonder if, like a sister, Nayoro decided it was time for Lindsay to give her clothes back?

Outside of the library there is a stone pillar containing an “eternal flame” and a time capsule put there in the year 2000 that is due to be opened soon (in 2025). I was 11 years old when it was erected - Lu’s age now. We were still using desktop computers and dial-up internet, wall phones and CD players.

Is the nostalgia related to the fear that I’m falling behind in a world that demands I keep up with its advances?

We took a good photo outside of the firehall where my dad cut his teeth in his chosen profession, a profession he’s since left but that informs what he does now (he’s a fire inspector). Sadie may not be a Dalmation, but she is white and black, and she looks awfully cute sat up between Lu and my love by the big bell at the base of the tower.

We did not take a photo at the ballet studio. I was disappointed that the building (an old warehouse with creaking hardwood floors and enormous windows that you can tilt inward to let in some air with the pull of a chain) had been painted black (it was formerly white) with the tacky addition of metallic gold details (sills, jambs, and lintels).

Perhaps the best photo was taken in Burns Bulk Food (formerly Country Call), not only because Lu - whose energy was at that moment flagging - was pleased to be allowed three choices from the candy bins, but also because with its orange and cream chequered floor and symmetrical alignments, it’s a setting fit for Wes Anderson, photogenic as.

And buoyed with midmorning sugar, we went on to stroll the main drag, stopping in at Sweet Annie’s and Kent Florist, saluting the façade of the Academy Theatre where I danced in a dozen June recitals (they say it is haunted by the ghost of a lady who tripped on the red velvet stairs and died), then descended to the riverside (which still stinks of dead fish) and looped back up to the car so I could show them my old schools.

Is it because Lu is in grade six, which means that a long, eight-year chapter is coming to a close as she will graduate from Old Orchard and go on to a new school? Is that why I am feeling such nostalgia?

We went to my old houses, too, in the order in which I inhabited them: first, Nayoro Place, a social housing project of butter-yellow brick by the river where I remember throwing up a quart of strawberries on the tire swing, eating earwigs, and watching Aristocats on repeat. Then the famous Hundred Acre Farm. Then that house on Cresswell over which an evil stepmother reigned for a time and where the trees my dad planted are now full-grown and beautiful.

Is it because I am leaving one home soon for the other? Saying goodbye for the summer to this city that by turns I hate and love, the people in it who I (always, deeply) adore?

Here’s my wish: that today, the sixth of May, might be the climax and the end of this long and strange phase of nostalgia. It’s bizarre how much this particular date has come to mean over the years. First, half a lifetime ago, when I met her at eighteen, I found out it was a dear friend’s birthday. Now en route to her down under: a card bearing 35 reasons why I love her. It was too easy to fill, so she’s going to have to keep on getting old. Next, and one of the reasons why I decided it made sense for us to attempt parenthood together: Lu’s bio dad shares this friend’s birthday. And then last year, another very dear friend lost her husband on May 6th. How can one date signify so much joy, so much sorrow? It’s a day that drowns me with nostalgia, and tomorrow I am determined - not to forget - but to come up for air.

Where did this nostalgia come from, sudden as the spring, heartbreaking and blue as the muscari in the ditch that Lulu happened upon as she was gathering poofy yellow catkins reminiscent of Australian mimosa on a dirt back road as we started for home? It is a question that might well be without any one answer, a question like where did all this time go?

May Day!

It’s the first of the merry month, the month in which my darling girl was born, in which I was married… the month of the darling buds of… May!

I’ve been busy with my buds a lot lately, and this month is bursting with beautiful occasions to be with those I love and together marvel at and revel in the ephemeral splendour of this (my favourite) month of the year. We are like the éphémères (Mayflies) in our frenetic carpe diems, gathering here, gathering there.

I want to write about Beltane, about maypoles, about H.E. Bates and the Larkins, about muguet (lily-of-the-valley), but I’ve made a vow to myself to fix my sleep this month, to get to bed early and to quit the screen at least an hour before my head hits the pillow. Last month’s sartorial challenge was a success, but as Lu pointed out, it was relatively fun. This sleep thing is going to require some amount of sacrifice.

The first hurdle: I’m lacking time to write, now, as I spent the day working with a friend and am soon going to take another friend out for his birthday dinner. Normally I might just do the writing later, no matter how late that might be, but that’s a big no-no from a sleep hygienist’s perspective. So: let me turn over the reins to another pair of darling buds: Patti Smith and Allen Ginsberg. You can listen to her reading of his poem - it’s quite moving - here: https://pattismith.substack.com/p/may-poem

MAY POEM

by Allen Ginsberg

Elan that lifts me above the clouds
into pure space, timeless, yea eternal
Breath transmuted into words
Transmuted back to breath
in one hundred two hundred years
nearly Immortal, Sappho's 26 centuries
of cadenced breathing - beyond time, clocks, empires, bodies, cars,
chariots, rocket ships skyscrapers, Nation empires
brass walls, polished marble, Inca Artwork
of the mind - but where's it come from?
Inspiration? The muses drawing breath for you? God?
Nah, don't believe it, you'll get entangled in Heaven or Hell -
Guilt power, that makes the heart beat wake all night
flooding mind with space, echoing through future cities, Megalopolis or
Cretan village, Zeus' birth cave Lassithi Plains - Otsego County
farmhouse, Kansas front porch?
Buddha's a help, promises ordinary mind no nirvana -
coffee, alcohol, cocaine, mushrooms, marijuana, laughing gas?
Nope, too heavy for this lightness lifts the brain into blue sky
at May dawn when birds start singing on East 12th street -
Where does it come from, where does it go forever? .

Stendhal Syndrome

Have you ever heard of an “Art Attack”? I’m not talking about the zany, larger-than-life projects on that 1990s TV show starring the inimitable Neil Buchanan. I’m talking about that feeling of being overcome by the beauty of a piece of art.

In his book Rome, Naples and Florence, the French writer Stendhal famously describes his intense psychosomatic response to the “sublime beauty” of his 1817 visit to the tombs of Niccolò Machiavelli, Michelangelo and Galileo Galilei in the Basilica of Santa Croce in Florence, Italy. “Everything spoke so vividly to my soul. Ah, if I could only forget. I had palpitations of the heart, what in Berlin they call 'nerves'. Life was drained from me. I walked with the fear of falling.”

