FINDING HOPE HAIKU IN THE TIME OF COVID

Reading with children Facetime is the next best thing When snuggling is out. Walking with Kathy To be outside where life is So spectacular. People delighted By an unexpected call I happened to make. Call from a cousin Who lives in Ontario Remembering me. Grateful for wellness And grocery delivery A home that I love. Making up stories Wednesdays are the send-out days Getting letters back. Balcony pansies Pandemic insensitive Blooming like crazy Media searching For good news to give us hope And give them hope too. Choosing not to clean Because I know there will be Time for it later. Choosing to clean now Because I know I will be Glad I did later. Thinking of places I’m glad not to be in now And those I still love. Sweet whiff of supper Slow cooking tantalizing While I watch Frasier Counting on science Admiring the leadership Of our officials Dreaming a future When this time will be the past That made us all wiser.

LET THERE BE PANSIES!

A couple of days ago I turned the channel to Detroit Public TV. I planned to watch the late night news for five or ten minutes. It’s something I’ve started doing recently—watching a bit of American television each day to broaden my perspective on how things are with other people. Imagine the humour of it! Usually I am complaining that too much of our local news is American, with a splash of Canadian thrown in there. But now we don’t hear so much about the States. There’s little room for it by the time they finish giving us the latest COVID 19 numbers, predicting future financial disaster and presenting the arguments for and against the wearing of masks in public. But I digress. Near the top of the Detroit news was the following revelation “Local greenhouses say they will be dumping their pansies now that the governor has declared them to be a non-essential service.” What was this? Dumping pansies? My heart stopped beating for a moment. There it was! My reckoning with the truth had arrived. In the comfort of abundance, the idea of scarcity holds the power to unhinge us. Fear is the enemy of hope. Sure I was afraid, but I figured I’d done pretty well over the past month at absorbing our new reality in a hopeful manner. When the first toilet paper buying panic began, I checked my cupboard, found enough there, and promised myself that I’d find a reasonable facsimile of the old Eaton’s catalogue somewhere if I couldn’t get anymore by the time it was needed. When my friend bought the only can of corn on a grocery store shelf, I assured myself that if no more corn appeared in desperate times there would surely be canned peas to buy. I wouldn’t particularly want them, but still they would be there. Nobody in their right mind buys canned peas. When someone dear to me bemoaned the shortage of frozen broccoli I smirked generously and offered to freeze for her some fresh broccoli from my well-stocked refrigerator. But now this. The governor of Michigan was declaring pansies to be non-essential. How could it be? Spring is coming late to Alberta this year, later than to Detroit. It’s already April 12 and we’ve hardly had a day when snow didn’t fall. The average daily temperature hovers about twelve Celsius degrees below normal. Migratory birds check the weather forecast and book an extra week or two in the trees of warmer locations. It’s been too cold to put plants outside. When we finally break through, be it late this week or late in the next, there will be pansies to buy. Or will there? “Pansies,” I shouted at the TV while reaching for the remote control to switch to the Movie Channel. “You can’t dump healthy pansies! If you don’t need them, send them to me. I need them.” That night I dreamed of the pansies on my balcony, cheerily blooming in fragrant profusion. But when I awoke, the air was moist with the hint of snow. First thing in the morning I called the local home improvement store. “Garden centre,” I said to the electronic voice that wanted to know what department I needed. To my surprise, a living, breathing human picked up the phone, a young woman by the sound of her. “Is your garden centre open?” I asked breathlessly. “No,” she said with the hint of a smirk. “There’s too much ice and snow out there right now.” This might have placated me, but it didn’t. I was looking to the future. “Do you think it will open?” I squeaked. Now she was in full-on deal-with-the-crazies-out-there mode. “I am pretty sure the snow will eventually melt,” she said soothingly. It is snowing a little today. So far I haven’t called any garden centres in Detroit. Nor have I sought any more news from that suffering city. Deep in my heart, I continue to hope for pansies.

