Just when you think you’ve got it bad.

So I spent the bulk of yesterday cleaning, repotting the perennials into cocoa fiber pots (which is going to make transplanting them into the new garden much easier as they’ll just compost themselves into the soil), and getting ready for a date…who texted me an hour before hand to tell me he had to leave town for work, and an hour after that to tell me (actually his friend Mal, whomever Mal is) that it’s great to be sitting with his feet up and beer in hand (incidentally, when did people loose the courage to say that they aren’t interested?) followed by “whoops, sent that to the wrong person” (right).

There are days when I write this blog that I wish I could be as a work of fiction, rather than one of reality.   Unfortunately, I went for brutal reality, seeds, stand ups, and all.

Today I get a letter from Pelican Narrows.  My friend Michael lives and works up there in retail, which up north means the Hudson Bay Company.  Now I will grant you that after spending last night hiding in my bed playing candy crush, getting this letter puts things into perspective quite a bit.  Michael hermits as well, but more because of his remote location than anything else.  He is the gay community, the only gay in the village.  And he may correct me on that one as well!  He has the same issues I have with lgbt community, and dating, with one difference.  I’m surrounded by them.   He isn’t.  I’m liking the actual letter writing we’re doing, and the letter I got really put my feet back on the ground again where they need to be.  He’s having the same problems I am.  That’s something at least.

I’m not sure who’s luckier!

Yesterday the first robins flew in.  I heard them before I saw them, and then the pelicans started circling around the east part of Wascana Lake.  It’s only going to be a matter of time now before I hear cranes returning on their journey north.  The snow geese flew over yesterday.  That was pretty amazing to be out at night, stars glowing somewhat glistening off-centerer by the mist in the air and then suddenly a low-flying flock of snow-white geese with that characteristic call, not unlike a Canadian goose but not as long, more “victorian granny” in nature (and yes, that’s a strange description I know but if you’ve heard snow geese you’ll understand).

Right now is the worst time for gardeners because the soil up top is still saturated, and the soil underneath (gumbo) is still frozen solid.  You get the illusion that you’ll be able to plant by putting in the shovel only to realize that once you hit that clay, it’s over.  Raised beds methinks.  If I’m going to cottage garden it’s going to take some patience and resilience.

Neighbour behind us moved out, which in itself isn’t interesting.  What is interesting, however, is that the managers of the complex offered to significantly decrease his rent for him to stay.  Things are strange around here.  They fight to keep people while increasing the rents beyond what’s affordable, and yet three guys stand by a sump pump watching it slowly drain a puddle.  And we’re paying their wages.  Nothing says government like Boardwalk Rental Communities.  I swear they could’ve been a caricature for city employees.

I did want to talk more about the first day of digging, a few weeks ago.  Dave Ledeaux in his podcast here often talks about Canadian gardeners on the first warm day heading out at ridiculously early times to start digging.  This year I got to prove that.

What I found somewhat strange was that as I dug in the garden to try and get a hole big enough to put my gas plant in, I found that I was digging up what looked like onions, then my brain went to how they could be crocuses or daffodils.  I didn’t know what they were because I hadn’t been there when they went in.  I suddenly found myself overcome with the realization that I was in someone else’s yard.  This wasn’t my garden!  I mean, it will be my garden but it didn’t feel like it. It was like Baba’s yard was vandalized, and I was the vandal! I took a look around and realized that the flower beds I had planned to put in were already there, under the snow, and there were/are perennials there.  The old tire I thought was a flower bed is actually a border with a cedar and perennials in it.  It’s begging to become a Marian shrine, and I can’t wait to head out into the valley once the pussy willows appear to cut the wood to make the nook where the statue will go, where the clematis will climb.  The lilacs will definitely need  cutting but more than that, there will have to be some kind of fencing so that Sookie won’t get out into the yard on the south side.  There are projects now that are coming into volition, the guy who digs around the house to put in new weeping tile will dig out a pond, stones will have to be laid, liners looked into, maybe concrete, but it’s taking shape.  It’s less formal now and more cottage, and I’m liking that because it truly will honour the years that Baba put into the yard while making it my garden.

