September 14, 2007
What blooms
Our backyard garden was born of a whim. Tired of staring at the rubbish heap outside his backdoor, our downstairs neighbour Curtis ventured out one spring day to purchase seedlings. He came home with lettuce, carrots, tomatoes, cucumber, peppers and melons, but then he left them on the back step for three days.
We understood the sudden death of Curtis’s gardening enthusiasm. Our house has been under construction as long as we’ve lived here, the backyard serving as a receptacle for all the refuse. An eyesore, with piles of bricks, pieces of toilet, old pipes, kitchen cupboards, and artifactual empty beer bottles. We are a blot in an otherwise lovely row of backyards, so well-tended by our Portuguese neighbours. The yard had become embarrassing, but ameliorating the situation seemed to require forces beyond our capabilities. A few seedlings in the face of such general awfulness would be no weapon, we thought. And so we were all quite content to let Curtis’s seedlings wilt away and die.
It was surprising, then, to wake up one morning and look out the window to see the seedlings planted. My husband Stuart and I consulted Curtis who knew nothing about it, which left only the possibility that our neighbour next-door had been as embarrassed by our backyard as we were. It appeared that he’d snuck over in the early morning and started the job, determined not to let the seedlings go to waste. Maneuvering his way around the detritus, he had planted tidy rows of vegetables, and now it seemed we had a garden after all.
Of course, the lettuce would be ready first, but we didn’t know that then. We didn’t know anything then, until somebody told us. We would learn quickly, however, that seven lettuce plants were probably more roughage three people could handle.
Lettuce was king throughout June, and our regular weeding and watering were paying off— the garden was growing. The old man next door who’d started it all liked to poke his head over the fence from time-to-time, observe the work we were doing, and to tell us, in his limited English, “It is good.”
And it was good, we thought. A garden was a neat trick, and finally we had a backyard we could be proud of. Everything in the garden appeared to be thriving— and then the lettuce bolted.
Bolting, I have since learned, is the process by which a plant goes to seed when faced with danger, in this case the onset of summer heat. In this last-ditch attempt at propagation, our lettuces suddenly grew tall with a thick ugly stalk and their leaves became too bitter for eating. Lettuce season was finished, finally, and we were a bit grateful at a reprieve from green salad.
So that was bolting. Never before have I learned so much in such a short time as I have from our garden. We also learned the way cucumbers grow with their yellow blossom at one end and the stem at the other, and that until they’re ripe they are spiky to the touch. We learned, with regret, that carrots in clay soil won’t grow downwards, and turn into a horrible mangled knot of root instead. We learned not to put the barbecue so close to the tomato plant, and that in spite of burns, tomatoes will persevere.
We learned that a melon plant can take over the entire garden, its vine spreading wherever there is room to grow, wrapping merciless tentacles around everything in its wake. That red peppers come into season later than green peppers, quite obviously it seems now, because of the additional sunlight and energy necessary for its fruit to blush.
Our garden was blooming, and although the lettuce was gone, we had the rest of the salad. Even though we had to pick the workmen’s cigarette butts out of the tomato plants, and I kept finding bent nails in the soil.
We knew we were doing particularly well the day the boy next door— the old man’s grandson— called over the fence to tell us that our garden was cool. “I like it,” he said. “It’s way better than the rats that used to be back there.”
Recently I read that it is difficult to grow watermelon. Apparently watermelon are quite sensitive to wind, require enormous amounts of sunlight, but if you provide them with a great deal of care and attention, your own may prosper. Which I found surprising considering the gorgeous melons nearly ready-to-eat in our own little laissez-faire patch of earth. We have had ample beginners’ luck, it seems, but then never has a garden needed it more.
It was August soon and the cantaloupe was ready. One afternoon we cut the first one open, revealing the perfection of its orange flesh, dark green around the edges, and the miraculous mess of seeds inside. We were sitting down to eat and I was about to devour my half, just like all the melons I’d taken for granted before, when I realized that only moments ago, here had been a living thing. A dramatic realization— food comes from somewhere— though of course I ate that melon all the same. But I didn’t just eat it, rather I savoured it. I appreciated it. And without a doubt, the melon tasted better for it.
This summer we’ve learned what a long haul it is to the table, even if it’s only the distance from the yard.
September 13, 2007
Elusive boys are hard to find
Now reading Gifted, which has been wonderful from the start, and, interestingly enough, wholly in compliance with my previous observations regarding the difference between British and American fiction about immigrants. The British is so much grittier. Tonight I went out to Le Bar a Soup with my friend Jennie, and then we had coffee and dessert on a patio, staying out talking until it was too dark to see.
