(Because deeper meanings are always hidden behind the paragraphs about the dirt under my fingernails!)

You have to know when it’s time to harvest, time to cut back the dead growth, time to evaluate how things went in your flower beds this year, what performed well in your vegetable garden, what needs tweaking for next year, what bulbs to order, what grass to turn over for flower beds next year.

Last year I opened up two new beds, one for asparagus and flowering kale (that ended up being purple cauliflower, which is OK just totally unexpected, and another that I called my “Cuban Garden” which had all kinds of marigolds and chilis, black bachelor buttons and bright red poppies.  It was also the first year that the new raised beds were planted with vegetables.  It wasn’t nearly as productive as I had thought it would be, and I suspect that had to do with too much humidity in the soil, a healthy crop of slugs (really…I’m still scratching my head about how in the prairies we can have such a plentiful slug population!).  To top it off, only two of the forty or so gladiolas that I replanted gave me flowers.  I was going to leave them in the ground to die off but I suspect part of the reason they decided not to flower was a) I planted too early, and b) the location I put them was way too wet.  So I’ll dig them up, return them to their little box, put them back in the closet, and try again next year.

There’s a couple of cats that seem to think they can hunt here.  Every once and a while I find a dead sparrow or a song bird, pick it up, put it under a hedge to try and give it some respect…I know, it’s a bird!  It’s a crazy way of relating to nature I picked up from my great Aunt Fran, who I still miss a lot and not just for the cooking.  I’ve tried hissing at them, I’ve tried staring them down.  I think the only thing I’m left with doing is either water, a trap, or just accept that sometimes being a hospitable host means putting up with boisterous guests.

That concludes the fall portion!

I saw a cartoon on Facebook that made me react.  It depicted a screaming woman with a halo, who was shouting about how Christians… it’s just going to be easier for you to look at it yourselves.

So my first reaction was to be offended.  Not because there aren’t valid points raised, and not because the context in which the cartoon depicts these images makes a blanket (read bigoted) slant to Christians/Christianity.  I was offended because the image was created to provoke a reaction.  I had written “offend”, but then walked away from my post and come back a day later, realizing that offend was too involved a term.

Part of creating a sacred space in a garden is knowing when a weed, say a different kind of natural grass that would be pulled out anywhere else, will insert itself into your lily beds and provide interesting contrasts in the summer (along with food for birds and insects), beautiful colours in the fall, and contrast the bleak white of the snow in winter.  Thistles are beautiful in the right situations, but if allowed to flourish will choke everything else out.  This was the case with mint in my vegetable garden.  I spent the better part of a day pulling out what felt like miles of hot pink roots that would potentially regrow even more vigorously next year as mint, choking out my veg.  So I garden knowing that I’m going to allow some kinds of weeds to exist because the trade off for not pulling them out is a kind of beauty that I’m attempting to achieve.

People are the same when it comes to how they interact with their opinions.  We pick up tools which justify and enforce our anger.  The cartoon image above is a great example of what well crafted weeding can accomplish.  It’s not about bashing Christians (although it accomplishes that goal), and it’s not about making Atheists seem more level headed and more common sense (although it seems to make us want to think that, from one point of view).  This image is created to stir emotion in anyone who reads it because the individuals who crafted it require the response to justify their own involvement.

As this image is geared towards Christians, I can think of several examples where fundamentalists have used their orthodoxy in the same way.  So from one point of view, this image is not conducive to reconciliation or acceptance or dialogue.  Rather, it’s conducive to keep the fight going because the fight, regardless of what the fight is about, is more important than the cause of the fight.

It’s hate porn.

In order for reconciliation to occur–meaningful movement beyond the continuing investment in anger, in hate–both parties have to first be willing to disengage from the capitalism of hate, the state where “I hate X about you, you hate Y about me, let’s hate each other and be unified in Z.”  To me, images like this when they appear show me that people have not yet begun to realize how attached they are to their hate, their prejudice.

Not all Christians believe abortion is a sin.  Some do.  I do.

Not all Christians believe that Queer people are an abomination.  Some do.  I don’t.  My denomination does not.  Many denominations do not.

Not all Christians believe that atheists are amoral agents of Satan.  Pope Francis doesn’t.   I don’t.  I know that I’m challenged more by my atheist/agnostic friends on my faith, but I don’t look at it as a threat;  it’s an opportunity to practice apologetics.  It’s an opportunity to share what I believe in a way that’s not proselytizing, or perhaps threatening.

Not all Christians believe that certain art is offensive.  Some do, but some don’t.  What comes to mind for me is the art of Robert Mapplethorpe who famously displayed crucifixes in clear containers filled with urine.  If you want to know my point of view about offensive imagery, go back one post and read about what I wrote about the image that caused so much ruckus on Facebook.

The war, I think, isn’t being raged so much against Christianity as it is against Christendom.  It’s not so much about rights being trampled on as it is a need by both extremes to be engaged in being engaged.

Again, hate porn.

So I find myself in a position of having just a few weeks ago posted an image in the same ilk as the one above, one which depicted Donald Trump and Mike Pense in a position which led the viewer to draw the conclusion that oral sex was being performed by Pense on Trump (ok, take a moment to wash that image out of your hair…..), and now being on the other side of the fence as the one offended (although mildly).

