So that is how I got this way

Gentle Reader

If you really want to understand yourself go live with your parent again for a while.

Not visit from far away with a start and leave date in advance when everyone is on their best behaviour and can maintain it the whole time
Although I understand for every family the ratio of annoyance to self control is different but in mine the added factor of British descent weights our ratio very heavily to self control




I mean live in their house with their rules and stuff, never having control of the television until they are asleep and they wake early and stay up late and watch far too much weather channel.




I miss my stuff, I miss my routine, I miss my dust bunnies. I miss not be judged for being who I am. I like who I am. I am a triple dipped lollipop of crazy with a light dusting of psycho on a you can't live forever stick.
I have worked very hard to over come bad traits I developed and spent a lot of time trying to dig down to those roots and pull them out, chuck them in the trash bin, and start again. Some of those traits I liked and I kept and have served me well and faithfully in some of the hardest times. Some of them were not as good as they portrayed themselves to be, having some usefulness but also caused damage.

I suppose some people would link my bad traits to a few or all of the seven deadly sins. Pride, gluttony, sloth, covetousness, envy, lust, and wrath lots of wrath. After all why take responsibility for yourself when you can blame a demon for pushing you to sin and get a clean slate with a few Hail Mary's, a rosary, and dirty knees. Yes I was raised Catholic.




When you have been reduced to your teenage self again all the while actually a grown up with all your grown up responsibilities and know all the right social mores but are treated like a partially developed being that is less not equal to the other person you really see a side of yourself you likely buried.
When you are constantly interrupted and talked over and corrected only to be proven right with no apology you really get a good look at yourself as well.

Do you simply swallow it either with another glass of alcohol or a handful of tums? Do you eat it with an entire chocolate cake you might also throw up or simply savour the guilt? Do you suddenly find the need for pain killers well beyond the suggested max dose all day? Do you find a way to sleep though it and secretly wish you were not waking up?

GenX didn't have a mental health system, we barely had parents, but we did have a great love of trial and error. We learned to fix any problem, please every adult, keep our heads down and suck it up. We were all waiting for the day we could call the shots out in the open not sneaking around. For many of us we did our own parenting, there were a few guidelines set out for us no setting fires, stay out of the liquor cabinet, don't get pregnant, and be home by depending on your age sometime between the streetlights coming on and midnight (it increased incrementally as you successful completed another year of school). We didn't age, we didn't set goals beyond Saturday night, and we had zero expectations for our lives it seemed a waste of time.




If you have ever watched some of those 80's movies either slasher films at summer camp or rebellious going to dance anyway or the incredibly popular nerds triumph over jocks themes all had a suspicious lack of adults. The few adults that might be present were caricatures or the villain to be outsmarted and beaten. I am not sure if I should tell you this but they were far closer to documentaries than entertainment. Don't believe? Go watch the 2020 documentary Class Action Park directed by Seth Porges and Chris Charles Scott III.

I guess what I am trying to say gentle reader is it can open your eyes if they have not been already. Giving your power to someone is far easier than most realise. We do it every day unintentionally and when you are trapped in close quarters with the ultimate authority figure from your life, the person you are tied to from start to finish, and yes it even goes beyond their death and lasts until yours, that shield you built melts away and your power drains and you hate yourself for it.

Ever aha moment that made you better, stronger, helped your self worth turns against you into a pile of doubt and frustration and silence. The whispers in your brain say: Don't talk back, Respect your elders, What do you know you are just a child, Do as I say not as I do, Grow up stop crying, It is not like you broke a bone, Pull yourself up by your bootstraps and get on with it. They go on and on they are relentless all the adages and sage advise from wise elders that didn't have a clue where you were all day, who you were with or what you did. As long as they were not called to the school no police appeared on the doorstep and the house was still standing it was all fine. You just had to show up for school, get a passing grade at least, and only come in the house for meals and after dark. Worse case scenario there was always your room to hide in and live inside your mind thanks to books - we had access to the world through books - no internet.