GROCERIES

A pair of friendly strangers showed up at my door with a grocery order this morning. My groceries were already unpacked by 8:00 AM. Everything I had ordered was there. They brought an Easter lily, a beautiful hydrangea, Easter eggs, a huge pineapple, tiny mandarins, and grapes almost as big as the oranges. Did I forget to mention the rutabaga, onions, milk, cheese, yoghurt and a few other ordinary things? What a way to start the day! All I had to do was click some links on the computer and provide my credit card information. Nobody was more delighted than I when grocery stores started offering on-line shopping with delivery. It all happened just at the time when David was finding it increasingly difficult to buy food for us. We could have asked family and friends to help, but we didn’t have to. For the first time in my life I was able to take on the responsibility of ensuring that our cupboards would contain the things we wanted. It was a welcome consolation against the sadness of witnessing the relentless disabling progression of David’s illness. It may seem to us that ordering groceries for delivery is a recent innovation. But I can tell you that my mother was doing it years ago. We lived on a farm 9 miles from the village of Lougheed. Sometimes she would drive into town to shop. Other times she would notice that Dad was on his way to pick up a belt for the swather or a shovel for the cultivator. “Stop in at the grocery store,” she would command. “Phone it in,” he would reply. Mom was in no hurry. She’d pick a few peas, maybe roll out a piecrust. All the while she’d be making a mental list of the things she needed. By and by Mom would check the phone sheet (you didn’t need a whole book to list the numbers on the Lougheed exchange). She would dial the number of the store. “Hello,” she’d say. “Who’s this?” I never knew why it mattered, but it did. “Donald will be coming in to pick up an order,” she’d say. “Oh, he’s already been in? Is he still there? Well, he’ll be back soon. Do you have a pen there?” “Okay now. I need beans. Are there any on sale? Well why is the bigger can cheaper than two small cans. I don’t really need a big can. But oh well. And some lettuce. Your lettuce isn’t going brown, is it? I don’t want the ones with the brown leaves. Get me the freshest one you have. And what have you got for fruit? How ripe are those bananas?” Then a pause. “Oh really? You don’t say! Why I just saw her at the ACW tea last week. Was it the cancer? She didn’t look too well.” “Oh that’s good. Patricia was always her favourite so it’s good that she could make it home in time. Do you have any tomatoes? You want me to take Hot cross buns? You’ve still got those? Are you sure they’re still good?” Another pause. “Really? I thought there was a lot of money there. Where does it all go?” “Oh yes, I forgot that I put on Easter dinner and bought all the supplies for the ACW tea. No wonder you are out of money for my groceries. Tell Donald when he comes back that you need him to put more money in the account.” “Eh? What’s that? You told him? He said he didn’t have a cheque. Could you just give him the groceries anyway and send the bill. I’ll top up the account the next time I’m in town.” (This, in fact, was true. Mom and Dad always paid their bills.) Still, it was important that this oversight not be blamed on her. “I don’t know why he carries a couple of cheques in his wallet instead of taking a cheque book,” she would say in the voice of exasperation. I have friends who had never ordered groceries for delivery until we started staying home to keep ourselves safe from COVID 19. They marvel at how easily I make an order. “Oh,” I tell them modestly, “I’ve had a lot of experience with this."

FLOWERS WILL BLOOM IN SEPTEMBER

Today is the first full day of spring. Is anybody in the whole world more pleased than I to see it? I am hoping to grow flowers on my balcony. I am hoping grocery stores will bring in bedding plants that can be purchased along with groceries. If they can’t I’ll forgive them. They might have more important things to stock. I would start seeds if I had them. Unfortunately I don’t have any seeds, but I do have acidanthra bulbs. They are waiting for me in a pot on the shelf in the closet of the guest bedroom. I put them there last October. “See you in the spring,” I said to them. “I’ll be planting you as soon as the soil thaws in my balcony pots.” Acidanthra plants are a bit like gladioli. They sprout uninteresting green shoots that bore you for most of the summer. Then, on some August day, you’ll notice a thickening, later a stock, later still the final pay-off. I bought and planted a bag of acidanthra bulbs last spring. I hadn’t had any for a few years. They were just as I remembered—boring! Then, in September they opened their flowers. They were just as I remembered--tall, white, delicate and marvellously fragrant. Lured by intoxicating temptation, I made several balcony visits every day just to smell them. And that is what I want to do this September—wander out on the balcony to smell the flowers. In the meantime, I’ll wait with those boring plants. I’ll be waiting for a virus to run its course, for the coffee shops to open again, for exercise classes to start, for social gatherings on my calendar. I’ll be waiting to see so many people I won’t be seeing on a regular basis. Flowers will bloom in September!

