 Tis the season of letting go here in the Northern Hemisphere. Having lived in the Southern Hemisphere on and off in recent years, I now know it would be smug of me to assume this applies to everyone in the world.
Autumn has always had this melancholic affect on me - unlike any of the other seasons. The gung-ho quality of spring and all its pointy shoots and bulging buds is contrasted with downward spirals and decaying seed pods after a summer spent strutting their stuff in the the damaging rays of the sun and wind and rain. Like us, life has taken its toll. These days when I dare to look too closely at my aging face (mostly by accident) in a mirror, I am reminded that I am in the autumn of my life. Suddenly the word crepey no longer conjures images of bistro brunches on the Seine but rather thoughts of Dame Maggie Smith or the cost of chemical peels and if I am destined for one or the other. However, as I sit and observe the stunning glory of the changing leaves from my perch here at Kyeema North, I am in awe of the pure gold in this annual spectacle that nature provides. The show changes daily now - the Maples and Sumacs and Oaks all competing for attention. “I’m more brilliant!” “No, I’m more stunning!” “HA!, neither of you can hold a candle to me!” They need not compare or try too hard to attract my attention. The blend of colour, like a perfectly choreographed dance is beyond any individual performance. By the time the show ends, a magical thing occurs. The scene that existed all along behind the lush foliage is revealed. A clarity beyond the trunks and branches pierces through, gifting us with an entirely new view of the landscape and season to come. By letting go of their pretty russets and aubergine coats they now stand naked. Their bare bones exposed and vulnerable yet strong. The weathered and dried coverings they once wore rest beneath them now composting into a nourishing mulch. Just as the spring and summer have led to this moment, my own springs and summers have brought me to my autumn. A long slow fall is what I wish for now. A gentle drift toward winter. The need for feather fluffing and ruling the landscape are follies of the past now. Peace and contentment have arrived and taut skin has been usurped by some well-earned wisdom. Is this how the trees understand it? Have they taken to heart their deciduous nature? Have they learned a few things? Have the rotted out hollows in their trunks given homes to owls or squirrels? Have their roots reached out to neighbouring strangers and helped ground them? Have they donated their canopy to provide shade? Have they shared their nutty bounty with all creatures? Is their selflessness not an inspiration? Is it not entirely possible that these silent giants that surround us, the wise teachers this world needs? Can the Cedars by the shoreline that stretch and lean toward the sun and water speak to us of adapting to one’s conditions? Was it only a matter of time before the forces of nature would topple the lone Stewiacke tree? Was Shubie too far from help? After almost 300 years on it’s own, did that red oak succumb to Hurricane Fiona or a lack of a support system, or both? What lessons are we learning? In October, it will be time to plant bulbs. Daffodils. Tulips. Hyacinths. Next spring’s parade of beauties are but a nugget of potential now covered in their amber onion skin jackets. Like the chipmunks and squirrels that scamper about stashing their acorns and hickory and butternuts, I will dig my own little holes and bury my bulbs. For the critters, it is food storage that will get them through winter. For me, it is a different kind of food. It is the anticipation of the soul food that will emerge from these fall plantings come April and May, making the harshest of winter winds bearable. The simplicity of this nature that surrounds us has been a soothing and healing balm to me these past five years. Living somewhat isolated from people may seem unappealing to some, but, like the Cedars, we have adapted to this environment - rooted ourselves next to the forests and fresh water. It’s a calming bubble in a chaotic world. As Thanksgiving approaches, may you all fall into your own Kyeema North. Wherever that may be.
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 Can somebody tell me why I cannot get affordable kitchen appliances in fun colours. I don’t want stainless steel or white or black. I want Candy Apple Red or Powder Blue, or Turquoise or Sunny Yellow. Cars come in all shades of the rainbow - why not appliances?
