Being gay, you would think that as soon as the month of June rushes in I would be even just a little bit excited about the Pride festival.

When I was in my early twenties, I decided I needed to make a change, make some new friends, and maybe do some good. I joined the Pride Committee.  Back then, it was a group of people who volunteered their time and energies to create a really kick-ass festival.  We also did things like challenge government stereotypes:  not many people remember this, but an NDP provincial government under then premier Roy Romanow refused to declare Pride week.  We actually had to take the provincial government to the human rights tribunal to get a declaration.  Co-incidentaly, many people don’t realize it was actually the government of Grand Devine, a *gasp* dare I say conservative government, that initially made inroads into LGBT equality in the labour force in…wait for it… the 1980’s.  I was really into it not only because it felt like politically I was working for change, or that I was actively working to organize events and help put together the first ‘legal’ parade in Regina, but because I was meeting all kinds of people, making all kinds of friends, and floating on a high of what I was able to accomplish with the help of those friends.  Which makes it sound like I did it all, when in fact i was actually just a minuscule part of a bigger team that did it without any organizing principle except getting the job done (and if we turned a small profit we could turn back into the next festival the following year, coolio).

After three years of mc-ing the flag raising, marching in the parades, getting tables and chairs set up for the dance at the Cathedral Neighbourhood Centre, talking to reporters, I (and I suspect everyone else on Pride) burnt out.  Without missing a step, the local group at the GLCR picked up the gauntlet and continued the tradition.  In that aspect, it’s a real show of what community is about when the celebration is important enough to keep it going without any need to ask.

So I find myself, 20 years later, thinking now.  Having watched event announcements for the week of festivities, realizing I can’t make half of them because of work, and not being able to make the other half because I just can’t drag myself out of the house that I’m living in…(taking care of this dog is another blog post in itself)…I find myself wondering why it is I don’t really have a sense of pride in being gay anymore.  I fired off an e-mail to the current committee saying that I would love to volunteer.  I thought to myself, all you need to do is get involved again and you’ll be meeting people, making friends, and gaining back some of that community spirit that you seem to have lost!  Except after the volunteer co-ordinater got ahold of me to ask me what t-shirt size I took, I found myself wanting to not volunteer anymore.  Lucky for me, I never heard back from anyone.  I guess they didn’t really need volunteers after all.

But at the heart of this post isn’t anything I did before, or anything I’m seeing now:  why is it, when I look at myself in my 43 year old body, do I not feel the sense of pride in being gay that I once did?

When the committee I belonged to dissolved, I slowly drifted away from anything community related.  I stopped going to the bar after a disastrous relationship with a disastrous drag queen (again, like the dog, another post all together!), stopped hanging out with my friends in the community in Saskatoon.  I went to Divas so much people thought I lived in Saskatoon!  That not going back to Saskatoon had more to do with not wanting to run away from my problems here in Regina than anything else, and I think that might be the real key as to why I don’t feel pride anymore.  When I stopped running away to Saskatoon and forced myself to start looking at the problems in my life that were making me unhappy, the need to run away disappeared.  The friends I had there for the most part never really stayed in touch, which only emphasized that the decision I’d made was probably for the best.  I miss Belinda especially, and there isn’t a day that goes by I wish I could reconnect with her.

I’m not ashamed of who I am.  But what I do feel is a deep sense of gratitude to have been given this gift, and it is a gift, even though some days I feel so very alone. One day in my past, I’m not sure exactly when or exactly how, being gay stopped being what I was and became an integral part of who I am, a part of myself that I am humbled to have.  Its not something I feel the need to flaunt anymore as much as treasure and honour by making good choices for myself.

Last night when I thought through how to write this post, I was going to say things like that festival now isn’t the same as the festival then, or that the energy now isn’t the same as the energy then.  Although that might be true in some aspects that have no real bearing on the heart and soul of the festival, Pride is basically the same.  I’m the one that has changed.  The way I look at myself has changed.  The sense of loneliness that I talk about comes not from not being able to have friends, or to want to socialize, or to date.  It comes from the realization that the vast majority of people that I used to be able to relate to are no longer people I can relate to.  I don’t belong to the community in the same sense that I did before. I’m not sure if it’s because I’m older, or because my outlook has changed.  My sense of grief doesn’t come from being alone as much as it does in realizing that even if I wanted to come back into a place of being active in the community in the way I did before, I can’t.  Firstly because there are younger fresher faces that are doing a fine job without my help, and secondly because you can’t put a square peg into a round hole.

