Red Cedar
More apocalypse, less angst
End of season goodness
So much happening since I last posted here, but almost none of it in the garden now that the October rains have started falling. Just before that happened, I managed to get my permanent raspberry “telegraph” posts in, and scored a major haul of plants out of the yard of a friend whose rental house has been sold and is being flattened. I don’t have pictures of it all yet, but we came away with:
- several large bamboo plants (which I’m using as a natural fence against where my angry neighbour lives)
- two hostas
- two blueberry plants (which I have to find room for)
- some raspberry cane
- some irises
- several rosemary plants
- a mahonia
- a heavenly bamboo (nandina)
- chives & parsely
Not to mention a bunch of bricks that we’ve used to complete the edging in our boulevard garden. The generosity of our friend Dave (who owns Elemental Gardens) was just outstanding to us, and I’m excited to see the results come spring as our new plants take hold and flourish. For now we’ve planted the bamboo in containers, but come spring we plant to get an old bathtub and sink it along the fence line in order to contain the plants from running into our (angry) neighbour’s yard.
In other news, on Tuesday night we made our final presentation on the Boulevards Alive! project to the community board who gave us the grant. I’m going to post the photos shortly from that project even though many of the gardens are still in progress because we are technically “completed” now that the money is spent. The board members were really congratulatory on our project and in particular, B made a very eloquent speech about how it was unifying to our community, which they appreciated quite a lot. We’re thinking that perhaps we might put in for another grant next year and I am thinking of perhaps approaching the parks board about putting in a community orchard in Clinton Park. This is a take-off on the community gardens idea, and would be a fruit/nut orchard of about 10 trees (or more) to be tended by the community closest by. We’ll see if there is any uptake on such an idea in our neighbourhood in the upcoming months. Once I’m done with the union work I’m engaged in this fall I’m going to be turning my focus back to the community for some hands-in-the-dirt healing.
Our vows of commitment.
Megan, today, among these much-loved friends and comrades, all I want is to shout my love for you, affirm my commitment to building a life with you, and celebrate this big thing we have made and continue to make.
This is not just about vows, not about the many promises and agreements that underpin any relationship. This is about a huge and always huger love, the work we have done to make a partnership of caring, of every day, of small gestures to build intimacy, of that positivity that builds on itself. Our little promises and rituals, of coffee and reading aloud, of special books and dinner-parties, Sunday lie-ins and breakfast in bed. These, for me, are the everyday commitment, the ways we renew and re-invigorate this love as our daily life. And if there is one promise that seems to me most important, it is my promise to keep building such little moments with you, to find a way every day to renew our intimacy.
For large parts of my life, the defining factors were violence and struggle. There were communities of resistance, sure – and some strong, hopeful communities of resistance. And I learned from them and lived with them and they shaped me and inspired me. But never really convinced me. There was only the war. There was escaping that war, fighting that war, denying that war. But nothing beyond it. And that’s not a place conducive to love. Not a place conducive to growing, to joy. But it’s where I lived most of my life, such that I didn’t really believe there was more to the world. Read More
Home again!
And by home, I mean my web home red-cedar.ca is working, and pointing in the right direction again. For some reason, it took CIRA ten days to process my domain changes – but patience paid off and without too much aggravation my whois entry was quietly changed this morning.
I am just coming off of an amazing weekend of love and connection – the second wedding/commitment party for Brian and I, held at our home in Vancouver. While I want to write more about both weddings, I will for the moment say that each was its own perfect event for its own perfect reason and we are still basking in the glow of it all. Due to some requests, I will be posting the vows that we exchanged Saturday here shortly. Photos will come tomorrow once I have a chance to sort some of that out.
I am also attempting to recover from a very bad bout of bronchitis that started early last week and is still plaguing me as I travel to Victoria for the night. I’m just at the start of five weeks of bargaining ratification meetings and I’m really not feeling all that peppy about it given my rattling cough and sleep disruption of the past ten days.
That’s the brief update, and I am so glad to be fully back online. Surprising how attached I have become to having a blog in a particular place!
Charting new horizons.
Surprise, surprise. All this running around lately has come to a grinding halt as I cozy up on my couch with a bad cough and an unrelated toothache. If it was just one or the other, I might have made it to work, but I’m feeling sapped at the moment. Really drained. Dead tired. And so I’m doing email and reading and attempting to heal myself quietly for the day.
