i’ve been spending a lot of time outside these days, weeding, planting, growing, more weeding, tending to the vines, mowing, watering and then more mowing. i’ve been surveying my little yard, planning already for next year. sometimes i wonder what it would have been like to move into a house that didn’t need the considerable amount of work that our house and yard needed, still needs but then i think what would be the fun in that.
there is something about taking a long neglected piece of property and slowly over time with a little money (always more than you think) and a whole lot of sweat equity (always more than you think) watch it become the dream inside your head, the beauty it was meant to be, the potential that always existed.
i have grande plans for my little plot of land and most of them include getting rid of all the lawn because at the end of the day, its just not good for the environment, its not natural and the amount of upkeep required is not worth it. So I plan and I dig. We have decided to wait until fall spring to build our deck as we want to spend a little more and go the route of trex instead of wood. Its environmentally friendly and beautiful and maintenance free. An all round winner really. We are also hoping to find some reclaimed brick and reuse it to create a large patio as well as replacing the concrete slab sidewalk with brick.
I envision a backyard loaded with plants and flowers, roses and daisies and all sorts of assorted beauties, boxes filled with vegetables and herbs with trees at the back and long tall sunflowers dancing in the breeze. I also want a hammock so I can swing my august days away with a good book and something fruity.
I’m not there yet because these things take time and a lot of work but I will be because I’m working on it, one small plant at a time. Our season is so incredibly short that it almost seems like a futile endeavour given the amount of time we spend hibernating under snow but I think that gives me all the more reason to explode the yard with colour and beauty during our short season of life.
hmmmm. now that i think about it, i think we are all like gardens really and for some reason that makes me smile. we plan and evolve and slowly grow and beauty springs forth as we live this season of life that we create.
“This planet has — or rather had — a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn’t the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.” (douglas adams)
five more sleeps until i am offically on vacation. two weeks of blissfully cubicle free existance. i am on the edge of my seat over here. i have two weeks of waking up, stretching and padding to the kitchen for a leisurely cup of coffee and breakfast as sunbeams dance across the dust bunnies on my wood floor. screeeeeeeeeeeeeeeech.
what is that? a mouse. aiiiiiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeee.
okay. its true. not much phases me these days but apparently a mouse has the ability to turn me into a cliche. jumping up on a chair screaming and shaking and hopping up and down. sad but true. we left the back door open while hanging out in the yard with friends and ta da we have a mouse. whoops!
though we have strategically placed humane mouse traps filled with peanut butter around the house, it has yet to take the bait and last night while the three of us sat around watching a movie, it skittered across the living room floor yet again.
Duke’s response: yawn
Aiden’s response: he’s sooo cute … can we keep him?
Me: fear frozen like a statue
ugh.
the mouse must be gone before my vacation … i will not let a mouse rob me of much needed rest and relaxation. i am sure that the mouse and i have the same intent, to get him out of my house and back into the outdoors where he belongs … i am sure he has a nest of compadres wondering where on earth he has gotten too, thinking a cat or a hawk must have swooped down and chomped him … but no mickey is freely roaming my house as i type this, thankfully i am not there at the moment …
in other news, if all goes as expected by the end of my vacation, the outdoor trim on our house which is in a sad state of peeling will be painted a lovely shade of light green and our new stairs will be stained a lovely shade of green. if i am really ambitious, our kitchen cupboards will be painted a soft shade (pei sky) of blue and they will be sporting new hardware. i will have a new front loader wash machine, excitement and will have managed to dig up more of my yard. i know it sounds a bit non-relaxing but following my vacation i am shooting two weddings, two weekends in a row and then am attending two weddings two weekends in a row and then summer will be tilting her head good-bye as fall’s cool air enters. i really want to have some projects done so i can relax into the winter season.
and
i will be having visitors. special visitors. blog love girl visitors. now that is exciting.
linni is actually here in Alberta right now … its amazing to me that her parents are living in the town where i grew up, in the town where my parents live and in a blink of an eye, she will be showing up on my doorstep and i will get to hug her in person. how cool is that? so amazingly cool considering she lives so incredibly far away. i still remember the first lovely and beautiful email this oh so kind and giving friend sent me. she is a jewel and i get to meet her. sigh.
no-one ever comes here … off in the middle of nowwhere and yet she is not the only blogger coming through this way … i also get to meet the oh so lovely and kind jill who incidently will be here while i am vacation as well. i can’t wait to hang out with her, drink some tea and take some photos. you know, she is almost famous and a total rock star or at least the folks at the lush that i shop at think so … i think so too! i feel so lucky that i have met such warm giving people over this new fangled internet thang!
and i know what you are thinking. not one but two bloggers are going to be in edmonton, alberta. wha?? but if that is not enough, there is a third, the oh so adventurous karen who is driving from north carolina all the way to anchorage, alaska and of course if you are driving to alaska, it only makes sense to drive through edmonton. its true, we are on the way to alaska and every time i head out to the rocky mountains, i am tempted to take the turn off to alaska. every single time. it appears that she is also coming through during my vacation as it turns out so will be able to spend some time with her on her latest adventure.
now if only i can get the mouse out of the house. all would be wonderful. if anyone has any tips, please let me know because this girly girl (apparently) can use all the help she can get.