I must ask forgiveness of my brothers and sisters in the Queer community because I have let you down.  I’ve participated in propagating hate porn, I’ve participated in an act of rage that will only propagate rage, not reconciliation.

I must ask patience from my brothers and sisters in the Queer community because it takes a lot of practice to break from the cycle of hate porn.  On the one hand I preach out against it, preach out against taking part in a system that breaks us down by uniting us in dividing behaviours that link us in rage and anger; yet here I am, not only participating but doing so with the same sense of self righteousness that comes with the moral high ground of quicksand we fight to gain.

I will attempt to be reconciled by changing my behaviour.  I’ve participated in this way of living most of my life, and to assume I can change overnight is a tall order–but it’s the only order than can stand.  Anything else is half assed. This cartoon image actually led me down a road of seeing my own faults, my own shortcomings.  It’s shown me how I’ve actually been caught up in the system I’ve been fighting and been even more deeply entrenched in the trade of hate porn that I was aware of.

There is a moment to turn the other cheek, and a moment to face the slap head on and call it out for what it is.  The challenge is to know how, to know when, and to be in a state of awareness to know when the challenge is done because it will profit rather than be an instrument of justice.  So…of course… the practice of turning the other cheek becomes even more important because of what’s at stake.  It’s a choice between living in a state of love and grace, or living in a state of rage and anger that closes the mind to any rational thinking.

I think that’s something theists and atheists can agree upon.  In practice, however……

 

I recently made an off-cuff share of a post that created a bit of a stir.  At first, I thought that the reactions were over the top; but in the spirit of being open and questioning my beliefs, I took the opportunity to practice taking on the other opinion for a moment to try and understand.

The post in question came on the heels of a protest made by US Vice President, Mike Pense (who Siri auto corrects to Sense for some reason…. pun?), who left a stadium after members of one of the teams took a knee during the singing of the national anthem.  The cartoon shows a figure in a suit kneeing in front of another figure.  He could be picking up a button, he could be proposing marriage, or he could be doing any number of things in front of the standing figure.  In case you’re wondering, the one figure is supposed to represent Mike Sense, (see!!!) and the other Donald Trump.  Siri doesn’t have anything to say about changing Trump.  (That could also be a pun.)

Then my boyfriend remarks, quite accurately, that the image was not drawn in such a way to suggest anything but oral sex.  For example if he was picking up a button, where’s the button?  If it was a proposal, where is the wedding ring?

Then he suggests that the image could in fact be considered homophobic.  By depicting Pense (THANK YOU SIRI!) and Trump engaged in (enjoying? We can’t tell because there are no faces!) oral sex, and by default Sense (REALLY SIRI?) and Trump’s image in this way is actually being homophobic.  Subtle, subconscious homophobia.

Thanks Dan.  Love you lots.  Really.  For real.

He also brought up the fact that we in Queer Culture might not be as shocked by these images because we’re subject to them in advertising and pop culture a lot more than heterosexual culture.  Reaction one, good point.  Reaction two, but there’s no definitive action shown.  It’s implied.  In the same way that the protest Pense (SIRI!  What’s going on here!?) made was implied before it was tweeted.

Point one:  An action that goes noticed because attention is brought to it is suspect of being spontaneous.  That’s a general rule that applies across the board.

He also brought up the important point that I could, COULD technically say that my actions online will have ZERO impact on how people think of me, and that my actions in the real non digital world will be how people judge me.  Case in point, growing vegetables for seniors who can’t get them, running a meditation workshop for the queer community, being available to queers for spiritual direction, volunteering for…you get the idea! (Remember point one?)

Point two:  An action that goes noticed by the people it is intended for is of more value than one that is staged for the actor’s own good, or the actor’s patron’s good.

Case in point the tweet that subsequently went out after the fact by HRH Trump. (Siri why are you not giving me clever suggestions for Trump?)

But in the end, he came up with what I thought was actually the classiest response possible, the one I concluded the thread with.  Which brings me to point number three:

Point three:  Given a choice between clicking a button that will make the problem go away, and clicking a series of buttons that takes time to make a point, people will always make the choice which takes more effort.

Why don’t people do this generally at work?  You know how productive people would be if they put the effort into writing a response that they should be doing putting into their jobs?  Which brings me to capitalism and the misdefinition of the mixed economy and we’re not going there today.

Yes, the image may have been seen by individuals in my feed who were minors, or individuals of a more delicate nature.  Individuals who are activists, who witness hunger and suffering all over the world on a regular basis because people in suites….I’m digressing.  This is about satire and it’s place in our culture.

Sure, there are images that we find offensive and we may have justifiable reasons for this.  We may be offended by the fact that a teen in a high school in the US refuses to say the pledge of allegiance and as a result was expelled, then again allowed to rejoin her classmates.  We may be offended by the fact that in a world of carbon-producing engines people feel the need to continue to drive big trucks that never haul a single thing because of the cool factor, regardless of climate damage.  We may be offended by people speaking about socialism and the costs involved in public services, or we may be offended by the 1% model of capitalism without even understanding the concept of a mixed-economy and how capitalism has never been tried by any modern society; we may be offended by the idea that two men can get married, or that a woman has a right to an abortion.  But what happens when we censor freedom of speech?  What happens when we decide that you have the right to an opinion provided the way you express that opinion doesn’t offend anyone?  Uniforms?  It’s not an easy discussion to have, but avoiding the discussion won’t make the problem go away.  I think the social dialogue that needs to happen isn’t so much about language as it is about dialogue, discussing the roots of offences, why people are offended and offending, and more importantly:  why people would rather hold on to the offences than move towards a resolution?