A CONVERSATION WITH ROSIE

Me: (to the rose bush in my bedroom) Okay, Rosie! This is the day you go outside! Rosie: Maybe not Wendy. If you pick me up and haul me through that door, dozens of petals will fall. And you know, I can never, never get those petals back. Me: But Rose, you’ve been in my bedroom for two full weeks now. You’re taller than my shoulder. Your thorns are like swords. Your leaves are making a mess on the floor. There’s a wet spot lurking under your pot on the linoleum. It’s time for you to go out. Rosie: But Wendy! I am covered in opulent blossoms. Several of my buds are still waiting to unfold. I say we keep me right here. We can spend the nights together. I can watch over you while you sleep. Me: Be reasonable Rosie. The huge white geranium went back out a week ago. So did the Martha Washington fully in bloom. The chrysanthemum returned to the patio without so much as a whimper of complaint. The pansies never even came in. I want you to go back out. Rosie: What if it snows again? It snowed on September 12 and 13 and 20 and 21 and 22. You didn’t think I should be out in the snow then. What’s different about now? Me: Well Rosie, it isn’t snowing now, and even though they’re predicting highs of three degrees in the next few days, we’re almost at the end of September. Rosie: Precisely my point. It’s almost the end of September. Winter is coming. You told everybody that bringing in the plants was your personal strategy for pushing back against an early winter. Me: So maybe I’m giving up on that strategy. Sometimes winter in Edmonton starts around Thanksgiving. There are things we cannot change, rosie; things we must accept. Rosie: Accept, you say? You with the thermostatically controlled heating system and the electric blanket Mark and Tracey gave you last Christmas. Go ahead! Put me out there where you won’t see me. It’s fall, you know, and you don’t spend much time out there, especially now that David is staying in bed to heal a pressure wound. You know that David was going out there every day in the summer, but now he’s not. Who will go out there and admire me? Me: Surely, Rosie, you aren’t still craving attention. Dozens of Laurier House staff have sung your praises. Every guest we’ve had in the past two weeks has come into my bedroom to celebrate your beauty. Even our five bouncing grandchildren made a special effort to keep you looking lovely. How much attention does one rose bush need? Rosie: Okay Wendy. Blame the victim. It’s my vanity that’s the problem is it? Put me out in the cold. Watch my petals drop. Offer me nothing but neglect and threatened frost. And after all I’ve done for you! You know what I think? Me: No. You’d better tell me. Rosie: I think you are trying to let go of a few things and using me as the scapegoat, the forerunner of lettings-go. I think you’re using me to prove that you can do it. Me: (sighing the big sigh) this is what happens when a rose bush spends too much time with a psychologist.

PATIO PARADISE (Nursing Home Life part 4)

A few years ago our daughter Ruth looked out over the floral profusion on our veranda and front yard and declared: “You people have a flower problem!” We laughed. She meant: “You have a ridiculous number of flowers out there.” I am happy to report that there is good news on this front. We still have the flower problem, only it’s smaller now. A flower problem, so it is said, occupies the space you give to it. On a magnificent June morning I step out on our Laurier House patio. The scent of flowers is positively intoxicating. Deep breaths now, deep breaths. What am I smelling this morning? Is it one of the two varieties of stocks, the alyssum, the bright yellow pansies kissed by the sun? It is probably not the heliotrope, whose fragrant best will emerge some time nearer to mid-day, and it’s not the roses which won’t be open for another day or two. It wouldn’t be the fuchsia or the begonia. They specialize in beauty rather than fragrance. Whichever it is, it smells fantastic! Small patios, I say to myself, have some advantages over large ones. The scents collect and support each other. Then they rush at you in joyous welcome when you step over the doorsill. It’s our second June at Laurier House, our first June with a patio. The two-bedroom suite we occupied last June did not have a patio. So we moved at the end of winter when this one became available. For people who have long been known for a flower problem, this is a definite improvement. Our living room opens to a cozy patch of concrete where I now pet my pansies and stroke my stocks. Tucked in the elbow between the front of the living room and the side of my protruding bedroom, our little patio peeks out through the spaces between the evergreens that shelter it from the bustle of the walk way and parking lot beyond. It’s cool enough to embrace a buffet breakfast on hot summer mornings; warm enough at mid-day to enjoy audio books on cooler days; shaded against the heat of the late afternoon. You can enjoy a glass of wine with friends there before supper. How, I wonder, did I ever get through last summer without this tiny refuge? Last summer this suite belonged to a married couple named Paul and May. I would have been fiercely jealous of them if I had known how a moment out there could transport me into the state of paradise. Unbeknownst to us, they were avid gardeners. Not limited to flowers, they had bonsai trees out there, and tomatoes Paul passed away last winter and his wife May moved out. Without Paul to care for, she no longer needed Laurier House. They left us not only a patio, but a supply of pots and fertilizer that gradually revealed themselves as the spring sun melted the snowbanks. They also left us a social bonus that we had not anticipated. To our surprise, the staff seem as excited about our patio as we are. If we happen to be out there when they come in on an errand, they join us and stop for a chat outside. If they don’t have a job to do, they might stop by anyway. First they admire our flowers. “Just look at that basket of yellow! Oh, what fabulous roses! Let me look at the tag so I can get one with those beautiful colours.” Then they reminisce about Paul and May. “Paul and May had this patio full of garden,” they say. “They had so many tomatoes.” Our hearts are warmed by the attachment they obviously feel. It’s like a promise that we too will be fondly recalled. If they come upon us having breakfast out there, or listening to an audio book, they smile with delight and linger a few moments to celebrate the day. Happiness in this place is a reciprocal process where all parties make contributions to the well-being of the others. I step out onto the patio a dozen times a day, sometimes for an hour with David, most of the time by myself for a moment of pleasure. Most of the days have been warm enough to allow David to spend some time out there too. “I wouldn’t be using this patio if you weren’t here,” he says to me, and he is right about that. He would not be able to move his wheelchair over the ramp and through the door. But we are a team, as we have been since the spring of 1972. Over the years our team member responsibilities have shifted depending on the circumstances. Of all the jobs I currently do, the act of guiding David over the ramps to have breakfast among the flowers is my definite favourite.