I’m very grateful to have participated in an organization that helped in breaking down the shame that so many of us have had to deal with.  When I think back, I realize I was actually part of a very small bit of our city’s history.  That’s pretty cool!  Being proud means being able to take joy from one’s accomplishments, for the hard work one has put into a life.  Yes, coming out of the closet is an incredibly difficult journey for many, and people very likely still need to be told, even in 2015, that it’s ok to be gay.  But it’s just one book on the shelf, and there are so many of those books that get overlooked because the rainbow book is so bright.

I’m proud of my accomplishments.  My sexuality isn’t an accomplishment.  It’s a component of the individual who’s written two novels, worked for 15 years at the same job, gone back to school after 20 years and landed high grades in some of the most challenging classes I (and others) have ever taken, grown an continue to develop a cottage garden, and make a really REALLY good cup of tea an honey.

I had no idea it’s been almost over a month since my last post.  Every day, almost, without fail I’ve been entering this space and putting my creativity and my worry to constructive use.  When I took this picture on Sunday and took a second look, I realized that my dreams of a cottage garden are well under way.  This is in north Regina.  It looks like its somewhere in the country.  Mission accomplished.

The seeds that I got from my friend state-side stayed in the garage until this past week-end, when I took a look at what I had, thought long and hard about the current growing season as it stands, and asked myself if okra really has a chance in Saskatchewan.  I planted it, along with some mustard greens, in between the two rows of carrots.  I’m encouraged by other gardeners who’ve shared with me the carrots have either come up sporadically or not at all. I watered last night (the fiasco of water rationing here is for another post, and probably another blog, suffice it to say politics and water treatment do not mix) for a good two hours; when I came this afternoon, the middle of the garden was dry as a bone down to the middle knuckle on my middle finger.  This is thirsty soil.

The peonies and the irises did not disappoint.  The peonies are a really rich vanilla cream in the middle of almost pure white petals, it looks like a bowl that you could sink your teeth into and smells, unlike the peonies I brought from the old place, wonderful…almost like cinnamon.  Where I was sure the irises would be blue, or dark purple, I was surprised to see purple mottle with bright sun kissed yellow.  I’ve only seen this in the neighbourhood in one other location.

I pulled my first radish today, brought it home to my father like a prize.  He was actually excited to see it.  That just about made me cry.  Seeded more radishes on the south side of the beans because in just a few days, I’m going to be able to pull and eat most of what’s growing.  Monty Don wasn’t kidding when he said you can grow two to three crops of radishes in a season.  Peas came up sporadically so I planted the rest of the packet in amongst the cedar poles I bought.  I had put in sticks, just long twisted branches from the cedar that was pruned down out front, but I realized they looked unsightly, like great dead fingers reaching out of the soil, and the string that I had tied around them for supports couldn’t get tight so they all hung down sad, droopy.  The cedar poles are attractive, and cedar is naturally resistant to water so they should last me a few years.

So I saw this bench idea on Pinterest, and since there’s plenty of cinder-crete blocks around I was able to toss six together with two pieces of wood from the renovation.  It’s actually pretty comfortable!  I’m slowly bringing my house plants from home and will be lining the waddle fencing on the “hidey hole” side (what I call my little sitting are).  It’s big enough for one, or two if you’re not afraid to cuddle.  I put a statue of St. Francis in behind it in the yearling lilacs and you can’t see it until you’re literally on the bench.  It’s a secret that helps to bring me down when it comes into view.  I do a lot of thinking and praying on this bench.  Needs some paint but otherwise I’m really happy with the repurpose look.

