Flora Dobbie

The reward for a long life is die without peers to mourn you. So it is our job today, and no doubt for longer, too, to thread back together the details of 95 years lived simply and honourably. To make a statement that a good woman walked through this world and we loved her.
As near as I can figure, it went something like this.

Flora was born on August 31, 1913, the youngest of seven children, to Janet and Alexander Crawford, who lived in a little house on Castle Avenue.

When she was quite young, perhaps 5, her mother took her to Scotland for an extended visit with her family. Also when she was a little girl, she suffered a serious struggle with Rheumatic fever that had her hospitalized and in isolation for several weeks.

As a young woman, still living with her parents, she worked in the shoe department at Eaton’s. In fact, for a period, she was the only breadwinner in her home during the Depression.

Judging by her old autograph book, she was a popular girl, which is no surprise; we’ve always known her to be sociable. She had a couple of girlfriends named Peg and Jean, who had a brother named Alec.

About the only thing I know about the courtship of Alec and Flora is that Janet had cause at some point to chase him down the street with her broom. Presumably he persisted, for they married in 1938 and he became my Grandpa. She wore a royal blue velvet dress that she showed to my sister and me some time in the seventies. We were mystified by how tiny she had been.

Glenn was born in 1940, with Flora living in her mother-in-law’s house and Alec away serving in the Navy during the war. Caring for a baby was no mean feat in those days: she had to rise early to wash and boil diapers, sterilize bottles and cook formula, all before the senior Mrs. Dobbie needed the kitchen.

Now, Flora was an attractive enough lady, but she must have had a special charm; some supplies were hard to come by in 1940, but the grocer secured and squirreled away a whole case of condensed milk for her. She mixed that with corn syrup to feed her baby. Apparently that’s what they did in those days.

Alec came back from the Navy and the three settled in their little house on Moncton, where they welcomed Jim in 1947. In that tiny, two-bedroom house, they lived for the rest of their 50 years together. Flora raised two challenging boys, cared for Mrs. Crawford in her old age, and produced thousands of breakfasts, lunches and dinners in a kitchen the size of most bathrooms—with the same amount of counter space.

I understand there were some wild parties in that house, too. Something about a person named Madame Red kicking her shoe through the front window?

Much of the summers were spent at Alec’s beloved cottage at Betula Lake in the Whiteshell. Grandma liked the creature comforts, and she was never a big fan of the cottage. She had a wide social circle at Betula, though, and spent many pleasurable evenings playing card games—31 and Chase the Ace—with the Perrys, the Pickens, the Forbes, the Gravesteads, the Nicholsons and the Wrights.

During summers in the city, she kept a garden. There was a big bleeding heart by the front door. Along the sunny side of the house, toward Mrs. Lily’s, she planted annuals every year: petunias, snap dragons and pansies. On the other side, where massive trees—well, they were massive by the time I played there—there were tiger lilies and, I think, phlox and Shasta daisies. At the back there were great lilac bushes, a magnificent stand of peonies and a big patch of rhubarb from which she would make rhubarb jams and pies. All rhubarb, not tamed by strawberries. Sweet and tart and delicious.

Flora and Alec were generous parents-in-law. They welcomed Glenn’s wife Dorothy into the family with their own special brand of understated warmth. Jim hadn’t been gone long before Flora started taking care of Lori, their first granddaughter, on a daily basis. Four years later (after Dorothy had me and was able to stay home for a year with the two of us), Flora had two little girls to look after every day. Not long after that, Linda became part of the family, and the ranks at the Christmas dinner table swelled to 8, where it held steady for a few years then increased by three over three years with a second wave of grandchildren: Kevin, Amanda and Melissa.

The milestones after that are numbered by significant celebrations and tragedies. She and Alec celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary in 1988. Alec died, at the cottage, in 1989. I think it was that year at Christmas that we got her a puppy, Patches, who was her companion for the next decade or so—fat, spoiled and utterly loyal to her.

