September 23, 2008

So my sunflowers did flower after all. A long proud row, tall and yellow and glorious.
I feel that my first garden was a success. I like to compare it to my neighbour’s garden. They are the same size on opposite corners.
Hers is neatly tended to, void of weeds, with specific varieties of flowers and shrubs situated in a deliberate, planned pattern.
Mine is a jumble of wildflowers, plants given to me periodically throughout the months of spring and summer, tall sunflowers alongside tiny sprouts of catnip and basil. They all coexist in a messy, thrown-together setting. There are metal pots as well, found at flea markets, some filled with stones, some filled with driftwood. There is also an old sled.
I think there are weeds. I cannot tell the difference between flowers that are not weeds and flowers that are weeds.
I am mesmerized by my neighbour’s vicious weed-extractions. She knows what belongs and what does not belong.
Our gardens are reflections of us, I believe. I am not a messy housekeeper, but I like old and crumbling, chipped and worn. She is a messy housekeeper (full time job, single mom) but she prefers expensive and shiny, pristine and new.
She is highstrung, wound tight, the boss at her job. She cannot sit still for long. I have sat out back with a big coffee and a magazine and begun to feel nervous at - and very aware of - her need to constantly ‘do’ as oppose to ‘be’.
Her children are as neat as her garden. My children are as neat as mine.
I have wondered over the course of the summer if my garden has caused her frustration at its freedom to flourish with few controls or boundaries. In turn, I stare at her garden and empathize over its halted articulation, its inability to express itself in its own way, its reluctant adherence to restrictions placed upon it by someone other than Mother Nature.

My husband and I went to a party last week. It was the launching of the premier issue of an arts magazine in Durham – Surfacing. I have a piece of writing in it and was invited to celebrate.
We sipped champagne cocktails and walked around the art gallery at which the party was held. I wore heels and we checked out various etchings and photographs. I felt very New York-y.
I left on a high – champagne cocktail-induced, partly, but it was also just feeling a part of something special.

There is a friendly squirrel at school. Older kids were petting it as I and thirty-odd four- and five-year olds raced to the swing set.
I told those kids,
“Don’t pet it.”
They didn’t want to listen. After a few more admonishments, they backed off and I headed over to the park.
The squirrel followed.
It was tiny and the little kids thought it was a chipmunk. It wouldn’t leave.
One of the other lunch supervisors picked it up finally and brought it into the woods behind the park.
It came back.
She did this many times but it kept returning. The children were divided. Some thought it was scary. Others wanted to take it home.
My colleague was unsure what to do. I turned and saw a city animal services van pulling into the parking lot.
The cavalry.
I walked over to the van and the man inside lowered the window. I said,
“Are you here about the squirrel?”
He told me, No, that his daughter was in JK and he’d come to say hi.
“Oh. So can you come check out this squirrel anyway?”
He told us this happens often, that the squirrel was following us because it thought we were its “mother”, that we needed to leave it alone and it would be fine.
His daughter was much more interested in the squirrel than she was in her Dad.
So we left the squirrel alone. As it encroached on the sandy area of the playground, the children slowly backed off. An aerial view would have shown a half-empty area with a tiny squirrel in the middle of it, the other half crammed full with kids.
My colleague whistled to end the lunch recess.
I’ve tried not to be too worried about the squirrel. The animal services Dad was very confident that it would find its own way. It is wild, after all. If it doesn’t make it, then maybe it wasn’t supposed to.