What Does this Garden Grow?

The pandemic has brought with it a great many surprises.

Way back in March, we were all surprised by the news about shoppers stockpiling toilet paper. Who would have thought that our initial response to a fast-moving deadly virus would be to ensure a good supply of TP? Grocery stores all over the world reported that there were now empty shelves where toilet tissues had been. The panic was so extreme that NT News in Australian newspaper printed an eight-page blank lift-out with cut lines to be used as loo paper in an emergency.  In an interview with the Guardian, the editor said, This is certainly not a crappy edition. It's good to note that tough times produce humour as well as innovation!

The next was finding out that stores had run out of flour. So many people -- men, women and children -- were taking up baking that the stores couldn’t keep up with the demand for flour. Talk about our daily bread -- it was everywhere! Every kind of bread. It’s been decades since I’ve heard so much talk about sourdough. Now, each day on Instagram, you can find photos of various sourdough loaves, with many people cooking so many that they have to make regular runs to deliver loaves to neighbours.

Recently we’ve been seeing the line-ups at garden stores and nurseries.  People are digging up their lawns to plant vegetables. Maybe they remember what Margaret Atwood is said to have said: In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt. Those who don’t have gardens are planting pots on their windowsills, balconies and patios. My own patio features big pots of lettuce, basil, chives, chard, and even one tomato plant. Last week my friend gave me a large pot of nasturtiums which are sporting red, orange and yellow blossoms, and today I found that my arugula seeds had sprouted, magnificently and almost magically. In the past, I have mostly grown only a couple of spindly geraniums. 

In these uncertain times, food security is a serious concern. Those of us who have private gardens and pots on our patios are fortunate, but for some it’s not so easy. That’s where organizations like Loaves and Fishes and Food Share and other social agencies are making a difference. Here in Nanaimo we’re lucky that the Nanaimo Foundation is overseeing a Community Response fund which is providing support to such organizations and others who may lack food and shelter and key services at this challenging time.  To learn more about what they are doing through funds from the Government of Canada and also donations from our local community, learn more from -- 
https://www.nanaimofoundation.com/communityresponsefund/
and maybe you’ll want to contribute to support this important work.

I often think of Minnie Aumonier’s line, When the world wearies and society fails to satisfy, there is always the garden. However, our post-pandemic gardening is not merely the result of weariness and dissatisfaction. Rather, it is the product of hope and resilience and creativity and generosity. Some people say they just feel better when they get their hands in the soil. Others talk about liking the feel of the ground beneath their feet. It’s grounding!

The pandemic has brought us many tragic things. Illness, death, economic devastation, fear, anxiety and grief. But it has also provided the gifts of generosity, creativity, day-by-day stamina, surprising resilience and positive new directions.

It’s a great treat to have freshly-picked garden vegetables. There’s nothing quite like a loaf of home-baked bread. And it’s never a bad idea to have a good supply of toilet paper on hand.

Birds on the Wire – Or, Thinking about Corvids at the time of the Covid…

 

I always liked that old song of Leonard Cohen:

Like a bird on the wire
Like a drunk in a midnight choir
I have tried in my way to be free

I liked it early on, and also much later:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmPUu-rMpWA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGvwvxA83Cs

I’ve been really appreciating the sight and songs of all the birds near my patio, but recently that Cohen song took on a different meaning for me. I awoke early with my alarm system going off because of a power outage. (Because my alarm system is old and has all sorts of problems, it is mostly disconnected but it still connects when the power goes off, just long enough to set off a brief alarm.) I got up and tried to make the beeping sound stop, and then checked with BC Hydro online and found that the problem, as was the case with another outage two weeks ago, related to “contact with a bird.” A bird on the wire.

BC Hydro was great; they posted regular updates and got a crew out to fix things quickly. But a power outage during a pandemic is worrying. It makes you wonder if maybe the infrastructure upon which we all depend might just suddenly disappear. And then I started thinking about that old Hitchcock film “The Birds.” Maybe the birds hate us, I thought. Maybe they will be glad when we are gone.

I was a bit aggrieved because, only a few days earlier, I had signed up to make monthly contributions to Birds Canada:

https://www.birdscanada.org/

However, I’m still glad to be supporting Birds Canada, because it’s an excellent organization the mission of which is to conserve wild birds through sound science, on-the-ground actions, innovative partnerships, public engagement, and science-based advocacy.

Birdsong is a great comfort these days, and the sight of so many birds lifts my spirits. I recognize that my feelings and fears with regard to the power outage were irrational and likely they have to do with an unacknowledged agitation I feel because of the virus and the uncertainty with which we are living these days.