She travelled all the way to Kingston for my wedding in 1990, and I have to say that she was the one who actually sanctioned me getting married away from home. Lori had had a big beautiful wedding the year before, David and I were living in Kingston and had only 3 months to plan the wedding because we were moving to Japan. As well, there were religious differences with his extended family in Winnipeg… it was easier for us to get married in Kingston. But my mom and sister were arguing with me after dinner one night—Grandma was there—and I was reacting petulantly, as only the baby of the family can. Grandma, who never messed in our family disagreements, smoked and listened for a while, and when it was time she offered, quietly, “You just do what you want, Shaun.”

Well, the discussion was over. Though she never lacked an opinion, Grandma wasn’t one to meddle. So when she spoke, gentle as it was, it was a decree and it was heeded. Now, I don’t know if it was the right or wrong decision to get married so far away, but Grandma knew it didn’t matter in the long run but that young brides are emotional and have their whims, and it’s best to give in to those whims.

We held an 85th birthday party for her, hosted by Lori, and a 90th in the restaurant at the top of her seniors’ apartment complex on Oakland Avenue. The guest list of her peers shrank from the anniversary party to the 85th, and more between the 85th and 90th. Now, five years on, the numbers in this room do not begin to tell how dearly and how widely she was loved. They indicate, instead, the determination she had to hang on to life. She was not bold or brazen, neither was she timid or retiring. But she was tenacious.

If old people are birds, Grandma was a sparrow, tiny and fragile but strangely hardy. At the end, there was no fat left in her flesh—I’m not sure there was flesh left in her flesh—and to see her narrow frame under a thin sheet of skin was to shiver at the length of life. But when she was awake, even in these last weeks, her milky blue eyes were bright, and her laugh, low and hoarse, came readily. Although she meandered between truth and fiction in her head, she never missed a joke or ironic twist. And she could fake her way through confusion, like a politician in a crowd: she never would come right out and say, “Do I know you?”

I have been at a loss for rational explanation at the intensity of my grief. After all, there is no better end than a peaceful one at 95. I am both frustrated and awed by the futility and nobility of a long life lived. Incensed that this tiny voice will have been a dim flash in a vast universe. Impressed by how those sparrow fingers, bent sideways with arthritis and dumb with Parkinson’s-like twitches, clung so steadfastly to life. Even as she strained against the soft bandages that bound her wrists to the siderails, anxious to pull away the undignified accoutrements of her endgame, she would not let go until she was good and ready, until she was sure.

Shelter magazines: neither real nor simple

I hate magazines. They make me feel inferior. Every article seems to insinuate: “here’s how you would look, think and act if you were slim, smart and stylish.”

As a magazine editor and publisher, I’m supposed to read magazines all the time, but there’s only one I read regularly: Masthead, a Canadian magazine industry publication. (I read Toronto Life as well, but I don’t want to mention them because we compete for some of the same advertisers. It makes me feel inferior too, but it’s well written.) Other than that, I’m fairly good at ignoring all the magazines that fill my world. And fill my world they do: we subscribe to about 10 at work because it helps keep our advertising sales staff up to speed on who’s advertising where. At home, I subscribe to the Globe and Mail, which means I get an extra five to 15 magazines per month as inserts in the paper.

If I don’t have a novel on the go or I’ve already read the paper before I find myself in a situation with time to kill (planes, doctors’ waiting rooms, kids’ after-school lessons) I sometimes buy a magazine. This puts me in a difficult position. As a good Canadian, I don’t want to buy American magazines; Canadian magazines, however, are my competition, so I don’t really want to be out in public with my nose in one, suggesting that these publications deserve attention from a smart-looking cookie like me.

With gardening magazines, the truth goes a little deeper. With gardening magazines, articles that gloze too quickly over interesting topics make me feel unpleasantly, pompously superior, while articles that I might consider good simply leave me feeling disappointed that they aren’t in my magazine. With gardening magazines, there is no level of comfort for me. I stopped reading them years ago.