I grew up in the 60’s and 70’s when avocado green or harvest gold were standard choices. One of my aunts had a really cool copper-coloured set of kitchen appliances. Now, before you go telling me there are companies that can do it - trust me, I have researched them all and I would need to mortgage my house to order from these places. (hello Northstar - I’m talkin to you!) Besides that, they charge an arm and a leg to custom colour these pieces, but inside is a very ordinary LG fridge or stove, so it’s not like you are getting the high end guts to match the skin. Am I all alone here folks? Surely there must be more of me out there. I have never been a beige gal. I find neutral shades boring. That’s right - bit of a yawn for me. When stainless steel first hit the ground running, I couldn’t afford to kit out my space with those. By the time they did become mainstream and affordable, I stopped wanting them. They had a cool edgy feel going for them with the mid-century modern crowd in the sixties and I had a great aunt back then that owned them. Whenever we visited their house I felt like I was in the Jetson’s kitchen. It was awesome. They also had an airstream trailer I wished my parents had owned. They were so ahead of the curve. I didn’t fare too badly for a brief period when my dad bought a VW Kombi and my mom painted big bold colourful daisies on the exterior to cover the rusty bits. Maybe that’s where I got my penchant for bold and groovy splashes of happy. I love the way it feels like a shot of sunshine when I walk into a space that just bloody screams. A space that gives you a gut punch. I can be cool with neutrals as long as the art and accessories are LOUD! I want to be aroused by the dramatic, not lulled to sleep with the mundane. Hence, my frustration with the lack of choice in the appliance section. I would buy a SMEG fridge in a heartbeat if it came in a size that held more than a six pack of beer and some leftover take-away. Seriously SMEG, we’re not all bachelors or single gals on a starvation diet. I need more storage space. I actually cook. If Canadian Tire can make giant tool boxes on wheels in fire engine red, why can’t LG or Kenmore make me an Indigo Blue French door icebox? If SMEG can make Pink kettles and Baby Blue toasters, why not a full size fridge in the same colour options? I do have the SMEG toaster in the pale blue and it is the one thing in my kitchen that makes me smile. The jewel on my island. It is a talking point. When my old neighbours used to pop over, we had a running joke where we would all turn and extend our arms skywards and then bow and chant…”ALL HAIL THE SMEG!” If a toaster can be that much fun, imagine what a Tangerine range might conjure up? We’d be dancing a conga line around the joint. As for that Candy Apple Red cooling device…I’m thinking nothing short of the Tango. Pass me a rose.  She must have overheard me. The plan was to dig her up and send her to a new home. After four annual performance reviews of 0/10, I had no choice. I had given this gal every opportunity to shine. I fed her. I watered her. I talked to her. The problem was, I wasn’t the only one interested in her. There were others who came to see her - sometimes in the night when she least expected visitors.
At first I couldn’t understand her inability to produce. She looked healthy. She sprouted an abundance of leaves each spring. She seemed well-rooted. She had a prominent position in my beloved heart-shaped garden, in the middle, just below the V of the heart. There were others who would have killed for her spot. After the first year, I chalked it up to the fact that she had yet to establish herself and her weakness radiated an energy that said, “Go ahead, do what you will with me - sink your teeth into my tender buds - eat me.” And so they did. Every last one. They defrocked her like swarm of locusts clearing a farmer’s crop. I decided to keep her on for another season. A second chance to strut her stuff, come September. It was one of the reasons I invited her into my heart - her habit of blooming late in the summer when most other beauties have come and gone. Besides, she had come from good stock - all the way from my brother’s garden in Kelowna. She was a proven winner and I always find it meaningful to grow things that my loved ones have shared. It gives them credibility and a little story to tell. They have a past and come recommended. That, and the sentimentality attached to treasured specimens from our favourite people. Any gardener will tell you, their best plants generally come from other gardeners. They have already been taken care of and grown up until it came time to be divided or pruned. This was her heritage and she was carefully transported home in my suitcase that first year, dampened paper towels wrapped tenderly around her roots and placed in a plastic bag, a piece of twine knotted in a bow at her neck, a few leaves poking out the top of the bag so she could breathe. The second year was more disastrous than the first. By September, not only was she budless, but most of her leaves were stripped away as well. I was verklempt. She stood nearly naked, her scrawny trunk and branches raw with embarrassment at having let me down yet again. Her sad state gave her an air of profound vulnerability, so I told her I would give her another chance and proceeded to give her a few extra layers of fallen leaves - a warm blanket for the winter. She would need it. The spring of 2020 arrived and so did Sharon. That was her name. Shame on me for not mentioning it earlier. More accurately, Rose…of Sharon. I