Apparently, it is par for the course for hospital staff at Santa Maria Nuova in Florence to treat tourists for dizzy spells after viewing Michelangelo’s “David”, and in 2018 someone had a heart attack while taking in the beauty of Sandro Botticelli’s “The Birth of Venus.”

But Stendhal Syndrome, as it’s called, isn’t exclusively caused by art. Remember the Double Rainbow Guy? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQSNhk5ICTI

Today, sitting in Trinity Bellwoods by the sakura trees, it seemed I wasn’t alone in really feeling it… everyone passing through gets this beatific smile and you can just tell we’re all giddy and perhaps even dizzied by the beauty of the blossoms. Stendhal Syndrome at its least discomfiting.

CHERRY BLOSSOMS

by Toi Derricotte

I went down to
mingle my breath
with the breath
of the cherry blossoms.

There were photographers:
Mothers arranging their
children against
gnarled old trees;
a couple, hugging,
asks a passerby
to snap them
like that,
so that their love
will always be caught
between two friendships:
ours & the friendship
of the cherry trees.

Oh Cherry,
why can’t my poems
be as beautiful?

A young woman in a fur-trimmed
coat sets a card table
with linens, candles,
a picnic basket & wine.
A father tips
a boy’s wheelchair back
so he can gaze
up at a branched
heaven.
                     All around us
the blossoms
flurry down
whispering,

        Be patient
you have an ancient beauty.

                                            Be patient,
                                  you have an ancient beauty.

Getting Organized

I was once a serial procrastinator. I would eventually get the thing done, whatever it was - a paper, the paperwork, the proposal - but I would put myself through an uncertain and wobbly hell of a time doing it, all in a rush and in the nick of time. These days I’m too old for pulling all-nighters. I prefer to get things done and out of the way as quickly and as efficiently as possible. Instead of letting it all pile up, I like to nip my tasks in the bud, get the upper hand.

A lot has been happening in the past week or so. We’ve decided on the middle school where we’ll be sending Lu, and I’ve decided to start searching for a new teaching job. I could feel the familiar sense of overwhelm and imposter syndrome creeping in as I began to organize myself for these consequential changes, but instead of giving in and getting stuck in a slump, I pushed myself to tackle the challenges straight away.

The result: in just a few days, I finalized Lu’s registration and applied for a year-long contract at the French school where I used to work, armed with an excellent reference and all. And now: sweet relief at having cracked the carapace of things that just a week ago seemed very hard to do. And now: a renewed taste for getting organized in all the senses, just in time for Beltane (prime spring cleaning season).

And “the universe” or “God” or whatever you like to call the mysterious force that can often be observed helping us when we help ourselves, well that force gifted me something lovely today as I walked home from school with Lu sighing at the pink and green beauty of sakura and Norway Maples at the height of their bloom. Just something little, and yet it was something I’d been wishing to find. Qu’est-ce que c’est? A tray for organizing floppy disks that works perfectly for keeping my seed stash in alphabetical order by plant type - 30 slots, so there’s extra room for the larger categories (think: beans, squash). Eunomia would be thrilled with such a good curb find, and so am I.

IF I COULD JUST GET ORGANIZED

by Douglas Malloch

There may be nothing wrong with you,
The way you live, the work you do,
But I can very plainly see
Exactly what is wrong with me.
It isn’t that I’m indolent,
Or dodging duty by intent;
I work as hard as anyone,
And yet I get so little done,
The morning goes, the noon is here,
Before I know, the night is near,
And all around me I regret,
Are things I haven’t finished yet.
If I could just get organized!
I oftentimes have realized
Not all that matters is the man;
The man must also have a plan.

With you, there may be nothing wrong
But here’s my trouble right along;
I do the things that don’t amount
To very much, of no account,
That really seem important though
And let a lot of matters go.
I nibble this, I nibble that,
But never finish what I’m at.
I work as hard as anyone
And yet, I get so little done,
I’d do so much you’d be surprised,
If I could just get organized!

Burning Pile

June 21, 2021. We arrived at what we’d soon decide should be called Maison Blum (BLUM for the allusion to flowers and because it works as an acronym of sorts for our names, Bethany, Lu, Michael, and also because of its aural adjacency to blue, like the blue tin roof) and took up our stewardship. Bleeding Hearts and roses were in full bloom, and what is now the shire was a wild meadowland so overgrown that we had to machete a path to the forest to get down to the river. It was such a jungle that we had no idea there was even a pond just fifty feet below the lower deck.

This untamed state of life unbridled was indeed beautiful to behold, and it was in some ways difficult to accept that we would have to trade parts of it away if we wanted space for play and a kitchen garden. I worried that we would adversely affect the wildlife by removing natural habitat - on our first day, while clearing a path, we did indeed bump into a massive mama of a snapping turtle. But it was important to us to have an area for playing fetch with Sadie, an area where kids could run wild. So Michael spent the better part of our first summer clearing the shire and, eventually, nurturing his newly seeded grass. For my part, I was to spend it sifting through an unimaginable amount of stuff left in and around the house by the former owners.

There was a lot of good stuff mixed in with a lot of junk, I have to say, and I so while sometimes I felt like Ariel in her grotto (look at this stuff, isn’t it neat?) I also felt like I had been dropped into a bad episode of Hoarders, stuck with heaps of things that had to be either donated, binned, or, in the worst case scenarios… burned. And some things, like the sweet wooden settee that we thought so charming with its peeling paint (a robin’s egg blue) and its spindly posts, we kept with the intention that they would be fun future projects.

Fast forward to that future, five years on, and that settee, which has been sitting out on the porch in all weather, finally saw the burning pile this weekend (pic above). There was a gleefulness that took over from regret as we mused that not all dreams are meant to be realized - they don’t all have to be.

And what might go where the settee was? For now, it’s an empty space that holds the magic of possibility.

It reminds me of a story my mother likes to tell. When she was a young mum of three and in the midst of nesting at the old farmhouse she and my dad were renting for a mere $600 a month, the place they’d call "Hundred-Acre Farm” since it was sat on so many acres, and where for seven idyllic years they’d tap trees for their prize-winning maple syrup, where my dad would build cedar furniture to sell along with my mom’s vegetables and jams and pickles and cinnamon twists and the famous date squares that I hated, well… when she was in the midst of all of this, and homeschooling us, and dealing with the death of her little brother, she decided that we required a piano. They were practically penniless, but she started searching anyway, trusting that the right piano would come, at the right price. Months of searching, and nothing turned up until one day on a whim she decided to clear a designated space for the desired piano. In a matter of days after clearing the space, the matter was settled. An upright, white piano was delivered to its spot, donated for free by a benevolent acquaintance. The lesson is, my mother says, that if you really want something, you have to clear the space, then it will come.