When I buy a magazine, I’m most inclined to pick up People. Yes, really. No need to think, plenty of eye candy, and they don’t tend to print hurtful or untrue things about the rich and famous. (With hopes of being rich some day myself, I support the magazine that supports them!)

Well. A couple of weeks ago I had not brought lunch to work and was going out to a restaurant by myself, so I grabbed a copy of a big, fat, popular Canadian shelter magazine. (That’s what the industry calls all the magazines about spiffing up your home.) I’m pretty confident about my home, having toughed out extensive renovations and gone further in to debt for furnishings. I figured I could handle it.

I’m not sure if I’m supposed to be ashamed to admit this, but I don’t have a garage attached to a 5,000-square foot home, and if I did, I just don’t think I could put the time, effort and money into installing ceramic tile in that garage. My closets are serviceable, but if I were to install a modular system—actually, if I were to make my younger daughter move into her older sister’s room and turn the vacated room into a closet with a modular system (closets in shelter mags are huge)—it would not look like the pictures in this magazine. For one thing, I have more than three colours in my wardrobe. The “closet” in the magazine contains the extremely limited wardrobe of an individual who wears only tan, white and light blue. I know it’s staged, but this fictitious person haunts me.

This imaginary individual, I might add, irons everything before hanging it. She probably takes the laundry out of the dryer the moment it buzzes, too. I bet she flosses her teeth every night, always makes nutritious meals for her family, reads to the kids then jogs before going to bed at 10 so she can get up early. Which she does without hitting the snooze button even once.

Me? I iron on an as-needed basis. I turn off the dryer buzzer because it’s annoying, but leave the clothes inside. They have to cool down, right? I floss a couple of times in the week before a dental appointment. I don’t buy prepared food, but I don’t necessarily cook a great meal every night either. My husband reads to the little one, who will soon be able to read to herself and give Dad a break; my bedtime ritual with Claire is watching recorded re-runs of Law and Order. (But no SVU—I have standards.) The only jogging I do is of my husband’s memory when the garbage starts to smell. If I go to bed at 10 I can’t drift off, so there’s no point turning in until I’ve fallen asleep on the couch during Letterman. I try to get up early; I never hit the snooze button—it bugs my husband, so instead I just turn off the alarm and go back to sleep.

About 10 years ago, there was a backlash against Martha Stewart. Normal people don’t decorate cakes with sugared violets and bake their own croissants and stencil a four-colour plate rail in the dining room and freshen the guest room linens with lavender water—certainly not all in one day. Who knows for sure how much of any of that Martha Stewart actually does—she does seem to be quite driven. I’ve got no problem with her being as she is nor with her demonstrating her talents for the public through her multiple media venues. Martha Stewart Living is about being better at everything than anyone else. That’s the unabashed theme.

It’s all these other magazines that purport to have a theme of helping the average Joe or Jane but offer no realistic advice. Why did the backlash against Martha Stewart just seem to drive the other shelter magazines further into fantasy?

The homes covered in the magazine I mentioned were really mansions. How do you achieve a mansion? Not by lying around reading fluff, that’s for sure. And the interior of that garage with ceramic floors? They painted it white. Because, you know, wiping down the interior of your garage is something you do all the time. Then they accessorized the work bench with a palette of apple green tools and a basket of Granny Smith apples. Do you have apples in your garage? Are they colour-coordinated with your watering can? Should they be?

I get that magazines don’t cover the average home because readers don’t aspire to be average. Ontario Gardener doesn’t cover the average garden—we look for gardens that are remarkable, in part because the writer needs to remark on the garden for about 800 words. But the gardens we cover are real, and there is never a shortage of them.

When your garden is profiled in Ontario Gardener, you don’t get a list of instructions on how to prep starting two weeks ahead of the photo shoot. The “team” that shows up for the photo shoot is usually me, though sometimes one of my kids comes along for the ride. I come with nothing but my little $800 Nikon and a spare charged battery. I got a tripod for Christmas, so I guess I’ve got “gear” now.