Just when you think it’s bad…like my friend Steven in Toronto said to me last night while cheering me up, “It’s amazing where life takes you.”

I was going to post on the first day of spring but I couldn’t get into the mood to write long enough.  It’s…snowing again. I grant you, the snow here isn’t as bad as it is in Nova Scotia right now, but I empathize  We had snow that bad a couple of years ago.  My dad actually had a very interesting point!  Why aren’t they shovelling it into the ocean?  Too much environmental degradation?  Ah heck, I don’t know.

Anyway!  A hermit’s life is always interesting.  On the heels of a bad encounter in Saskatoon with a gentleman whom needs all the prayers and thoughts of good things we can muster, I had a call very early Friday morning from another friend up in Saskatoon.  Now I’m a night owl, so I thought it was kind of funny that I should find myself at 1:00 pm looking at my phone and asking myself, why in the name of all things green would she call me at that ungodly hour?

I put my phone away, walked the dog, and went on with my day:  no message, must not be important.

Saturday I sent a text with the new running gag, you’ve stolen my phone.  Long story.  Rather not get too deeply into it.  The conversation only lasted for a few lines, but in those lines I realized that where I was looking for an ear and to maybe grieve a bit, it simply wasn’t there.  I got shut down fast, and my compost side went into that deep, dark, decomposing murkiness that does nothing but heat up, rot things, and stink.

So after I spent the bulk of the night sulking I realized I’d probably be better to bend like these damn seedlings rather than uproot anything.  I turn the tray these tomatoes are in and within 40 minutes they’ve already begun to lean the opposite direction to get better light.  In them I see potential for sauces, sandwiches, warm fruit off the vine, canned vegetables, you name it.  But not every seed germinated.  There are some that have still got the husks of the seeds on the leaves, and they’re fighting to get them off, the leaves opening slowly like a little ring holding the crown of a husk on them.

Number one rule of a hermit, is be the hermit.  That means, internally work through your stuff but don’t become the stuff.  Hard thing to do.  It means, let things compost but be prepared to turn the compost.  So she wasn’t able to give me what I needed.  Maybe she’s not in the space where she can, or wants to.  That’s not necessarily her fault.

What I find somewhat stunning if not crazy is the fact that over the last week, 3 guys have popped into my life, all three basically unavailable for three different reasons, and I simply walk the dog at night, look up into the sky, and wonder why this Creator has such a strange way of making a joke.  Last night, guy #3 bailed on a date we’d made.  I don’t blame him.  These days it’s not easy to like someone and not get frightened.  Especially given my own circumstances in the last month.

Loneliness is not a curse, it’s a state of being that never disappears, but it does dissipate given the ways we occupy our time.  Being a hermit is the way of learning to master that skill, and to translate that mastery into everything that we do.

Would it please melt already.

Two years ago I visited a garden centre near where I live which among the other better plants sold a variety of plants which had/have no business being here on the prairies.  I bought from Gwen a couple of plants I still have, an olive which is currently in the fight for spring sunshine, and a bougainvillea.  The bougie, as I’ve come to call it, is one of the old friends that has come with me the last couple of years and I suspect with the right care and attention will be someone I lovingly grow old with.  I’m hoping the east window in the new house will be enough for her.

During a really difficult depression, one that just about stopped me from participating in the world beyond what I absolutely had to, the branches went absolutely bare.  Every single leaf disappeared and for six months they covered themselves in flowers, multitudes of flowers.  At one point it was a three foot tall pillar of bright pink.  Oddly enough, when I came out of the depression the flowers ceased and it started growing leaves.  The branches are wild, angular, and in all sorts of brambly directions but I didn’t mind.  I kind of liked the green and the wildness of it all.