We are all wired! According to my dictionary, that means being in a nervous, tense, or edgy state. It also means being connected by wire. For those birds on the line it might mean sudden death. For birds in a cage it might mean beating their wings against the wires as described so poignantly in Paul Laurence Dunbar’s poem, Sympathy:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46459/sympathy-56d22658afbc0

Sometimes we are agitated, tense and fearful. Even Dr. Henry noted the other day that the situation was “nerve-wracking for all of us.”

We are birds on the wire. Occasionally, we need to acknowledge that.

 

Contract with the World

 

 

We’re all “100% in” for flattening the curve of the coronavirus. How we must do it is with “fewer faces, bigger spaces,” advises our Medical Health Officer, as we prepare for the May long weekend. This holiday weekend will be unlike the past ones which featured crowded beaches, big weddings, and huge conferences. It’s now all about space and bubbles. But, because things are going OK with the coronavirus numbers, we are getting to expand our bubbles a tiny bit, while still staying socially distanced.

Bubbles! “More bubbles, less troubles,” said Sandro Bottega when we visited his vineyard in Veneto, Bottega Spa, many years ago to taste and write about his outstanding prosecco wines and grappa. It was a heady time. We agreed that those bubbles made our troubles disappear. The word “bubble” has a different connotation now, not of an intoxicating and liberating libation but of an encapsulated and limiting confinement, yet the formula still works.

In a global pandemic, keeping within our bubbles is our contract with the world, our country, our province, our community and our families. Every night, people step outside to applaud and bang pots for seven o’clock tributes to essential services workers, but otherwise mostly stay home, staying safe and being kind. Following these directions is our side of the contract. We do sometimes raise glasses of prosecco across balconies and patios and gardens, but always keep two or three metres of separation.

I’ve been re-reading Jane Rule’s Contract with the World recently: partly because it’s told from the perspective of six characters, and I’m trying to write something like that; partly because it’s a good novel about the protests, upheaval and sexual politics of Vancouver in the 1970’s. That was a very different time, a freer time, yet the book still contains some relevant messages. At the end of the novel one character says, “All things fall and are built again,” and another observes that their lives “will change in ways she couldn’t predict.”

While reading, I’m breathing in the scent of a little bouquet of lily-of-the valley that a friend brought to me. The fragrance of this flower hints at spring and sweetness and everything that is green and growing. Lily-of-the-valley is the birth month flower of May, which is usually a month of many rituals and celebrations. But this year is different, and it is the strangest May long weekend I’ve experienced. There will be no May Day festivals, no parades, no maypole dancing, not much travel to holiday cottages, only distanced Mother’s Day visits and small weddings. And yet I can’t complain, knowing that a small number of us are a lot luckier than a great many of us on this planet right now.

The lily-of-the-valley symbolizes unity, humility, good fortune, and the return of happiness. Good things to think about. We’re paying attention to what these days are telling us. In her poem, The Lily, Mary Oliver writes that the lily may be “saying in lily language/ some small words/ we can’t hear.” I listen closely, trying to hear the flowers’ small words. I think they are probably saying “Stay home, stay in your bubble, and be kind.”

And maybe they’re also whispering, “Have a little glass of prosecco to celebrate the holiday weekend.”

Happy Victoria Day!

A Trip of a Lifetime

 

 

When I was about five years old,  my family would go to Gibson’s Landing in the summer to visit my father’s older half-brother, Uncle Gordon, and his wife. We travelled on a Union Steamship, the Lady Alexandra, one of the fleets they called “The Lady Ships.” It was a leisurely journey of about three hours, during which time we sat out on the deck eating a picnic lunch, reading, and playing card games.

Uncle Gordon and Auntie Annie lived in a small cottage on Franklin Road. What I remember most about my visits there, in addition to the sight and scent of the many roses on the trellised archway, Is the sunroom that was just inside the door, a crowded space where their travel mementos were featured. I was especially keen on the two painted and lacquered Chinese parasols. I hinted broadly that I would like to take one of them home with me, but to no avail. My mother explained that these were treasures from the trip Uncle Gordon and Auntie Annie had made during the Twenties. The Grand Tour, my mother said. A Trip of a Lifetime, said my aunt..

I think they made this trip in the 1920’s on one of CP Empress Liners of that period. They saved for a long time, travelled for months on this “round trip,” and enjoyed their souvenirs and memories for the rest of their lives. They had seen the world!

In those days of slow travel, they could not have conceived of making a trip to Italy and then another to Scotland and then Japan and then Britain… it was unimaginable! They dreamed, saved, planned, travelled and remembered.

By the time my parents had enough time and money to travel, airplane travel was commonplace. They flew twice overseas to see their old homes, visit family, attend a son’s wedding, and the also flew back east a few times to see children and Vancouver. My siblings and I were able, like many of our generation, to travel long distances frequently, greedily and thoughtlessly.