In polls, consumers say they turn to magazines for information and advice. Obviously, they also look for something beautiful and inspiring. But if the beautiful and inspiring isn’t real, if it’s staged, how much information and advice can you really take from it? And why aspire to something unattainable?

These magazines make me want to give their editors and publishers a shake. The world is a magnificent place and there is beauty and inspiration all around us. Go ahead and make something new and call it art—I love art! But if you call it a magazine, use your power and influence to illuminate the real world.

Darkness Descends

The air stings and leaves turn dry and light as crumpled paper. The heady scents of full-blown blooms are now dumb with cold and the only life in the air is old mould. Winter is the now of our discontent.

I suppose it’s my job as a lifestyle-magazine editor to sing the glories and praises of winter—to be upbeat about everything for that matter—but gosh it’s hard. I grew up in Winnipeg, where winter meant short sharp days of blinding sun and snow and air that cut like a knife with every breath outside. As teenagers we didn’t wear boots in winter because nothing is warm at minus 30 degrees anyhow and there is certainly no danger of getting your feet wet; there is no damp at minus 30.

As a young adult I moved to Kingston where I learned the true meaning of “a damp cold”. At first I could not understand that there wasn’t snow everywhere, continually, from November to March. (Snow melts in winter? It can rain in winter? Not in Winnipeg.) I marvelled at weeks of days when the temperature would surface above freezing. But by the arrival of my first spring as an Ontarian I had realised the downside: four months of endless cloud and wet feet. Feet always wet because if your boots aren’t waterproof the wet gets in, and if your boots are waterproof the sweat can’t get out.

Now living in Toronto, it’s a little warmer but every bit as grey, almost as wet and twice as grimy.

I’ve learned a few local tricks for coping with winter. I can do the icy-day cha-cha from the parking lot to the office in my indoor shoes with some aplomb and I now start nagging my husband to shovel as soon as it starts to snow, before it partially melts and freezes into a solid platform for litigation. I know how far I have to go to get to a full-service gas station. I walk on the side of the street where cars are parked to minimize the risk of a drive-by soaking. Useful strategies but cold comfort.

Today is darkly cloudy and my psyche smarts from the jerk back to standard time. The chrysanthemums are still blooming, but I no longer believe them. Winter is coming soon and fast and hard, and with winter comes the cold, the wet, the dark and the dead.

So what I have to offer, in lieu of an upside, is an exhortation to acceptance and a stab at meaning.

Every thoughtful thing, from Chinese medicine to Newtonian physics to the writings of Northrop Frye, knows this much is true:

It goes both ways.

For every yin there is a yang, for every push there is a pull, and the outward gaze wants introspection for a fuller view. Opposites don’t attract; they are the halves of a whole. Hopeful spring, exuberant summer and fiery fall must have restful winter.

Well… (the crosspatch says) that’s four seasons and “opposites” implies two things, and besides it’s only in the temperate part of the world that we have such different seasons—

But I say hush. I’m looking for meaning, not facts.

Winter will come as it must. We shall survive as we must.

The plants and certain animals will have their rest. And we shall rest in our way (after Christmas—the ladies know what I mean), praising the slim light of day and embracing the comfort of dark evenings by the fire with seed catalogues and plans for gardens where the peonies don’t flop and our knees don’t ache from weeding.

"Living green" doesn't have to be mean

There’s a difference between being green and self flagellation. Or at least, there used to be.

If you’re reading this, you’re probably a gardener. And that means you’re probably respectful of things that grow and sensitive to your own influence on growth, for better and for worse.

The vast majority of gardeners I meet tell me they garden organically and resort to chemicals only when absolutely necessary. We’re all thoughtful members of our communities, so we are aware of the rules surrounding garbage separation and follow them. We love the outdoors, so we walk rather than drive whenever it’s practical. That used to be enough to be considered green.