September 13, 2007
Fictional Fiction
I’ve been thinking about fictional books lately, and of course I’m not the only one. There’s a whole wikipedia page devoted to them (and of course there is). But fictional books have been turning up in my life awfully frequently lately– The Blind Assassin by Laura Chase, A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Nikolai Mayevskyj, Briony Tallis’s Atonement, the Great Expections as retold by Matilda and Mr Watts, My Thyme is Up by Reta Winters. I do believe Mr. Ramsay had written a book to prove he’d reached the letter Q, but I don’t think I know its title.
Please pardon the obscure references (but full points to whoever can get them!). Do note, however, that these are only the fictional books found in books I’ve read since the beginning of August. And I haven’t even started on The Raw Shark Texts, which are primarily constructed of such things. Is there something strange going on here?
Now I understand that the ubiquity could have something to do with the books I choose, and my affinity for books about people who write. But sometimes fictional books do turn up in the oddest places. Some have also had profound effects upon me. And which especially, you may ask? The best fictional book I’ve never read would have be Lo, the Flat Hills of my Homeland by none other than A. Mole. And I am also quite fond of Anne Shirley’s short story “Averil’s Atonement”, though of course its commercial nature put me off a bit in the end.
September 12, 2007
My Mother's Daughter by Rona Maynard
It’s not clear to me why I wanted to read former Chatelaine editor Rona Maynard’s new memoir My Mother’s Daughter. I am hardly the target demographic and I often have problems with memoirs– usually that they fail to be Annie Dillard’s An American Childhood. But Maynard was familiar to me– she and Sally Armstrong, whose letters would grace the magazines that came into our house while I was growing up. I was also intrigued to discover that her sister was Joyce Maynard, she of the controversial memoir and JD Salinger fame.
And so I read My Mother’s Daughter, Maynard’s account of her relationship with her difficult mother. Though I found their relationship less interesting than their respective experiences as women in the twentieth century. Their struggles are not those I would identify with (Maynard’s mother had to leave her job as an academic when she became pregnant; the conflict Maynard faced as a working mom) but that lack of identification is the very point. It’s important that women my age know what not to take for granted.
Maynard’s family dynamics were more difficult to read about– references to her sister as “The Adorable One” were a bit painful, and I’m not sure if they was supposed to be. Further, the episodic nature of the work meant that parts of the story felt glossed over. But Maynard is a really wonderful writer, deft with prose, and her life has been inherently interesting (if not always where she thinks it should be). I enjoyed reading this book, and I imagine fans of Maynard’s Chatelaine work will find much with which they can identify.
September 12, 2007
I made a pie instead
The Poet’s Occasional Alternative — by Grace Paley
I was going to write a poem
I made a pie instead it took
about the same amount of time
of course the pie was a final
draft a poem would have had some
distance to go days and weeks and
much crumpled paper
the pie already had a talking
tumbling audience among small
trucks and a fire engine on
the kitchen floor
everybody will like this pie
it will have apples and cranberries
dried apricots in it many friends
will say why in the world did you
make only one
this does not happen with poems
because of unreportable
sadness I decided to
settle this morning for a re-
sponsive eatership I do not
want to wait a week a year a
generation for the right
consumer to come along
from Begin Again Collected Poems, 2000
September 12, 2007
Adoring Rosie
Rosie Little mania abounds. You might remember the rave reviews when I read it recently– and I’m not the only one. My magnificent Jennie has reported adoring it, and wishes that Rosie were her friend. And what company she’s in, as Heather Mallick read it also, reporting ” The stories are odd and witty, but have an undercurrent of pure terror. Young women will love this book, but after reading it, they may not want to go outside.”
September 11, 2007
A goat with one horn sawed off
It is very nearly that time of year, better than Christmas. Indeed The Victoria College Book Sale is just around the corner, and tomorrow I am taking a suitcase full of my own books to donate. You should do the same if you are able.
I was saddened to hear of Madeleine L’Engle’s recent death. I will join the chorus of people singing about being profoundly affected by her work, in my childhood and after. I remember turning to A Swiftly Tilting Planet six years ago tomorrow, and the comfort it delivered me then. In Laurel Snyder’s Salon Tribute, she writes “To compare L’Engle’s universe to the stuff cluttering the post-Harry Potter marketplace is to compare a unicorn to a goat with one horn sawed off: real enchantment standing beside something that approximates felt hat and white rabbit magic.”