A few years ago, I read that there were 10,000 planes carrying well over a million people in the sky at any  given time. Until now, the number of flights has been increasing exponentially every year for a few decades. But now, since the Covid Crisis began, everything has changed. Wikipedia reports that by April of this year over 80% of flight movements were restricted across all geographies, including North America, Europe and Asia. This has changed things. Many journalists have recently described clear waters, clean skies, new views of the Himalayas which had  previously been veiled by smog. There are stories about animals taking over the streets and we are all hearing more birdsong than ever.

This won’t last, of course, but I can’t help wondering what post-Covid travel will be like. Will we take fewer trips, being very thoughtful about priorities, including the welfare of the environment? Maybe we will take long flights only once a year but extend our time away with side trips by train and boat. Maybe we will stay home and take the opportunity of leisurely forays into beautiful places close to where we live.

It’s too soon to tell, as Chinese premier Zhou Enlai was famously quoted as saying about the implications of the French Revolution – although it has since be said that he was referring to turmoil in France in 1968. Whatever the case, we will actually find out before long.

 

Quotidian

 

 

Lately, as I stay indoors going through one routine activity after another, I think about the word “quotidian.”

Every morning, after my daughter’s daily check-in awakens me, I get up, brush my teeth and have a shower. I don’t “measure out my life in coffee spoons,” as Eliot’s Prufrock does, but I do count out my pills each day: one red, one blue, one pink and one white. I make my toast and tea, wash my hands, and then make a list of the things I plan to do during the day. It will be a long list with many more things than I shall check off and, since I continue to self-isolate, they will all be rather mundane things:

·         Make bed

·         Do laundry

·         Email tax accountant

·         Clear out top drawer of filing cabinet?

·         Organize photographs

·         Phone brother

·         Email cousin

·         Pick up fresh vegetables from farm in Yellowpoint

·         Wash hands

·         Make vegetable broth

·         Take out garbage, recycling, etc.

·         Sanitize kitchen counters

·         Email distillery and order more hand sanitizer… and whisky?

·         Wash hands

·         Read 21 Lessons for the 21^st Century

·         Practice meditation

·         Do stretching exercises

·         Polish silver?

·         Walk to mailbox

·         Wash hands

·         Find out the name is of the tiny bird that skitters up the trees in the park in front of my patio

·         Write letter to London friend

·         Read Tessa Hadley

·         ???

Sometimes I put things on the list that I have already done, just so I can check them off because it’s so satisfying to see progress. But, even so, I rarely complete the list.

The quotidian nature of my days seems appropriate now as well as necessary. The etymology of the word says it is from the Latin: from quot  meaning how many and + dies meaning days. How many days. That’s the question we all ask ourselves: How many days will this go on?

In his poem, “Days,” Philip Larkin says, “Days are where we live/They come, they wake us/Time and time over,” and he asks, “Where can we live but days?”

The definition of quotidian has to do with the commonplace, the ordinary. It’s about dailiness, a concept which is becoming of more and more interest to me.

I’ve never liked housework, and I’ve always been a lazy and negligent housekeeper. I failed Home Economics in junior high school; in later years, whenever possible, I’ve gone out to restaurants for meals and hired someone to clean my house. However, since the virus has isolated me, I’ve taken up cooking and cleaning and, much of the time, I’m actually enjoying these things. There’s satisfaction in scrubbing and polishing. I don’t think I’ll ever enjoy vacuuming, but it’s nice to have clean counters. I’ve made rock buns for the first time in over six decades and have been pleased with the way my beer bread and rhubarb cake have turned out. Most of my silver is tarnished, but I’m now looking forward to polishing a silver plate that has been neglected for years. When it’s finally gleaming, I might set out fresh-baked cookies on it.

“I love the comfort of daily life’s routines…,” says Elizabeth Strout. “It’s no accident that my favourite word is ‘quotidian.’”

I’m becoming accustomed to dailiness, and it’s changing the way I spend my days. I reflect on times past as I sort through photographs, feeling happy when I can discard all but the most important or else send them off with a note to people who might like to see them. I write letters. I read recipes and appreciate the farmers who produce the ingredients for whatever I  cook. I spend hours looking at the park across from me, and am keen to learn the names of the birds I see there.

“The true secret of happiness lies in taking a genuine interest in all the details of daily life,” said William Morris..

This is a strange time, and none of us knows what is yet to come. But, while we are shuttered at home during this pandemic, it gets easier and easier to have a genuine interest in and appreciation for the daily life that many of us are privileged to enjoy. One day at a time.