We’re comfortable being offended.  Our society is set up to be comfortable.  Saint Francis challenged this model of behaving when he took active choices to face, embrace, and move past the victim perpetrator model.  He did this when, after being confronted with a bigger in his father’s shop that was turned away, he chose to go after and give alms.  He made the choice when he stepped off his horse, crossed the road and embraced the leper.  He made the choice when he gave up his life, took on the robes of a beggar, and became a friar.  These are the challenges I deal with regularly.  I choose to be socially challenging, to cross the road and embrace the leper as a way of embracing my own leprosy.  But in doing so, I need to remember that if at any time I take value in being a leprosy I will be finding myself back on that horse on the other side of the road.

As a gay man, I’m confronted with satire every day.  Its not as bad for a lot of people because I’m not black, I’m not aboriginal.  I’m a middle age white man that nobody notices when they say “fag” in the context of a conversation, or talk about how “gay” something is.  I’m ignored when people talk about how disgusting “those people” are for taking a knee, because in most minds I’m one of the crowd.  I’m not a part of the group that is oppressed.  But in the same vein, I’m also the person who hears the comments about religious people and how they have their heads up their asses.  How faith and queerness are somehow at odds.  When you aren’t noticed, it’s very easy for people to assume you’re not effected when in fact you are.

The Trump presidency does effect me.  It effects the part of my family that is Trans.  It effects potentially the parts of my family that want to get married, or express rights as individuals in courts of law.  It effects me as a traveler, who right now feels afraid about traveling in the United States unless I’m going to California or New York.  It effects me because as someone who lives in a province where Trump is as a rule supported, and Trump-isms are becoming the norm for conservatives both nationally and locally, I have to wonder if my rights are about to go under the knife.  I have to wonder if one day I will have to fight again for the right to marry my boyfriend, or adopt children, because that image might be too uncomfortable for someone.

It’s about taking on the opposing view, even for a moment, or for a while, to see if you can understand why that view may have value.

As a Franciscan, and as a Catholic, I have to face satire every day that I wake up, every day that I pray the Office, or going to Mass. And it may not be what you’re inclined to believe it is.  It is a satirical comment that was attached to a cross, a comment made to stir up a response from those who saw it, those who needed to bend their perspectives and consider what they have done, what they believed to be orthodox.  It is a statement I as a practicing Catholic have to contend with every day of my life, a statement that reminds me that truth transcends satire, transcends imagery and ideas and rests inside our souls.

INRI

Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum

Jesus of Nazarus, King of the Jews.

Social justice shouldn’t be about removing the images that are offensive.  Social justice needs to be about embracing them, confronting them, and resolving in our own souls what it is that is at the bottom of our offence.  At the end of the day I want to embrace the process of reconciliation and the action of being in reconciliation, rather than owning, embracing, and spinning my wheels in offence.  (Siri did type offence as offal.  Well played, Siri.  Well played.)

The last few months I’ve been trying to find ways to express my desire to be involved in community activism again. So when I went to the Queen City Pride AGM last night, I wasn’t sure what to expect except I knew that I wanted to get back into working with Pride.

The last time I was involved with a Pride committee we met in a member’s living room and had an operating budget of well under $500.  I think I went into the AGM naive, thinking this would be pretty much the same kind of experience.  It was not.  Pride has become a well oiled machine with a bigger budget and a bigger festival.  Regina’s now home to the longest Pride festival in Canada.  Parade attendance has tripled in size since the last time I was at a parade.

I felt awkward, and a little daunted because the format has changed so much, the language has entered into a place that I’m a little unfamiliar with (I’m someone that hasn’t had much exposure to non-binary individuals, and my classic english trained mind has difficulty wrapping around the idea of “they” being a singular pronoun not used by a monarch).  I’m starting at the bottom, and I expected that was going to be the case because I’m coming out of the shadows after almost 20 years of hiding.

Towards the end of the meeting the subject came up regarding uniformed officers marching in the Pride parade.  I’m not totally sure if the police are marching with us in Regina, or if this is an issue, but I know that for some people this has been on our minds.

A few months ago I held the opinion that police officers should be permitted to march with the uniform on.  Then I met someone with a different perspective on the matter and I decided to maybe think a little bit harder on the matter.  That, like dealing with wasps in your garden, can be tricky and uncomfortable if you’re not prepared.  A great tool set for this kind of endeavour can be found in this article here.

So what I learned actually changed my perspective in a few ways.  The best way to describe the transition is to talk about how the conversation flowed last night.

The subject came up and the opinion was expressed that when we limit who can participate and how they participate we are closing the door on a very important aspect of the inclusiveness of our society.

