Antirrhinum is a genus of plants commonly known as snapdragons from the flowers’ fancied resemblance to the face of a dragon that opens and closes its mouth when laterally squeezed (thus the ‘snap’).

When I was a little girl, my mom had snapdragons and I remember her showing me how to “snap” them. It was the first flower I could recognize. I used to test other flowers by squeezing them and if they didn’t snap open, I knew they were not my favourites.

Snapdragons are on sale at Tru-Value this week. I got 6! They are a pale pink and first thing I did when I placed them triumphantly on my desk at work. You got it! I snapped them! To my delight, they worked the same as they did when I was 4 and first learned their trick!

When I look at this last picture, this is our front garden, all I see is potential. I see a potentially perfect place to have herbs. In fact there is already a lavender bush, a rosemary bush and a bay tree. I would like to put ornamental flowers and herbs here. I look at this picture and cannot wait to transform it. Let me at it!

But… I read recently in a book called “In The Realm of Hungry Ghosts” that when we look at something’s (or someone’s) potential, we fail to see the real person. I am really bad for this. I look at someone who I know well, whom I love, and I see their talents, their skills and I think “Oh they have so much potential!” I always thought it was slightly tragic when people didn’t live up to their “full potential.”

What I learned from reading the aforementioned book, was that by focusing on the potential, I am not able to love that person (or garden, haha) unconditionally. Loving unconditionally does not leave room for dissatisfaction or disappointment. It puts a condition on my love. “I love you but, I would be more pleased if you did this, this and this.” Thus unconditional love is vanquished.

So lovely garden, I choose to see you as you are, very healthy soil with earthworms, froggies, salamanders, and bumble bees! Sounds like a very good brew indeed!

What inspires you? What makes you squirm in your seat to be part of the beauty?

There are some songs, some poetry, some stories, some operas, some paintings that make me want to get up and join in the genius. There’s a spark in the art that I run into that makes me want to emerse myself, wrap myself up in it and weave my own thread into the tapestry. I’ve often wondered what is it about that particular poem, that particular painting, that particular song that inspires me. But when I hear, see, smell, read it, I am involved! I am there!

There are some people who seem to be on the same wave-length as me, as if I were a colour, shining out a frequency. Ok, so all colours emit a frequency. A light wave. Different light waves can actually affect your mood. So what if we as people emit a frequency? And sometimes it lines up perfectly with yours. And then you get the shiver of inspiration. This is what I feel when I read a a stanza like:

He walks down the street, The asphalt reels by him.

It is all silence.

The silence is music.

He is the singer.

The people passing smile and shake their heads.

He holds a hand out to them.

They open their hands like flowers, shyly.

He smiles with them.

The light is blinding: he loves the light.

They are the light.

That excerpt is from Keri Hulme from her book “The Bone People” which took her 10 years to write. It sends me to my notebook. I read it and I want to write, I need to write. Do not stand in my way! I will write!

Or there is an Alanis Morisette song that I relate to. I hear it, and I say “She gets it! She gets me. I think these thoughts…”

These are the thoughts that go through my head
In my backyard on a Sunday afternoon
When I have the house to myself and I am not
Expending all that energy on fighting with my boyfriend

Is he the one that I will marry?
Why is it so hard to be objective about myself?
Why do I feel cellularly alone?
Am I supposed to live in this crazy city?
Can blindly continued fear-induced regurgitated
Life- denying tradition be overcome?

Where does the money go that I send to those in need?
If we have so much why do some people have nothing still?
Why do I feel frantic when I first wake up in the morning?

Why do you say you are spiritual?

How can you say you’re close to God
And yet you talk behind my back as though I am not
A part of you?
Why do I say I’m fine
When it’s obvious I’m not?
Why’s it so hard to tell you what I want?
Why can’t you just read my mind?

Why do I fear that the quieter I am the less you will listen?
Why do I care whether you like me or not?
Why is it so hard for me to be angry?
Why is it such work to stay conscious and so easy to get stuck
And not the other way around?

Why am I encouraged to shut my mouth
When it gets too close to home?
Why cannot I live in the moment?

I read a book once that said that when you create, you need to be filled up. You need to recharge, to feed on the creative world around you, whether that’s taking a walk or reading a book. You need something going back in when you put out. I’ve found this concept prevalent in the whole world. You cannot get something for nothing. We consume, we pay. So how does that translate into the creative world? We feed on art, we create art. It’s almost like a reflexive expulsion. I find an art that is of my taste, I consume it. Then I produce art because I simply cannot help myself.

Some people say to me, I am just not creative. I cannot paint, write, sing. But I wonder if building a tiny toy train model is creating something. What if digging a garden, or decorating a house, or growing a plant from seed is filling a creative need as well?

What if every single person is creative? Capable of art? I suppose under the vaguest definitions, we all are. To me, art is the simple act of creating something for the pleasure of creating. Perhaps this is the divinity in us leaking through.

You plan so long for spring, for the coveted months of April and May to plant, to sew your seeds. And then, voila! They are upon us.

These are our seedlings that we snafu-ed from Clam Bay to put into our greenhouse. Yes, they are my seedlings planted in March! I’ve got onions, spinach and leeks in there.

So we mapped out, before we left home, as to where we’d plant what. Upon arriving at the garden, we (we being Marc, haha) promptly forgot the plan and planted unscheduled beets. Love it! Impromptu beets! Who else enjoys this kind of spontanuity? Am I getting too enthusiastic over a row of beets? I think not!