ACT OF DEFIANCE

A blossom burst out on the rose bush this morning Lush, and perfect and smelling like a rose A botanical act of defiance Against the shortening of the days That threatens an end to summer.

IN SEARCH OF GRATITUDE

“The most transformative and resilient leaders that I’ve worked with over the course of my career have three things in common: First, they recognize the central role that relationships and story play in culture and strategy, and they stay curious about their own emotions, thoughts, and behaviors. Second, they understand and stay curious about how emotions, thoughts, and behaviors are connected in the people they lead, and how those factors affect relationships and perception. And, third, they have the ability and willingness to lean in to discomfort and vulnerability.” Brené Brown, Rising Strong After spending more than a year on the market, our house sold. Our realtor seemed happy, if a little apologetic. Beside him I sat, scribbling initials here and there, scratching my full name on the line as he pointed. Then I waited for the surge of gratitude that would, if my readings of www.gratefulness.org were accurate, enhance my physical/mental health, contribute to financial stability, improve my personal relationships and contribute to the well-being of work/community environments. I waited for the unbridled shout of joy, the quiet contentment of satisfaction, the slight tug of a smile against my cheeks. Then I waited some more. Gratitude, it seemed, had gone missing. To my surprise, I didn’t call anyone to announce the good news about the sale, didn’t tell my friends, thought it better not to disappoint them. They had been summoning my gratitude—my relief at a minimum--ever since the negotiations began. “You must be so relieved,” they said. “You must be really happy to have the possibility of getting it done with.” If I can’t be grateful, then I must be relieved, I thought. I must be it. I have to be relieved for my friends, for my kids, for all the people who want to hear that I am relieved. They are counting on me to be relieved. But I was not relieved. I was anything but relieved. Instead of being relieved, I was angry—angry that it had taken more than a year to sell, angry that it had sold for so much less than we had ever imagined, angry that the buyer was demanding that we do routine maintenance before handing it over, angry that I hadn’t insisted on lowering the price long ago, angry that there had been a break-in during the negotiations, angry at myself for feeling sad every time I visited the house I loved, so sad that I only went there when forced to do so. So it wasn’t enough just to be angry. I had to be sad as well. I was sad to be losing the house that had made us so happy, sad that David’s illness had made the sale of the house the only reasonable option. I was sad to lose the house with the incredible veranda and the yard full of birds, the house where you could lie awake at dawn and count the birds you could hear through the open windows—five birds, ten birds maybe. I was sad to lose the rhubarb I hadn’t wanted to plant, the onions I couldn’t get rid of, the raspberry bushes that tore the skin off my arms, the lupines, the peonies, the lilac bush, the Solomon’s Seal started from a cutting stolen by friends from the front of Athabasca Hall for my fortieth birthday, the goat’s beard Mark once gave me for Mother’s Day. Adding it all up, I had to admit that I was far too sad to be grateful. On top of all this, I was resentful, resentful that it wasn’t enough just to be angry and sad. I had to be worried on top of it all, worried that the accumulation of all that had happened to me had somehow transformed me irreversibly into a sad and angry person who couldn’t be grateful for blessings, who couldn’t tell stories that ended happily without including long middle descriptions of the suffering. I worried that I might have lost the capacity to be satisfied with my life. Now I know that the best way to enhance gratitude is to list things for which you are grateful. I also know, from trying this myself, and from hearing hundreds of stories from clients who tried it, that listing things for which you are grateful is a practice that works best when you are already feeling grateful. When you are mostly sad and angry, a list of gratitudes quickly transforms itself into a list of yes-buts. Yes, I am grateful that we live in such a beautiful apartment, but I am angry that we had to move out of the house. Yes I am grateful that I was able to go to the house and collect two fragrant bouquets of peonies for the apartment, but I am sad that I will probably never grow my own peonies again. Yes I am grateful to have the best husband anybody ever had, loving children, delightful grandchildren, devoted friends, financial security, sunny days, the on-line grocery shopping service, and the electric wheelchair that has made it possible for David and me to cruise the streets of our new neighbourhood, but I’m angry and sad about the house. Take it from me. Satisfaction with your life is a hard thing to come by once you get into the intoxicating rhythm of making a grateful yes-but list One of my great disappointments in the positive psychology trend with all its potential for self-help is that it makes you believe it is possible to make yourself feel what you want to feel instead of what you feel but don‘t want to feel. If you can make yourself feel things, I haven’t yet learned how to do it. The best I can offer is that you can lead your unwanted feelings to the door, but you can’t shoo them out. They’ll leave when they are good and ready to do so. If you are lucky, the process of herding them toward the door will leave some empty space to fill with other feelings. Maybe you can do a little bargaining, practice the art of compromise. It took a while to come to it, but I’ve offered Sadness a deal. I’ll stop pressuring her to leave if she’ll stop pushing back. I’ve hinted that she might even be allowed to stay permanently. As for Anger, well, she’s already on her way out. I suspect she got a little jealous when I buddied up with Sadness and decided to search for an easier target. And as for life satisfaction, a visit to www.viacharacter.org has reminded me that satisfaction is strongly associated with five character strengths—hope, zest, gratitude, love and curiosity. With Anger consuming a little less of my time, I found a moment to take an inventory. Firmly in place I have love and curiosity. Hope, as you might expect, refuses to be left out entirely. Zest is making occasional appearances, and gratitude has promised to keep working against the yes-buts. As the peonies prepare to drop their petals, maybe tomorrow, but certainly the day after, I notice that I’ve even made a few calls to announce that the house has sold, and though I had to pinch myself to believe it, I am quite sure I heard myself say, “It’s a bit of a relief to have it sold.” Could it be that, one day soon, “It’s a bit of a relief” might actually be replaced by “I’m grateful”?