Then I raised the point that I, as a Franciscan Friar, marching in the parade in full habit might make people feel uncomfortable because (without knowing about my denomination, or knowing me), they might draw a conclusion based on the significance of that “uniform”.

Making a judgement based on appearance is something we all do.  Those judgements are based upon definitions that we believe to be true and part of our larger world view.  So, in the case of a uniform that some individuals see as a signifier for safety, others who wear the uniform would see it as a signifier of their duty, and an aspect of pride; others still, like my friend Ashton, would see the uniform as a signifier that this is someone who needs to be feared.

Rather than run from what is making us afraid, it would be a refreshing experience to instead embrace the fear, dialogue about it, and begin a process of redefining in ways that are conducive to constructive co-operative behaviour.  Which is basically a big complicated academic way of saying:  Let’s get our terms right so we can all play together nice.

For some, this is going to be the fear of the uniform.  It’s going to be discussing openly with people who have never had that experience of the uniform in a very personal way that is going to require a risk of being vulnerable and trust.  Others may have to embrace the fear of cherished ideas and custom:  we may not see something is wrong because it affords us a great level of comfort.  It’s going to take a willingness to embrace an idea that is completely opposite to one we may hold dearly, even if it means doing so with the condition that we don’t have to continue to agree with that idea.  We’re walking a mile in someone else’s shoes.

Both sides of this issue have one thing in common:  the risk that if they continue to hold dearly the struggle, the goal of the struggle will never be achieved.  There’s a cliche conspiracy theory about how the cure for cancer has existed for decades, but that if the cure was permitted to be used in medicine the industry of fighting cancer would collapse.  I often think that we have settled in the same way.  Pride as a political movement was begun to say no to the establishment, no to having to hide behind barriers the establishment had set for us.  If we in turn set up the same barriers, are we not becoming the establishment we had fought against for so many years?  And yet, should we not as a minority within society afford the same compassion and love to the minorities within our own communities regardless of how uncomfortable we feel?

It’s too easy to hide the discomfort, to run from it, to celebrate around it.  It needs to have the blankets ripped off of it, it needs to be exposed to the light of day, and it needs to have the power it has over us taken from it and put into the place where it needs to be.

The point was brought up during the meeting that if dialogue like this were to take place, it would be impossible for that dialogue to reach everyone who needed it.  It isn’t possible to hear everyone.  What is possible is for the people who are heard, the people who experience a kind of reconciliation to take that transformative experience out into their own micro-communities and continue the momentum.  To not proceed with dialogue because everyone can’t speak and be heard at the same time is a foolish logic.   You give up before you start, and nothing changes.  It’s too convenient.

At the end of the night, I told my boyfriend that I’d be willing to serve with Pride and get my roots down if that meant pushing broom, making phone calls, sealing envelopes, or leading workshops in Spirituality from a Queer Perspective.  Whatever it takes.  I have to start from the ground up all over again.  Having an open perspective on things makes this challenge a little less daunting and a lot more exciting.

You don’t grow a garden by just thinking about it.  You put seeds in the ground and you wait, sometimes for a very long time, sometimes for a time that seems longer than what you expect, until something sprouts out of the ground and renews your faith in all things wonderful.

After the meeting, my boyfriend and I went to a cafe to talk about how I felt about what had happened and enjoy a drink and a piece of pie.  We sat on a couch together, he put his arm around me, and we talked casually.  The gentleman sitting behind us was visibly uncomfortable by this even though the majority of people in the cafe couldn’t care less.

Ironic.

 

One of the raised garden beds in the back of the yard is made from old cindercrete blocks stacked up, the internal space lined with weed-barrier, then a big pile of old wood, then compost and soil from the garden.  The idea behind this way of doing things is that the wood retains water, and as it rots, provides nutrients to the soil and warmth.  In a way it’s like an active compost bin that you grow plants in.  This particular bed is for tomatoes, cucumbers, chard, a watermelon that may or may not produce, and some Mediterranean  herbs (basil, thyme, rosemary).

The space however has become home to some wasps.  Earlier in the year I didn’t mind the fact that they were there because they didn’t bother me, and I apparently wasn’t bothering them.  But last night when I went to pick a couple of cucumbers for my mom, I realized that as I lifted the vine from the side of the bed, the wasps were acting to defend their nest.  A swarm of about 15 wasps came flying out, looking at me, wondering what I was about, and wondering if I was a threat.  Wasps tend to sting/bite first, ask questions later.  My experience is based purely on the number of times I’ve been stung.  At times, wasp stings have felt spiteful, angry, cruel.  They occur without apparent reason and as I’ve gotten older, result in swelling and burning.

Anxiety often behaves like a wasp sting.

I got some text messages today, work related, that under any normal circumstance wouldn’t matter.  But for some reason today there was a sting.  My stomach tightened up, my body fills up with a kind of mauve-green feeling, a tremor followed by tickle in the stomach which isn’t pleasant; it’s like the beginning of a stomach upset.  The feeling doesn’t go away.  It lingers.  In the moments following, your mind is pushed into defensive thought:  how can I protect myself?  You shift into isolating yourself from the incident that created the anxiety to try and bring an end to it.  I send a text asking to be removed from these messages in the future.

