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.)

Solstice 2013 Wreck Beach Mandala

Little Helpers

 'Mandala' is a Sanskrit word which means 'circle.' A circle can be defined as an 'integrated structure organized around a unifying centre.' (That's from my book, The Mandala Book: Patterns of the Universe,  by Lori Bailey Cunningham.)  Both mandalas and circles are found in sacred art all around the world, and throughout nature.

This beach mandala happened this
evening on Wreck Beach, famous for naked people and sheer bliss.

When I make beach mandalas, I follow a few simple rules:

I must only use materials found onsite.

Um, I think that's the only rule.

Oh ya: and anyone who wants to help is welcome.

This time, I placed the most delicate
materials at the centre of the mandala and worked outward with increasingly sturdy bits. The rugged seaworthy bush in the background (must look that up) is slightly prickly and pungent, and part of the perimeter.

By the time the wild roses, feathers and beach grasses were in place, I had a troop of little helpers scouring the dunes for bark and driftwood. Here they are, pushing the final berm of sand into place. I also had a lovely gentleman of the discreetly naked variety drift by with a rose, a bit of driftwood.

So fun.
Try making one, somewhere. Doesn't have to be on a beach. I'd love it if mandalas starting appearing everywhere.

Happy Solstice.

Sun and Rain...

 A few pics from the days before Summer Solstice...



A President Kennedy (methinks) purple hybrid tea rose at Sue & Hugh's... with Oriental poppies and an equally purple variety of Sidalcea behind...












'Lollipop' lilies appearing in a burst of stars through a rain-weighted billow of Centranthus ruber ... in my own garden...

...and a Papaver somniferum, originally from Bowen Island, that reseeded  in my herb  circle...saving itself for a sunnier day. Everybody's grandma grew these opium poppies for poppyseed cake and the full-skirted blooms in the old-timey days. I love how everything has crept around this year, emerging in natural rearrangements around the front garden.

Journeyperson Landscape Horticulturist = Journeywoman Gardener

I have a new credential floating beside my garden self as of March 2013. I passed the national Red Seal Trade exam for Landscape Horticulture, making me a certified Journeyperson. What a mouthful. I in fact prefer to call myself a Journeywoman Gardener, which sounds super.

To the right is a fuzzy pic of the Level 4 Apprenticeship class at Kwantlen Polytechnic out in Langley. I am the fuzzy person in the orange vest on the far left.

All of this came together rather suddenly in the fall of 2012. I decided I wanted a horticultural update, looked around, and discovered I could 'ladder' into the Kwantlen Landscape Horticulture Apprenticeship program, thanks to my previous schooling and experience.

Usually, apprentices work for a mentor and attend 6 weeks of schooling in the winter over 4 years. Because I was already certified through Capilano College, Kwantlen gave me credit for the first two levels of the apprenticeship. By luck, levels 3 and 4 were being offered back-to-back in January through March. Perfect--I could get it all done in one swoop!

Then I was able to contact all my old employers and mentors to sign off on my work experience with them, and together with a signed affidavit stating my self-employed hours, I fulfilled more than the required work experience hours (equivalent to 4 years full-time). It was also a pleasure reconnecting with my original employers and sharing perspective and  philosophies about the industry.

So it wasn't until mid-December that I was set to go: study for 3 months (which my not-so-inner-plant-nerd was particularly excited about) through my off-season, in preparation for the Red Seal exam at the end of Level 4.

In a final cosmic push, my longtime clients Jim & Wren spontaneously offered to lend me their 1992 Toyota Corolla to carry me the 50 km to Langley on the #1 Highway every day!  It's hard to describe how grateful I was and am for this generous gesture. Just grateful. Carrying it forward.

And so I have emerged from the experience, officially 'Sealed.' Ork ork.

Shared-House & Garden Fast-Forward

I'm back. Really.

I've missed you, Blog, and mystery blog-friends, and not-so-mysterious blog-friends.

A lot has happened in this interlude from blogging, which probably explains the interlude from blogging.

I think I've had a crash-course in humanity, as I forge through the second year of setting up camp and garden in Osborne House.

 I think I'm a slightly more ragged, simultaneously toughened and tenderized version of myself. I like me better.

When I 'inherited' the lease here, I had to work double-time to create a space I could...wanted... and loved to live in.  I wanted this place to be awesome so badly it became a bit of a mantra through the tough times, when I had to make hard decisions. I still say awesome way too much.

The first year was really fun...but waaay more of a roller coaster than than this second year. I've learned a few things. My current housemates are a rock-climbing punk, a gypsy pie-maker, and literate bon-vivant--all of whom have been here for more than 9 months. (The literate bon-vivant has been here almost as long as I have.)

Shared living is awesome. Never boring.

And the garden.
I adore the garden.
I am shamelessly in love with the garden.

This garden brought me back from Ghana--where I'd spent years investing love and hope and sheer energy into a house and a garden and a family who are still there. This garden brought my energy back here. Thanks, garden!

All of these pictures are from 2012--the year gone by in blog-less-ness.

I divided bits from clients' gardens.
I planted from seed,  bought and shared.
I rescued and revived what was here.
I bought myself a rose, and herbs for the herb garden.

Tea in the garden before work, every morning.
Bare feet out the door.