And Bookninja’s feature on empathy— it’s wonderful. Says Barbara Gowdy, ” For me, as both a writer and reader, it’s necessary maybe not to like the main character but to believe that he or she can be redeemed, whether or not that turns out to be the case”.
September 11, 2007
Blowing off dust
Today was exciting for a number of reasons: that I woke up and sat down to spend the morning working on my manuscript, which has been living under my bed since April. Had to blow off a layer of dust, but it was easy to get started, and strange to be affected by words I’d written so long ago they’ve ceased to belong to me. My goal is to finish this final revision by the end of this year, and then what’s next would, quite naturally, come with the future. Further exciting, was lunch with my old dear friend Erin Sanko who I’ve not seen in at least five years. Nice to have it feel like no time had passed, and her boyfriend is lovely. (I was also happy to hear that she had so much enjoyed Half of a Yellow Sun). I spent the afternoon shopping, for skirts, shoes, and turtleneck sweaters. Also for a new backpack, and any number of things to replace hideousness. And then I had my first visit to Ben McNally Books, which was a marvelous experience, and I had the good fortune of picking up a copy of Jonathan Garfinkel’s new book Ambivalence. It’s a beautiful book, and I am very happy for him. I also look quite forward to reading it.
September 10, 2007
Turtle Valley by G. Anderson-Dargatz
Gail Anderson-Dargatz’ latest novel Turtle Valley reminded me of Sheila Watson’s The Double Hook. No small words are these. Though their books remain worlds apart in sensibility and accessibility, Anderson-Dargatz writes similarly to Watson of desperately stunted people rendered smaller amidst a harsh and aggressive environment. She evokes the same ghostly presences, ambiguous in their nature, and she can also write downright spooky. Anderson-Dargatz’ book has far more popular appeal than Watson’s, but she practices the same art of witholding, letting what can be sensed tell the story. A quick internet search reveals that Anderson-Dargatz has been inextricably stuck with the tag Northwest Pacific Gothic, which is dramatic but makes sense to me. In tone I found Turtle Valley was also reminiscent of Eden Robinson’s Monkey Beach.
I’ve not read Gail Anderson-Dargatz’ earlier novels A Cure for Death by Lightning or A Recipe for Bees, but I do know that Turtle Valley is a descendent of the former. Beth Weeks’ daughter Kat is the subject of this new book, which takes place against the backdrop of a mass evacuation due to forest fire in BC’s interior. Kat has come with her husband and son to help her parents clear out their home before the fire comes down into their valley, and in the course of sorting through her parents’ accumulations, she discovers things about her family’s past that she never knew. History is thus disturbed, but Kat’s present is also in need of sorting, as she struggles in her relationship to husband Ezra who has become a different person since his stroke. To complicate matters further, she finds herself having feelings once again for a man from her past.
The fire metaphors are hard to resist: rekindling, old flame. Fire is pervasive throughout the text, and provides perfect imagery– particularly at the book’s conclusion. Anderson-Dargatz’ writing is strong, absolutely beautiful in spots. Her treatment of everyday objects is particularly admirable, and underlined by the photos of said objects accompanying each chapter, showing the reverence with which simple things can be treated, and the meaning that is invested in them with time. To understand Kat and her family’s history through these things is a fascinating process, and yet in the end something about it troubled me. The same thing that troubles me with any narrative in which a character finds a box of stuff that tells her all the answers. Now Kat is certainly in need of clues– her mother is entering the initial stages of dementia, her father is terminally ill– but somehow it seems too easy for her to assemble stories of such gravity. Tidiness is perhaps my most frequent gripe with fiction, and I was disappointed to have to call it here, however slightly, for a book I enjoyed so much otherwise.
September 10, 2007
En vacance!
Oh what a joy it is, not only to arrive in a brilliant city for the very first time, but to have friends there (as friends in interesting places are a most precious commodity). And how happy we were for ours, as Rebecca showed us all the best spots, as well as her new apartment with its death-defying staircases. Stuart and I got in a rather broad exploration of the city, ate all the required foodstuffs (and loved them), walked off the calories, spent a rather lazy Sunday relatively speaking, I spoke French and was understood, the train was a sweet dream as we played Tetris and read our books, our hotel was fantastic, brunch was amazing, we have bagels. Also I have the day off tomorrow, to return to my novel after four months away, have lunch with a friend I’ve not seen in years, and to buy clothes so I can work this Fall without looking like a ragamuffin.