I also realized how proud I am of the generation I had a hand in raising for not falling into the same trap. They are standing up to their jailers. The power brokers that won't raise the minimum wage but gouge the hell out of every necessity of life, prices rise, portfolios bulge, and the average person struggles while being fed excuse after excuse and being told "If you didn't buy a coffee everyday and learned to budget you would be fine - it is your fault"
We would have just put our heads down, swallowed our wrath and kept going. I guess we are to blame for the current state of things as much as anybody. We sang songs about not going to take it but we did, we took it. We settled for the hand me downs from the boomers, the leftovers, the scraps from their table and we lived in our dreams and self medicated our pain.
But not our kids they are saying NO and they will live in abject poverty if they have to but on their own terms. They would rather scrape by then live a soul sucking existence in worship of the almighty dollar. They know their worth and they are demanding it.



Try to remember you cannot be upset with how your offspring turns out if you took no part in raising them.



We lived where the wild things are catching frogs and climbing trees until puberty hit, then we were the wild things no fear, no hope, just surviving.
We survived well beyond our expectations and now we are a little lost and we keep recreating ourselves until we find the right fit. But deep inside we are still those fearless tinkerers, those trial and error fixers, we are unchaining ourselves from the please everyone keep your head down habits, we are not just surviving anymore we are learning to live like we once did, with wild abandon and insatiable appetites for adventure and joy.



Gorge yourself on life gentle reader
Until we next meet

My own personal groundhog day

Here I am again, somehow sucked back in time a few decades and no way out.

As you have guessed from the GenX I lived through the last time Russia (USSR then) threw a tantrum and got twitchy near the big red button. I lived through Roe vs Wade the first time. I lived through Reganomics and inflation just like we have right now. I also lived through my mother until I left home a little sooner than originally planned, slightly unexpectedly but it was a matter of personal survival.

If I wanted to survive as an individual entity I had to leave the cube. (For those of you that are not trekkies it is a Borg reference.)

That is right I gave up half my ability to earn an income, luckily I can keep the other half remotely, and drove 1990 kms again to come stay in  a two bedroom apartment to care for my elderly mother. This is not the first time and in spite how everyone was acting it doesn't look like it will be the last time either.
I suppose a little background might make this easier on you. I left home after finishing Grade 12. I could not force myself to do the last 4 courses required for my Grade 13. My mother was very adamant about the rules as long as I was in school it was one thing but not in school I was a tenant which is fair - she took 10 percent of each pay cheque. But I was not really a tenant as all the other rules of my mother's house still applied including the curfew and Victorian expectations of my overall existence. Do not confuse these rules with raising me that I was expected to do myself. So I went out into the world with my best friend and we had a wild ride.

The 70's I was old enough to know important things were going on but too young to fully understand the ramifications or have any control of anything. In my lifetime women fought for and eventually gained some ground for personal autonomy and financial rights.  The 70's were a time of huge change the US had Roe v Wade and we had Canadian Equal Credit Act.

Roe v Wade particularly strikes a chord with me, I am the poster child for pro choice. A teen pregnancy that chose adoption but was given the option for abortion, raised a son as a single parent starting in my late 20's, had an abortion, married late in life resulting in more procreation decisions and choices. The Canadian legalities around abortion are as clear as mud but far safer and deeper entrenched thanks to our Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The 80's I lived in a two bedroom apartment with my mother and eventually a bungalow house with Mom and Dad (he was my step dad technically but that is another story - he was Dad).
My mother's best friend was also an immigrant to Canada but while my mother spent her childhood ducking German bombs "Aunt" Ilse was ducking Allied ones. Aunt Ilse told us of when the Berlin wall went up and one day she left Canada and returned to Germany - it was less than a year later the wall came down and she was there for that too - that always stuck with me.

I have been well off, middle class, on the edge of poverty, on welfare, and stable but teetering on the brink of financial disaster in my life. I have made bad choices, failed to see the future coming at me like a freight train, and lived for today because tomorrow was not promised. I know when I did it to myself or outside forces contributed to my current state. Currently it is not our fault, the US is in the death throws of serious change and the world is going along for the ride as the USA circles the drain. 

And so it begins again

I tend to live the existential existence of always being 20 something in my mind - because who wants to get old really? We are all going to die might as well enjoy what we have while we have it. But old is inevitable, bodies break down and heart conditions and cancers creep up on you and one day you find yourself driving 1990 kms to live again in a two bedroom apartment with your mother while Russia tries to recapture the good old days of the Soviet Union and a handful of very old very rich men in the US panic that they are finally losing control and try to stuff the genie back into the bottle with fear.

