onehouse

Gabriel

This guy had no fear of me as I came quickly around the corner on another trip to the garage, arms full of recycling. He just wanted a drink from the rain bucket and a moment in the afternoon shade. Or maybe Emily Dickinson was right and "The Robin is a Gabriel/In humble circumstances..."

Love your anemones...

Picture Blogging: Day 21: City Pity

The whole city is a bit grumpy today. We're locked into snow and wind chills and icy roads until the end of the week and it feels like a time warp. This is my garden halfway through May last year. Mumble. Grr. Grumpy vibes. Mumble.

Picture Blogging: Day 9: Gardener/Crime Fighter.

This from my mom tonight:

"I am off to watch Rosemary and thyme- 2 detective ladies.  I should see some lovely gardens I hope as they solve the crime."

Some pictures from my mom's garden in north/central British Columbia - carefully carved out from bad soil for a short growing season and with her advice to just find things and plant stuff in them. The work of decades of taking out "just a little more grass." She once told me she was wasting her time and should be doing more good. (This after years and years of being wrung dry as a pastor's wife.) I told her that she was an artist and participating in the redemptive work of creation. She said "Ohh, phhhht." But she also smiled.

Picture Blogging: Day 4: Singer/Songwriters

My mother gave me a gift certificate to Uppercase Gallery for Christmas and yesterday I bought this print by a local artist.

After a few years of having future conversations with bunches of folks across the land, I realized that I didn't even know the birds in my own yard. How do you talk about place and neighborhood if you don't pay attention to what's in your own trees? So I bought a secondhand Alberta bird book and quit what I was doing. I still don't know too much but these singer-songwriters have helped me me along this new and different way.

Defeat.

I have waved the white flag and pulled all the remaining tulip bulbs from the garden. I'll put a few back covered in finer mesh than last year. And I'll force some bulbs in pots and put them out.The squirrels are relentless. In the spring they actually pulled the wire mesh apart with their tiny little paws and then dug through the hole to get the bulb. I'd be better off just burying some dollar bills so they can run off and  enjoy a full-on winter filled with riotous living. I can see them now - their furry arms linked together as they toast my generosity/stupidity and their wire-bending fingers wrapped around the delicate stems of yet another round of nut-flavored martinis.

Daffodils (narcissus)it is. Squirrels find daffodil bulbs to be the brussel sprout of the "I'm going to ruin your garden." buffet.

In the meantime, a friend of mine sent me this:

The Worriers' Guild

Today there is a meeting of the
Worriers' Guild,
and I'll be there.
The problems of Earth are
        to be discussed
        at length
        end to end
        for five days
        end to end
        with 1100 countries represented
        all with an equal voice
        some wearing turbans and smocks
        and all the men will speak
        and the women
        with or without notes
        in 38 languages
        and nine different species of logic.
Outside in the autumn
        the squirrels will be
        chattering and scampering
        directionless throughout the town
        because
they aren't organized yet.

"The Worriers' Guild" by Philip F. Deaver, from How Men Pray ©. Anhinga Press.

Perhaps the earth...

Lisa sent me this from inward/outward. Nice closing thoughts for this week:

Keeping Quiet
Pablo Neruda

Now we will count to twelve
and we will all keep still.

For once on the face of the earth,
let's not speak in any language;
let's stop for one second,
and not move our arms so much.

It would be an exotic moment
without rush, without engines;
we would all be together
in a sudden strangeness.

Fisherman in the cold sea
would not harm whales
and the man gathering salt
would look at his hurt hands.

Those who prepare green wars,
wars with gas, wars with fire,
victories with no survivors,
would put on clean clothes
and walk about with their brothers
in the shade, doing nothing.

What I want should not be confused
with total inactivity.
Life is what it is about;
I want no truck with death.

If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with death.
Perhaps the earth can teach us
as when everything seems dead
and later proves to be alive.

Now I'll count up to twelve
and you keep quiet and I will go.

Source: translated by Alistair Reid in Extravagaria

Now where did I leave my shovel again?

I haven't been reading. No books. No blogs. No magazine articles. I have been in the garden digging out tree roots the size of my legs,  burning brush and old papers while sweeping debris off the patio, and cutting out dead tree branches. I haven't planted a thing yet. A friend is coming down this weekend to help. I've just been doing preparation. Tomorrow morning it will be the last 7 am trip to the dump before the rental truck is returned. Today we looked at the dump ticket and noticed that we hoisted over 450 kilograms of dirt and pine needles out of the yard, into the truck and onto another pile of old chesterfields, broken windows, and too many easily recyclable cardboard boxes (what are people thinking?). I am sore all over and have a few mighty scratches and bruises to show for a long few days work.

Preparation. The turning of the soil. It takes much longer to do this than to actually plant something. It is making me think harder about what preparing the way actually means.

Before the wind comes.

Little Black Moons/Give-a-book 11 and 12

I have to make frequent trips to the post office. I divide my time between two of them, one at a 7-11 just north of the house and another one bus trip south at a small import shop in Chinatown. Canada Post has given me plenty of misery in my publishing and mailing lifetime but these two places are always helpful and friendly and good for a little conversation.

Most of my time is spent at the 7-11 post office to the north. I usually come in with a big batch of magazine envelopes, all different weights and destinations but the lady who greets me just plows right through them. She reminds me of one of those unflappable truck stop or diner waitresses complete with the flaming red hair and the "hon" thrown in at the end of my order. The other day she stopped to show me her nails, long, newly painted and very shiny. I looked down at my battered and ragged nails. "I've been gardening so I can't do that," I said. "I'm going away tomorrow so I took the risk of having these at work for one day," she replied, picking up my packages carefully between the palms of her hands, her nails reflecting the sunlight from the window.

Two kinds of light, I thought, remembering poet Luci Shaw describing her gardening hands:

All this spring, I've worn dirt
under my fingernails like a label--
little black moons.

from Inscriptions, The Green Earth

(The Green Earth is up for a giveaway should you like it. Also Voices in the Night: The Prison Poems of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Both are hard covers and in great shape. I also have the bottom three CS Lewis books still available at this post.Don't be shy. There is no catch. Just send me an email.)

Update: Well, that was fast. Minutes after posting, The Green Earth is off to California.

Update to the Update: And the Bonhoeffer book is now gone too. Still got the Lewis books.