We must plant this garden.

Photo: Robert Rock Belliveau: Tomato seed taken with a polarizing microscope

"We find a useful parable in one of the farm journals, whither we turned, hoping to escape for a few moments the ominous headlines of suspicion in the papers. It was a vain hope. The first headline we encountered was 'Danger in the Flower Garden.' There is enough poison in a single castor bean to kill a person. The seeds of pinks cause vomiting. Sweet-pea seeds contain a poison that can keep a person bedridden for months. The nightblooming jimson has enough power it its leaves to produce delirium. Daffodil bulbs when eaten cause stomach cramps. And in the lily of the valley is a subtle substance that makes the heart slow down. But the conclusion drawn by the writer of the article, chewing absently on a daffodil bulb, was a good one.

We must plant this garden anyway. Even in the face of such terrors, we must plant this garden."
                                                                                                                                                                                      E.B. White 4/24/54 The New Yorker

*quote via @planthisgarden

Tip of the hat to a late spring...

And my old prairie Hedge Society from a late spring years ago:

I am a lifelong Canadian and still I do not learn. Around mid-February I begin to notice the band of light on the horizon at 7:15 in the morning. Soon eight hours of winter light will turn into eight and a half hours and then nine and then ten hours of glorious daylight. The other night, I noticed the sky was actually a beautiful deepening teal blue at 7 pm rather than a navy black. I wear a t-shirt instead of a sweater inside the house as a defiant gesture to the retreating winter.

March. The very name evokes thoughts of green grass and warming breezes. When will the tulips I planted in September begin to show? When can I put the snow shovel away? But March in Canada loves to fool you. A few years ago, we received 40 cm of snow in mid-March. The temperatures are still below zero one day before Spring arrives. The t-shirt takes its place back on the shelf and I return to checking weather reports in between trying to unfreeze the front gate and wrapping myself in blankets while sitting at the computer.

My mom is visiting and we take a quick trip to the gardening store. It is quiet and empty with just a few hopeful souls breathing in the pictures on the seed packages. The vivid reds of early girl tomatoes, the purples of lobelia, the oranges of tiger lilies and pastels of sweet peas swirl before us like an impressionist painting. When I drive home, heater on high, mittens gripping the frozen steering wheel, I turn down a back alley near the house. We crack open the frosted windows ever so slightly so we can hear the tiny birds that are hiding in the skeletons of lilac bushes. They sing and sing wearing down the fraying ends of winter, coaxing the warmth of spring to appear. 

6 Billion Others

I first saw the 6 Billion Others project in a bookstore, as a book. (That may be why it was in a bookstore.) Six directors filmed 5,000 interviews in 75 countries, asking people forty or so questions to get at what brings us together and keeps us apart. The result is a portait of humanity across the globe. 

Aside from what's in the book, you can watch twenty- to forty-five-minute Youtube compilations of those interviews on topics like love, God, happiness, fears, forgiveness, the meaning of life, and war. Here are a few to get you started.

Shameless Idealists: "Get out of my way."

Our little gathering of the Hedge Society is meant to provide some hope to each other in our working and creating lives. It is also meant to pass on some of that hope, meagre and confused as it is from time to time, to our readers.

We often think of idealists as people whose eyes are so blinded by the silver flashing in all the linings that they have no concept of any realities. But as you look to those working on the everyday and the ordinary of bringing hope to dark places, you often see lives inspired by not just the recognition but the embrace of the suffering that comes their way.

Shameless Idealists is a 7 part television series hosted by Craig Kielburger, the founder of Free the Children. Throughout the series, interviewees are asked about giving up, about facing fear, and about being intimidated. Often their answer starts with "I could have..." and ends with "I just decided...". Listen for hope as a decision.

One of my favorite interviews is with Betty Williams. She and I may be far apart in background and approach but it doesn't matter. I love the strength. I love the sense of humor (which seems to be a common chararacteristic of many activists). I love the "up yours" to apathy.

Craig Kielburger: "You took on one of the most intractable conflicts in human history. People must have looked on and said, 'Your actions are futile. You can never bring peace to the Middle East.'What did you say to them?"

Betty Williams: "Get out of my way."

My Christmas Eve Song.

The McGarrigle Christmas Hour
Kate and Anna MCGarrigle ( and Rufus and Martha Wainwright and Emmylou and Beth Orton...just get the whole CD, and look up a bit o' history on the McGarrigle family at the same time.)