But today was the day that I realized the reason the leaves kept turning yellow was because it needed to be repotted, and if I wanted it to bloom again I was going to have to take drastic action and prune the snot out of it.  Hard.  So I put some newspaper down on the coffee table, began pruning away the dead branches and dry wood, being careful to leave some of the established growth.  Once I repotted it, I took some of the stronger branches I had cut of and put them into the pot to try and root some cuttings.

While I was pruning, one of the thorns (yes, they do have thorns.  Everywhere a bloom comes out a thorn grows…ironic that!), pierced my thumb pretty deep.  Revenge, I suppose, for the drastic pruning I had to do.

Considering the nature and life of a hermit, there is an important lesson that has to be learned, both by pruning and repotting, but also by the piercing of the thorn into my thumb.  The orders of monastics who live hermit lifestyles come out of the desert frequently to associate with their brothers, usually during mass, but also to share a communal meal and to enjoy the company of other human beings.  The thinking behind this is that complete and total solitude can in fact create a distance, a gap, between the seeking soul and the Divine rather than a closeness, or a connection.  Only in communing with others are we able to return into our solitude and go deeper towards that connection between God and our hearts.  Pruning is like this, in a way.  Each branch can in fact deliver new growth and provide life to the plant; but if the branches are not pruned on occasion, with compassion and well intended common sense, the plant will not flower.  It will in fact wither, become weaker, and eventually die if it is not cared for.  Sometimes along the way, we encounter a thorn that may pierce.  Pain is not a reason to escape the world, it is a consequence of engaging it.

Every seed that is put into the soil is a risk.  The risk is that it may not germinate, or  that it will be weak.  There are things we as gardeners can do to minimize that risk and maximize the potential, but in the end we are only allowed what is in our control:  we can increase or decrease the light, we can increase or decrease the nutrients, we can increase or decrease the humidity.  Or we can simply not engage the plant and refuse the seed in the ground.

Grow hard or go home.  Plant vigorously, prune when needed, weed when required.  And take the time to enjoy the fruits with some wine and some friends.  The garden, even if a potted plant, is a place of retreat and solitude but unless it is shared with others, the work is meaningless.

Wonder of wonders.  If anyone isn’t familiar with the weather in Saskatchewan, we have two seasons. Winter, and everything else.  And as the snow melts, we’re able to see some of our plants peek out, the ground melts, and leaves begin to poke out and give us hope that indeed, spring is on it’s way.

Last night while I was laying in bed contemplating the move to the new house, I realized that I really like my room!  I like the fact that it faces south, that sunlight streams in here and makes the mountain of green greener, that I wake up with sun kissing my legs, that the crystal in the window perpetually throws rainbows over my walls.  I like that the lake, the park, is right behind my house.  I love the fact that in the summer I can open my window and get a cool breeze off the lake!  In short, there are a lot of things about where I live that I love!  Why, I asked myself, do I want to move from where I live to a tiny house (YAY) with a huge yard (YAY!) in a neighbourhood that’s as far from the park as can be?

Then I stepped out my door and realized, after walking around to survey the gardens, that the newspaper has not yet been cleared off the lawns.  And one of my neighbours, actually quite a few of my neighbours, who have ‘assisted living’ dogs (translate that to mean the people in the rental office are about as smart as some of these dogs to realize that a german shepherd is not on the allowed list, but a rented unit in a community of about 25% vacancy needs every body with money it can get) have allowed their lovely animals to run amok and ‘sow seeds of happy buttons’ all over the grass.  Land mines.  Lovely.  I wonder if they’d fit into the letter box people use to drop their rent cheques off…….ooops, careful.  Don’t talk about shooting a horse in public!

