Title : The Garden as Book: Turning the Pages of My New Urban Terrace
link : The Garden as Book: Turning the Pages of My New Urban Terrace
The Garden as Book: Turning the Pages of My New Urban Terrace
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| I love the way the weather has blasted a rust stencil into the old Doukhobor church bench I picked up years ago to celebrate having successfully passed my doctoral comprehensives. The stencil itself was bought about the same time -- I think it was intended to be hung in a garden, but instead I had it on a kitchen wall in our island home, so this is the first winter it's revealed its inherent dynamism of decay. . . Not sure what I'll do about this going forward, but for now I quite like the effect.... |
When we moved into our new urban condo last fall, my sadness at having left my island garden behind was somewhat assuaged by my pleasure in our city oasis, the fountain tinkling its liquid camouflage over the sounds of traffic at the busy intersection just a block away, the lush foliage and bright colours of late summer soothing our two-moves-in-one-summer jangled nerves. The garden had played a large part in convincing us to buy the condo, and although we only had a few weeks before leaving for three months in Europe, we went out that first week and bought a decent sectional -- enough to seat four or five, cosily, and a big coffee table.
We also bought weather covers, of course. We're not naive, and we were too busy, then ill, then busy, December, January, and into February, even to think about taking the covers off to sit on the terrace. But by March, after a relatively cold and miserable winter, we began anticipating an afternoon in the weak but welcome spring sunshine, albeit with a fleece blanket to cut the chill. March, however, was the rainiest March Vancouver's seen since before I was born, I believe (and that's saying something, given our situation here in what used to be a Temperate Rain Forest).
Impatient, disappointed, even occasionally disconsolate . . . . we comforted ourselves with some urban terrace bird-watching and with little forays to see what might be poking out of the ground and trying to remember what perennials must be waiting to emerge in which containers and what leaves might appear on the bare branches of shrubs we couldn't yet identify.
I posted a few photos of the shoots and blooms and the leaves just barely, grudgingly, ever-so-slowly releasing outwards from their tightly folded positions against the branches they were expected to fling themselves away from, towards the sun when it eventually made closer, longer arcs above us all. . .
And on one of those postings, a sweet friend commented that it "will be so fun watching that garden unfold like an unread book. I love this analogy! In fact, my first thought was that I should have started at the beginning of the year, or even the beginning of our life here, to write what I was reading in that book. I should have begun one of those garden journals and kept track of when the hostas first poked green snouts through their container's soil, and how many of the crocuses were blind and how many bloomed, and how long the Sweet 100 cherry tomatoes kept hanging on the plants.
Next Garden Post, then, I'm going to try a very quick inventory of the plants, shrubs, and trees the former owners left for us, and I'll tell you about a rather significant concern we have going forward as we assess the conditions of our Rooftop/Terrace Garden (hint: that crane in the background might give you an idea). Until then, though, perhaps you'd like to tell me what you know -- or would like to know -- about gardening on a terrace in a city condo. Or about big changes you've made, voluntarily or otherwise, in your gardening life. I know that some of you may not be interested in gardening at all, but I hope that you'll continue to find enough else of worth here that you might tolerate the occasional garden chat among the rest of us.
And for those with scant interest in gardening, I've got permission to share a few photos of my daughter as a beautiful bride, so that's next up here. . . .
Thus articles The Garden as Book: Turning the Pages of My New Urban Terrace
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