I did this once before - late April 2020 - while having a diagnostic test for cancer Mom decided to have a heart attack. So I packed up somethings, and drove across Covid ravaged Canada to come stay for 3 months. Unlike the stroke several years before I was told this time. Mom decided to tell everyone I didn't care so they were not allowed to let me know about the stroke. Like good little boy scouts the orders were obeyed. No one bothered to inquire as to why I was incommunicado for the most part - for all they new I was finally dead, took that plunge, or had disappeared inside my mind and never came back out. But I sure got an earful about how awful I was. We do not acknowledge or discuss weakness in my family especially if it does not involve x rays or diagnostic tests.

This trip was not the same as the last in so many ways. First off, turns out it could have been prevented. Secondly it was forced to move up from a planned trip by two weeks on zero notice. Thirdly the universe tried to hold me back and I didn't listen. 
I quickly packed a few things trying to figure out how to be prepared for winter, spring, and summer weather all in the same day that would eventually turn into an Ontario summer with the least amount of items and from what currently fit after 2 years of covid house arrest and eating. For those of you that have never been to Ontario in summer it means breathing soup for days on end and being basted in sweat like a roasting turkey.

My husband had duty watch the day before I was to leave so gone for 24 hours and it left me to deal with it all on my own. Not a big problem but certainly not something I was as used to anymore. The mechanic fell down on the job, yes he changed my studded tires out for the summer ones but failed to notice my shocks rotted through. In addition, some guy waiting on his own car being attended to decided to help out with mine. I never said anything, my mind was not at its best and that was the tire behind which the sensor controlling my ABS and traction control linked to my hilltop start and 4WD drive failed at the point of no turning back.

Half the banks had issues with their systems the day I left and I forgot to grab any cash. My first stop for gas 3 hours and 294 km into this journey was cash only. So I hopped to the next one and prayed a little.  They had a different system and with a full tank, cash in my purse, and feeling much better I set off on what should have been an easy 4 hour drive to my first rest stop.

Nope that is when the sensor lit up my dashboard, first ABS and then traction control. Not the first time one of these sensors failed so I was partially prepared after all it might just need a computer reset. The other things were not going off and it still felt okay, the lights were solid not flashing and I had road side assistance. Hope springs eternal as they say and I was already beyond civilization approaching 4 pm on a Saturday in the middle of nowhere NB. Hope was all I had going for me. Watching my gas I realized my final destination was going to be rolled into on fumes so best stop one last time. That is when the hilltop assist start and the 4WD drive decided to inform me they were no longer available until I got them a new sensor. Well no turning back now onwards I go watching for the lights to start flashing and I get to my hotel.

I did not take my bags in right away - not sure why but that feeling was there so I listened. Sure as fate no room at the inn. My late check in was missed my room was gone and I was possibly screwed. Limping along I did get to a hotel that would take me in. 
After a small panic slash frustration attack and personal pity party I got some food and made a plan A and a plan B. If you do not have a plan B then you really never had a plan A my Dad always taught me. Well there was nothing in the way of a mechanic available Sunday so extending my stay another day and sleeping pretty much all of Sunday I got up twitchy and called mechanics. The Gods and Goddesses smiled on me, I checked out and carefully drove to the mechanic who after 3.5 hours and $1,200 got me back on the road. He noticed the shocks and yes it was that sensor and I can't thank him enough.

Back on the road and cell phone refusing to pick up a tower for a call but strangely allowing me to text I decided to top up the gas tank and hit the road and periodically try my phone until it got its act together. I was in QC and I had faithfully confirmed 3 times that google maps was using the toll road around Montreal. I was feeling much better and glad I had decided not to push through with lights on my dashboard only to die by the side of the highway in a foreign province. The hospital had confirmed that they would keep Mom until I got there to dig a hole big enough for her. Yes it is a joke and yes it was bantered about between me and the hospital and no I did not dig it.

Well we are approaching where I should be exiting for the toll road and a quick glance at google maps makes me think something is not right. I look up to see auto route 30 Ontario sign - the only exit from previous experience - slide by 3 lanes to my right and dead stop traffic ahead. Insert several foul words here. I jump off, possible scaring a few drivers behind me, into an industrial park and have a fight with google maps. Eventually I do get to my toll road - farther along then I would have liked and after getting an interesting tour of a part of Montreal I have never seen while narrowly escaping a trip to see US border patrol and explaining no I do not have a passport and no I had not intention of trying to enter NY state and trust me I really dislike the thought of being in your country send me back now.