With the environment a top issue for most Ontarians now, all sorts of neurotics have glommed on to green issues. These individuals are inventing endless new sins which, as far as I can tell, are predicated on the idea that we humans were born evil and our very existence on earth should be endlessly punished. Apparently, if we all re-use our dirty towels several times before laundering and flush our toilets “selectively”, we may be stinkier but we’ll be just a little holier.

If you’re not “on” Facebook, the Internet social networking group, you’ve probably heard about it. One of the most popular Facebook applications is called “I am Green”; users select and post their “green leaves” to show what swell environmentalists they are. The green leaves are statements like:

1. “I recycle even when it’s not convenient.”
2. “Most of my batteries are rechargeable.”
3. “I do not own any personal watercraft, aircraft or a Hummer.”

The first two are pretty reasonable; it’s hard to dispute the validity that these minor efforts make a small but positive difference to the environment. For the third, many of us could continue in that vain and declare: “I don’t own or operate any smelting plants”; “I never have drained a lake for commercial profit”; “I have never caused a major spill of crude oil”; and so forth. Other people—perhaps very worthy and environmentally heroic people—might balk at the third, particularly if they live or cottage on an island.

Many Facebook greenies, however, would argue that environmentally responsible people live in urban areas—yes, seriously—because that way they can walk instead of drive. Curiously, they also want to eat local fresh produce; I’m not sure where it comes from, since you get extra points for: “I don't have a yard, or it has only local, low maintenance [sic] vegetation.” Low-maintenance? How does less work in the garden equal a better environment? Because gardening makes you breathe a little heavier and exhale more carbon dioxide?

I suspect the push for smaller gardens by these urban-dwellers—who are also vegans, wear second-hand clothing as a badge of honour and pledge to have no more than one child each—stems from a disdain for lawn grass.

Lawns, if you hadn’t heard, are evil. Forget the extreme usefulness of turf grass in designing an outdoor space that is peaceful, cool and useable. According to the greenies, lawns use up too much water, require chemical treatments and are a monoculture. Of course, many folks don’t put chemicals on their lawns or even water them. And as for the monoculture argument: if you aren’t chemically weeding your lawn it almost certainly contains a wide diversity of species, and besides, monoculture areas are quite common in nature. What’s more, as green plants, lawns process carbon dioxide and cool the air. They also absorb and filter rainwater. And they stand up to foot traffic better than any other plant you’d probably care to cultivate.

Nonetheless, somehow Kentucky bluegrass got voted Canada’s Worst Weed by CBC Radio One listeners. It was up against Canada thistle and leafy spurge, two weeds so invasive they threaten farmers’ livelihood. It made the list ahead of poison ivy and field bindweed, two weeds so invasive they threaten gardeners’ sanity. Perhaps the farmers and gardeners were busy farming and gardening, leaving the majority vote to the childless ideologues in their loft condos.

There’s more.

We’re not supposed to travel long distances anymore because flying makes too many greenhouse gasses. I always thought visiting other countries helped one develop a wider world view which might, I dunno, make us less likely go to war or something.

We’re not supposed to do laundry in hot water, even though it keeps whites white and kills bacteria. We’re not supposed to dry clothes in a dryer, even though line-dried linens are torture for sufferers of hay fever. We’re not supposed to purchase Mexican produce in the dead of winter even though Mexican labourers cannot survive if they cannot sell what they grow.

Maybe this isn’t what you’d expect from the editorial message at the front of our Living Green issue. But the truth is, I’m worried about the environment because of all the ridiculous chastisement. Environmentalism is a great thing, but it is starting to overshadow a lot of other great things. What we’re hearing from so many corners is that we should do things that range from the really uncomfortable to the implausible to the impossible.

Here’s what we need to do, as individuals, to live green, and it’s not new: we need to think about our actions and weigh our options for a reasonable outcome. We each need to trust our intelligence and not simply assume that if something is difficult to do it must be for the best, that suffering is noble, and that the product with the greenest label is superior.