Now I’m mixing metaphors, maybe, as it’s not as if I have a master plan for what to do with the area where the settee once was now that it’s gone on the burning pile. I suppose for now what it allows is simply the pleasure of the invitation of its emptiness to imagine new projects, most of which will inevitably find their ways to the metaphorical burning pile in turn.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDHue6yW2iI

Foray into Foraging

It is becoming a spring tradition at Maison Blum to forage for wild garlic, nettles and violets. Lu’s initial impatience at having to pick those tiny violets has given way, this year, to her own enthusiastic initiative. She made this simple recipe for violet sugar from Fare Isle: https://fareisle.com/wild-violet-sugar/ as well as the customary violet ice cubes we love to break out for picnics at the height of summer. She wanted to know what Sadie (our dog) made of her precious, amethyst-hued bounty, and I’m told it passed the sniff test. Pic above for proof!

I simply took some leaves from the wild garlic plants (aka ramps) instead of digging up the bulbs, partly out of laziness and partly because I’d like to encourage the expansion of the patch in our forest. Here’s a great resource for anyone looking to go “ramping” - https://www.wildedible.com/blog/foraging-ramps. It’s sad to hear that over-harvesting is causing a decline in these wonderful plants, harbingers of spring and the perfect post-winter tonic. The good news is that you can harvest more responsibly by following the directives given in the article linked above.

Lucky for us, nettle grows abundantly at the edge of our forest where it meets the shire, so I can go ham on that! Now, while the plant is young and tender, is the best time to harvest nettle to dry for tisane, which apparently provides a whole host of benefits to health. I’ll admit I’m not quite there with my wellness regimen - I prefer black teas - but I’m planning on introducing these sorts of gentle medecines to our family slowly as we all begin to grow older (found my first silver hair this month!) What I do adore is making a simple nettle and wild garlic soup each spring - a big batch - and freezing a few jars for later. The soup is an incredible emerald colour and you can feel the reinvigorating, cleansing power of it coursing through your veins like the earth’s own evergreen blood, I swear! Here’s how I like to make it:

EMERALD GREEN SPRING SOUP

INGREDIENTS

25 wild garlic leaves, roughly chopped

5 large handfuls nettle tops

4 small yellow onions, roughly chopped

2lbs. small yellow potatoes, whole

large bag of frozen spinach

2 tbsp. olive oil

2L homemade chicken broth

METHOD

1. sautée onion until golden

2. add wild garlic and heat through until bright green

3. add broth and potatoes, bring to a boil, then lower heat to simmer until potates are soft, adding nettles once the potatoes are al dente and not quite soft yet

4. add spinach and cook another 5 minutes until it has softened and mixes through; do not overcook or else the soup will be a dull green instead of emerald!

5. using a hand-blender, purée.

6. season with salt and pepper and enjoy!

STINGING NETTLES

by Charles Goodrich

Murky water in the slough, 

the oily sheen and bitter smell 

of herbicides and sewage.  That deeper stink 

is the natural putridity of drowned fescue 

decaying anaerobically, and it rouses me 

like a whiff of sulphur from hell. 

I’m here for nettles, for a spring 

slumgullion of bitter herbs, and the edges 

of swampy ex-river bottoms 

are where to go with gloves on and rose snips. 

The osoberry bushes 

are leafing out beside heaps 

of broken concrete.  Shattered green 

wine bottles wink among wild blue violets. 

Winter’s gunshot possum has vanished, but now 

here’s a rufous-sided towhee just back from Mexico. 

Cottonwood pollen floats in long swirls 

on the slack water.  I sit on the muddy bank 

snapping twigs.  They say nettles 

are richer in vitamins than spinach, but I’m 

not Popeye.  I steam them for a homeopathic dose 

of poison.  I may be chronically pissed off, 

but I’m a singer of praises, to the end, 

and I need those needles 

lining my throat. 

A Spring Long Weekend at Maison Blum

It’s been a while, and I’ve decided to change the title of this section from “Daily Musings” to the simpler and less binding “Musings.” Truth is, I’ll still attempt to post every weekday, but on the somewhat frequent occasions such as this past long weekend when we make the trip to Maison Blum from Toronto, I’m so taken up with preparations the day before we leave and then the landing back in the city and all the unpacking and reorienting that entails that it’s simply not feasible to hold myself to writing. So: we’re back, and over the next few days I’ll mostly be sharing and processing the loveliness and the lessons of an Easter weekend that was jam-packed with goodness and gardening.

The first order of business this past weekend was to take care of the “shire.” No mowing, of course - we wait until after May for that in order to allow whatever beasties need the cover to wake up slowly and survive and because such things as violets which bloom now are important early sustenance for pollinators - but we did pick up many a stick, any debris from the winter winds that would cause uneven grass growth. I avoid raking unnecessarily, but we did do some tidying work in some high-traffic areas and along the forest path to the river, and I made leaf piles here and there with the intent to later add them to an updated composting system come the summer.

Once the shire felt happy and light, free of its impediments, we turned our attention to the garden. This time of year is prime time for removing unwanted suckers and weeds such as Poison Parsnip, along with any weeds in designated garden patches, but I’m always careful to leave a few desirable “weeds” such as Lamb’s Ear (because it’s soft and cute and makes children happy) and Mullein (for natural remedies) and Nettle (soup and tisane!) and of course lots of Milkweed (for the Monarch butterflies).