>> Play "Counting Stars"
(just for a few days in hopes you'll get the whole album)
 

Every year around Christmas or New Year's, the big black phone tucked into the cubbyhole of our yellow kitchen would send its loud bbbbb-ring into the house late into the night. We'd all wake up as mom ran for the phone knowing that it was my uncle, loudly talking about eternal life and Jesus while mom tried to calm him down. He was always half in tears and more than drunk. Being drunk was his thing, his lifelong thing.

The song Counting Stars reminds me of him, gone now to lung cancer. My last memory holds a thin man sitting in a low-rent apartment hooked up to an oxygen tank, a necklace of plastic tubes on his stained t-shirt. This spoken word piece reminds me of him and other hims and hers that might be "in damn trouble again" as Christmas rolls around. I listen to this song and try to send hope along. I hope they're all counting the best kinds of stars as the chorus sings and the pianos play. I hope when they call  - all drunk and thinking of Jesus - that someone picks up the phone.



House of Hope

As KR (Karen) Wolfe wrote a few days ago, "I love letterpress" and connected this passion for paper with a creative and generous way to support Kiva.

Well, I love gardening. And I'm going to connect my passion for plants with YouGrowGirl's Holiday Drive for the House of Hope in Dominica.

The House of Hope in Delices, Dominica, is a home that provides loving, 24 hour care to persons with severe physical and mental disabilities. It was started by a small group of women in the village of Delices when 2 severely disabled women in their community lost their elderly mother. Without her to provide care they were stranded without anyone to help them, or any kind of facility to take them in. Since then, the House of Hope have raised the funds to build a larger facility with a garden and they now have six female residents including the original two women. They are ages: 6, 8, 14, 38, 40 and 52 years old. The facility gets some money from the government, but the rest comes from donations. They are in constant need of supplies.

(From Gayla's blog post)

And here's a little incentive for Hedge Society readers to contribute. For every $5 you donate to this drive, Gayla will enter your name into a raffle to win a prize pack of books, T-shirts and buttons. I donated this morning and have a couple of tickets; if my name is drawn, I'll pass on the prize to a Hedge Society reader who also donated. (Just let me know in the comments below that you donated.)

You will need to act quickly, though. The Holiday Drive ends tomorrow, December 18th.

Out My Window 2: Paper Snowflakes

I have a black, hardcover journal from the days before my son got his autism diagnosis.  It's where I'd write what he'd eaten that day, how many tantrums, how much head-on-hardwood banging, how few hours of sleep.  Words that came and words that went away for good.  It is pocked with asterisks and exclamations and mostly question marks; a scabby scrawl bumping over rippled pages.

I can barely open the thing now for fear of the sorrow that will leak out.  

I know, though, that tucked inside is a folded paper snowflake.  It was the last one I cut that December, the one that made me draw an astonished breath at order and beauty perfectly manifest on a sheet of cheap computer paper.  It was effortless, and it was a promise.  Even I could see that.

I'm ashamed to admit that Christmas gets a little harder every year for me. I have a hard time shaking off the year's accumulation of injustice and disappointment, even though I believe those things are not the end of the story.  Advent requires some deliberate measures, and now I have a strategy:  I defiantly make paper snowflakes, as a reminder to myself that random cuts unfold into effortless beauty.

At least on paper.

*****

I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day
Their old familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet the words repeat
Of peace on earth, good will to men.

I thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along the unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good will to men.

And in despair I bowed my head:
"There is no peace on earth," I said,
"For hate is strong and mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good will to men."

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
"God is not dead, nor doth he sleep;
The wrong shall fail, the right prevail,
With peace on earth, good will to men."

Till, ringing singing, on its way,
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime, a chant sublime,
Of peace on earth, good will to men!

(Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882), 1867)

Christmas Music 2010

We here at the hedge were asked to recommend a favorite Christmas song this season and explain why it's meaningful to us. I've got two, at totally different ends of the holiday spectrum. (Here's the other one.)

I'm with Patty Griffin when I hear her sing, "I must confess there appears to be/ Way more darkness than light." That's why my favorite religious Christmas carol is 'O Holy Night.' It never fails to remind me that someday, somehow, all will be well: "A thrill of hope; the weary world rejoices/ For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn."