I’m not so sure that the house will be ready now until the fall.  But I’m certain that every day lily that I add into the border, the garden grows and becomes more cottage like.  The one flowering almond that sat mid-veg garden was half diseased so I ended up cutting most of the adult growth back almost right to the ground.  New growth is springing up from the base of the trunks since the spring, but something tells me there may be a pond in it’s place before August.  I’m budgeting at least $350 for the liner and the plants that I’ll need to create the natural pond I’m wanting to make.  Friend of mine with a farm, Susan, has told me that yes she does in fact have rock piles I can come and take from, and lots of cow manure I can take as well.

It isn’t so much pride that I’m taking in this space, although the process that it is becoming does fill me with a real sense of accomplishment that is becoming, developing, growing and almost mystical way.  This is a prayerful place for me.  I’m not sure if it’s that way for anyone else who visits, but I’ve heard at least one visitor say that it feels good to be in the garden.

A purple lama from the United States (read internet forum friend) just sent me envelope upon envelope of seeds, some of them I’ve never heard of, one of which (okra!  OKRA!) I’ve never even thought to try growing!  About 15 packets of seed, turnips, squash, cucumbers, mustards, chilis, greens, 4 different lettuces, I am on fire!

And FROST TONIGHT again.

Ok so it’s the night before Christmas.

Please Santa, can I have a dutch hoe in my stocking?  I’ve been a pretty good boy generally….ok relatively….

I have two ways I can write this.  I can write it from a philosophical perspective that very few people will be interested in, or continue to read once they see the word epistemological, or I can talk from the heart which is more difficult than writing philosophically because of the emotional charge.

I was planning on writing a post about gay marriage for a few weeks now, ever since the case came up to the US Supreme Court.  But each time I began to write, I would end up three or four paragraphs in and realize it was sounding contrived, preachy, fake, or just plain boring.  So I’d delete the blog post and think that I would come back to it with some more thoughts.  Then yesterday, while reading through some posts on a Facebook group I belonged (past tense) to, I came across what would be thought of in an evangelical sense to be a compassionate response to gay marriage, or “practicing” being gay.  I found myself in a situation where the philosophical stands I once seemed to embrace so willingly were suddenly challenged.

I went to work, started sweeping/washing the floor, and decided to think it out.

First off, why am I continually drawn back to Christian faith even though there seems to be an apparent contradiction between what I believe and what most churches typically believe as the doctrine of the sin of homosexuality?  This is a tough question to answer and I’m not sure how many LGBT people get it, or how many practicing Christians will get it.  One of the doctrines of Reformed Epistemology, a generally Calvinist-backed philosophical view of God, is that certain ideas are hard wired into human beings right from conception.  Like how a child knows that sharing is good, or stealing is bad, even if no one has given that child direct knowledge of these facts.  In the same way that we have direct knowledge, innate knowledge that we are reminded of about things like math (think about that one!), we have innate knowledge of the existence of God.

Which isn’t going to win the minds and hearts of atheists.  But that’s a different thread all together.

My reality is that I’ve always known God existed, always had that connection, always sought Him out.  I went from the church I was raised in to Buddhism to paganism to First Nations spiritual expressions in sweat lodges and vision quests, back to my roots.  And when I came back to my roots, I realized that it felt like home, so I attempted to deepen my personal practice, prayed and continue to pray daily, pray the office, contemplate and meditate as much as I can in the day, do good things for the old people I clean for, and some of the younger people I clean for as well.

Which isn’t to say it’s easy being a Christian.  The reality is the LGBT community, not in totality, but many people look at me in a somewhat perplexed way.  Last week one individual actually called me out on it, saying that they couldn’t see how homosexuality and the worship of Jesus Christ as the Son of God were consistent.

Let me quote something here that gives me some consolation:

O Lord our God, who made humankind in thine image and likeness and gave it power over all flesh everlasting, and who now hast approved thy saints and apostles Philip and Bartholomew becoming partners, not bound together by nature, but in the unity of  the Holy Spirit and in the mode of faith, thou who didst consider they saints and martyrs Serge and Bacchus worthy to be united, bless thy servants, N. and N., joined not by nature  . . . , but (grant them) to love each other and to remain undhated and without scandal all the days of their lives, with the help of the Holy Mother of God and ever virgin Mary.  Because to thee belongs all glory, honour, and worship.

