Wonderful article by Sondra Gottlieb in the Saturday National Post (just got around to it) about our European spring. How right she is, everything is early this year. This past weekend in Bolzano in Northern Italy, one of my favourite cities, would have been their spring garden market. Been there several times and wished that we might have the extra growing weeks that Europe has. Well, no need to pine, St. Jacobs Market was in full flower power too, this past weekend – our early spring and gigantic moon having bought planting weekend forward by about three weeks. The hops on the pergola are growing at the rate of six inches a day.
Strange spring though, there has been unusual kill in the garden from our freeze/thaw cycles. One ten year old Japanese maple is as dead as a door nail and is going to be a real pig to dig out. Great swaths of Boston ivy succumbed too. And almost everyone complains of the frost nip on the early hostas.
If you want to meet a true optimist, find a gardener. It has been said that for a gardener, there is nothing as great as next year’s garden. How true. Our desire to control nature is at it’s peak about now as we pull dandelions and stinkweed, and move perennials around to better compliment each other and create a show. And what I haven’t got right this year, will be spectacular next year.
I love hard labour in the garden. The back breaking, joint cracking, oh God I can’t straighten up, sweat, toil and breathlessness of striving to create something beautiful. Absolutely refuse to go to the gym and slog away pointlessly, but give me a trailer of mulch to move, and I’m there. But there is nothing like the first day of work in the spring garden to confirm that you are indeed a year older…
I am absolutely addicted to, and short-term obsessed, with gardening. My reward is the way the traffic and walkers slow down as they pass by and call out to tell us “Love your garden”.
When I garden, my mind is quiet, the ticker-tape incessant conversation of the mind is silenced, and I simply focus on the plant or task in front of me. I am at peace. And by the end of June, I am totally fed up with it and want to escape the heat to an office.
But my time is now, this spring garden time is my Christmas, my first kiss, my wedding day, happiest times with friends, my best day ever at work, all rolled into one.
A house has been torn down in our neighbourhood to make way for a new one, and the good-natured owners have tolerated my garden raids. Everything from hostas, to paving stones to a fairly large Serviceberry tree have been uprooted and lugged back here by this dirt-bag neighbour in her wellies. But I wear my pearls even when I’m gardening, one has to be dressed after all.
Sondra Gottlieb says the British actually have a gardening gene and I think she’s right. I’ve have always said that I can feel when the first bluebell blooms in the woods in Southern England. There’s that morning when I wake up and I just… know. The Bluebells are in bloom in England and it’s time to get serious in the garden here.
I watched the robins in the bird bath tonight. Robins like to bathe at about 7pm and it’s a big, splashly, languid affair. They revel. And the Robins remind me of growing up in England. There was nothing better than that one night a week in our house, usually a Saturday, when we kids had our weekly bath, clean pyjamas, and clean sheets. Pure heaven. I know how the Robins feel.
What’s with Vocal Fry and, like, Uptalk?
This Vocal Fry fad in young women seems to be growing in our region at a very fast pace. You must have heard it by now – young women talking with a drawn out, gravelly tone to their voice, usually hyper-extending the last syllable of a sentence to convey their mastery of the Vocal Fry. Last time I talked like that, I’d just had my tonsils out.
Heard it yesterday in three separate conversations, coupled with the use of the conversational masterpiece “like”.
Then there’s Uptalk, where the end of the sentence goes up in tone, and you’re left wondering if you’ve just been asked a question. Only females seem to do this. Probably, research tells me, because of the social pressure to feel part of a group. But their combined trilogy of vocal and linguistic habits is truly awful and conveys insecurity and immaturity. And rather than want to listen to what these Valley Girls on steroids have to say, I find these vocalizations have the opposite effect, subconsciously I start to dismiss the speaker as childish and unintelligent – I really have to work to stay engaged.
I guess this is vocal texting in a way. A way of messaging coolness. It sounds terrible.
I know I’ve posted about this before, but this fad is really trending. Maybe it’s because I’ve recently joined Toastmasters and renewed my interest in elocution, public speaking and competent communication that this bothers me so much.
As Samuel Johnson said “Language is the dress of thought”.