Next, at 1:45 pm after catching the whisps of dope from next door (yes, we can smell cheap weed for blocks, even though you may deny it!), I find a lovely surprise has jumped out of the grass and began to grow on my lawn!  The Bohemian Beer Can Plant.  This lovely little gem was deposited by my neighbour during the fall.  When planted, usually by trash (not exclusively white anymore people!  We’re a multicultural society, trash can be any race or gender now!  HYBRIDS!), expectant of a tree growing, sprouting, and spewing bohemian beer.  I grant you, the amount of fertilizer left by the dogs would be consistent of the flavour of this particular brand of beer…. I think, as a rule, people generally try to plant these seeds after they’ve imbibed too much of the cheap dope.  And judging by the smell, they smoke a lot of it.

It’s time to get out.  If I needed a reminder about why I can’t stay here anymore, the gopher who woke up too early and died, curled in a little ball next to the foundation of the house, trying to find warmth, was the last straw.

Then…this:

Monday, March 9, 2015.  The hollyhocks are growing.  Growing.  They’re actually further along than my seedlings which makes me shout for joy!

Life is like weeding I suppose.  You survey what is around you, assess the growth with the die-back, decide what to mulch, and prepare.  I’m not as a rule a vindictive person.  But as I watch the staff move the piles of snow from one location to the other, stacking it at least 20 feet high, then moving it back the next week to where it was before (this is our rental increases hard at work) I can’t help but think about all the catnip seeds I’ve spread through out the lawns here, and how, especially with regular mowing, there should be tens, maybe hundreds, of cats both domesticated and feral, rolling around in the grass, pooping and peeing in the grass, howling at night in the grass.

Ok ok, it’s not very hermit like.  And karma is a pain.

Every time I see catnip, or a beer can, I’m reminded that there is always something better around the corner…or under the snow.

I had to remind myself the other day that blogging about gardening and blogging about my life as a gardener, but also my life outside of the garden, is what this space is about.  Why then did I choose to call myself a hermit?

Recently I told a friend in a rather maudlin text message the hardest part about being alone isn’t the pain of loneliness.  No, rather the pain come from surfacing for air, leaving the solitude, and risking contact with people outside of one’s solitude.

Don’t get me wrong!  I’m going to tell every person I come in contact with that has some genuine spark of normal that human beings are dangerous animals that should be avoided at all costs.  I need to be social, but there’s a line to draw between being social and allowing someone into your space.  I wrote about that in my journal about the importance of the gate in a garden, the importance of how the gate functions not only to define the space, but defines who can and can’t enter the space beyond.  It’s control in a way, but it’s also part of creating the safe space, the sacred space, that is the garden.  Or, if you follow the metaphor, the sacred within.

What I’m learning more and more each day is that peace is something not earned, not sought after and found; peace is what exists.  The choice we have as gardeners, as human beings, is how we choose to adapt to that peace.  The last two weeks I’ve found myself trying to create what I thought was what I wanted, but instead it pulled me further from the peace that already existed in my life.  A human being, a man, suffering because of the choices he’s made in his life and perhaps because of the choices that were made around him, has no choice but to return the the agonies of his life.  Do I want to live like that?  Do I want my life to be a reflection of those choices, those distractions, those weeds?

Being a hermit isn’t about being alone.  It’s about making choices, active choices, about the people we want to interact with, how we want to interact with them, and how we choose to spend our solitude:  do I as a hermit want to wallow in being alone, a loneliness that I choose for myself?  Or do I want to instead love the peace that surrounds me in my solitude, choose to admit those into my garden, my peace, who will help the garden to grow?

Every day we are bombarded with choices, from the moment we wake up until the moment we go into our beds at night.  Some of us are meant to be stationary, to live stationary lives, meant to live within the hermitage.  Others of us, like my friend Russel, are meant to go out into the world like a Franciscan and take the message to others, to serve others, to live in the world.  For Russel, living in solitude is against his heart.  He’s spoken recently about moving back to Toronto and I realized after telling him (rather presumptuously I might add) to not act rashly that unless he’s moving, unless he’s settling for short periods in different places, he can’t thrive.  For him, his garden moves with him.  This is the way he tends his garden.  The choice is ours every day to thrive, to flourish, and to choose if we will do this with weeds, with grasses, or with grains.