This is a prayer from the liturgical same sex union from the tenth century.  A further prayer from the same liturgy concludes:  “Wonderful and much longed for is the sweet smell of love.  On earth it sows the seeds of piety and in heaven it gathers the sheaves of justice.  ‘He hath dispersed abroad; he hath given to the poor:  his righteousness remaineth forever.’  Turn thy holy ear to the prayer we raise to Thee, for Thou are the provider of all good things and the saviour of our souls, and to Thee is endless glory, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”  (from John Boswell’s ‘Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe’, published by Villard Books, New York, NY, USA.  (C) 1994 John Boswell)

In short, the liturgical rights for same sex unions have existed in Catholic churches for over a thousand years.  

Which isn’t going to bode well with many fundamentalists.

So how do I reconcile it, even with that evidence?

There are two things I am innately aware of.  The first is that God exists.  The second is that I am gay.  Each of these exist with the same level of epistemic weight (meaning I believe in them relatively equally, I know them in my mind and heart with the same level of certainty).  I know that as I practice my faith, I must trust that given I live my life to the best of my ability, given that I am open to the voice of God and His intercession through my prayer life and the interactions of others in my life, and given that I am open to the happiness of finding a partner, making a life with that partner, in my heart of hearts I cannot but think that a God, who in the wisdom and power of creating the universe so infinite that looking on the night sky is only looking upon a drop of a drop of a drop of a drop of creation, must of in His divine wisdom known what He was doing having created me a gay man in His creation.  Was I not created in His image?  Is there not room in a universe as diverse as ours is (although we cannot in our limited minds comprehend infinity as it is) for me, and the way I love, and the way I wish to express my love?

The life of contemplation and the work I do in contemplation, both gardening and my day job as a janitor, has given me a small taste of the infinite and my place in it.  Last week I saw a bumper sticker that read “The Truth is Not Relative” and had a picture of a cross beside it. I suddenly had a revelation that if I believe that statement is relative, then even truth is relative.  I can’t believe that.  I don’t believe that.  However, I do believe that how individuals respond to truth is relative.  And, if I may be forgiven for taking this quote out of the context it was intended, and turning it on its head to prove my own point, I would direct you to the words of the Venerable Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen.  I submit that a man, or woman, who truly loves God and is gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, two-spirited, or questioning the fluidity of their own sexuality can fall under the category of the right.  I submit that knowing one’s self is the closets way to knowing God, to knowing Jesus.  “Wrong is wrong, even if everybody is wrong.  Right is right, even if nobody is right.”

Spent the afternoon in the garden today, taking out more plants that are springing up in the beds here at Gladmer and moving them to the permanent garden over on Halifax I’m calling “Short Meadow”.  I love my new bedroom.  Even if it’s just plywood and drywall.

So I’m having two strange conflicting struggles in my mind right now that I’m focusing on.  One is the fact that I haven’t had a relationship with my mother for about four years now.  I walked out of a conversation in her home that to me felt more like something you should be hearing from a needy girlfriend than your mother, and even though I tried reaching out a few weeks ago to re-initiate some kind of a relationship with her, the idea of phoning her to start a conversation just makes me feel like I can’t cross that bridge again.  Life has to be about making positive decisions, even if that means cutting people close to you loose because they create more negativity in your life.  I just never saw it this way.  Trying to focus on the things I can control, the things that have value:  work, gardening, contemplation, my dog, my health.

The second strange conflicting struggle has to do with someone I met, but didn’t actually meet.  The social media world is one strange place.  When I chose to go hermit, that is, to retreat from any participation in “community” bigger than the small (very small) group of friends and family, I did it with the intention of trying to improve the quality of relationships in my life…who am I kidding.  I did it because the idea of interacting with people threatened me.  Very recently I walked away, luckily, from a bad “trip” in Saskatoon.  Just when I think I’m able to step out, to risk letting someone get to know me, I end up choosing a nut.  I seem to be good at that!

Which brings me to the struggle.  Gentleman accepted a friend request a few days ago.  He seems to meet a lot of the bells and whistles that I go for.  I’ve never actually met the guy, this is all via social media we’re looking at this.  My dilemma is this:  do I introduce myself, and suggest we grab a coffee and get to know each other better (because clearly I’d like to know him better), or do I sit back, turtle, and contemplate that every guy I’ve made eyes on in the last year or so has ended up being a visitation to the crazies?