Which from their side of this is going to seem bizarre, strange, odd; there’ll be head shaking, there’ll be “here we go again, the drama queen is at it again”.  I can’t help it.  Many people in my life have tried to find an explanation for why I have these episodes.  They’ve theorized that I’m having late-stage teen temper tantrums, that I’m trying to get out of doing tasks by making excuses.  Again and again, I keep telling them my experience until I find myself, literally at the point of realizing that they just don’t get it, they don’t want to get it.

But you have to go on.  You can’t stop.  So I attempt to embrace the anxiety.  I call it what it is, a chemical reaction that I have no present understanding as to why it is triggered some days and not triggered others.  You hope that people won’t be disappointed if it gets in the way, and in the next breath you realize that what I am experiencing is no different than what a diabetic experiences if they require insulin.

I’ve considered medication.  I know that some people have had success with meds.  But I’ve also watched people who have medicated walk into a more out-of-control state of being than I experience now.  I’ve decided that the moments of anxiety when they happen, and they’re happening with a lot less frequency now, are easier to accept than the moments that I would experience contending with medications that are possibly messing my brain chemistry more than I am on my own.

Saint Francis asked his gardeners to leave a patch of the ground for weeds to grow, weeds to flower and in their own way exhibit the praises of God in the action of a plant.  I’m not sure if these episodes are exhibits of praise from my brain, but they’re definitely weeds.  At times, they’re even wasps.  The true art of the gardener is to allow a balance to exist between weeds (nature) and intentional planting.  This is the act of faith, that in moving forward into what it is I have to do, the anxiety will diminish in it’s severity and control.

 

I was recently at a family event, and one of my cousin’s came up to me and said:  I really like your blog!  You should post more!  Or something to that effect.

I woke up this morning with absolutely no intention of even looking at the blog.  I’m going to the Queen City Ex with my family and my new boyfriend!  Yet, here I am, sitting at my coffee table in my living room in the house that is my hermitage, blogging.

As a gardener, you sometimes have to make decisions with long-term perspective.  Cut out the grass to make room for a flower bed, remove one form of diversity of ecosystem in order to create a more diversified section of the ecosystem.  Diversity equals health, both in terms of plant material and wildlife.

But in the case of a blogger, and a busy person, it can make for an added encumbrance.  I’m going to try to start blogging again! It’s late in the season, but I can still tell some of the stories of the experiences I’ve had in the garden over the past year; but I’m also going to be shifting what I was doing over at OFAJourney here as well to try and tighten it up a bit and make it a little easier.  So on top of the gardening, there’s going to be some reflection and musings about my life as a Franciscan novice and seminary student.  Nothing too heavy hopefully, but just enough to maybe spark some conversations in your own circles.

On that note!  A lot has changed, mostly for the positive, and I can’t wait to start telling the story of the last year or so.  So stay tuned!

So in true form, I’ve been a hermit.  I realize it’s almost been six months since my last post about the garden, but there’s been something holding me back from writing–not something negative per say, just a need to be still, to not engage with text, to simply let things happen as they need to.

Our house is almost finished.  It’s been a long time waiting for it to finally get to the stage of moving in, but the final touches are happening over the next few weeks and with any luck we will be able to move in by the end of February, which means that there won’t be a long drive over to the yard but instead I’ll get out of bed, lift my curtains, and look out my window.  I’ve held off on buying seeds for now because I don’t want to order on the off chance that they’ll end up being delivered to the wrong address, but I am keeping an eye on the gladiolas in my closet that will have to be cleaned up before putting into the ground.

And I’ve been saving seeds!  Tomato plants, a couple of kinds of squash, and some geraniums that happened to go to seed (who knew if you didn’t pinch off the flowers they oblige so nicely and give you seed!).  This is also going to be the year that I try square foot gardening in the hugelkulture  beds that I set up in the back yard.  Which also means, I’m going to have to let my brother’s friend know we will need his chainsaw to remove the lilac overgrowth.

Did I mention I discovered how stringy old growth lilac wood is?  I actually thought that in taking a couple of hedge clippers and a hand saw, I’d be able to clear out the lilac wood in just a matter of a couple of days.  After an hour on one of about 450-500 (I’m guessing) thick trunks I realized that I was going to need something mechanical, a truck to haul the excess wood away, and hoped that I wouldn’t need the opportunity to get in touch with humility through a lilac stump ever again.

I’d be lying if I didn’t say that I’m excited at the prospect of being so close to the space that I’ve grown so fond of.  I’d also be lying if I didn’t say that the prospect of leaving the safety of the home we’ve had for so long wasn’t a little bit daunting.  Transitions are difficult when they mean shaking the safety of physical places for other physical spaces.  Why I don’t just accept the possibility of having that safety within my own heart, I’ll never know.  It takes so much practice to keep that in mind, consistently in mind, and not revert into that jelly mess of panic and anxiety and fear.

I wonder if seeds feel this way before they leave the packets?

 

“Moreover, he used to tell the brother gardener that he should always make a beautiful flower bed in some part of the garden, planting and cultivating every variety of fragrant plants and those producing beautiful flowers.  Thus, in their time they would invite all who saw those herbs and flowers to the praise of God.  For every creature says and exclaims:  ‘God made me for you, O mortal!'”