We also cut down some carefully selected, small trees at the edge of the forest in order to make room for a mini orchard that I have been dreaming of starting since we first came to Maison Blum, five years ago. Even though, as they say, “the best time to plant a tree was five years ago,” I’m glad I waited because the original site I had imagined for the orchard was far less practical and less beautiful than the one we finally settled on. It has taken five years of developing the garden to understand where exactly the most sensible place for fruit trees is, and now that I’ve staked out their spots, I have no doubt that they’ll be the happiest they can be. What’s going in? Peach, plum, pear. Two of each. Like this song by Joanna Newsom: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcHjAUhtSrk

Certainly the most exciting part of all of this prep work was the sowing. Let’s start with the flowers. At the front of the house, I put in the Gladioli corms that had been dug up and stored inside over the winter, hoping they will be happier with full morning sun and with the porch to lean against. Several varieties of poppy - Mother-of-pearl and the classic Flanders - were sown in the gardens bordering the drive, with the Jelly Beans and Iceland varieties down by the chicken coop. Framing the blueberry patch will be all kinds of sunflowers - the giant Peredovnik with its tasty fat seeds, sweet fuzzy Teddy Bear, high-falutin’ Velvet Queen - plus the pest-repellent and edible necessities of Marigold and Calendula, and some beautiful blue Borage. In the white and blue “Sissinghurst” garden, I added Lewis Flax in the hopes it is as good for xeriscaping as the package advertises, plus some California Bluebells and German Chamomile. The original garden where I used to grow vegetables is now turning over to bright flowers (with some edibles) like Cornflower and Snapdragon, with a central focal point of Red Hopi Dye Amaranth that I think will look dashing (and rather French) against the white and blue of the house and the Sissinghurst garden, and that I can’t wait to use for salads, as grains, as flour, and for the brilliant red dye that is alluded to in its name (more on this incredible plant and its history later).

In terms of root vegetables, we sowed two types of carrots - Bolero and the promisingly named Cosmic Purple Carrot - plus Detroit Dark Red Beets and Red Rat’s Tail Radish. Liliaceaes: leeks and onions. For brassicas, some Sorrento Raab and Green Magic Broccoli to add to those we’ve gotten started in the city under lights, and then all the rest are greens: spinaches, Swiss chard, Mizuna, cilantro (for the first time, somehow… what was I waiting for!?)

I’ve declared 2025 the Year of the Bean and, as they like cooler temperatures to get started in, we did a comprehensive planting of ten varieties of beans and peas and put in the stakes upon which they’ll be strung up later. I purchased most of these seeds last year from a rare seed company based in Missouri called Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, and although some part of me wonders if they’ll appreciate our chillier zone, and all of me wants to make sure I only buy from Canadian companies going forward (for political reasons that didn’t exactly exist last year), I have to say that the names of some of these babies are highly evocative… we’re talking “Dragon Tongue,” “Urizun Japanese Winged Bean,” “Slippery Silks,” “Fort Portal Jade, “Chinese Red Noodle.” I mean, come on! And of course I put some Sweet Peas in - this time, under the rose arch, hoping they’ll have enough sun and the right amount of support as they vine up, and smell like Heaven!

I’m getting very excited for what’s to come, as we have a mere month until I go back with the seedlings I’m nurturing here in Toronto and set up for the long summer. As of May 21st or so, I’ll be based at Maison Blum (about an hour southwest of Montréal) and coming back and forth a few times for special events through June - a wedding, two bar mitzvahs, a grade six graduation, summer camp prep. This will be my third solo June, and in previous years I have waited until landing in my garden to do any direct sowing, fearful that any babies I might plant earlier wouldn’t get enough care to make it without me. This year, though, given the experience of great harvests at Thanksgiving despite the garden being left alone from the start of the school year in September, I’ve decided to hail Mary it. Let Mother Nature provide for them, and if that doesn’t cut it, no big deal. I’ll plant successions as soon as I hit the ground again in one short month.

And now, to end today’s musings: a poem by Mary Oliver. This won’t be the last poem about beans I’ll be posting, I’m sure, given that it is, after all, The Year of the Bean, but it also won’t be the first, because, you know… Beans, beans, the magical fruit… (I digress!)

BEANS

They’re not like peaches or squash.

Plumpness isn’t for them. They like

being lean, as if for the narrow

path. The beans themselves sit qui-

etly inside their green pods. In-

stinctively one picks with care, 

never tearing down the fine vine,

never noticing their crisp bod-

ies, or feeling their willingness for

the pot, for the fire.

I have thought sometimes that

something—I can’t name it—

watches as I walk the rows, accept-

ing the gift of their lives to assist

mine.

I know what you think: this is fool-

ishness. They’re only vegetables.

Even the blossoms with which they

begin are small and pale, hardly sig-

nificant Our hands, or minds, our

feet hold more intelligence. With

this I have no quarrel. 

But, what about virtue?

In All My Slimy Glory

This has been a red-letter week for poetry in the city. On Monday, S.K. Hughes and David Bateman featured at Organizers Observed at the Free Times Café, and last night it was Terese Mason Pierre at Mixed Metals at Danu. I was lucky to attend both, and to share a few poems of my own during the open mic segments.

I say that this week has been a red-letter week for poetry in Toronto, but in fact I think that these days, every week might be one as the sheer number of events on offer is at an all-time high. There’s a renaissance happening and I think everyone in the (growing) community feels it. So many brilliant initiatives are buzzing themselves into the fray, experimental formats and new forums from Miles Forrester’s collective zine workshop at the Tranzac to the plethora of happenings at HamSart Market Souk to Poetry Brothel and its immersive cabarets… and the list could go on. If any of you dear readers want a complete list, a good person to talk to is Paul Edward Costa. He has his finger on the pulse.

My favourite poems are those in which the poet reveals a self in all its slimy glory, exposing what hides under a shell in regular everyday life. We don’t tend to go about the world speaking of our private griefs and embarrassments or even of our most sublime joys. We reserve these, perhaps, for our closest friends, and some we keep just for ourselves, as secrets. But the best poetry asks us to retrieve these things from their hiding spots deep within us, and to hold them up for a brief moment in the sunlight, give them a sip of air. It can be scary to make oneself so vulnerable. That’s why so often at these readings you’ll hear the poet’s voice trembling, see their pages shake. And this is why each reader is, in my books, a badass.

In the final lines of “Snails” by Francis Ponge, the poet concludes that the lesson of nos chers amis les escargots is that you must know yourself and “… accept yourself for what you are. In agreement with your vices. In proportion with your measure.” And it’s clear that the famous French hermit considered poetry to be humanity’s best tool for building self-knowledge, and further, that snails present us with a poetic obligation: “And so they delineate the duties of humanity: great thoughts come from the heart. Live a better life and make better verses.”

Here is Ponge’s “Snails”, translated by Joshua Corey and Jean-Luc Garneau:

Unlike the ashes that make their home with hot coals, snails prefer moist earth. Go on: they advance while gluing themselves to it with their entire bodies. They carry it, they eat it, they shit it. They go through it, it goes through them. It’s the best kind of interpenetration, as between tones, one passive and one active. The passive bathes and nourishes the active, which overturns the other while it eats.