It’s very easy to get caught up in the romance of solitude, especially when you throw a spin of philosophy and theology onto it.  Gardening is a passion that has really touched me in so many ways, but the yard has to have a gate, a way out, and a way for people to get in.  I’ve started writing three or four times now, little messages about how I think he’s a nice guy and if he’s got the time and the inclination, I’d like to get to know him better.  Each time I hit delete or turn off the computer because it feels needy, or it feels contrived; it’s lacking confidence!

Here I am, 43 years old closing on 44, and feeling about 15 years old.

The risk is planting the seed, seeing what grows.  If it doesn’t come up?  It doesn’t come up.  Merely turn the soil and try again.  With a seed it’s so much easier.  These interactions with human beings….being lonely isn’t always a good thing.

It’s been a few weeks since my last post and I thought, given that I have a choice (being a rainy day) between blogging and going to the garden centres to spend on beautiful things, I thought it might be a good idea to start by posting…and then if there’s time go to the garden centres!

The lilacs are beginning to open their leaves with a fresh, lime coloured felt that soars up twelve feet.  I’m really pumped because I’ve always loved lilacs, and these apparently are going to open up to a very old deep purple variety.  You can see the progress the boys are making on the house, and it’s an interesting experience sharing the lot with them as they hammer away.  Last week David and I helped them install the picture window, which seemed like it would be daunting at first, but ended up not being so tough given our new neighbour came over with advice and a can of beer.  While Jarred and Dave tear the house apart, I tear up the lawn.  Two new flower beds have gone in, both double dug, one got ahold of the delphinium which is poking it’s head out now, the russian sage I’m not 100% sure about (it always came late here at Gladder, I’m hoping it’s just thinking about it’s options at this point, two packets of poppies, a packet of wild flowers around the Marian corner, and an entire white envelope of hollyhock seeds which are refusing to germinate.  I think the soil, because it’s in direct sun, is going to be too hot for them to sprout.  Good thing I dug up five or six plants and brought them over.  I think I’m probably going to dig up another five or six of the big roots and take them over.  The mature leaves wilt, but new leaves quickly sprout up and start to soak up the sun.  I need to dig another couple of beds for the tomatoes.  There are going to be a lot of tomatoes.  I think I’m going to be making friends with people through tomatoes.  One old guy at the condo I clean gave me eight plants in white styrofoam cups that are supposed to grow up to nine feet tall and produce tomatoes like little grapes.  Good thing I’m getting good at digging up turf.

Onions are starting to poke their heads up, but nothing from the potatoes yet.  Garlic?  I see one little sprout poking it’s head up.  The compost pile is starting to steam when I turn it…or that might just be dust kicking up, either way it’s breaking down and will be good food for the dirt come frost in September/October.  I also put in  a package of an ancient barley from the British Isles, a grain that very probably my ancestors were harvesting in their kilts.

The lilies are filling in, and the perennials that I moved into the border are also waking up and taking to their new spaces.  I realized as I was putting in the welsh onions (that little dark line just up top of the lilies, above photo) that the cottage garden thing is shaping up but confining itself to the veg patch.  It’s not a bad thing!  The space in the back waddle has got a path of some kind needing to come out of it, and the oodles of perennials I’ve got can make dividing spaces in the garden itself.  I’m beginning to see that the room is running out.  Dad said he wants to put in cucumbers, and I may have to sacrifice the zucchini so he can have a patch for them, and I’m not even beginning to have a clue where the peas and beans are going to go, but I have to get out to the valley in short order and cut lots of red willow to build the trellises for both of them, not to mention the sweet peas.

The next nice day we get (probably Friday) will be seeding the carrots and the radishes.  The seed packets on my desk are getting fewer and fewer.