THE FLOWER PROBLEM

Picture a balcony bearing ten pots of flowers. Find impatiens, geranium, Martha Washington, evening scented stocks, pansies, heliotrope, roses, begonia, petunias, alyssum, ornamental grass and a few adornments that didn’t come with names. Picture all of this in mid May in a province known for occasional snow in June, and there you see it—evidence of a FLOWER PROBLEM. Warning: don’t bother organizing an intervention to get my attention. Don’t assemble a delegation of caring family supported by flower problem treatment professionals! I know about the problem. I know that only I can beat it. Some day I’ll beat it. I swear I will! It was daughter Ruth who first named the illness. She had failed to notice the introduction of the lily patch and a few hanging pots to the already flowered house on 67th Street. She had celebrated the planters and peonies at the house on 89th Street. But when the number of front yard pots exceeded twenty, she felt she had to say something. “You, Mother,” she announced, “have a flower problem.” How could I deny it? Time I used to spend with the kids on the soccer field was now spent trimming the coleus. Television watching time was pre-empted smelling the roses. But how could I quit, or even cut back? What would our friends say? How could I explain it to any of the neighbours who passed our house on walks just to see the profusion Then, out of the blue, an opportunity presented itself. We were moving to an apartment. It would be difficult to have a flower problem on an apartment balcony. Where would I store the potting soil? How would I deal with the mess of water and fallen leaves? Who would haul away the debris? We moved in late August. “No flowers,” I said to my surprised family. “The flowers stay with the house.” Just to show how serious I was, I only took a few empty pots, and a few plant stands, and one pail of potting soil. And I only bought one chrysanthemum when the need arose to warm the autumn chill. Perhaps if I had been a little more vigilant at the first signs of spring, things might have turned out differently. But it seemed right to thank Mark for bringing the first pansy pot in early April, an affirmation that winter was truly gone. And would it not have been impolite not to rejoice when Grace brought my favourite yellow pansies and removed the remains of last year’s chrysanthemum? And how could I have rejected the rose bush in full bloom that Mark presented as a gift for early Mother’s Day, or the free pot of geranium and petunias that came free from Superstore with a grocery order over $250.00? Would it have been right not to support our church by purchasing $100.00 worth of summer joy from the annual plant sale? After all, the house did not sell as we had planned. And there sat the remaining plants stands, lonely on the veranda. Had they, after so many years of faithful service, not earned a position of honour outside our new livingroom window? “I like to look out the window at all those flowers,” said David. Next door to us stands a high rise with suites that look directly on to our balcony. “These people probably think I have a flower problem,” I said to David, as I stowed the last of the potting soil. “Don’t worry,” said he. “The neighbours have always loved our flowers.. If I were to be truly honest and not simply hopeful, I suppose I would have to admit that I may never be cured. The root of the flower problem, it is now obvious, lies in the act of enablement. Yes, there is an enabler living under my very own roof? How can you expect to cure yourself of a problem like that with an enabler in the family?

