Even Good Change Can Be Hard

A few days ago we packed up the old place, packed up the roof garden and all of my plants, and moved. It was hell. A special thanks to friends who helped us get the remaining vestiges of our stuff out. That was no small feat and I am super, super grateful.

As of right now we are living in the midst of chaos. Piles of boxes lay everywhere. We can’t find anything, although I did find the kettle yesterday! Baby steps and small victories. I’m calling this stage the Where is Everything? Phase. The basement is like a set from the television show Hoarders. Regardless, for the first time in my adult life I have a basement. Hooray for a place to throw the stuff I can’t deal with right now and the location of my future seed-starting set-up!

This morning I woke up from a bad dream. In it, I had gone back to the old place to visit a neighbour and there was a television crew out on the roof giving it an extremely fancy, bourgeoisie makeover. In typical dream-like fashion everything was twisted. So while I should have had direct access to the roof, in the dream I couldn’t get anywhere near it to ask what was going on. And as I walked around looking for ways to gain access, it only got further and further away. The next thing I knew I was lugging my bike around heavy security lines and the makeover wasn’t just my old roof but the whole neighbourhood.

As the size of the production grew, so did my anxiety level. I was becoming a frantic person running around muttering aloud, “That used to be my garden. What are they doing to my garden?”

Finally, I found someone who would tell me what was happening. They were filming a makeover show, but they were also super fancifying the space to be a meeting place for a Catholic Bishop that was coming to town. Huh? All I can say for that portion is that last night was Halloween and one of the movies I watched (John Carpenter’s “Vampires”) must have melded with my dream.

Needless to say, I am beginning to suffer some emotional fallout from that tornado-like move. It was fast and furious, leaving me with a sense of displacement and some vestiges of separation anxiety from my old and familiar garden. And yet, I am also very excited to be embarking on gardening in a brand new location with a new set of positives and challenges to maneuver within.

Onward and upward.

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I Am Getting a Yard!

About a month ago we looked at a house with a yard and about 10 minutes after the viewing I tweeted that this was the next place I wanted to live. I could envision our life there and it looked rather nice.

We didn’t get the house. Or that yard. That yard. Yard…. Sweet, sweet yard. A nicely-sized (for Toronto) empty yard with a ramshackle shed. Sounds terrible, I know. But to me….

We proceeded to mope around with a major case of the sads for a month.

And then, out of the blue, we got it! One day I will tell the story (it’s a doozy), but I don’t think it is appropriate right now. What I can say for now is that I have the keys and we are moving in. Just like that. Pretty much overnight. We are still in shock. I figure we’ll be moved in and living there for a while before the shock of it wears off.

It’s a bit late in the season and I don’t have time to jump into gardening before winter sets in. It’s too bad, but then again, it will give me time to familiarize myself with how light moves through the space, and more time to plan. And you never know, there just might be some bulbs and surprise plants lurking underneath the surface. Either that or dead bodies. The yard is the lumpiest I have ever seen!

Our hypothesis is that the yard was once used as a vegetable garden but was then neglected for years. The grass probably just seeded itself over time. Either that or I am going to find some gnarly things when I stick my shovel into the ground next spring.

I’d love to show you more but I have to get back to packing asap. In the meantime, I leave you with one more photo of one of the few plants currently living in the yard that I plan to keep. It’s a little pear tree that the former occupants put in recently.

Oh and I’ve given the yard a name: Orto. I believe this approximately translates to kitchen garden in Italian. Please correct me if I am wrong.

p.s. Sorry about the quality of the images. I took them with my camera phone. Real photos soonish.

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