(There is more to be said about snails. First of all their immaculate clamminess. Their sangfroid. Their stretchiness.)

One can scarcely conceive of a snail outside its shell and unmoving. The moment it rests it sinks down deep into itself. In fact, its modesty obliges it to move as soon as it has shown its nakedness and 
revealed its vulnerable shape. The moment it’s exposed, it moves on.

During periods of dryness they withdraw into ditches where it seems their bodies are enough to maintain their dampness. No doubt their neighbors there are toads and frogs and other ectothermic animals. But when they come out again they don’t move as quickly. You have to admire their willingness to go into the ditch, given how hard it is for them to come out again.

Note also that though snails like moist soil, they have no affection for places that are too wet such as marshes or ponds. Most assuredly they prefer firm earth, as long as it’s fertile and damp.

They are fond as well of moisture-rich vegetables and green leafy plants. They know how to feed on them leaving only the veins, cutting free the most tender leaves. They are hell on salads.

What are these beings from the depths of the ditches? Though snails love many of their trenches’ qualities they have every intention of leaving. They are in their element but they are also wanderers. And when they emerge into the daylight onto firm ground their shells will preserve their vagabond’s hauteur.

It must be a pain to have to haul that trailer around with them everywhere, but they never complain and in the end they are happy about it. How valuable, after all, to be able to go home any time, no matter where you may find yourself, eluding all intruders. It must be worth it.

They are a little vain about this convenient ability: “Look at me, a vulnerable and sensitive being, who is nevertheless protected from unwanted guests, and so always in possession of happiness and peace of mind!” It’s not surprising the snail holds his head so high.

“At the same time I am glued to the earth, always touching it, always progressing, though slowly, and always capable of pulling loose from the soil into myself. Après moi le déluge, I don’t care, the slightest kick may roll me anywhere. I can always get up again onto my single foot and reglue myself to the dirt where fate has planted me, and that’s my pantry: the earth, the most common of foods.”

Joy to the snail! But they leave their proud slime on everything they touch. A silvery trail follows them. And maybe this points the way for the beaks of birds that love to eat them. Ay, there’s the rub: “To be or not to be, that is the question!” Such vanity! But that’s the danger they face.

Alone? Yes, the snail is quite alone. He has few friends. But he needs no friends to be happy. He sticks to Nature, he enjoys his perfect nearness, he is the friend of the soil which he kisses with his whole body. And he befriends the leaves, and the heavens toward which he proudly stretches his head, with eyes sensitive enough to signify nobility, slowness, wisdom, pride, vanity, fire.

No, he is nothing like the pig. He lacks those pitiful little scurrying anxious feet. That needful flight from shame. The stoic snail is tougher than that. He is more methodical, more proud, and without 
a doubt less gluttonous than any pig — pigs after all are capricious, leaving behind one bit of food to chase after something else. That 
panicky, hurried gluttony, that fear of missing out on something — that’s not for the snail.

Nothing could be more beautiful than that deliberate and discreet advance. What it must cost them to glide so perfectly along the earth they honor with their presence! Each is like a ship trailing its silver wake. They proceed with a majesty that is all the more complete when you consider again the vulnerability of those highly sensitive eyeballs.

Is the anger of snails perceptible? What examples can be found? As it makes no other gestures, the snail’s passion can probably only be discovered by a more profuse and rapid effusion of slime. The slime of pride. So one can see the expression of their rage is identical with that of their egotism. So they rule the world in their rich and silvery fashion.

The expression of their anger, like that of their pride, shines as it dries. But it also makes the trail that reveals them to predators. What’s more, this trail is ephemeral and lasts only until the next rain.

That’s how it is with everyone who speaks in an entirely subjective way, in verses and lines only, without taking care to build their phrases 
into a solid dwelling with more than two dimensions. Something more durable than themselves.

But undoubtedly they don’t feel this need. They are heroes, that is to say beings whose existence alone is a work of art — not artists who merely make masterpieces.

Here I touch on one of the main points of their lesson, something they have in common with all shelled beings: that shell, part of their essence, is at the same time a work of art, a monument. It lasts longer than they do.

That is the example that snails offer us: saints who make masterpieces 
of their lives, works of art of their own perfection. They secrete form. Nothing outside themselves, their necessity, or their needs is their work. Nothing is out of proportion with their physical being. Nothing that is unnecessary or obligatory.

And so they delineate the duties of humanity: great thoughts come from the heart. Live a better life and make better verses. Morality and rhetoric combine in the ambition and desire of the wise.

How are they saints? Precisely by obedience to their nature. So: know yourself. And accept yourself for what you are. In agreement with your vices. In proportion with your measure.

What is most appropriate to the human being? Words. Decency. Our humanism.

Into The Wind

I’ll be brief today in my musings as I’m crunched for time (there’s a poetry reading tonight, the lovely Mixed Metals at Danu Social House). This afternoon, inspired by a sky full of blue and cotton batting, I simply had to ride. It was a big trip up to the Danforth, past my old high school, Rosedale Heights, over the viaduct… and did I ever feel so free and fine, despite the wind, which was wicked, and perhaps ever the more thanks to that wind as it made me work all the harder. The added strain of it reminds me of something I must do for my seedlings: put a fan in the room for a few hours every night. The wind it blows is supposed to help the seedlings to root deeper, to grow well-girded, stronger than they would be without it.

MULGA BILL'S BICYCLE by A.B. "Banjo" Paterson

'Twas Mulga Bill, from Eaglehawk, that caught the cycling craze;
He turned away the good old horse that served him many days;
He dressed himself in cycling clothes, resplendent to be seen;
He hurried off to town and bought a shining new machine;
And as he wheeled it through the door, with air of lordly pride,
The grinning shop assistant said, "Excuse me, can you ride?"

"See here, young man," said Mulga Bill, "from Walgett to the sea,
From Conroy's Gap to Castlereagh, there's none can ride like me.
I'm good all round at everything as everybody knows,
Although I'm not the one to talk - I hate a man that blows.
But riding is my special gift, my chiefest, sole delight;
Just ask a wild duck can it swim, a wildcat can it fight.
There's nothing clothed in hair or hide, or built of flesh or steel,
There's nothing walks or jumps, or runs, on axle, hoof, or wheel,
But what I'll sit, while hide will hold and girths and straps are tight:
I'll ride this here two-wheeled concern right straight away at sight."

