From my desk to yours …
Well, it’s been an extra week since my last missive, but I feel like I’m allowed given that I took last week off my professional job as well.
I haven’t taken any time off since we moved, and I had what I knew would be a slow week at work, so I decided to hell with it, and took the whole thing off. It was lovely.
I had big plans, and did not get to very many of them, but instead spent the week recouping sleep and time with my partner and just enjoying my little house during the whole of the day. It did rain most of the week as well, which did not encourage going outside to do anything, so there’s that.
This tulip had been waiting to bloom for the whole week and as soon as it got sunny on Friday, it popped and I’m so pleased. It’s so fascinating to watch the garden awaken, considering I have no idea what has been planted in it by the gentleman whose house this used to be.
So far, it’s tulips and daffodils and narcissus, but soon I hope there will be other things that come up through the ground. One of the neighbours saw me out futzing with the garden and came to chat with me about the plants that William, the man who lived here, had planted and how he’d taken very good care of the gardens up until he could no longer manage it and that she was happy to see me out in it.
There’s something in that notion of living in a space that was someone else’s before it was mine that speaks to me, especially in the garden. I feel like I can reach back through the dirt and the bulbs and find the love and the dreams that were planted here decades ago by William and his family when they built the garden and sowed the seeds of their future in this little house.
My aunt and uncle came to visit last week as well, and brought me more things to put into the ground. Rosemary, my aunt, is a gardener and is a fountain of knowledge about how to grow everything and anything. She brought me two lungworts, along with some thyme and some oregano and five tomato seedlings.
The lungwort went into the front bed, because they’re a perennial and will come up every year with very little assistance from me. Hopefully, the pair of them will have survived the transplanting and bless us with their sweet pink and purple flowers next spring. The oregano and thyme went into a pot that is set next to my pot of rosemary that I brought from the old house. They’re all set in a group out the kitchen window, with the shepherd’s hook that is going to hold the hummingbird feeder once it gets warm enough for the hummers to come. I have to get to some bee balm to plant at the base of the hook, to draw them in.
My tomato babies are in their own pots in a line in a sunny spot on the lawn, so they’ll get their warmth and their light and the particular kind of benign neglect that tomato plants need to thrive. I also have seeds for cheery tomatoes, scarlet runner beans, some funky lettuce, and a bunch of other herbs and things. I’m looking forward to seeing everything come up and grow and eating out of my garden this summer.
We also picked up a pot of rhubarb from the Mennonite greenhouse, a couple of concessions over from town. I’ve got to dig it a home at the back of the yard, and then let it do it’s thing this year so I can pick it next year to make so many pies. I love rhubarb, which I always feel makes me a bit of an old soul, but there’s something about the tart punch of it swimming in warm, sweet custard that really makes me feel like the year has turned more fully towards the coming heat.
In addition to all this gardening, I spent the last week getting reacquainted with my tarot practice. Beltane has come and gone, ushering in the spring and a renewed desire to learn to read the cards and see what they can teach me about myself and the collective unconscious of the universe.
I’m no expert, and am also a firm believer that even if you know the cards back to front, there’s still more to learn, but it’s been really refreshing to sit each morning with my coffee and my deck and see what the day might hold, or what reminders the cards have for me.
Today’s card was The Star, which is as good a card for a Monday as one could have! A good sign for today and for the coming week, of the fertility of the ground I have watered and seeded with my own hopes and dreams.
A journey of the senses …
So, we had a new album from The National.
On the first listen, I really enjoyed it but as I listen to it more, and especially in comparison to some of their past records, I’m not sure that it’s at the same caliber as those previous efforts, which is really disappointing. They’re still a band that I will listen to anything that they put out, I just think I’d rather have more of High Violet or Trouble Will Find Me or Boxer, instead of The First Two Pages of Frankenstein. Oh well, we can’t love every album from every artist, can we.
On the visual end of things, I’m still working my way through Disco, and still desperately enjoying this most queer of Treks. I fully teared up during an episode I watched yesterday where Adira requests to be referred using they/them instead of she/her and Stamets immediately affirms and acknowledges the change and then it is applied going forward without any further discussion, or confusion.
I’m also desperately in love with the whole Georgiou side plot, any opportunity for me to watch Michelle Yeoh be badass is always a treat and getting to see Captain Killy again is a thrill. The way the mirror universe is still enough the same even as it is incredibly different from what is happening in the prime, is so interesting to me.
My friend and I were talking recently about the kinds of things I wanted to see in Trek and when I was listing some of my desires off, she was smiling knowingly and I can absolutely see why, now, as I move through the third season of Disco, on my way to season four. It looks like it’ll be over after five seasons, which is sad, but at the same time, I like a show that knows to quit when it’s ahead, and Disco paved the way for us to have the most Trek shows on TV at one time, I think ever? So, it’s done what it came to do and brought Trek back to the collective consciousness and also given me the Trek I’ve always wanted.
As mentioned above, I have been doing a lot of gardening this last couple of days, so that covers the more tactile senses. There’s something very fulfilling about having your hands in the dirt and the scent of tomato plant leaves lingering on my skin.
This week, I am going to make bread and pull some of last year’s rhubarb out of the freezer to make a pie. I’m also hopeful that we can get the BBQ organized so that we can start cooking outside, as I know that our kitchen will get nice and toasty as the season heats and the sun settles into the summer line.
Miscellany …
For a primer on the WGA strike, and what you can do, I highly rec the following: So You Want To Learn More About the WGA Strike which is Val’s column from the weekend, and has great background, as well as concrete actions you can take to support the writers who are the backbone of the shows and movies we love.
Last week, we lost a member of Canadian music royalty. Gordon Lightfoot was the soundtrack to so much of my childhood, and I think that is similar for a lot of folks both my age, older and younger.
I’m officially published on Amazon! Please pick up my short story about a couple who have some relationship baggage to unpack and find themselves stranded in a roadside motel during a Bruce County snowstorm with nothing to do but unpack it.
It was the Met Gala a couple of weekends ago, and while this is very much fiddling while Rome burns, I cannot help but enjoy coming together with some friends to critique fashion at an event none of us can ever afford to go to. Everyone agrees that Doja Cat won, though, right?
With that, I’ll leave you and hope this week brings you whatever you’re seeking.
Love all of this! Way to embrace spring!