First version, O Holy Night, featuring Aretha Franklin & Billy Preston.

And in case you want to hear it a second time and sing along at the top of your lungs with a black gospel choir, a version by Mariah Carey, below:

Of kiwis & hope

This evening (Wednesday) my dining room is filled with plants from the balcony so they won't freeze outdoors in these record-low temperatures. To remind myself why I persevere about many things, not just gardening, I'm re-reading nutritionist, gardener & author Joan Dye Gussow's lovely essay, Kiwis and Hope wherein she describes the "immaculate conception" of kiwifruit in her garden.  I encourage you to read the entire piece (it's not long & she's a wonderful writer) to learn why Ms. Gussow believes cultivating hope is not a foolish or futile pursuit.

And they [kiwis] seem to me a happy metaphor for the importance of continuing to work toward our necessary future even though the prospects sometimes seem daunting. Even when things seem hopelessly unlikely; if you just keep trying, even nature is apparently willing to break some rules (from the PowellsBooks.Blog essay).

Photo credit: Kiwis by Luis Miguel Bugallo Sánchez (Lmbuga); copyright: GFDL (GNU Free Documentation License), via Wikimedia Commons

Our Daily (angry) Birds: 47

I know that Our Daily Bird is one of the most popular parts of The Hedge Society but I just need to come out and say it, not all of us are fond of birds. Despite being 6'4" tall and large enough to play the defensive line in football, birds freak me out. They swoop, they have scales, they eat worms, they lay eggs... my dog is even bred to hunt them. Whatever the reason, I may or may not be afraid of them as well. Every time I think I am over it I end up jumping in my brother's lap because a bird came to close to our table.

It's not all my fault. The birds can't all be trusted. Look at the bird lobby and their special interest groups in Washington.  They even got a bird onto Sesame Street and look at the trouble him and his "imaginary" friend Mr. Snuffleupagus cause. Not all birds are nice. Like these ones below.

Genus Aves Iratus (Angry Birds)

Years ago while in Toronto to see the Barenaked Ladies in concert, I wandered into a Second Cup for a coffee when I made a near fatal mistake and ordered a crumbly muffin. As I stepped outside, I was immediately surrounded by sparrows. Keeping my cool, I told myself if this gets bad, I can probably take them and I casually kept eating my crumbly muffin. Then out of nowhere, a one-legged seagull came swooping down and landed awkwardly on one leg before falling over (like I said, he only had one leg). He gave out a call and then there were hundreds (it was more like millions) of seagulls landing all around me and all wanting a piece of my crumbly muffin.  

There are a lot of stories about what happened next but I did what any normal person who had a deathly fear of birds would do; I threw my crumbly muffin as far as I could in one direction, tossed my coffee on the one-legged seagull, and then ran as fast as I could the other way, ignoring the laughter of my wife and about 50 strangers.

I hate birds. Why can't this site celebrate something less evil like Beagles?

November 11: Poppies

Photo: Thomas Lieser via flickr/creative commons

I have been wearing my poppy for over a week now. I spotted the change bucket and the little pile of red plastic flowers while waiting in line at the bank. I put in my money and attached my poppy to the left side of my jacket - the simple act of pinning brings many memories:

• elementary school and the shock of learning that people killed each other in such terrible ways
• the neat little rows of the poem In Flanders Fields, hand-copied by fellow students onto ruled paper and then stapled onto school bulletin boards:

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row

• the RCMP officer, my next door neighbor, standing in dress reds at the local cenotaph. How could he stand still so long?
• taking the poppy apart at recess, putting the red part in our mouths, making fake lips and then wondering if we had done something wrong.
• watching all the red flowers go by as people walk down the street. If you just look at the flowers, it looks like the poppies are carrying  people across crosswalks, along the street, and into buildings and cars.
• one year in Paris for Remembrance Day. Poppy red against a black jacket. I turn to look north towards the D-Day beaches.

The poppy won't let you forget. Its long, straight pin sticks out of your jacket, catching on the sleeves or shoulders of other poppy wearers. It finds fingertips when you go to get dressed. It pokes you in the back when you lay your jacket over a chair. It constantly works its way loose and drops to the floor where people find it and say, "Excuse me, you dropped your poppy," and you put it on again. You are always checking to see if it is still there.

War is always failure. There is nothing glorious about it and the red flower reminds me of that and the hard work of peace that I must do in my own heart.