-Day by Day with Saint Francis, A Franciscan Breviary

In looking at the space created so far, I’ve realized just how much the garden has metamorphosed; but also, how much I have changed along with it.  We’ve read each other I think, and in that reading the garden and I have both changed and grown together.  The space that exists continues to be a tranquil place of contemplation, work, and relaxation as well as a place to grow peas to keep Dave happy while he’s working on the house.  The sweet peas are beginning to climb up through the dying English peas, so where there was once sweet and tasty eatable pods are now the delicate vines with deep purple and mauve flower of the Campanini sweet peas, the fuzzy little seed pods that will give me more of the same ancient flowers next year.  These are the descendants of the original flowers growing in a Sicilian monastery, collected and sent all the way across Europe to the shores of England.  By my desk is a bowl of dried English peas that will make their way into my square foot garden space next year, and the most amazing climber beans that bloomed scarlet, almost lipstick red and produced sweet pods of young beans, and iridescent violet and beans that dried deep purple, now an almost black with just a streak of white.  Next years crop laying in wait.  Likewise, the strange octagonal pods of the asparagus peas grow tighter and tighter around their seeds, drying and waiting to be planted into strange fingers of stem and leaf that bloom into a deep grape purple flower.  The pods themselves have a rather earthy taste that end with a drying, almost base effect on the tongue.

A week ago I got a tumble compost accelerator in the mail.  I traded in my points on my credit card and got a rain barrel, composter, and a clock for the new house.  Saturday I went out to the yard to assemble the composter.  Little did I realize that this marvel of technology was not only assemble in so many easy steps as the Chinese who made it will never have to do, but the parts that are all hard black plastic don’t assemble as easily as the instructions suggest!  So, like any man in this situation, I didn’t follow the instructions, and attempted to put it together to no avail.  Compound that with the swatting of mosquitos, wiping of sweat, and the frustration of trying to put a square peg into a round hole and viola!  You’ve got a recipe for curse words.  I put it back in the garage, incomplete, and left for work.

While I was at work it dawned on me.  Black plastic in direct sunlight has to heat up, and if it does heat up, it has to become more flexible.  So back to the house a couple of days ago, half an hour in the sun while I mow the front lawn, back to the composter and yes, the part that wasn’t able to bend will bend.  If I had another pair of hands I’d be able to bend it in place while holding each end of the composter together.  I’m sure it was quite the site, me bracing two halves of a very large, very warm plastic barrel between my legs while trying to get the bottom half to line up with the holes the screws that hold the barrel together will require, then trying to line up the opening of the cover so that the holes that will be the lip the door to the composter will support also line up…

…then my neighbour and his friends light up a bowl.  Mosquitos, sweat, heat, and the putrid smell of  cheap dope and the cackling of what can only be described as male versions of MacBeth’s witches high on cheap clove.

The things I go through to keep the garden looking it’s best.  I’ll need a pair of hands to help with the composter, and I know my brother will probably be able to spare half an hour  to help.  Or an hour.  Or maybe two hours.

Then yesterday, another miracle.  I’m walking back to the compost pile before I leave and I notice that an amaryllis bulb has shot up, along with thick fleshy green leaves, a flower stalk!  The bulbs that haven’t bloomed for three years, that are sitting in pots in my back garden gaining strength so they can flower over Christmas, have decided that Christmas is coming early this year.

The tomatoes are multiplying beyond my ability to use them; but there are plenty of people in need of fresh tomatoes and I’m not afraid to have a cherry tomato or two while I work in the garden.  The corn is filling out really nicely, only going to be three or four cobs but I am certain they will be delicious.  Beets are getting fatter, and I’m about ready to try my hand at making kale chips.  Keep everyone posted at how that turns out!

 

Unlike Mark the duck (who has his own twitter feed if you’ve not seen it! @marktheduck1), my day was spent quietly mowing the grass, filling the pond, pulling weeds, harvesting onions, digging out potatoes and garlic, some baby carrots, peas, beans, beets, dill, and even a cob of corn that looks marvellous, but probably could’ve used another month or so.  Still lots to grow bigger left on the stock.  It was my 45th birthday and it came quietly, and passed again quietly.  Just another day, but one that I enjoyed very much doing things that are my own quiet, peaceful pastime: primarily, scheming about how to alter or improve the garden.

There’s new grass coming up in the front.  I initially thought I wanted to do raised beds throughout the front yard, increase the production of vegetables and flowers, do something more productive or just plain different from the other houses on the block.  But there is a kind of strange, peaceful, enjoyment in mowing that I had forgotten!  Mowing is just … zen!  Plus there’s cuttings that are great for compost.