You can take the girl out of Ontario but

As I cross the QC / ON border a wave of relief washes over me. I stop in familiar Bainsville at the ever popular Enroute for a timmies, some gas and a chance to get the circulation in my ass back. I am rejuvenated and thinking I could get the rest of the way at this point sometime after midnite is a great time to go through Toronto. I have only been driving for 6 or 7 hours at this point and I only have 6 more hours to go. Better judgement stepped in and I texted my mother in law - I am only 3.5 hours away google maps says can I stay with you tonite? I should be there 9:30 or 10:30 at the latest.

Yeah 3.5 hours - google maps lies - but that is not news to me at this point and yet I still believed her.

I am cheerfully driving along enjoying the drastic difference between a have and a have not province, drinking in the colours and smells of an agricultural province instead of one made of rocks and trees and crashing ocean waves. The constant signs informing me traffic is moving well to exit whatever and knowing I am in the home stretch of what feels like the longest trip I have ever taken. But google starts to chatter about optional routes and the electronic signs are warning of delays ahead 28 minutes at exit 666, then 29 minutes, 31 minutes and it is dusk soon to be dark and we come to a stop.

Just me and some 200 or so tractor trailors and the odd car sitting and occasionally rolling forward for 45 minutes until we squeeze 1 by 1 through a very short span of highway down to one lane. Well I am going to be a little later than planned but still not bad I gave a big window with that hour or did I? I am in a different time zone now and the clock in the car is still ADT or AST whichever one you end up in when you spring forward, google is what ever time she feels being at the moment, and I have completely lost track of when I started anything never mind how long it has been. The smattering of rain didn't last and the end of lane reduction is in sight so we are good. At least I think so.

The severe weather warning was about to be no longer a warning but an event. Lightening pulsed in the sky which opened into a torrential downpour like you only get in Ontario when the temperatures are starting to rise. I really should have made sure those new windshield wipers I ordered in December made it onto the car.  The highway also opened up but all I can see is black and taillights. No idea where the road meets the shoulder and barely any idea which lane or lanes I am in. Eighty-five kms of following the taillights and passing the paranoid at less than average highway speeds puts me at my turn off well past my expected arrival time. The skies clear and I am now careening down a county highway around curves and without signs or much in the way of landmarks in the pitch dark to a place I have never driven to and only been a passenger twice before. Found it.

My poor mother in law she was getting worried and sleepy and I show up wired for sound and stressed out. She feeds me a turkey sandwich and listens to my babbling before I insist she go to bed at 1 am. I finally drift off by 2 am. In the morning I am up at 7 and know I need to hit the road but I don't want to sneak out the door leaving a note or wake her up so I wait. She is up in a bit makes me breakfast and I know I am behind schedule but part of me wanted to stay where I was, it is peaceful and lovely and there are horses.

I gas up at the 401, good old familiar 401, and my gastro intestinal system commits a crime in a PetroCan washroom. I really should send them an apology note. A spin thru the timmies drive thru and I am on my way. Thinking Toronto and the construction are going to leave me stuck crawling along for horrid expanses of travel I came prepared with snacks and beverages but not too much beverage as there are no convenient places to stop and pee from New Castle to Cambridge. But I am home and the Gods and Goddesses are still smiling and I breeze thru to Cambridge for some gas, a quick change of  shirt and the revival of blood flow to my tush.  

I am not far from the end, I have found a decent radio station, the transports are spaced out now, and the landmarks familiar to the point of evoking emotional responses. This was my stomping grounds for a few decades, I have literally driven some of these roads in my sleep. I pull in and my parking spot is still there, I grab a couple bags and head off to get my apartment key. Everything should be easy peasey right? Nope my keys are with a neighbour who went shopping I can get inot the building I have that key but the apartment key is at Walmart. The superintendent is no where to be found, and I am running out of adrenaline, did I mention it suddenly started snowing?

I do get in eventually and unpacked, I ordered delivery and got some rest. Still lots to do and an appointment at hospital tomorrow.