'Twas Mulga Bill, from Eaglehawk, that sought his own abode,
That perched above Dead Man's Creek, beside the mountain road.
He turned the cycle down the hill and mounted for the fray,
But 'ere he'd gone a dozen yards it bolted clean away.
It left the track, and through the trees, just like a silver steak,
It whistled down the awful slope towards the Dead Man's Creek.

It shaved a stump by half an inch, it dodged a big white-box:
The very wallaroos in fright went scrambling up the rocks,
The wombats hiding in their caves dug deeper underground,
As Mulga Bill, as white as chalk, sat tight to every bound.
It struck a stone and gave a spring that cleared a fallen tree,
It raced beside a precipice as close as close could be;
And then as Mulga Bill let out one last despairing shriek
It made a leap of twenty feet into the Dean Man's Creek.

'Twas Mulga Bill, from Eaglehawk, that slowly swam ashore:
He said, "I've had some narrer shaves and lively rides before;
I've rode a wild bull round a yard to win a five-pound bet,
But this was the most awful ride that I've encountered yet.
I'll give that two-wheeled outlaw best; it's shaken all my nerve
To feel it whistle through the air and plunge and buck and swerve.
It's safe at rest in Dead Man's Creek, we'll leave it lying still;
A horse's back is good enough henceforth for Mulga Bill."

Of Stiff Necks, Swimming Pools, and Striped Squill

This morning I woke up with soreness in my neck and shoulders. Nothing unbearable, but I knew that if I didn’t act, I’d be stuck with the unpleasant sensation all day. So: I checked the pool schedule and saw that there was still time to make it for a morning swim if I hurried over - the Bellwoods pool is just a seven-minute walk from where I live.

Beyond the excellent exercise that swimming is - gentle on the joints, good for the heart and the lungs - I find it deeply quenching for the soul. Especially when it comes to lane swims at a public pool. There is something so dear and humble and democratizing about the vulnerability of being in your swimsuits with your neighbours, strangers, and sharing a lane with consideration for the Other who may be more fast or more slow. I love the geekiness of goggles and swim caps, the earnestness of the flipper-footed older folks, the patience of the teenage lifeguards, the sense of peace and community under it all.

Is it strange to say that I am smitten with the aesthetics of the public pool? Its air of innocence and purity, its promise of refreshment, its irreligious offer of renewal via self-baptism. I think always of Tereza diving into the pool in The Unbearable Lightness of Being, of her juvenile rapture, her sensual thrill.

And if there’s a flower that, in its stripy blueness, captures the same feeling as the public pool, it’s clearly got to be Puschkinia libanotica, commonly known as the striped squill. We look for them each spring in Bellwoods, and as of this weekend they’re in full bloom! Coming just after snowdrops, along with pussy willows, and slightly in advance of forsythia, these candy-smelling sweeties are here to assure us that the worst of spring cold is over, that blue skies are in order and the sun here to stay.

If you were wondering if the striped squill’s Latin name is in reference to the Russian Romantic poet, it is in fact not. It was named after the Count Apollo Mussin-Pushkin, a chemist and plant collector who died in 1805 when the author of Eugene Onegin was a gap-toothed six-year-old dreamer. Here, for the fun of it, and because it fits with today’s theme, is Alexander Pushkin’s poem “The Roussalka”:

A LEGEND OF THE WATER-SPRITE

In forest depths, beside a mere,
A monk once made his habitation ;
Absorbed in penances severe,
In fast and prayer he sought salvation.
Already by his own poor spade
His grave was hollowed to receive him,
And every day the good saint prayed
That Heaven from earth would soon relieve him.

One summer's eve, the hermit poor,
At prayer within his narrow room,
Looked out beyond his humble door
And saw the forest wrapped in gloom ;
Night-mists were rising from the mere,
Between the clouds the moon 'gan peep;
The monk unto the pool drew near
And gazed into its waters deep.

He saw himself—drew back perturbed
By fears he ne'er had known before ;
For, lo, the waters were disturbed,
Then suddenly grew calm once more ;
"While fitful as a twilight shade,
Than virgin snow more purely white,
From out the pool appeared a maid
Approaching in the silver light.

She shook the bright drops from her hair
And gazed upon the anchorite ;
To look upon her form so fair
The good monk trembled with affright.
And he beheld her from afar
With head and hand strange signals make,
Then swifter than a shooting star
Dive back into the silent lake.

All night the hermit could not sleep,
All day in agony he prayed ;
But still he could not choose but keep
The image of that wondrous maid
Before him. So, when day did wane,
And overhead the moon was bright,
He watched, and saw her come again
In all her beauty, dazzling white.

She beckoned to him where he stood,
And gave him greeting glad and free.
She played and splashed about the flood,
She laughed and danced in childish glee,
As softly to the monk she cried :
"Come hither, monk, and join me here!"
Then suddenly she dipped to hide
Her beauty in the darkling mere.

The third day came—grown mad with love,
The hermit sought th' enchanted shore
Ere yet night's veil was drawn above,
And waited for the maid once more.
Dawn broke—the monk had disappeared . . .
And now the frightened children say
He haunts the pool: and lo! his beard
Floats on the water night and day.

Mettre de l’eau dans son vin

Mettre de l’eau dans son vin. It’s an expression that doesn’t translate well. Literally, it means “to put water in one’s wine.” The sense of this metaphor is that of a compromise, the softening of one’s stance, the watering down of something to make it more palatable.

In yesterday’s post I alluded to some challenges I’ve been facing of late. I’m wondering, today, if the greatest challenge is to let go of perfectionism… to put some water in my wine.

Today, I haven’t quite felt on top of my game. It’s Friday and though I hit most of this week’s work goals, they won’t all be checked off on the little chalkboard in my kitchen. It’s rainy out, I’m tired of the grey skies, there are dishes in the sink, the dog needs another walk, I miss my lover who’s been gone for two weeks (but will be home on Sunday!) and, naturally, I’m on my period. Nothing terrible is happening, but I’m feeling blue. A different sort of Your Blue Girlfriend.