Dave and Jarred mentioned to me that it might be a better position for the pond beside the garage between the garden and the garage.  This way, the pond will get plenty of morning sun and shade in the late day, with a little evening sunshine and less of a chance at becoming a festering pool of algae.  I had to actually think about this, not about the common sense position of it all, but realizing that it may not be this year that the pond goes in.  My goal was to get a shovel, and the liners, dig the hole, get the pond done and ready for the May long week-end.  The only problem being that the outside of the garage is going to need to be fixed up and having a pond there might in fact be detrimental for anyone backing up while they’re taking off or putting on siding, or the life that may be living in the pond itself!  I’m smelling a later summer/early fall project.  Digging it by hand will be a lot harder than having someone do it with a backhoe; but I’m digging that the extra work that is going in is man-powered, me-powered.

Then again, when the back hoe shows up I might just take advantage of Chad’s good nature and let him dig the damn pond.

Even with all the noise, the dogs next door, the guys in the house, I spend a few minutes tucked in a corner just soaking it up and the nosies and everything just…disappear.  I think if I could live in that yard I probably would.  Having the deck off my bedroom with big sliding doors I can look out of when I wake up in the morning, looking into that space first thing every day before I even get out of bed…..what a way to live.  What a great way to live.

You know that spring in Saskatchewan has arrived when you hear that unmistakable sound of the sandhill cranes returning on their way to Condie Nature Refuge.  It’s unlike anything else in the world, different from the hundreds of geese that fly over.  I’ve been hearing them a lot lately.

Yesterday I started dismantling the rocks from the west flower bed, a couple of milk crates worth, and took them over to the house to put around the round flower bed which is going to become the Marian shrine.  It only took about half an hour, but under a lot of rocks were little ant colonies, some red, some black, all panicking because I was taking their warmth and shelter away from them.  I felt a little bad about it, and I actually had to talk myself out of not taking the rocks.  Its trivial perhaps to be working about ants, but even they have a part to play in aerating the soil, bringing in small bits of debris that slowly compost.  And they pollinate!

The rocks in the back yard are stunning.  I think originally they were placed there to keep the lining around the garden in place, but I couldn’t help but pull them out and stipple them between clusters of the rocks I collected 2-3 years ago from Last Mountain Lake.  I may yet return out there to get more rocks for the pond, which won’t be going where I though it would be.

Dave was at the house again, and we spent some time in the back yard discussing how the deck will come off of my bedroom, which direction the stairs will go.  The place I thought would be best for the fire pit ends up being the worst place, so the fire pit will end up in the middle of the yard, and I’m actually seeing a circular patio of stone or brick around it, and of course more places for flower beds to go around that.  Wood ash is good for fertilizing lots of different plants so the fire pit will not only be recreational, but a functional part  of the continued growth of the yard front and back.  The pond that I initially thought would go into the centre of the yard and create a kind of parterre is going to end up being the long rectangular pond I had wanted, but pressed against the east side of the garden.  Because it was so nice yesterday, 20C, I took the opportunity to put in the perennials I’d dug up.  The garden isn’t just garden anymore, the peony is in the south-east corner so that it will come up and bloom behind the existing peony bed, the lilies and gas plant are now lining the east side of the garden so there’ll be a wall of green and colour separating the vegetables from the rest of the yard.  And I may still yet take turf up along the back pathway to plant the perennials I have growing in my house on the windowsill and under the grow lights.

And just when I thought it was finishes…I look up to see that the ivy geranium I’ve kept in a pot for the past four years has just opened it’s blooms.  Burgundy.

Life is freaking good in a garden.

BITCH, PLEASE!?

In case you haven’t seen the snow melt the last three times, back by popular demand, featuring 5 more centimetres of the white stuff, idiot landlords shovelling half the walks, and young men and women who can’t remember how to drive in the snow (remember, two weeks ago, when there was ice on the road and you knew how to do it?), and OH yes.  All that open, warming dirt?

So what I wonder is, are the tomatoes leaning towards the window because they want to see the tragedy, or do the birds that come back along with the gophers that have woken up wonder….da fuq??

Good Friday I headed into the yard to do some raking.  Not just raking, but introducing myself and getting to know the lay of the small piece of land that is the yard I’m adopting and caring for.  This is the first real day of work I’ve done here and the more that I step into the space and actually sweat in it, the more it sinks in that this is my yard.  So I started to rake, knowing that I would be putting the dead debris into a pile behind the garden.  In my mind I had this image of a set of compost bins neatly in the back, filled with varying degrees of composting matter.  But when I showed up at the yard what I realized was the practical, affordable treatment was to just build a pile.  So, knowing the minimum is roughly three feet by three feet by three feet, I started trimming back perennials and … wow.   I think there’s a bed of peonies!