It is going to be a long summer but it might not be as bad as it feels. On my journey so far I have encountered the kindness of strangers that you only read about in dusty old southern novels and plays. The waitress that broke covid protocol to hand me a box of kleenex, the fellow travelers that offered good wishes and thoughts on mechanics, the vending machine service man that handed me a coke from the broken machine - no charge, the neighbour that let me leave my things inside his door while I hunted down my key, the food delivery men that were company to a lonely traveler if only for a minute or two it means a lot when you know the faster they work the more income they make (been there done that).

I know I am missing so many I met along the way but more than anything there were a couple of people that have no reason to care, they are co workers technically, but have become so much more and they checked in and listened and made me feel not so alone in the world.

My husband was there on the phone too, but as a Navy wife with far too many long deployments and operational gremlin incidents under my belt, I am grateful for that but it is not the same. We are a team that functions as well apart as together and it is how we are designed - to never have to count on each other except in the knowledge that I will keep our lives intact until he gets home and he will do everything he can to get home and not worry about us while he is doing his job. This reverse deployment where he stays home and I am away is like that.

So Gentle Reader I have bent your ear long enough
I got here in one piece
and so my endless repetitive days soon really begin

Until next week

Part I The Rhododendron that ate Foxpoint

 

Fourteen years ago I came to Nova Scotia from Ontario to live, January 3rd 2008.
I had spent many a summer here but was ill prepared to live here.
The bloom was off the rose so to speak after my first spring.

My Nova Scotia gardening has been a trial-and-error adventure. Armed only with three less than exulted previous gardens, the memory of my Grandmother's beauteous successes, and very little experience especially in this northern zone. Ontario is the magic land of gardens, where if you keep half an eye on the watering sumptuous results magically appeared for esoteric pleasure and grumbly tummies.

I grew up in a family that always had gardens. My first 13 years the vegetable garden took up most of the back yard with hand poured concrete paths and every edible imaginable. The upper half of our tiered yard had manicured beds of flowers, water features, and a lovely patio that was used more for my play then anything else as work seemed to overtake the enjoyment of that garden.

My grandmother’s vegetable patch was smaller and at the end of her yard as well but behind a white picket fence with a gated arbour covered in clematis vine. The first half of her temple was lined with perennial beds and a wondrous fruiting tree that attracted birds and butterflies, the center bed devoted to roses of every name and colour and perfume. The small wooden garage almost completely invisible under the largest climbing rose of story book red and a variety that I doubt I could every find again. It was here that my spirit soared and I truly wished that I had inherited her skills. It turns out not completely, at least not as of yet, she had many more decades of trial, error, and practice under her belt.

The generations before had gardens too and small animals. I am first generation Canadian but my Maltese and British ancestors would have starved to death in WWII and prior wars with their resulting rationing and enforced abject poverty of the masses, had it not been for gardens. I would like to venture into small animals to complete my paradise some day but for now the guilt associated with an accidental death of a favoured plant is easier to assuage when I can salvage a seed or cutting from its last gasping breath and its offspring come to life after it has gone. This is not the same proposition when you have a chicken die of pneumonia, as my mother will tell you. Her function was to care for the chicks and rabbits that provided meat and eggs and as all small girls love to play with fuzzy cute little critters washing off the mud too hide her forbidden activities once resulted in a nearly drowned and then very ill little chick and a scolding she never forgot.

I did not have a garden of my own for a very long time so I began with houseplants in my apartments and lots of visits to my Grandmother. Once when asked what church she attended my Grandmother, whom I called Nanny for future reference gentle reader, replied, “Go into my garden and if you cannot find your God there you are sadly lacking. It is the place I always find mine.” Every visit and emergency phone call for resuscitation advice brought me closer to a greener thumb. Sadly my Nanny died before I had an outdoor garden and my education is now sadly lacking. I truly wish she could offer advice now the climate of England especially Wales and the North both places she gardened are so similar to here I have taken to getting my resources from British gardening books.