For my part, my seedlings are an inch tall in some of the peat pods.  Soon I’m going to have to transplant them into other containers, and start seeding my sweet peas.  The melt has begun.  The itch to turn soil has begun.  The square beds are so visible to me now, the pond, the borders of lilies and poppies and the talls; the closer it comes to spring, spring in Saskatchewan, the greater the call to enter the garden.

On my desk, in a tray covered with a clear plastic top, are 72 small peat pellets that have become, in effect, my garden.  Scabiosa, Salvia, Echinops, and Hesperis are all either laying just bellow the surface or on the surface.  The smell is enchanting, deep and rich.

St. Thomas Aquinas, at the end of “Prayer Before Study” writes:

Ingressum instruas, progressum dirigas, egressum compleas.  Tu, qui es verus Deus et homo, qui vivis et regnas in saecula saeculorum.  Amen.

-or-

Order the beginning, direct the progress, and perfect the achievement of my work.  You who are true God and true man, and who lives and reigns forever and ever.  Amen.

I’m trying to memorize the latin, trying to pray the prayer when I rise in the morning, and before I begin anything significant.  So before I planted the seeds, I prayed the prayer.

Not everything that we do is blessed, or appears to be blessed, by the hand of God.  Sometimes we are too far from the actual goal to see the transition between events.  I did not think starting work at the job I am at almost 16 years ago that it would eventually lead me to this place, a place where very shortly the snow will melt and my garden will increase in size.  And yet, the little things like planting the seeds will eventually produce one of two results:  a seedling will appear, or it will not.  A plant will grow and thrive, or it will not.  We are given the opportunity to use all the skills and talents we have acquired to try and make this an easier transition for the potential in the seed.  But sometimes, the soil is too wet or too dry, the seed is buried when it must lay on the top of the soil, a seed is not frozen by winter when the cold is needed to urge the growing.

Every garden is potential; even in that potential there is the possibility of failure, or success. Every year is another effort towards knowing, gaining knowledge, becoming and growing alongside the seedlings.  Plants become old friends.  I have a ficus I purchased when I first moved into the place I’m in now.  This tree has been through everything with me, and other ficus that have grown along side it have died, withered, not nearly become as strong a tree as this one.  The ones that have died are added to my in-head file of “what not to do” or “what is difficult to grow” or “how not to water” or “how to water and feed”.

People are like gardens.  Often we are thrown, or we throw ourselves, into relationships with people and like the seedlings, they either grow and flourish, or they wither.  In some ways, we are only responsible for the actions of our own hands, our own hearts.  We can only turn so much soil, compost, water, prune, and then we are at the mercy of nature.  Nature is the ultimate gardener, and although we do enjoy a hand in participating, she is the ultimate pruner, weeder, harvester, and planter.

So a flower bloomed in my life recently.  It faded very quickly, the petals fell to the ground, and I was left confused, sad, but gladdened as well that I had the opportunity to experience the blossoming.  I know very little about how to be in a relationship.  I can only hope, and pray, that I know far more about growing plants, turning soil, and mowing grass.

In as much as I can, all I have is the ability to choose the seed, plant the seed, do the best to nurture rather than suffocate the seedlings, pot them on, and once mature find a place of rest for the plant.  The snow cannot disappear soon enough.

A garden is only as good as the gardener’s self awareness.  If a gardener cannot intimately know himself, then he cannot enter the garden complete and free, able to see the needs of his plants, the proper portions and placements of things.  Of course, a gardener and a garden have a special relationship that is different from one who enters a garden simply to experience it. In this way, the garden becomes the means by which a gardener know himself.  So in the planning of my own garden I find myself able to buy seed, sketch plans, but not able to fully see what it is that is garden, which has been the expression of a one hundred year old woman from the past forty years, will be.  This was her space before it was mine. I suspect in many ways she must know herself better than I know myself!  So the garden must be an honouring of her, but also an honouring of me.