Many of the plants I’ve put into this garden have significance.  They’re like markers of where I’ve come from, the people that I’ve met, the important times in my life.  The hollyhocks came from Gladmer Park, and although they’re suffering from a really bad fungal infection I can’t break myself to pull them out.  They’re standing, in some cases, almost ten feet tall without leaves and just masses of pink, purple, and red flowers.  The lilies that I brought, the gas plant, all plants that were purchased after taking garden tours with the Regina Horticulture Society.  Star gazer lily to remind me of my past history as a club kid in Saskatoon, my friends there, especially Belinda who was (and still is in my heart of hearts) one of my best friends.  And the perennials that I planted from seed which are now filling out, spreading like gang busters in whites, pinks, mauves, and reds.  The roses, three planted and two survived the winter.  One red, the other white (and a miracle growing from a dead stump, yet to bloom) to remind me of my friendship with Pam, my boss.  The herbs throughout the garden:  borage, lavenders, sages, thyme (which had no business over wintering…you bet I’m going to mulch heavy again this year!), lemon grass–all to remind me of the history and nature of gardening, the healing power of herbs and the earth taken care of.  And this year, four asiatic lilies planted to mark my birthday, but one specifically planted to mark the passing of a primate of the Old Catholic Church.  It’s called playful:  bright white blossoms with streaks of pink and purple spots, combined with a heady scent.  Then there’s the other plants, the perennials that were part of this garden before I took it over, the old poppies and peonies, the new trees Dave planted in the front borders:  cedars, willows, box, dogwoods, and beautiful red-leafed trees that once grown up will not only provide shade but help to keep water out of the basement.  The garden is a collection of plants that have memories, that become individual but part of a collective.  I know I’ve said it before, but gardens like people, like gardeners, have lives their own.  This garden is a far older, more elderly teacher and companion.  It has taught me patience, knowing when something is a mistake and needs to be either re-done or reconsidered, the importance of layers and colours in a space to increase it’s depth not only to the eye but to the body, the foot, the paths which when wandered create separate spaces and rooms, but also the illusion of a larger space, a journey.  It feels a lot more like a cloister, or a courtyard, and I think even when the lilacs are trimmed back in the fall, as they grow that space will return.

So new projects!  The fall will bring trimming back the hedges in the back, sorting and cutting the wood for fire in the spring/late fall.  The pond is going to be filled in with gravel, sand, and stone to create a fire-pit space with two benches.  The reality is that putting the fire pit in the garden (that is the old garden) will put a source of flame far too close to the three old spruce trees and I can’t risk them going up in flames…because they’d take out my garage, and probably my neighbour’s garage as well!  So!  New pond going in where the garden is, much bigger, much deeper, and with any luck filtered by pond plants, kept mosquito free by gold fish, and cool enough to jump in after a long day’s work!  The city requires permits for pools that primary function is for swimming.  The primary function of this pond would be fore aquaculture.  Swimming would be secondary; still, fences and gates are going to need locks and greater security to keep wandering kids out.  The old topsoil is going to move to the hugelkutur garden raised bed that I started late spring:  twelve by six, I layered a bunch of sticks, twigs, and branches (old and new wood) from the hedges and buried it with soil.  The idea being that once the wood begins to decay, it will not only provide greater nutrients for the plants being grown on top of it but the wood will retain more water (meaning you have to water less) and the head created from the decomposing wood will allow for earlier planting!  I’m wanting to create a really substantial mound so I will probably layer more wood on top of the existing soil and put more dirt on top of that wood.  By next spring, the mound should be (I’m hoping) about 2-3 feet tall in the middle, sloping down to the edges of the raised bed.  Enter square foot gardening techniques and bob’s your uncle.  Higher yields, earlier yields, and better tasting (apparently) yields as well.

Keep weeding, keep harvesting, keep being grateful for the bounties you have in your life, especially the ones that are unexpected.

 

 

Every hermit needs a hermitage.

Recently, my neighbour noticed that the lilacs in the back yard were pushing over his fence.  Turns out when a lilac lives to be a ripe old age, they lean (much like people) on things to support them.  So in a gust and burst of energy, Dave (the guy who’s flipping the house) cut down all the offending branches and put them into the back yard.  After getting the rest of the branches from next door, I realized that I had the coppice that I had wanted to build the fencing around the south side of the house.

Except that something moved in me and pushed me towards a bigger project.  Every hermit needs a hermitage, a dwelling place that is a somewhat temporary structure where he or she can retreat to in the world.  Now the garden in the back yard is definitely becoming a very cloister like, contemplative place in it’s own planted-and-wild sort of way.  But an actual structure would not only be a dedicated place to actually just *sit* and *think* but be a decorative aspect to the yard as well, in that hermit-desert father-Franciscan kind of theme that I’m going for.

For the last two days I’ve been stripping leaves off the branches to make them ready, sorting out the smaller branches to fill the spaces in between the bigger branches, and thinking of a plan on how to construct this hut.  My first thought was to build a simple small rectangle under 100 square feet with an arched roof on either side, kind of like the arches of gothic cathedrals.  The upside would be that the waddle would be consistent up the sides of the arches and provide support for any dob that I’d put on.  Dob, by the way, is a mixture of water, clay, grass or straw, and poop from a horse or a cow.  When mixed and combined it forms a kind of concrete that adheres between the branches, can be left exposed as is or painted.  I was going to white wash it.

Unfortunately, my mind lead me into a different direction.  Instead of a rectangle, I’m building a sort of square with one rounded end.  I laid out the pattern and marked the ground with my fingers, cut the initial poles for the walls, tried hammering them into the ground (mistake number one:  rubber mallets are not for stakes apparently), gave up on trying to hammer them into the ground, and instead dug a hole about a foot deep for each of the stakes, then stomped the earth around them to give them some support.