Balcony gardening is an adventure in itself. My mother had a small water feature on hers with a lily and fish in a tin washbasin. The cement wall hidden by morning glories and sweet peas all the way from floor to ceiling are the backdrop for some of my early graduation pictures. They supplied food for the soul alone until I discovered not only edible flowers but also bucket veggies. I grew broccoli, cauliflower, peppers, tomatoes, and romaine lettuce, in round plastic buckets scavenged from bulk food stores. I had long window boxes on the floor with delicate greens and radishes. Arbours of climbing beans and peas clung to the walls; after all there is little difference between a sweet pea and a green pea. The flower boxes had marigolds. The petals are a wondrous substitute for saffron. Nasturtiums, beautiful peppery salad leaves and glorious brightness along side the pansies in a salad or on top a cake. My landlady had a garden below mine with raspberry vines and an endless supply of violets for candying. My miniature roses did not fair so well but they are not for beginners so I am told but I ventured forth anyway for how am I to learn without a casualty or two.

 

I finally bought my first house and it was owned by an older couple and to my delight an Englishman with the inherent love of gardens that all the English once possessed. It is practically a royal mandate that to be truly English you must love gardening. I had clematis vines that rivaled my Nanny’s and a rose of pink stolen from a perfect sunrise, manicured beds lined the perfect postage stamp lawn in the front accompanied by a rather phallic cedar that would be evicted as soon as I figured out how to fell a tree without removing my eaves or the neighbour’s windscreen. In the back from my raised deck off the kitchen I could sit and enjoy another perfect lawn lined by more manicured beds and a row of the tallest and most fragrant lilacs leading to a small shed at the end to keep my accumulated pots and tools. I had plans to remove the end bit of lawn and put in a vegetable garden at the back end (it is tradition) separated by a white picket fence and with an arbour of flowering edible beans, space being a precious commodity in my little piece of heaven.

Alas the best laid plans of mice and men, I moved in too late in the season to make any progress with my plans and by fall was making plans to start the adventure of becoming a Navy wife in Nova Scotia and so that garden will only be finished in my summer dreams.

 

The garden I discovered here that cold grey January I moved in was not what I expected when the snow left and sun warmed the earth. The bushes were misshapen; the lawn nonexistent for moss and weeds, and the only flowerbed had the plastic pots buried underneath the plants. Its edges were so overgrown with wild strawberries that I was not sure where it ended and the only place where the ground was not either spongy from enormous biting ants nests or the colour of rust from the iron in the water overflowing the well. All my winter dreams of an English garden dashed in one quick walk about and the shear volume of work to recover anything pressing down hard enough that I am surely an inch shorter.

First things first I decided and bought new gardening tools, a shopping trip to the nursery should brighten up my spirit. I picked a corner and dug in literally. In the back corner of my property was a sugar maple backed by birches and on the edge of a section of woods just thick enough to screen the back neighbours from us. I thought what a great place for a woodland garden with its giant rocks and tree stumps providing textures and places for the moss to grow in an acceptable format. Already dotted with buttercups growing up from the woods I started thinking of shade plants and fairy statuettes and a perfect little bench to sit and read. 

The previous owners had thought this part of the property perfect too, for burn barrels and dumping trash especially the kitty litter. I stepped in a grey vaseline like sludge and poked around to find some of it still in grocery bags, the neighbourhood cats thought the drier surface was their own outdoor loo.  I walked back to the house scrapping my favorite ruined gardening shoe and considering the creeping charlie now blooming in the lawn reminding myself I come from tougher stock than most and this challenge could be met but not today.

The opposite corner of the property was at the end of driveway and after all I see this spot far more often so I really should start there. Pruning shears and small rake in hand I headed for what turned out to be a lilac bush. This was a good sign until I spent an entire day pruning and raking and taking out the overgrown mass of shoots and bindweed choking it to death. Once the grass and weeds and old leaves were gone, I harvested enough rocks to ring the base and hoped it wouldn’t take more then two seasons to reshape it into something less eclectic. The good news it bloomed that spring which apparently was a renewed thing the bad news is my fourth season and I am still trying to encourage its shape into something more reasonable.

 

It was the right time of year for pruning so I continued around the yard going from bush to bush with the same unkempt issues of a garden not tended for five years or so and kept at it. Along the front of the house were two ornamental quinces, a red and an orange one side by each with what I think was a butterfly bush but never truly identified close by and what I thought to be a climbing rose without an arbour. The entire front corner of the property was a giant white pine. A Giant bonsai that Mother Nature hand tended and shaped as any elderly Japanese master would into a perfect model for Tom Thompson. Inspiring as that would be for a painter the years of long brown acid filled pine needles made a thick soft wondrous bed for bugs and soil that had a Ph I can only imagine. I worked away until the three shrubs were pruned and cleaned up, the rose cut back and the pine needles raked away, ground loosened and some bone meal and few banana peels dug in. 