Because I’m feeling a little alone these days, thought I’d share this poem/video link I found online.

HOW TO BE ALONE by Tanya Davis

If you are at first lonely, be patient. If you’ve not been alone much, or if when you were, you weren’t okay with it, then just wait. You’ll find it’s fine to be alone once you’re embracing it.

We could start with the acceptable places, the bathroom, the coffee shop, the library. Where you can stall and read the paper, where you can get your caffeine fix and sit and stay there. Where you can browse the stacks and smell the books. You’re not supposed to talk much anyway so it’s safe there.

There’s also the gym. If you’re shy you could hang out with yourself in mirrors, you could put headphones in (guitar stroke).

And there’s public transportation, because we all gotta go places.

And there’s prayer and meditation. No one will think less if you’re hanging with your breath seeking peace and salvation.

Start simple. Things you may have previously (electric guitar plucking) based on your avoid being alone principals.

The lunch counter. Where you will be surrounded by chow-downers. Employees who only have an hour and their spouses work across town and so they — like you — will be alone.

Resist the urge to hang out with your cell phone.

When you are comfortable with eat lunch and run, take yourself out for dinner. A restaurant with linen and silverware. You’re no less intriguing a person when you’re eating solo dessert to cleaning the whipped cream from the dish with your finger. In fact some people at full tables will wish they were where you were.

Go to the movies. Where it is dark and soothing. Alone in your seat amidst a fleeting community.
And then, take yourself out dancing to a club where no one knows you. Stand on the outside of the floor till the lights convince you more and more and the music shows you. Dance like no one’s watching…because, they’re probably not. And, if they are, assume it is with best of human intentions. The way bodies move genuinely to beats is, after all, gorgeous and affecting. Dance until you’re sweating, and beads of perspiration remind you of life’s best things, down your back like a brook of blessings.

Go to the woods alone, and the trees and squirrels will watch for you.
Go to an unfamiliar city, roam the streets, there’re always statues to talk to and benches made for sitting give strangers a shared existence if only for a minute and these moments can be so uplifting and the conversations you get in by sitting alone on benches might’ve never happened had you not been there by yourself

Society is afraid of alonedom, like lonely hearts are wasting away in basements, like people must have problems if, after a while, nobody is dating them. but lonely is a freedom that breaths easy and weightless and lonely is healing if you make it.

You could stand, swathed by groups and mobs or hold hands with your partner, look both further and farther for the endless quest for company. But no one’s in your head and by the time you translate your thoughts, some essence of them may be lost or perhaps it is just kept.

Perhaps in the interest of loving oneself, perhaps all those sappy slogans from preschool over to high school’s groaning were tokens for holding the lonely at bay. Cuz if you’re happy in your head than solitude is blessed and alone is okay.

It’s okay if no one believes like you. All experience is unique, no one has the same synapses, can’t think like you, for this be releived, keeps things interesting lifes magic things in reach.

And it doesn’t mean you’re not connected, that communitie’s not present, just take the perspective you get from being one person in one head and feel the effects of it. take silence and respect it. if you have an art that needs a practice, stop neglecting it. if your family doesn’t get you, or religious sect is not meant for you, don’t obsess about it.

you could be in an instant surrounded if you needed it
If your heart is bleeding make the best of it
There is heat in freezing, be a testament.

My first year as a member of the horticulture society, I jumped into a minivan filled with middle aged women and we went on a garden tour of three gardens/growers near where I live.  One garden I will never forget:  it belonged to two really sweet guys who were very much into botany.  There were three distinct rooms in that garden that we were shown, a herbaceous garden with lawn that opened into a massive squared vegetable and herb garden straight out of England, followed by a reproduction of an art deco garden they saw while traveling Europe that included a long oval pond made out of red brick, surrounded by peonies (the sword dancer will probably make the next plants I love section), day lilies, perennials, and a chicken coupe at the end of the lane that looked like a little swiss cottage. Those two may not have realized it but the gardens on that farm outside Earl Gray, Saskatchewan, not only inspired me beyond words but have left a lasting impression on me.