We need a balanced approach to environmentalism to keep it sustainable. I hope you find a balanced approach in these pages.

Editorial from Ontario Gardener Living Harvest 2007.

Ontario Gardener Quiz #85

True or false?

1. The Latin name of a plant is important.

2. Carl von Linne developed the binomial system of plant names in 1753.

3. Alba, luteus, purpureus and rosea all refer to colours.

4. If you need small shrubs, look for plants with nana in the name.

5. If you prefer native species, favour the specific epithet canadensis.

6. Rubrum, coccineus and amur all refer to the colour red.

7. Rosa rugosa is so-named because it is hardy or rugged.

8. Plants with the specific epithet sylvestris were discovered by the Italian monk Sylvester.

9. A plant with officinalis in its name is the true species.

10. The specific epithet reptans means “creeping”, like a reptile.

Answers

1. Hmmm… I’m going to go with true. While the garden-variety gardener may be happy referring to that orange plant as a marigold, the horticultural community needs to be able to distinguish whether it is Calendula or Tagetes, two completely different plants commonly called marigold. Latin naming conventions have the advantages of crossing language barriers, and while it may seem like nobody can understand the names, in fact they are very descriptive, as much of this quiz will demonstrate.

2. True. The question isn’t meant as a history lesson but as an entry to say a little more about the binomial system. “Binomial” means “two-name”, and the two names are the Genus—which refers to the general kind of plant, like Rosa for rose, and is capitalized—and the specific (as in species) epithet (name), which is the specific type of plant, written all lower-case. The great thing about the specific epithet is that it is an adjective: it describes the plant, so sometimes you can get a good idea what a plant looks like just from hearing its Latin name. For example, Rosa grandiflora is a large-flowered rose. Sometimes, though, the specific epithet gives information about where a species is from or who discovered it; you can’t tell from the name Rosa chinensis what the size or colour of a Chinese rose is. Neither does the title Viburnum davidii tell you much about the form of that flowering shrub named in honour of French Jesuit and plant egghead Armand David.

3. True. Any flower with the name alba will be white, luteus will be yellow, purpureus will be purple and rosea will be pink.

4. True. Nana means dwarf; you don’t find nana as the specific epithet in modern cultivars very often, though; it is more common as part of the variety name and frequently seen with aurea, which means chartreuse. Two dwarf golden shrubs that have sold well in the last couple of years are the barberry Berberis thunbergii var. aurea nana and the false cypress Thuja orientalis var. aurea nana.

5. True. Canadensis means “of Canada”. Mind you, if you are particular about how native a plant is, the canadensis tag won’t tell you if a plant is from British Columbia, the prairies or Peterborough. But you can know that Aquilegia canadensis, for instance, is the pretty woodland columbine native to Canada.

6. False. Rubrum and coccineus both mean red, but amur refers to the Amur River in Asia. Of course, many plantsmen would guess that amur means red because of the Amur maple, which turns a wonderful fiery shade in autumn. Strangely enough, though, the botanical name for Amur maple is Acer ginnala, not Acer amur. Stranger still: I cannot find the meaning of the specific epithet ginnala anywhere.

7. False. Rugosa roses are generally hardier than hybrid teas, but rugosa means “wrinkled” and refers to the leaves.

8. False. The Latin sylvestris means “woodland”, as in Mentha sylvestris (wild mint).

9. False. It’s only in common parlance that plants need to be distinguished as “true” or “false”, as in a “true grass” (member of the Gramineae or Poaceae family, unlike, say, sedges) or “false sunflower”. Officinalis is used to distinguish a plant of use to humans; it is often the specific epithet for culinary herbs, as with Salvia officinalis (common sage) or medicinal herbs, as with Calendula officinalis (pot marigold). It isn’t always obvious why a species gets the epithet officinalis, as with the common peony Paeonia officinalis.