My thoughts strayed around ornaments for this area and I headed for the remains of a forsythia that my dear husband mowed over twice but it kept coming. He thought it was ugly as he does any plant or tree that cannot feed you or be found commonly on a golf course. He would have ignored it I suppose if it hadn’t been in a spot awkward to mow around but his visions of the property involved putting greens and winter skating rinks not flower beds and ornamentation. In my reverie and feeling pleased with the work to date, blazoned with scratches and bug bites I headed around the house only to be greeted by what appeared to be the unholy offspring of the union between an octopus and possibly a rhododendron. Although it had buds galore it never bloomed and I only found it was a rhododendron for sure from the leaves and my dear husband telling me it had flowers once like the bushes on the base; they were tended by gardeners and prolific, ours was a nightmare from a B rated sci-fi horror movie. 

To salvage or not to salvage that was my newest question. Even with skilled hands could that monstrosity ever be a bush? Currently it was a tangle of creeping branches crawling and squiggling like a handful of bait worms covered in foliage and buds and making we wonder if it uprooted itself and wandered the neighbourhood eating small animals at night. I never had a rhododendron before and I certainly wasn’t that skilled my thumb being a pale green at best out here in a new climate zone. My dear husband stepped in and did what he does best in the garden. He dug it up. It did attempt to come back like all horror movie monsters but never made it to a trilogy being finally destroyed in the sequel. 

I also made a disastrous attempt at a water feature early on but that is a story for another day

and so on that note I leave you gentle reader
Happy Mother's Day

 

The beginning is where you decide it is.

 Gentle Reader

Yes, this is how I have decided to address you. I do so in hope you will be kind as I learn to fit into my latest reincarnation as a writer.

There was a time, a few lives and pounds and adventures ago, it was thought by a few I would be a writer  and the concept of journalist was swatted around too. Mom was sure at one point I would be a stand up comedian or a lawyer. I wasn't sure I was going to make it past 25 so it really didn't matter to me.

I will do my best to keep a promise and put my stories out into the world where they can live their own lives without me.  Your imagination will illustrate them and perhaps bits and pieces of them like seeds planted out of season they will come to life much later and be passed along. 

For now let's just get a few little things clear before we go on and I offend you with bad language or harsh opinions and I start receiving comments about how I should write so that everyone and the neighbours dog is happy with it. Not happening. I am doing this with eager encouragement but ultimately for me.  When I opened this up I discovered I had started and faltered at it once 8 years ago. Someone else had been trying to get me to share my stories too but that reincarnation of me did not have the time or focus to dedicate to writing. So that is the second thing to make clear, I will put stories here that I think might have value to someone but mostly because they have value to me. I am not looking to have an open debate on abortion or politics or religion but all of these things and a few more sore spots will appear in my tales. They will be presented as they happened to me, not you, gentle reader, me. If you do not like my experience or my hindsight vision of those experiences skip it, move on, come back next week or not at all.

For now I will write you a letter each week at least to let you know I am still trying to get the hang of this. I will work on bigger essays suitable to fill part of a rainy afternoon in a comfy chair with a cozy blanket and fuzzy socks while you sip a cup of tea and the cat purrs. I may from time to time share a recipe that I have finally perfected for something luscious or soothing. The odd anecdote and photos might sneak into the collection you find here. I guess this blog will be my equivalent of my nan's spare room full of a little bit of everything and no one knows how she got it all in there. 

It seems to be the family tradition that there is one of me in each generation. Each one of us so much like our predecessor and yet completely different. So my spare room will be full of words, photos, thoughts, memories, and hope.

So now you know a bit about this place, my electronic rocking chair by the fire, and as time goes on you will get to know more about me. I have a sneaking suspicion more secrets then I ever thought will find there way here to these pages. So gentle reader please do your best to be kind, words are the most powerful thing in all our human universe. I will try not to cut you as I know I can but only ever use them to warm your heart and maybe even help heal a soul or two along the way.

Until we next meet