One plant in particular that I snatched up the first time I found it at the garden centre is this one, Dictamnus Albus (the gas plant, not to be confused as google does with actual gas producing plants, or gas using electrical power plants, or certain members of my immediate and extended family).  It took four years to bloom, and there were a few times I didn’t think it would get any bigger than a small clump I could hold in the palm of my hand.  This past year for some reason, the plant took off and bushed out, and up, and threw some beautiful blueberry sundae and cream coloured flowers.

This plant has an interesting history.  Apparently in the summer, I was told, it produces a rather pungent and volatile gas around its foliage and flowers.  The word is that this particular plant produces enough of this gas that if one puts an open flame close enough to the leaves, the gas will burn off all over the plant giving the appearance of a burning bush.

Heaven forbid.

I haven’t tried igniting the plant as of yet, I was too overcome with joy to see it bloom.  I did however bend down on both knees and stick my hooter into the blossoms to see how they smelled.

Awful.

It’s become one of the treasures in my perennial garden and I’m a little nervous about having to dig it up and move it over to the new garden because it’s supposed to be “sensitive about it’s roots being disturbed”…meaning there’s a good chance that if and when I do decide to dig it up, I’m probably going to have to give it a good distance around the base of the plant to try and take up as much soil as possible without disturbing the roots.  God forbid I do.  I thought about collecting seed from the pods and went out a few weeks before Christmas only to realize any seeds that might have been in the pods are long gone.

Mental note:  collect seeds sooner.  I’m such a rookie.

If it doesn’t make it, I’ll have to try and dig another one up somewhere in the garden centres around here, cross my fingers, and hope that it will thrive.  The other thing I’ll do is check out the seed houses and see if anyone has anything.  I haven’t seen anything so far so if you, reading this, happen to know where I can either purchase plants or seeds, drop me a line.  I’d love to hear from you!

Maybe it’s cliche, I don’t know.  They are beautiful flowers after all, not only stunning as an oriental lily, but that scent…that heavenly scent.

This lily was first introduced to me by a long ago friend named Belinda up in Saskatoon, her absolute favourite.  A bouquet of these in a room fills it with heavenly scent.  So when I planted one in my lily garden to remind me of the times I spent in Saskatoon, it seemed strange that after a few years it began to grow more stunted until last year, all it did was throw up a spike of leaves without any blooms to speak of.  This particular bulb I suspect is not doing well in the kind of soil I have it in, and it may do better once it’s moved over into the new garden.

Back in my 20’s I spent a lot of time running away from myself, as probably many of you have or know someone who did.  To me, it was easier to run away to Saskatoon on the week-ends, take time out to spend on the soft silky beach at Cranberry Flats, eat fattening and delicious meals, smoke way too many cigarettes and other substances, and dance my ass off in Divas, the local gay bar up there.  It was safe because my relationship with my friend Belinda made it safe.  The only down side was that as I grew, our relationship and our friendship grew apart until now, most of the relationships with the people I did know there in Saskatoon are just memories.  I had a lot of fun in Saskatoon, but I made a lot of mistakes and eventually had to come back, settle down, and rediscover who I was here in my own home.

I love how the day lilies compliment orientals by pushing punches of single spiked colours through the foliage of the day lilies that seem grounded, almost herbaciously hedge-like.  I’ve got a few orientals in my side garden that will have to be potted up come spring, but the star gazer, if I can get it to stay alive, and thrive again, will be a good reminder for me of my times past.

Right now we’ve had a bit of a reprieve from the freezing cold temperatures that I’m told were actually at times colder than the surface of Mars.  I’m thinking about potting up the lilies, the friends that I’ve made out in that west flower bed that I need to take with me; not so much hoarding, more like book marking the time that I spent here.  In a way, they’re the memories I can choose to take with me and hopefully hold onto and use to help me grow a new space.