Ok, so see me planting my leek transplants, that are supposed to be 8 inches high before you transplant? Yeah well, I was a little enthusiastic with my leek seedlings, or I doubted their tenacity. Whatever! I ended up with a bed of leeks, double the size shown in this picture. This evening, I was chatting with my brother and he asked “So what do you use leeks for?” And I said “Oh James, they’re so good, why, I use them all the time for…. soup… and… uh… well…” Well James, I’ll use them for just about everything now! Anyone want a leek? Put your orders in! A bit of an overdose on leeks, declared Marc. What encouraging and realistic men I have in my life.

Then! (yes there’s more- it was an exciting day.) We were tromping around the garden, and I was thinking about where I was going to plant my carrots. When I read about carrots, it says to plant them an inch deep, to not walk near the carrot bed, and to put fine vermiculite on top to allow the carrot seedlings a loose soil to poke their noses through. I’m thinking “Wow, high maintenance carrots!” and vowed to appreciated them more in the grocery store. Then the owner of the farm was saying “Oh yes, and over here, I think I planted some carrots. I don’t think I ever pulled them up!”

30 carrots later, these “fragile” beauties had neither vermiculite covering or a trodden-free growth. I know I stamped on their heads unknowingly a dozen times! That’s it! It gave me confidence to till my row for carrots and in they went. I’m gung-ho for new adventures as soon as someone shows me that it can be done.

I was reading in my too-often mentioned book “A Circle of Quiet” how the common man plays it safe, but the uncommon man is what moves forward mankind’s evolution. Thomas Edison, the uncommon man, invented the incandescent light bulb and said: “We will make electricity so cheap that only the rich will burn candles.”

Einstein‘s Theory of relativity did not come about because someone showed him how to do it. It came about as an epiphany, a brand-new thought. He said: “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”

Stephen Hawking was far from common, and his advancements in quantum gravity and black holes was astounding. He said: “To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit.”

-I am going somewhere with this. I appreciate your patience.-

In my commonness, I wait for someone to show me how it is done. This is not a spirit of an adventurer, inventor, or an explorer. I am not a risk taker. I am uncomfortable with this. This is good. I follow in my father’s footsteps. I do not naturally stretch myself. And when life stretches me, I protest but what good it does me! What good indeed.

I had a very dear friend say to me once, “I love being broken. In brokenness, I am naked before all that matters.”

I shudder to think. Naked before what matters, no thank you. Leave me clothed before What Matters. Let me wrap my ragged dignity around me, please. But I need it. We need it!

I took an excerpt a couple posts back about the Foolishness of God. I expressed how we need to be forgiven for what we’ve done to each other and to this Earth. To pair with the foolishness of God, I would venture to say, we need the Brokenness of the Common man.

Then perhaps, we can change the world’s course. This is the whispers of a young revolutionary. Did you make it this far?

Good,. Come have a fresh garden carrot and I promise no more philosophy tonight!

I wanted to share with you something I read lately. To me, it is delicious. I hope you enjoy.

“When I do something wrong I tend to alibi, to make excuses, blame someone else. Until I can accept whatever it is that I have done, I am only widening the gap between my real and ontological self, and I am thus excluding myself, so that I begin to think I am unforgivable.

We need to be forgiven:

to be forgiven in this time when fish are dying in our rivers; in this time of poison gas dumped on the ocean floor and in the less and less breathable air of our cities, of children starving; being burned to death in wars which stumble on; being attacked by rats in their cribs…

We need to be forgiven in this grey atmosphere which clogs the lungs so that we cannot breathe, and breathless, spiritless, can no longer discern what is right and what is wrong what is our right hand and what is our left, what is justice and what is tyranny, what is life and what is death.

I heard a man of brilliance cry out that God has withdrawn from nations when they have turned from Him, surely we are a stiff-necked people; why should He not withdraw?

But then I remember Jonah accusing God of overlenience, of foolishness, mercy and compassion.

We desperately need the foolishness of God.”

-Madeleine L’Engle in “A Circle of Quiet”

Lately, these have been my activities:

-Preparing an asparagus bed, (they take 3 years to be edible, best get started now)

-Planting strawberries

-Visiting farms/gardens to haggle where the bee hives go that are coming in June.

-Reading “A Circle of Quiet” and today, finishing it.

-Writing a story for a children’s competition that is now too long to be entered.

-Walking to and from work

-Unearthing someone else’s old garden

-Beekeeping

-Wearing skirts (the last two days)

But as my husband and I were just discussing, listing the activities of someone’s day without accrediting emotions is really doing no justice to one’s activities. Something taken out of context is not the real picture. I have been thinking that I should learn more about soil PH levels, I should know what to look for in my sprouting asparagus or zucchini, I should be researching what grows where or when. But instead, I am doing the learning through osmosis. Through ontology. (That date with Dictionary is paying off.)

Instead, I celebrate as my black bean braves the wide world and sprouts on my window sill, leaves still pucked behind their bean-shell. I am astonished at my bees because their pollen sacs on their legs, like little luggage sets, are stuffed with bright yellow pollen to the hive, even though I’ve given them a whole patty of pollen at their disposal. I do not only smile, I grin inadvertantly at the glow of the pink flowers on the Japanese Cherry trees popping up in my neighbourhood. The splash of Pink! (Pink is such an incredible word) It makes me feel cheerful and girly.

I walked to work yesterday morning and as I crested my little hill at the end of the road, the electrical Al drove by. He yelled out his window “It must be Spring!” And I twirled and flounced in my skirt for him. What music do I hear in my ears on Sunny Skirted Days? Ella Fitzgerald, Peggy Lee, Wailin’ Jennys. Girls! And what do I smell? The intoxicating smell of lilies, orchids, daffodils, tulips, gerbers. Girly Girly Girly! Celebrate!

I am woman, see me twirl!