I’ve been thinking about why I started scribbling these somewhat frivolous and certainly inconsequential essays in the vein (though never à la hauteur) of Michel de Montaigne, who, prefacing his Essais, wrote the following:

“… je suis moi-même la matière de mon livre: ce n’est pas raison que tu emploies ton loisir en un sujet si frivole et si vain.” *

What has compelled me to share what more or less amounts to a collection of morning pages?** There is a desire here to share information and circulate ideas and come proper gardening time, I intend to get down to nitty-gritties and how-tos, and there’s also a desire to infuse the world with a little more poetry, a little more, “Oh me days! Would you look at that?” As Keats wrote in his “Ode on a Grecian Urn”, "Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know." I think he was mostly right about that, but part of me finds it disingenuous when writers and creators of online content whose focus is beautiful things like plants and poetry glibly gloss over their struggles, as if the beautiful things they’re talking about and experiencing have succeeded in vanquishing all of life’s difficulties. Of course there are limits, and this won’t be the place where I dump my traumas (that’s what the journals are for!) but I mean to state my intention with these Daily Musings more clearly…

What differentiates these musings from the journals I keep is essentially an intention to invite readers to think along with me. And perhaps a shared thought here or there might spark a real-life conversation out in the world - who knows? A Blue Girlfriend can hope for that.

Speaking of girlfriends, tonight I’m invited to a Girls’ Night, and it’s already six o’clock and the dog still needs her evening walk, so I’ll have to suspend this post here, hang up my hat, mettre de l’eau dans mon vin and accept that I haven’t really said everything I meant to say. There is always mañana.***

* Translation: “I am myself the matter of this book; you would be unreasonable to suspend your leisure on so frivolous and vain a subject.”

** Morning pages - a daily, ideally matinal, free-writing exercise espoused by Julia Cameron in The Artist’s Way

*** Actually, not tomorrow. These Daily Musings will be slung your way on workin’ days. Monday-Friday. Chag Sameach!

Your Blue Girlfriend

“Your blue girlfriend is very pretty.”

The year was 2008 and it was springtime in Paris. My mother had come to visit me while I was on my romp across Europe. That was the year between high school and university when, fancying myself a real “beetnik” who drank wine under bridges and wrote poems under persimmon trees, I cycled from farm to farm and harvested olives or planted tulips in exchange for room and board.

Neither of us had much money, but we were staying (free of charge) in spitting distance of the Champs Elysées in my mother’s Italian boyfriend’s former lover’s stylish pied-à-terre, and we were feeling luscious.

One afternoon while we strolled around the Île St-Louis, we saw a beautiful blue velvet coat with floral embroidery in a shop window, and though she really couldn’t afford it, my mother insisted that she had to buy it for me. Walking out of the shop wearing that dreamy confection, I felt a little guilty about my mother’s sacrifice, but there was something in her face that said I shouldn’t - she was proud.

Later on, still high in the azure on the cloud of this purchase, we descended into the metro station at Cité, and an elegant pair of Frenchmen in their early twenties - beautiful men - smiled at us, and one of them said to my mother: “Your blue girlfriend is very pretty.”

While it was flattering, this small Frenchy flirtation, I’ve never been one to dress for the male gaze. There’s nothing inherently wrong with doing so (all the power to every femme fatale who looks a million bucks!) but for me, the greatest sartorial pleasure is in wearing clothes that I find pretty, that speak to me, that float my boat.

Clothes have been on my mind more than usual, lately, as I’ve committed to getting out of a bit of a rut in terms of my self image. Full disclosure (and this is me being vulnerable): I’m currently recuperating from some mental health challenges that have also affected my physical experience. For a long time, I’ve been wallowing in shame, contemptuous of my body, most days hiding it in the same couple of things that disappear it - a big, black Nirvana sweatshirt, a coat like a sleeping bag, a now-threadbare pair of leggings. I’m not saying that clothes make the woman, but I certainly do feel a pep in my step when I dress myself well - and when doing psychological battle, I think it’s fair to say that making this effort might help secure the little wins that add up to better days.

So: a commitment, in April, to wearing something cute every single day. Importantly, it doesn’t have to be for the entire day. Before cooking or cleaning, say, I usually change back into my old (faithful, comforting) rags. We’re a third of the way through the month today, and so far I’ve kept up the experiment/kept the promise to myself. It’s been fun, putting together new outfits, actually wearing the clothes I thought I couldn’t wear unless I felt more confident in my skin. Turns out sometimes you have to fake it til you make it.

One thing I will say about the journey I’m on to figure out my style: I don’t know much yet, but I know I still - and will always - love blue. From the linen wrap-around work dress I wore everywhere on my honeymoon to the trusty men’s button-down I wore all last summer on repeat to my shifts at the farm, I always feel most at home in this colour. Most truly myself. True blue.

The initial idea for the garden bed that borders the outdoor dining area at Maison Blum was to have only white flowers that would glow in the half-light as we sat out for late dinners - I imagined a sort of Sissinghurst vibe - but blue crept her way in. First she came in the form of some stubborn lupins that had been there already for some time, and then she came in a frank, welcome wave of everything from delphinium to sea holly to hydrangea.

If I were to choose a perfect shade of blue, it might just have to be that of this grape hyacinth pictured above. Muscari armeniacum has such a lovely springtime scent, and with the little white frills at the edges of each bell it reminds me of a bygone time of lace gloves and ballgowns. I can hardly wait to plant it out at Maison Blum. Apparently, it’s as easy to grow as dandelions (almost) and it is eager to naturalize and spread. The bulbs do not require lifting, but every few years or so it can be done in early fall to manage overcrowding, and you’ll get bonus plants by dividing the clumps.

Now, to get out of this housecoat and on to the day in something cute and, likely, blue! I will leave you with these lyrics from Joanna Newsom who looks quite like a grape hyacinth herself in this perfect dress from Rodarte: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/46936021092204507/

THIS SIDE OF THE BLUE

Svetlana sucks lemons across from me,
and I am progressing abominably.
And I do not know my own way to the sea
but the saltiest sea knows its own way to me.

The city that turns, turns protracted and slow
and I find myself toeing th'embarcadero
and I find myself knowing the things that I knew
which is all that you can know on this side of the blue

And Jamie has eyes black and shiny as boots
and they march at you, two-by-two (re-loo, re-loo)
when she looks at you, you know she's nowhere near through:
it's the kindest heart beating this side of the blue.

And the signifieds butt heads with the signifiers,
and we all fall down slack-jawed to marvel at words!
While across the sky sheet the impossible birds,
in a steady, illiterate movement homewards.

And Gabriel stands beneath forest and moon.
See them rattle & boo, see them shake, see them loom.
See him fashion a cap from a page of Camus;
see him navigate deftly this side of the blue.