APRIL WHINE

Kitty: When the sun shines I just want to ambush my people, rush the door, make it out into the yard, sneak through the hole in the fence, race down the alley, catch mice, chase birds and scare all the neighbourhood cats. Too bad they won’t let me. Pirate: Gosh Kitty. All I want is to get my leash on and go for a walk. Kitty: Then why don’t you make them take you? Pirate: Well, David doesn’t have time. He’s too busy looking after Wendy, bringing her cups of coffee, getting her laptop, plugging in her iPhone, getting the ice for her foot, wondering if she should see a doctor and asking if there’s anything else he cando. Kitty: It’s spring! Why would anybody want ice? Pirate: I don’t exactly know. I imagine it has something to do with the 7-foot-deep pothole she stepped into on her way home from work. Kitty: 7-foot-deep pothole! Do you expect me to believe that? Pirate: Well I don’t know if anybody measured it. But I heard on the news that there are more than 500,000 potholes in Edmonton. Do you think anybody counted them? Kitty: Okay, okay. So she stepped into a pothole. Pirate: Yes, and she fell down and skinned her hands, and got a scab on her knee that would strike pride into the heart of any 8-year-old. Kitty: I suppose she’s moaning about the pain. Pirate: No, not really. She’s moaning about not being able to plant her pansies, or check out the primroses, or walk in the river valley on the first nice weekend we had. Kitty: Seven-foot pothole? Ice in April? Sounds like disordered thinking to me. the symptoms point to a serious case of Spring Fever. Pirate: Who knew it could spread so easily from animals to humans?

LUSH GARDEN

LEAVING A LUSH GARDEN FOR THOSE WHO FOLLOW There’s a story in YESTERDAY’S newspaper that caught my attention. Heather Miller writes about her mother-in-law Nellie, a railroad worker’s wife who was frequently FORCED TO CHANGE RESIDENCE without notice by her husband’s transfers to other towns. Come spring, she would plant a lush garden and then just when, or sometimes even before it began to produce the flowers and vegetables she had cultivated, she would have to leave it behind for a home where the previous worker’s wife had planted no garden. No garden is what anyone would expect to find. Why would anyone plant a garden knowing that it probably would only be used by someone else? One year, Nellie added a new element. Just before she moved, she left a note inviting the next person to use her garden. Redundant you say? Well, she was surprised, a few moves later, to find a note and a garden waiting for her. She had started a trend that continued for years, people investing their time in gardens that somebody else might use. Nellie was a generous woman, willing to garden for others if she couldn’t have the garden for herself. But why did her note start a gardening trend when her generous gardening had not? Could it be that the note helped the garden recipient see the gardening activity as an act of hope rather than an act of despair, an acvt of intentional contribution rather than an act of probable loss?

TOP 10 GARDEN SMELLS

In a flaring celebration for all the world’s noses, and, and a bow of apology to those whose summers have been smellimited by rogue colds, I present to you OLFACTION WITH SATISFACTION: THE TOP TEN snifty SMELLS FROM our 2012 GARDEN 10 Freshly mowed grass. Who can catch the whiff without being transported to the days when your mom said, “How did you get those grass stains?” 9 Green onion. We step on it as we reach to pull the sheets from the clothesline. There’s a combination for you—tangy green onion and the laundry after the breeze. 8 Tulips. It’s never quite warm enough to stay outside in the early days of spring, so it may be that the fragrance gives us the first inkling that a blossom has decided to open. 7 Peonies. The white ones, lovely! The pink ones, fabulous! The red ones—the faint reminder of toilet water. Without their pink and white cousins, they’d never make it to this list. 6 Geranium. Some people say the pungent geranium reminds them of the school days when their teacher would pinch the leaves that grew lanky in the classroom. Geranium reminds me of Mom’s kitchen window, right behind the chair where I sat to eat fried chicken, or roast beef, or rice pudding laced with cinnamon. 5 Dill. Our dill leans over the sidewalk. It beckons when you bump it as you pass. It rewards you when you pick a sprig. The kitchen fills with delight when you boil it with the new potatoes, or the beets, or the beans. 4 Tomato vine. The tomato vine treats you to a promise every time you water it. 3 Rose. This year the yellow ones smell best. Today there are 17 on a single bush. Oh why does it have to be so near the end of August? 2Calendula. Rub the leaves and your nose could almost convince you to believe you were touching a lemon. 1.6 Marigold. They say bugs hate that smell, but I don’t. 1.5 Stocks. 1.4 Heliotrope. 1.3 Peas in the shell. 1.2 Carrots. Rub them before you sniff. 1.1 PANSIES. And the #1 smell in our garden for 2012 just came out today. 1 ACIDANTHRA!!!!!!! Acidanthra flowers call me out to play. “Don’t worry,” they say. “It only feels like fall. Feeling like fall is not the same as actually being fall. There are still a few summer days left.”