was alone here at Kyeema North that spring, so my propensity for talking to my plants became somewhat of a worry to those who knew me and loved me. Had I lost the plot? No, I had not and besides, I have had good luck talking to plants in the past and this girl needed all the help she could get. As I raked away the leafy winter blanket I coaxed her and caressed her leaves, so determined was I to see her succeed. By bloom time, like most of the world around her, she blamed the virus for everything. Flowering would be delayed by another year. Her excuse was a bit lame but who could fault her logic? Weren’t we all feeling a bit like hiding? The 2021 bloom season will forever remain a mystery. She may or may not have shown her true colours but I was not here to see it. From what I heard, she tried to hide behind the mass of weeds that took over my heart bed that year as we were separated by oceans and thousands of miles and this time we both blamed the virus. By the time we returned to Kyeema North, gardening season was over and Sharon was the last thing on my mind. I did notice her trying to slink from my sight amongst the ragged and spent Iris leaves each time I passed, hoping I would just forget about her dismal performance yet again, but I had her number. “You, my pretty, YOU have one more year,” I admonished her and hastily dumped a wheelbarrow full of leaves over her for one more cold snowy Eastern Ontario winter. If she didn’t wake up in the spring, I wasn’t going to care, nor would I try to revive her. We were all but finished. By June, I could see I was flogging a dead horse. I called my friend Peg and asked if she would be interested in adopting Sharon. I had dangled little mesh bags of stinky Irish Spring on her feeble branches to help her out but she clearly was not happy. I would dig her up in the fall and take her to her new home where she would be loved and safe from her predators. It was nearly a fait accompli until…. …today, as I strolled over to consider the chore ahead of me in the heart garden, (which overall had not performed well this year), my jaw dropped. There it was. ONE lone flower in full blossom. She was radiant in the morning sun, tiny crystal drops of dew resting on her pinky-mauve petals, her stamen standing proud and firm, begging me to notice. I swear I heard trumpets or a choir singing Hallelujah, or maybe it was just my heart growing three sizes like the Grinch on Christmas morning - whatever it was, it can only be described as pure unadulterated joy. Never has a blossom in my garden given me such a thrill. “My God, Sharon,” I said as I stooped to admire her perfection. “Finally. You’re here.” For a second I thought I saw her blush. How she had done it, I’ll never know. Perhaps in the moment some hungry doe or fawn was leaning in, the slightest breeze had caused the stink of the Irish Spring to drift up its nostrils, changing its mind. Or, she kept tight in the bud until the very last minute, disguising herself under a leaf - so determined to show me she could do it. And what had made me choose this day to look into the heart garden after weeks of ignoring it? Did she know I needed a bit of cheering up? I did. And it worked. The power of one flower and patience and a bit of serendipity. How about that?  Ina, Alf and Sarah Lever They say our family histories often die with our elders. With this in mind, I have become curious about my long dead biological maternal grandfather’s family. I never knew him. He died in an ammunition factory explosion in Welland, Ontario during WW2. It was a tragedy of immense proportions for my grandmother at the time. She had three little girls under 7 years of age…and he was the great love of her life.
Ina (my grandmother), was working as a waitress in Niagara Falls at The Refectory restaurant overlooking the Horseshoe Falls. Alf (my grandfather) was working as a Cabin Boy on the Maid of the Mist when they met and fell head over heels for one another. She was a petite thing with twinkling brown eyes and scrawny legs that made you wonder how they supported her upper body. This became far more evident in her later years when she might have been described as buxom. Alfred (Alf) was a tall broad shouldered hunk of a man that towered over Ina. I can imagine it was effortless for him to scoop her up in his arms and carry her over mud puddles and thresholds. His broad shoulders developed over his lifetime due to his love of swimming. An old newspaper clipping still remains describing his courageous swim across the Niagara River below the falls in the late 1930’s. He must have been confident and self-assured to attempt such a crossing against the notorious currents of that river. Clearly he had impressed one gal enough for her to say “I do.” Alf’s mother, Sarah (nee Graham) (my great grandmother) was born in England. She married a man named George Lever and after bearing two boys with him, she left him behind (for reasons unknown), and moved to Canada. She lived with her two sons, Alf and Grandville in Paris, Ontario for a few years before moving to St. Catharines. Considering this would have been shortly after the turn of the century, she must have had a good reason to leave. I can’t help but admire her bravery to start all over in a new country with two small children. If she had any money, it wasn’t much. She eventually moved to St. Catharines to become a housekeeper for an Italian widower and lived in a room in his home with her boys. It was never revealed but rumour had it, he eventually became her secret lover and she remained by his side until she died at 