And the rest of our lives will the moments accrue
when the shape of their goneness will flare up anew.
Then we do what we have to do (re-loo, re-loo)
which is all you can do on this side of the blue.

In Praise of the Savoy Cabbage

Amongst the snapdragons and foxgloves, the red beard scallions and the apricot strawflowers - all the new varieties of seeds I’m trying out under my grow lights for the first time this year - the one that seems the most eager to please is the relatively humble Savoy Cabbage. I’m aware that she’s bound to give me trouble as soon as she’s transplanted out into the garden; that along with all her brassica sisters she’ll need netting - one long, white wedding veil for their row to keep the wights at bay. She’ll also require frequent inspections for these pests which, at their larval stage, wreaked havoc on my purple Napas two years ago, before I started netting. Last year’s success with broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, and my precious purple Napas was thanks to the netting and also to several judicious applications of BT (Bacillus Thuringiensis, a safe and natural bacterial pesticide that is approved for use in organic farming). But for now - before Mademoiselle Savoy has me fluffing her veil, hand-picking her caterpillars, and spritzing her down for good measure - she's growing fast and strong and not too leggy.

In these bizarro days of Trumpian aggression and idiocy, I, like many of us north of the border, have been doing my best to buy Canadian at the grocery store. It may be a tough go in the winter at times, sacrificing all that Californian produce, but the forced return to the way our ancestors ate (primarily local) is an opportunity to reconnect with nature and the seasons. Buying Canadian might seem limiting to the vegetable-lover in these early days of spring, pre-Asparagus, but we’ve still got all the root cellar things: beets, onions, rutabagas, certain squashes, potatoes, turnips (neeps and tatties, anyone?) In addition, there’s a wide variety of frozen or canned things grown in Canada last summer - peas, corn, broccoli, you name it. There’s also a growing demand for our greenhouse tomatoes, cucumbers, microgreens and even strawberries that will hopefully become more affordable with increased supply. And let’s not forget mushrooms! We’ve got plenty of local options on that front, too. The only thing I’m particulary hurting for at the moment is fresh dark greens - I’m talking big bunches of crunchy purple kale, rainbow chard, fresh lettuce. Forgoing American products has made it necessary to get creative when it comes to our salads. Enter: the Savoy cabbage and her cousins, red and green, all currently available and just as Canadian-grown as The Red Green Show.

Speaking of shows, do you remember that episode in Portlandia with the peerless Steve Buscemi as a hapless salesman stuck selling celery to the masses (good luck!) while Fred Armisen lives large as a bacon mogul? Too good. I often think of that episode while I’m experimenting with new ways of using this or that vegetable. With the Savoy cabbage, it’d be almost too easy. She’s versatile as they come. It’s nearly a “boil ‘em, mash ‘em, stick ‘em in a stew” situation (Sam Gamgee fans will catch the reference). In lieu of “mash”, though, which doesn’t really apply to cabbages, we might say “macerate,” “pickle,” “roast,” “sauté,” “stuff”… and the list could go on.

When I was in London last spring, we were told it was a must to experience the British tradition of the Sunday Roast. On my dear friend’s late husband’s suggestion, we went to Coin Laundry in Exmouth Market - it was his favourite spot - and the single leaf of steamed Savoy as a bed for the meat in its pool of gravy was a pure revelation. So mild and wholesome in its taste so as not to distract from the carnivorous pleasure of the succulent roast, yet still counterbalancing vice with its pretty, green virtue.

Another example, but this time the leaves go on top: for our last New Year’s party, I made several types of lasagne, including one vegan version which, instead of cheese, was topped with a patchwork quilt of Savoy cabbage.

Most recently (yesterday) I made the salad pictured above, and it was so damn good (healthy, tasty, riffable) I think it’s worthwhile sharing, so here goes:

1. Roast, with a little oil, salt, pepper: chopped Savoy, drained canned chickpeas, and an entire (small) halved zucchini (okay, I’ll admit I cracked and bought the zucchini from our friends down in Mexico)

2. Make this “Liquid Gold” dressing: https://thefirstmess.com/2020/07/18/liquid-gold-dressing-recipe/

3. Prepare Freekeh (or whatever grain you like - quinoa, rice, farro…)

4. Top the grain with the vegetables, dress and enjoy!

And if my praises of the Savoy cabbage have been prosaic today, it is the better to leave you with this piece by the German-American poet Lisel Mueller:

FOUND IN THE CABBAGE PATCH

The shiny head is round,

full term, between

the spread leaves of its mother.

I come as the midwife,

a kitchen knife in my hand.

There. No lusty cry,

this child is silent.

Two white moths

hover and flutter,

milky attendants

in perpetual motion.

I leave the mother’s wound

for the sun to heal.

The stump of the newborn

dries in the crook of my arm.

I am the witch, cradling

the pale green head,

murmuring, “Little one,

you look good enough to eat.”

ASAP: As Soft As Possible

T.S. Eliot said it: April is the cruellest month. Last year on this day, we were at Maison Blum for the solar eclipse and it was warm enough for a nap in the grass and a picnic dinner. This morning in Toronto, we woke up to snow.

I’ll admit that Lu and I considered eschewing the morning walk to school, but in the end we swaddled ourselves in our warmest coats and woolly hats and went out to brave it. At the end of our street, we bumped into a friend, and so the walk was not only good for our bodies but also good for our social butterfly souls. And en route home I spent a long moment communing with the pussy willow by the main gates in Trinity Bellwoods. She is in her silvery glory, her catkins sleek and plump.

As northern gardeners, we often wish that we could hurry time along and make the mercury rise. We want to put winter firmly behind us and get down to the exciting enterprises we feel entitled to engage in as soon as the vernal equinox has come. And yet, we’ve all seen snow as late as early May - there’s still a ways to go!

What if, instead of pining away for what we can’t have as soon as we might like, we tried to soak up the last few weeks of relative calm and live by this alternative vision of ASAP that you may have seen floating around the web:

As Slow As Possible

As Soft As Possible

As Sustainable As Possible

As Sincere As Possible

As Steady As Possible

Allow Space And Pause

And though we yearn to put our winter things away and bare our shoulders to the long-awaited sun, we can still enjoy the beauty of this transitional season, especially if we stay wrapped up like Pussy Willow in this sweet ditty by Kate L. Brown:

Pussy Willow wakened
From her winter nap,
For the frolic spring breeze
On her door would tap.

It is chilly weather
Though the sun feels good,
I will wrap up warmly,
Wear my furry hood.