10. True. Sometimes you just can’t make this stuff up!

8-10 correct: Suma cum laude!
5-7 correct: Cum laude.
Fewer than 5 correct: It’s all Greek to you, isn’t it?

The Japanese maple is dying

My Japanese maple is dying. It is the one thing in my garden I consider irreplaceable.

For one thing, I don’t know the name of the variety, so I actually cannot replace it. I recall that it was a Japanese name, possibly starting with shi-, but I haven’t been able to locate it online. It’s a magnificent tree, with spring leaves almost pink, turning to green for the summer then to orangey-red in the fall.
We put it in about five years ago, after removing the dilapidated old garage—a denizen den after hours—from our back yard and installing a proper fence and a little pergola. I went shopping at Weall and Cullen and found the tree and justified the huge price tag on the basis that my husband’s birthday wasn’t far off and he likes Japanese maples. I brought it home and put out my back planting it by myself. David liked it so much he didn’t even press me to reveal the price.

I suppose I can rationalize my connection to the tree by pointing out that it signifies a second phase of my garden. The first phase, with the garden built out of old cinder blocks and broken concrete, filled with plant cuttings from my mother’s Winnipeg garden, was lovely in its youthful exuberance: a riot of experiments in herbaceous colour, all backed by the appalling garage. This second phase is more educated, somewhat better planned. The Phase 1 garden was a laboratory; Phase 2 is a place to stop and breathe.

I’m not saying I got it all right the second time around. I hate the gangly four-in-one apple tree I planted at the same time as the Japanese maple. The patch of lawn next to the barbecue has long-since become a packed mud floor. The raised patio under the pergola is just a little too small for a dining table. Even the beloved Japanese maple would look better turned about 70 degrees; once I wrenched my back hefting it into the hole, no adjustments were in the offing.

But bringing the maple home was one thing I definitely did right. It is a thing of beauty all year ‘round. There may be weeds and frazzled blooms everywhere, but all eyes turn to that superb tree in all its pink, green or red glory.

And now it is in decline. I believe it is full of verticillium wilt, a soil-based fungal death knell for maple trees. Every few days, a branchlet of leaves curls up and dries out. I cut off the dead parts and clean my tools, offer more water and something of a prayer, but it is all too little too late. I should have kept it better watered last year and the year before; the best cure for verticillium is prevention through excellent cultural practices. The only thing my own cultural practices have prevented is a long life for my beloved tree. Japanese maples don’t appreciate tough love.

I tell David, “oh, it’s probably just getting scorched by the sun since we cut the ballerina rose back,” to give him hope while preparing him for the worst. The tree is dying. The tree will be dead soon.

I have children and a dog, so I cannot reasonably compare the decline to losing a child or even a pet—this death does not begin to hint at that level of pain. Yet my sense of hopelessness and loss is entirely real, and not quite like anything else I’ve felt before.

The mid-century American poet William Carlos Williams, who was also a doctor and a gardener, understood the human connection to plants. His poems, though very modern, are as filled with references and odes to specific flowers as anything by Wordsworth. He imagined and understood the character of different flowers and trees. My own current sadness reminds me of his poem “The Stolen Peonies” from the collection Pictures from Brueghel. It goes, in part, like this:

that year
we had the magnificent
stand of peonies

how happy we were
with them
but one night

they were stolen
we shared the
loss together thinking

of nothing else for
a whole day
nothing could have

brought us closer
we had been
married ten years

Now, this is a happy blog and it is summer; I cannot possibly end on a note of sadness, so I will end with hope and promise.This week I went to Vineland Nursery in Beamsville (Niagara) and brought back a trunk-load of exciting new things including a Taxodium, a Dr Seuss tree called Sciadopitys, a pagoda dogwood and a variegated dawn redwood. Yeah, a redwood. My little city lot is about to become an arboretum. Now that’s hopeful!

Published in Ontario Gardener Living vol. 8 no. 2
Copyright Pegasus Publications Inc, 2007