Yup I know, it looks like a pile of leaves.  I trimmed back quite a bit of wet and deteriorating leaves and pulled away the bits of rope and wood that were holding the flowers up.  You can see one stick still in the ground, that I left in the ground, because you can never know when your’e going to need a long, forked, rough stick.  I snipped the leaves down into smaller pieces and spread them on the ground:  the bottom layer of the compost pile.  Next, I went around to the other bed, and started pulling out dead marigolds, banging off the dirt and breaking them up slightly so I can layer wet, then dry, then wet. That’s when I came across the surprises.  The perennials that already exist, and are starting to poke themselves out of the ground.  A mound of iris that is about three feet by there feet, so old that the centre of the mound has gone punky.

Ok it’s tough to see.  But those little green dots scattered all through the mountain of dirt, leaves, and other debris are the sprouts of the irises that will be blooming for me this year.  Even more exciting was the realization that the circular bed with the huge mound cedar in it is also filled with dead leaves….not just any dead leaves, but dead leaves that look like there are at least 60-70 bulbs attached to them.  I didn’t touch this bed.  I left it exactly as I found it, unable to see anything sprouting as of yet.  No doubt in the next few days something is going to poke itself out of the ground as the daytime temperatures are going to climb into the mid-high teens…celsius.

And, wonder of wonders, the gas plant looks like it’s actually thriving.  Well, as much as you can see at this early stage of growth.  The way I’m looking at it, that little lump of green next to the top-left dead branch in the pot has grown at least 3 cm.  If it’s still growing, then the roots can’t have been damaged that badly.  I’m going to make sure when I put it into the ground with the others that I had potted up to throw in some store-bought compost into the bottoms of the holes to give them a jumpstart.   But the best part, the bit that made my heart leap, is that the gas line has been marked.  And it goes out towards the north side of the yard and runs along the fence.  Which means….

Pond.  There gonna be pond.  Big pond.  Also there gonna be new paint job and yes, new roof.  I know.  After raking up 3-4 shingles from the flower bed I looked up and gasped a little bit.  Ok I gasped a lot.

The other thing that came to me is how the sidewalk that runs to the garage is the perfect place for a seating area, maybe a barbecue or a fire pit.  Still so much to do, and yet it feels as if this space is becoming mine more and more each day that I work in it.  The rocks I collected for the flower bed here at the apartment are going to be lifted, washed, and put around the circular flower bed.  The last few lilies that are poking their heads out of the ground here will be lifted and taken over.  The really challenging move for me is going to be the wisteria.  I’m not sure it will survive, but the reality is that if it stays here it won’t have a chance.  White trash don’t care.  Just saying.

Raking did something else for me.  It gave me a better understanding on how the land shifts and moves, where the high spots and the low spots are.  A rectangular pond might look good provided the land is flat, but it isn’t.  About 3/4 towards the back yard it dips down before the vegetable garden begins, which in the world of ponds does provide a bit of a problem.  It may end up having to be a square pond which won’t be an issue particularly.  And fish or, what I’m staring to lean towards more, a nature pond with an abundant amount of plants to encourage wildlife, and hopefully in time frogs!

Frogs…which sounds like a good idea now, but when there are 100 of them in the pond chirping 24/7 and the neighbours start to complain, and I can’t get to sleep because of the noise….ok maybe a bass or two….

The reality hit me when I was talking with Dave who came out for a smoke and a Pepsi, taking a break from the drywall work in the house.  In just a few short weeks I’m going to have to buy a lawn mower.  And a few short weeks from that, a lawn chair or two.  A week from that, plants can start going into the ground.  Then the loan application…then the move. It’s all happening fast, and the really crazy thing is I don’t think about it that often.  It’s the first time something huge has happened, begun to happen, and I’m not worried about it.  I’m more concerned to be honest about the syringes that have popped up around my flower beds here.

Mental note:  avoid Boardwalk.  Avoid Gladmer Park.  Just saying.