GARDEN EVOLUTION

This morning I am working on the gardening 2012 file. Changes will need to be made next year and so we need a record of things we know now but will have forgotten by 2013. Yes, the garden was lovely, but changes will need to be made. Sigh! Face it, Ihave a love/hate relationship with change. This garden is the tenth we’ve grown since moving here. You’d think we’d have it figured out by now. You’d think we’d have found the ultimate combination of beauty and fragrance, the perfect balance among herbs and flowers, a place for tomatoes where the slugs can’t get them. You’d think we’d get it right and keep it there. So why don’t we? Things happen. The elm that was huge when we arrived, grew bigger and a sunny spot got shady. Nature takes a stand. The long planting troughs rotted and had to be replaced. Only short planters were available. . Things grow differently in short planters. C.S. Lewis said: “It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.” There is, it seems, no point in hoping to settle on a garden. Gardens, like all living things, unfailingly resist all nudgings toward settledness. I suppose, if I am to be perfectly honest, the garden could be more stable then it is. I go to a greenhouse, thinking I’ll stick with trusted plants and then I am assailed by a temptation to try something new. And it doesn’t stop there. So many wonders grow in other people’s gardens. Each year we see a new flower somewhere, and somehow we find room for it. That is how we got the pots of ageratum. The ageratum plants should have been blue and fluffy. They should have been healthy. There was so much potential for them when they arrived. Why, we lament, did they die so young, leaving sorrowfully empty pots where beauty ought to have been? Gardens evolve. You can spend a whole winter planning them, and take infinite pains to carry out your intentions, but you never know how they will evolve, only how they did. That’s what makes them so frustrating, and so fascinating. Like I said, we’ll be changing a few things in 2013. Some of the changes will be improvements. At this point there is no way of telling which ones those will be. The gardening file is an attempt to learn from the past. This year, among other things, I write: don’t buy agaretum!

RIVERDALE SUNFLOWERS

The sunflower blooms beside the sweet peas,
Bushy abundant, dozens of blossoms.
Descended from a lineage of Riverdale sunflowers
How the line started, nobody remembers.

Its cousins have rooted in cracks along driveways,
In patches of clay where no hand will remove them
One tiny flower adorning each stem
Producing enough tiny seeds to keep going.

But once in a blue moon a seed will drift onto
A spot where the rain can begin to ignite it.
And then if the humans too late with their weeding
Continue the nurture as if they had planted it,
Then one in a million old Riverdale sunflowers
Will grow as a tree sprouting multiple granches
Resplendid with blossoms, the radiance of joy!
The parent of ten million new possibilities,
The infinite future of Riverdale sunflowers.

Lucky are we at those magical hours
To witness the good that can come from nurturing
Ideals and talents and people and sometimes
The visiting seed of a Riverdale sunflower.

GARDENER'S HOPE

"Gardening is a way of showing that you believe in tomorrow." (Source unknown)

One: Remember those petunias that I watered because they looked like they might be dying?
Other: Yes.
One: Well, it looks like they are waterlogged. They look deader than they did yesterday and weigh three times as much. Let’s take them down.
Other: And what would we replace them with?
One: The healthy geraniums from the side.
Other: Okay.
One: What are you doing with those petunias?
Other: Putting them where the geraniums were. They’re not quite dead.
One: They will be dead tomorrow.
Other: You don’t give up hope that easily, do you?

And that is how gardening progressed from spiritual pursuit to resurrection theology.

A CONVERSATION ABOUT HAPPINESS

Me: How happy are you, on a scale of 1 to 10?
Myself: How happy am I about what?
Me: About everything. How happy are you in general?
Myself: Right at this minute?
Me: Sure. Right at this minute. How happy are you?
Myself, Well, so-so, I guess. Maybe 5. I certainly can’t say I’m delighted to be answering these boring questions. We are on holidays, you know, or perhaps you’ve forgotten. Seems as if you have us thinking about some pretty serious stuff.
Me: Serious stuff? We’ve been thinking about happiness. How serious can that be?
Myself: Pretty serious when we’re supposed to rate our happiness on a scale of 1 to 10. Looks like psychological research to me, the kind we’d be thinking about at work.
Me: exactly. It is what we’d be thinking about at work, if we were in the mood and if we had spare time. But right now we’re on holidays, and we’re having fun, and we’d got time to think. We’ve got time to be thinking and reading about happiness, which is why I’m wondering how happy you are.
Myself: Well, I’m very happy to be on holidays. I’ve been having a great time seeing friends, working in the garden, spending time with family, having little adventures, finding places in the city that I hadn’t known about before.
Me: So if you are very happy, then that must count for more than 5 out of 10. I’ll raise it to 8, maybe 9. How happy do you think you’d be if we were at work?
Myself: I don’t know. It depends which day, maybe even which hour. It’s just like holidays. One minute you are 5 and the next you are 9. It goes up and down.
Me: the pleasure part goes up and down.
Myself: The pleasure part? What other part is there to happiness?
Me: According to Martin Seligman, 2 other parts, meaning and engagement. In fact, it appears that meaning and engagement may be even more important than pleasure when it comes to being happy.
Myself: Meaning and engagement? What are they?
Me: Meaning is whether you think your life is important, whether it seems to matter. Engagement is about the things you do. Do they seem important?
Myself: Well I guess we must be pretty happy then.
Me: How do you mean?
Myself: Well, here we are, at home on vacation, reading research articles and thinking about things that pertain to work. And in a minute, we’re going to stop this conversation and go to a flower show. Then we are having company over for dinner. Nobody’s making us think about happiness, or go to a flower show. We’re doing these things because we like to. They give us pleasure. And when we go back to work, we’ll tell everyone how much fun we had on holidays. And it won’t matter that we are wasting work time thinking about holidays, because we were thinking about work when we were on holidays. Sounds like a happy life to me.