65 with bowel cancer. By then, she would have spent a lifetime mourning the loss of her eldest son Alf. She kept in touch with her three grandchildren and Ina despite the fact that Ina eventually remarried. Apparently, I have Gramma Lever’s heavy legs. I would have preferred Ina’s scrawny gams but I guess I drew the short straw. Ina’s new husband must have always known he was never really “the one”. Surely he saw how her eyes lit up whenever she spoke of Alf. I noticed. It was obvious. He also must have known he could never compete with her strapping Cabin Boy but he kept his mouth shut and worked hard and took care of three children he did not sire. She seemed grateful but always a little sad and their relationship seemed dutiful and unromantic. Perhaps she jumped at the first opportunity that came along after Alf died for the sake of her girls. Life would have been full of hardship otherwise. Ina and her new husband Lorne, bought a farm and acreage toward the end of Lundy’s Lane in Niagara Falls and while Lorne worked full time at the paper mill, Ina ran an 8 unit motel called The Homestead that Lorne built himself in his spare time. It was a typical 50’s style motel with a neon light on the lawn in front of the farmhouse that sat adjacent to the white-washed units. There was a red swing set on the lawn for the motel guest’s children and a single colourful fan-backed, mid-century painted metal chair beside the door of each unit. Red. Blue. Yellow, Orange. Green. You get the picture. Each unit had a kitchenette. As a wee lass, I used to love “helping” my grandmother on cleaning days. I was in charge of placing the paper mats on the shower floor and distributing the little mini bars of Ivory soap on the sink and shower shelf. During the busier summer season, they would sometimes rent out the three upstairs bedrooms in the farmhouse when they were “full”. Those three bedrooms shared a bath and a kitchen.The bathtub was turquoise and there was no shower.Three bluish fish plaques of varying sizes (purchased at a plaque party) hung on the wall above the tub. In those days, long before the internet, people would drive all the way along Lundy’s Lane from the falls until they found a “vacancy” sign. Theirs was the last accommodation before Black Horse Corners and pretty much the end of the line. High season cost $6.50 per night and low season was $5.50. (an increase from earlier years of $4.50 and $5.50). Once in awhile, a guest from some exotic foreign land would leave something behind and if it wasn’t claimed by the end of summer, they kept them. A pair of brightly coloured sandals all the way from India and a watch with Sleeping Beauty on the face and metal stretchy strap became mine. The shoes were far too small but I lied and said they were fine just so I could keep them and admire the dazzling colours. I wore the watch for years until I grew out of such fairy tales but I never forgot it. Ina hired a helper in high season to assist her in the cleaning. She had a full size pressing machine in the kitchen where the 100% white cotton sheets were starched and pressed and folded to a silky crisp finish. I can still see my sweet bespectacled grannie standing before that steaming hot machine, a polka-dot handkerchief wrapped around her head and the beads of sweat dripping from her brow and the end of her nose. There was no air conditioning and she kept a glass pitcher of cold sulphur smelling well water in the fridge. Even the foul taste and smell of that water was refreshing on a hot, humid July day. After a day of laundering and cleaning 8 units and 3 bedrooms, her day wasn’t over. Lorne expected a hot dinner on the table every night and she complied. I cannot help but wonder if Alf had lived, if her life might have been a bit easier. They took one holiday in all those years running that motel. They drove to California and toured around. Lorne never tired of telling everyone how amazing the redwoods and Knott’s Berry Farm were. (for years I thought he was saying Knoxberry) I noted Ina never seemed as enthused. She was likely so exhausted, she dozed through most of that journey. Until they retired and sold the place, it was their only adventure. Their years of toil granted them enough savings to spend their winters in Florida and the rest of the year in a house in St. Catharines. A better outcome than many, but they never flew anywhere, ever and those hot dinners landed on the table no matter where they lived. Ina grew old and dementia set in during her mid eighties. Toward the end of her life when she no longer recognized her family, my brother paid her a visit from the west. He did not know what to expect, but it may have been the best visitor Ina ever had in that final year. When Rick walked into the nursing home room, she turned to look at him and her tired eyes lit up as she cried out, “Alf!, you’ve come to see me.” My brother did bear some similarity to Alf in his younger years. How wonderful for her to finally see her long lost love after so many decades. I hope she is with Alf now. It may seem mean to anyone reading this that I have that wish for her but there are stories about Lorne that will remain untold for now. He did indeed step up to the plate when she needed him, but Alf is the man I think she truly loved and deserved. Alf and Ina. Navigating heaven together. |
DEBunked.I see nature as a metaphor for life. Please join me on this journey down the garden path as I explore life through story - a shovel in one hand and a camera in the other. Archives
May 2023
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