Then the waddling begins.  It’s a kind of peaceful weaving process, but the more sticks and branches you weave in between the posts the more you realize just how much coppicing you need to build a think like this.  I realized after getting about 10 inches of wall that I was probably going to have to switch to larger branches, and more than likely going to have to go into both hedges and cut more wood to finish the project.   But that wasn’t the biggest problem.

It turns out that soil that is dry doesn’t create much of a support for wattle (or is it waddle? Mental note, post about the Mark the Duck twitter feed at some point) as the walls get higher.  The key branches on the south side that I used for foundation poles began to not only bend in the ground, but turn up the soil.  Which means I need to possibly rethink my design, definitely dig up and re-pound the poles *or* put in support poles, and take all the woven wood out so I can do this.  The foundation poles *have* to be strong and in the ground stably otherwise the entire building, small as it is, could potentially come crashing down…even while someone, someone like me, is in it!

I’m agitated that I basically have to start over from scratch, but the reality is if I do the job well and know that the construction is solid, I’m going got have a hermitage that will that will not only function, but one that may last a lot longer in years than one that is just shoddily assembled.  I kind of like the open wood and the spray of branches that jut out everywhere.  I know that I could produce an adequate about of dob from the gumbo in my own yard…I’m not sure if that’s the route I want to go.  I need to think about it more, and think while I’m working.  God knows there’s enough grass clippings available to mix into any kind of dob that I would use.

It’s as meditative as walking in the garden, or pulling weaves, to build with the materials that come from the space you occupy.

Having realized it’s been quite a while since I last wrote  a blog post, I wanted to update everyone about what’s been going on.

I started in the garden late this year; it wasn’t because I was up to my eyeballs in other things.  I was feeling depressed about things, feeling stuck with no way out.  I was contending with fears that had a grip on me that were at one and the same time absolutely illusionary.  It’s so strange how we can come up with ideas in our own minds about things that have almost no grounding in reality, yet form concepts that stop us from doing what’s good for us.  And the insane part of it all was that once I was able to overcome that fear and get back into working the soil, that grip the illusionary fear had on me all but vanished.

As you can tell, I’ve put in a few more beds and changed the concept of what the back yard garden is supposed to be.  When I started last year, I had this idea in my head of a kind of cloister of green and purple and pink and yellow and red and blue.  This initial idea hasn’t changed really, but the concept has shifted a little bit.  That lawn I initially worked hard to airate and fertilize is very slowly disappearing in exchange for perennial beds.  The lawn is now pathway.  The rest of the garden instead functional on three levels:  the first, production of vegetables and fruits to both eat and give away; the second to provide a  place to entertain, to be out of solitude.  The current vegetable patch will at the end of this season be transformed into a brick and moss patio space with a fireplace at it’s centre.  If I can arrange the bricks into a labyrinth even better.  The perennial beds that surround the vegetable garden will act as a border between the contemplative space and the social space, as well as a break between that contemplative space and my work space and potting table.  Right now, I’ve got some pressure treated wood (thanks for the donation, Dave!) that I will be drilling and fixing into the ground to create a new vegetable patch just behind the tall perennial bed.  Once that’s done, the sod that I moved last year which is now turned over and dead will go back into the space to become the vegetable garden in the back…this year, seeded with some wheat from Dave’s family farm going back God only knows how long.  If it grows, there will be seed for the birds to eat and a good amount of straw that can go into compost.  If it doesn’t, I’m sure the birds will love it.

Speaking of birds!  There’s a cheeky little chickadee who doesn’t seem to be too afraid of me.  A few times I’ve gone to the pond to get water to take to the beds or the garden, and I’ve interrupted his bath.  He just flies around a few feet from me, lands on the trellis where I have the sweet peas growing, eyeballs me, and chirps.  I bet if I got bird seed and held it out in my hand he’d land on it and eat.  The robin rules the roost, splashing in the pond like a crazy man with a bad hat, sparrows having to wait their turn as they go.  Found a dead song bird out front again…time to get a water gun for the cats.  Yellow canaries come, land on the lantern, bathe, drink, sing in the trees.  And today there were cedar waxwings.  I haven’t seen cedar waxwings since I was a kid!  I need to get a bird feeder and put it over the compost pile.  Bird poop is good for compost.

Corn is growing rampantly, the day lilies I transported over from the house last year are filling in and showing signs of budding.  The asiatics are almost 4 1/2 feet tall…clover growing with wild flowers I’ve let take space in the garden for the bees.  The mint has filled up big swaths of space in between the perennials, I dug some up and moved it over to the north side of the vegetable garden.  Once the patio goes in it’ll be a lovely fresh border of blue flowers and fresh smelling foliage.

The front yard is greening up, but nothing much I can do there until the construction and renovation is finished.  That space too can be utilized and should be for purposes other than just grass.  It can and will grow food, flowers, fruit.  The work isn’t nearly as difficult as getting to the point of actually doing it.  The imagining is simply part of the enmeshment that you feel when you let yourself become part of the garden space, let the garden space change you.  It feels very much a co-operative process, one in which you read the land your working in and let the land tell you what to do.