It’s been a really crazy time since I went to Ottawa on collective bargaining business, came back to get married, and then hurried back to Ottawa again. I’ve had garden clean-up to get to, visitors, angry union members, and heavy workload to contend with as I try to catch up from what was an unexpected foray into contract negotiations. And in all honesty, I’m not particularly happy about the abruption of it all. I had planned my wedding, fall visiting and food security workshops around the fact I didn’t have any big union commitments scheduled – that it was perhaps the last fallow period before bargaining started again the early winter for me to plan some actual living around…. And out of nowhere, it was all been turned upside down.
Now I’m not bothered to be resentful about that, because I did say yes when the phone call came and I should have known better, but it has underscored a realization I’ve been coming to for awhile: I’m just not cut out for this life of union politics and continual travel. And I don’t mean that in the I’m a big wimp kinda way. I mean in the way that there are too many other things I would rather be doing right now than facing down angry people, or sitting at boardroom tables discussing the specifics of severance pay buy-outs.
Like what you ask? Well, hiking, canning, spending time with my family, gardening, working in my community, going to the gym, reading books, writing creatively, and most of all…. working towards another degree or some other education. Which is something I have been itching after for awhile, but with the tuition benefit at SFU attached to B’s job, it’s become just that much more possible. Or at least, the economic barrier has been reduced some what.
So I’ve got two months of a pretty hellish schedule ahead, doing ratification votes around the lower mainland, on the island and in the interior – but should this agreement pass muster with the membership? Well the next two years I had set aside for bargaining are now open for me to do something else with (our normal bargaining process takes 18-24 months, the agreement I just worked on was part of an exceptional and expedited process). And I think I know just the graduate degree program I want to go with.
So I’m working on my applications and lining up references because for once I’m not going to talk myself out of the process before I even get to the gate – and because this program is exactly what type of education I’m looking for right now: inquiry-based, interdisciplinary and aimed at the mature (working) student. Plus it’s situated at the downtown campus which is three blocks from my office.
Really, I’m using it as the light at the end of the tunnel right now. The chance to move onto something that serves the intellectual part of me for awhile. After several really intensive years of union responsibility, I’m feeling the need for a little space to re-evaluate, and re-prioritize. Where I used to feel that I was gaining a lot from my union work, I now feel like I am missing out on too much. How is it that we find the balance in these things?
In the Bookshed: Meditation & the Art of Beekeeping
Meditation & the Art of Beekeeping
Author: Mark McGill
Publisher: The Ivy Press (October 31, 2010)
ISBN-10: 1907332391
ISBN-13: 978-1907332395
Meditation and the Art of Beekeeping is a charming little volume (only 144 pages) that works on the theme of observation. That is, observation as developed through meditative practice, and observation as used in connecting to the world of bees as an apiarist (beekeeper). Connected through anecdotes and character sketches of his teachers, Mark McGill layers instruction in both beekeeping and meditation throughout, using the structure of seasons both literally (in the case of bees) and figuratively (in the case of developing mindfulness).
Brief and yet reflective, this tract does not attempt to provide a “how-to” for the beginning beekeeper, but an approach to the responsibilities of those who tend to earth’s creatures.
In the first chapter, McGill lays out this thesis:
For a bee-keeper, the challenge is to avoid causing suffering, for both the bee-keeper and the bees. As a bee-keeper, there is also a question of accepting responsibility for the welfare of the bees under my care. How do I avoid causing suffering and carry out my responsibilities? I face the same questions as a father, a husband, a son, a citizen. One way would be to understand why our best-laid plans often seem to go wrong……
Like any task, bee-keeping requires attention, observation and a willingness to learn. From that comes knowledge, skill and accomplishment. What then stands in the way of that? On one level it can be inattention, a lack of observation and a closed mind….. This is where meditation comes in.
This theme, and this tranquil writing style, carries the reader through the four seasons to understand some of the perils and pleasures in beekeeping, and what various observations might tell the beekeeper about hive health and productivity. The zen parables throughout underscore the importance of training the mind, while the meditation instruction gives some practical insight into how to cultivate this state of being.
Really, it’s an interesting instructional combination, guiding the reader towards increasing understanding and appreciation of the natural world, its critters and its cycles. The book itself is attractive and approachable, making it a precious gift for the beekeepers and Buddhists alike.
Red Cedar 