Schueller, S. & Seligman, M. (2010). Pursuit of pleasure, engagement, and meaning: Relationships to subjective and objective measures of well-being, The Journal of Positive Psychology 5(4) 253-263.

NOW BLOOMING

Sipping morning coffee in a room beset with blossoms.
Pots of perky tulips brought by last night’s dinner guests,
Dapper Daffodils we bought for last night’s dinner table,
Eager Easter lilies opening boldly for the season,
Christmas cactus counting flowers second round edition,
Handsomest hydrangeas petals poising in profusion,
Patient pansies planning planting when the snow has melted.
And in the kitchen window,
The all season, ever blooming orchids.

THE ETHICAL DILEMMA OF PHAL14

I come to THE HOPE LADY Blog today chastened by the after-effects of having been forced to make a life-and-death decision--not the most serious decision of its kind, you might claim, but important to me nonetheless. Today I once again had to decide whether to kill, or not to kill the 14th phalaenopsis.
Outright phalaenopsis murder is definitely not an act with which I would choose to be associated. But on the other hand, a question nagged: Should I sacrifice Phal14 in the hope of bettering conditions for the other 13? Examining the question from an ethical perspective, it was necessary to explain why Phal14 should be the object of such a deadly consideration. Alas, like so many of life’s difficult hconsiderations, that question had more than one answer. Simply put, it had three answers: yes; no; and maybe.
In support of yes, there was “Yes. There is no reason to sacrifice the health of 13 blooming and almost-blooming orchids for the sake of one small plant that is neither blooming nor in bud. That plant has been keeping company with an unsavory colony of Mealybugs. Mealybugs don’t like to limit their luncheons to a single phalaenopsis. Think of the rest of them! Let it go.”
Supporting the no side there was “No. Why should you kill a perfectly good phalaenopsis? Are you punishing it unfairly? Did it know what it was doing when it allowed the Mealybugs to visit? Surely you cannot claim that you have made every possible effort to restore it to perfection.”
Soon the other stakeholders were adding their voices to the cacophany. “Kill Phal14,” cried Phal1. “And while you’re at it, sterilize the pots. I’ve been blooming here in this window since 2003. Not once have I entertained a Mealybug. Now I am old and vulnerable, my roots exposed, and shrivelling. Would you put me at risk in a possibly fruitless attempt to save the life of this unproven upstart?” I had to admit, it was difficult to argue with anything that Phal1 had said, and I said as much to the assembly. That brought a swift reaction.
“Save Phal14,” cried Phal13. “Look at me. I have Mealybugs, and I’m still blooming. The same can be said of Phal11. Maybe Phal14 can bloom again. Tell me honestly Wendy. Presented with this evidence, what would THE HOPE LADY say?”
And thus, As so often happens, the results of the investigation are not so easily interpreted. You might claim that the no side won, noting that Phal14 was returned to the window after receiving a bath designed to drown the Mealybugs. THE HOPE LADY argument was bound to carry the day. Trust those bleeding-heart liberals to put the whole society at risk for the sake of a few under-achieving whiners.
But actually, the most conclusive evidence shows that the maybe side won for sure. Bloomless Phal14 escaped by the skin of its leaves, while its blooming and almost-blooming neighbours, having also succumbed to the temptation of inviting guests to dinner, received a somewhat more charitably administered Mealybug-drowning bath. Bleeding-heart liberal I may be, but I still prefer to help those who help themselves.
“Bloom!” I warned Phal14, checking the underside of one last leaf for that telltale stickiness. “The Mealybugs are hiding somewhere, waiting for dessert. If your future is in my hands, evidence of a future blossom could be the one thing that eventually saves your life.”

PLANTING

I tried not to plant anything this weekend.
Really I did.
It is too early for planting.
And it will probably snow again.
And anything I put outside now will freeze for sure.
Oh I tried not to plant anything.

But the sun shone,
And the spring breeze blew,
And I heard a robin
And some geese too.
So I put in a few acidanthra bulbs.

But only four.

ORCHID IMPOSTER

Eight flowery orchids blooming in the window
Purple to pink, to yellow, to white,
Everyone thinking Wendy is a wonder
An expert on orchids to grow them right.

Here sits Wendy, the orchid imposter
Keeper of a shelf neath a rare possession,
A perfect window
For growing orchids.