On the Back Patio at Bean Around the World

Last year, I started helping Barney beautify the back patio of the Bean Around the World in West Van. This was super, considering my lifetime secret desire to work at a coffee shop, which I never actually have done. Strange.

Bean had been my longtime pitstop--ever since I pedalled by as the bicycle-gardener and leaned my bicycle on the tree out front on Marine Drive for a half-way cuppa en route to clients down the winding road. Bean seems to be the place where the 'real people' pitstop in West Van--the workers, the poets, the daily philosophers. Or maybe you just feel 'real' when you drop in, because there are familiar faces and a small-town well-worn laugh-lines feel to the place. In any case, I was secretly happy to be asked--specifically, Barney said, because I operate in such an original way and he likes weirdos. (He didn't really put it that way :)

By this time, I was scooting around on the Ruck and had to pull in around back, like so. 

(Aw, there's my little red scooter, predecessor to my little white scooter. An aside.) It probably took a while, but I inevitably met Cec, the old guy who always sat around back with friends or with whoever was seated on the apple crates or miniature set of wooden furniture that Barney eventually set out by the dumpster for smokers and their ilk.

Everyone talked to Cec. He was the 'good morning' guy--the guy who gave you your first smile of the day after you left your house. When I pulled up on the scoot, he always waved me in and offered to watch my gear while I went in to grab a coffee. He created an atmosphere of comraderie on the back steps.

I worked with Barney, planning the plantings while he ripped down the old arbour, found new planters and painted patio furniture a driftwood shade of gray.

The day we shopped and brought in the carefully selected plants--a new Japanese maple, a Japanese Umbrella Pine (Sciadopytis), Spanish lavender, new grasses and flowers, and somewhat strangely, squash plants I'd grown from seeds from my mom--Cec was there to supervise. When I planted the maple in its sleek new gray square planter, Cec placidly offered to steady it by the trunk while I packed in the soil. It was natural for him to have a hand in the process. It was his patio after all.

 The squash grew down to the ground over the 

summer. People were curious and delighted and picked the fruit. In late summer, the vines mildewed and we cut them off. Eventually, I dug out the spent annuals and planted daffodil bulbs for spring, decorating the boxes with willow switches, fir boughs, and holly for Christmas. I don't have a picture of that.

Then I dove into school for three months over the winter, and one day when the winter rains paused I thought I'd better check on the daffodils, and scooted by to clear the old evergreen boughs from the emerging shoots. Cec was the first person I saw.

One of the best parts of being a gardener is coming back in the spring to familiar faces--plants and humans. Part of you realizes that you are a sign of spring yourself. After an intense winter of studying and computers and rainy highways, there was extra delight in seeing Cec there again, overseeing the back patio plants and humans.

And then, one morning in May, half-way through the week, I arrived to no Cec on the step.  When I arrived at the counter Barney told me that we'd all lost Cec that past Monday. I gaped. I ran to the bathroom for a tear. Barney gave me a hug.

Cec had had a heart attack in the line up to Air Care, and had passed away before he reached the hospital.

Later this June, Cec's family and friends gathered on the back patio for his memorial. That's when I got the photo of him that I have on the fridge.

That's when we all realized how involved Cec had been at the coffee shop--how he'd helped staff open in the morning, showed the new kids where things were. That's when we learned he'd been  rugby player and a janitor and a coach, and how he'd always been great with kids and humans in general. 

Up on the deck, Cec's longtime friends sat on real furniture, drinking coffee. Down by the dumpster, in a circle of apple crates on the parking lot, the young staff and Barney and the dumpster-philosophers gathered.

And when we planted up the patio in May, both Barney and I paused to agree that Cec sure would have liked to have been there. 

Bean here. Bean missed.

(That's Crocosmia 'Lucifer' in the planters. Glorious.)