THE GREEN STUFF

"When you're green, you're growing. When you're ripe, you rot..." -Ray Kroc

Quite a few moons ago,  there was a family living about six streets over.  My mother didn't know that I spent so much time  hanging out with the daughter.....Summer.... that was her name. We were in Grade 6. Their last name was "Forest". So her name was "Summer Forest". Summer didn't always come to school. Her family were free thinkers. She was cool.

We would walk by the poppy patches and gather them in bunches. They would die.But we'd take them back to her house and stuff them into glasses. Her house was cool.

Beads hung everywhere. Furniture was enveloped with fuzzy fake fur. An assortment of dogs and cats wandered in and out. Loads of records lay on chairs.

And there were plants everywhere. Little green ones.  In pots, on shelves, in the window. 

Lots of them.

Summer's mom dressed in raging bell bottoms, tie die frilly blouses with her long straight hair tied up in a scarf. Her hoop earrings were  huge and bangled and bongled and jangled as she walked.

She liked me to call her "Spring". Her husband, she called " Fall", was a gardener of some sort. "Names we chose, names we can live with," entoned  Summer's mom , as she swayed back and forth while she baked . "Names  that make us  ONE with the universe. It's important to find your universe."

She liked  to dance  to the Rolling Stones, Led Zepplin, and  someone called the Jimmy Hendrix Experience. All while  brandishing a watering can. Her green plants sure needed a lot of water. She was always watering them. Summer's dad would come sailing in. He was a sculptor . He would say to me " Can you dig it?!"

Summer would just roll her eyes.  We'd raid the freezer for root beer freezies, and home made Jello popsicles. Her parents would sing "Wild horses couldn't drag me away, wild wild horses...."

One day we came back to Summer's house and her parents weren't there. There was a note left for us to water the little green plants. They sure had a green thumb. 

One day we put on some Jimmy Hendrix and  bopped about  jumping up and down on the fuzzy furniture, till Summer got a nosebleed on the white fake fur.  Then we had to hurry and clean it up before her parents got home.

But they didn't seem to care. " It's in the bag, man", said Summer's dad. when they came in.

I wasn't sure what was in the bag. But Summer's mom  said  they wouldn't be low on bread now.  They must be making a lot of sandwiches, I thought.

They sure were happy. He'd landed another gardening job, apparently. 

"Love was such an easy game to play. Now I need a place to hide away, or I believe in yesterday", Summer's mom and dad sang, and sang. They weren't very good  at it.

And off I toddled home. Last time  I would see Summer, or Spring or Fall....

  In August they had gone. Plants, dogs, cats, fuzzy furniture.  Not sure where they went.

  I bet they had a righteous  time deciding which part of the universe to live in...........

     "Sock it to me..." Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels 1967

Photographs 2021

 

LOVELY THINGS

"A garden to walk in and immensity to dream in....what more could you ask?" -Victor Hugo

Cat Plants abound. Rona and Sweet Simon from the hill. Taking turns. I have not planted in that flowerpot  for years and years.......Especially since the cat plants thrive in it.

Our resident raccoon.

Columbine. Dark and lovely.

"A garden isn't meant to be useful. It's for joy." 

                                            - Rumer Godden

And then there's Cordelia, from the hill, who's been coming here for 10 years......peeks out from the trees. Beautiful ,faithful visitor.

"Every wild yard is wild in its own way." -Richard  Powers

Abraham Lincoln Rose.  The blooms grow as big as your hand.

Fuchsia. Ready to blossom.

The Peace rose. Dormant for a year, but back in full bloom this year.

"The gardens were brilliant with summer magic..."

                                -Lisa Kleypas

And who hasn't repurposed a  toilet for the greenhouse.....along with tomatoes.

Rain. Rain. Rain....

If not being a cat plant, Rona, from next door,  plops himself in the flowers....

"Faeries are known to be tenders of gardens....."

                              -Elizabeth Eiler

The roses just starting. Some did not bloom last year. But they're back......

Pots and pots and pots and pots of flowers.

Water basins  for the faeries............

Strawberries for the deer. Clematis for the bees to sleep in.....

"Both of them loved the earth, and the things that grew in it..." -Lailah Gifty Akita

And Spencer, the Original Cat Plant, who has been coming here about nine years. Still sleeps in the flower pot that is never planted...........

 

GROWING CORN

          "Plants want to grow......" -Anne Wareham

1988 CFB Petawawa, Ontario

There were a lot of things to consider with a garden. Dirt. Plants. Veggies. Light. Water. My mother thought about  all of those when she considered Corn . 

 She had picked up a lot of pamphlets  about growing corn.She was so enthusiastic.........

And it  was the reason, in the end,  she gave up corn and moved onto Sweet Peas.......but that comes later.

She thought Corn would be  great to try.

But where to plant it. We had a lot of lawn. 

A lot of trees. But that did not deter  her. It was going to be Corn no matter what.

So she wandered around the property looking for a good place that screamed "Corn".....

She found a nice wide spot. Just outside the dining room window. We could watch  corn rising from the dirt , as it grew.

The grass was tough ,so she dug holes in the grass for the little corn things she got from the greenhouse. It took her ages to dig the little burrows. She planted a dozen of the seedlings.

The baby corn  were new and true and ready for action.

My mother stuffed them in their little homes in the grass.  She took dirt from the dirt pile out back and plopped a goodly amount on each  baby corn. They were watered and  we waited.

They did all right for a short while. Then they started  getting this frowsy odour.  The cat had started using the corn seedlings as its litter box. My mother sprinkled cayenne  on the dirt. That would stop the cat, she thought.

The corn  continued to grow. The cat liked to roll in the baby corn stalks and claw at them. My mother erected wire netting. 

Then the corn stalks started disappearing, one by one. 

The cat was clawing them down and chewing on them. The cayenne wasn't working. There were three stalks left. Bent and listless. The cat loved them.

My mother made a small scarecrow out of one of my old baby dolls. Attached a floating scarf around her neck that flipped in the wind. She tied it to  a twig and stuck it just outside the wire netting.

The cat thought that was great. He ripped off the doll head and the scarf with it.  Ran around like a crazy thing with his new toy.

There was only ONE corn stalk left by now. It was kinda bent. Bedraggled. The cat chewed on it when it wasn't playing with the doll's head. No corn then or ever.  And that's  when my mother started planting Sweet Peas. Fool proof. 

Photographs 2021