Dägmar's Voice

  I planted a creeper in a stump in my glade.

A Rhodo I got is about to burst.

This is part of "the glade," a wild area I want to leave wild but
I put topsoil over the ground so I can add perennials for colour.

This is a tiny Rhodo "bred" on Gabriola. 

Rain. What else? It’s too bad because it’s Beth’s final day at Pinecone Park & Spa. There were ice storms in southern Ontario yesterday. Like incest, it’s relative.

There were shadows on Saturday — not sunshine, really, but bright shadows. And it was warm in the light. I did some Defiant Dresswork — scene three is a healed wound, but it still hurts. There’s much more work to do.

I have one character with a voice I can’t write. Dägmar could be funny in the hands of the right actor. I want her to speak poor English and have a thick German accent but I don’t know how to write her lines. But wouldn’t you know it — ask and ye shall find — I found a German accent generator.

Now Dägmar has a voice (of sorts). I just type in what I want Dägmar to say in correct English and the site gives me Germanized writing and voila: “I chust tybe in vat I vant Dägmar to zay in correct Englisch und zee zite giffes me Germanised vriding und foila.”

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The accomplishment of yesterday was gardening. And it felt good! I put deep topsoil into a wild area and planted some Roses, a Lilac, more Rhodos and another Clematis.

I spent quite a bit of time toting soil from the pile in my driveway to the new garden I was building and when I do endless rote behaviour my mind “floats.” My thoughts can land on anything, triggered by a smell, a sight a sound or the sunlight on my skin. It could be anything. And in that state yesterday this thought popped into my head: “I hope I live long enough to enjoy this.”

It was an uninvited thought. It was a response to my glance at my plantings. All my plantings, all over the yard, are so young and immature. And I continue to go, go, go.

I love gardening so I will probably never stop planting. But I hope to work less and relax more next year.

It occurs to me, for example, to get a heat pump and use electricity to heat and save fires for evenings and special occasions. If I do that, it will reduce the cost of wood and the endless toting back and forth from the woodpile to the house. If there’s a government rebate program on heat pumps, it could move me to action.

I hoped to live long enough to see my garden mature in that thought. When I had AIDS and my heart attacks death felt so proximate; to suddenly become aware of my mortality with the wheelbarrow in my hands rolling towards the next load of topsoil inspired my desire to relax more and enjoy the fruits of my work.

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Today I want to do some more gardening between bouts of rain — but not for shrubs, for border plants such as Alyssum, Geranium and Lobelia. Tonight, Patsy comes for Beth’s goodbye dinner.