“Our birthdays are feathers in the broad wing of time.” (jean paul richter)
(my blog is a part of me)
dear blog,
five years ago today, i wrote my first post. i mean really what is there to say to you that hasn’t already been said on you during the past five years?
i had no idea what i was doing and i had no idea that it would last this long, that you would evolve as you have, that you would lead me to create photoblogs and flickr sites and then force me to learn html and css and help me discover blogger and handcoding and typepad and movable type and wordpress. i had no idea you would open up opportunities for photoshows and publications. i had no idea that strangers would come and read my words and that some of those strangers would turn into friends and that those friendships would be so incredibly meaningful and caring.
i feel pretty grateful to have this little room of my own, this place to express myself and connect with others and so my dear little blog … i would like to wish you a happy birthday … thank you for being you!
xoxo
dar (aka daisies)
p.s.
a super talented writer friend of mine is doing a wonderful series on women bloggers and she interviewed me for contribution among a whole lot of very cool women bloggers. i am find the interview fascinating and i am amazed at how much the blogging world has grown and continues to grow. i am glad this interview is running on your birthday, it somehow feels fitting.
I was a high school drop-out, high on this and that and yes plenty of those too. I worked a 12 hour shift as a desk clerk at a motel on the edge of town that catered to oil field workers or as we called them and they called themselves, rig pigs where I had to remember to turn on the porno movies at a certain hour. I worked an 6-8 hour waitressing shift at a restaurant in town and yes, I realize that left me a grand total of 4 free hours of which to party my ass off but my weekends were free for drunken escapades and wild bush parties, naked beach running into cool waters under moonlight acid trips.
(i can’t believe i am sharing this!!)
I was in the process of leaving my boyfriend of a couple of years for what would become my new boyfriend and having a bit of fun flirting with this one and that one.
I was working my way through shakespeare and enjoying all the philosophy books I could get my hands on. I had a lot of time to read during those long 12 hour nights manning the night shift.
15 years ago
I was living in the city (as us small town homies like to call it) and working on my english degree in university. I had hung up my lifeguarding flippers to work as a morning baker at a convenient store called happy mart (it was filled with other university students and was indeed quite happy) and was done work by 2:00 pm every day giving me plenty of time to plan my wedding and hang out with my fiance.
I had left the previous boyfriend for the shiny new fiance not quite a year before. I had just moved out of a house of many shared accomodations, it seemed the party had come to an end and moved into a high rise apartment in the heart of downtown.
(gosh, i had abs back then ~ this was just before i dyed my hair blonde)
My hair was dyed blonde and my skin was a lovely shade of brown and I looked a bit like a barbie doll having somehow managed to abandon my hippy ways and my red hair. It was my one and only stint as a blonde and I found it extremely annoying that I was suddenly being hit on right left and centre. I was bouncy happy and a little freaked out by all the sudden changes.
10 years ago
My son turned four (did I mention that I got pregnant on my wedding night?) that July and I we had just moved into a big two story house in a beautiful neighbourhood near the university. We had a big old apple tree and a boat and a car and I was happily back to my red hair and patched jean hippy ways. I wasn’t even freaking out about turning 30 as I was happily working on my education degree, working here and there as an admin assistant and enjoying my family. I was doing a writing workshop and spewing poetry to whomever would listen and was writing a play which was later performed at our city’s fringe festival.
(technically, this was taken when i was 31, about a year in a half from this point but i think it represents the period well)
I biked everywhere and did yoga 3 nights a week. I even purchased rollarblades and enjoyed blading to school and around. I would get drunk on too much beer and wine, friends and laughter, intellectual discourse and chattering banality and loved to walk barefoot along the dew danced grassy side of sidewalks from the Avenue to home. Looking back, I can see that it was quite the idyllic summer and I couldn’t have predicted at this point that it was all going to fall apart though I can see the frayed edges if I look closely and see how lonely and confused I felt inside.
five years ago
A lot can happen in five years as it turns out.
I was living in the downstairs of an upstairs/downstairs house with my a son who had just turned nine. My landlord lived upstairs and she too was divorced and sharing custody with her ex-husband and she had three boys all around my son’s age. In fact our little street was quite the divorce central and filled with boys running up and down the yards, playing street hockey and enjoying the end of our street which turned into a ravine and led to all kinds of parks.
I should have been reeling by the fact that in five short years, I had been separated, discovered myself as a single woman, danced through the dating scene and ended up engaged to a boy nine years younger than me. I had watched my sister die and decided that I couldn’t get married again and then somehow ended up in a relationship again.
I had been dating my love, duke, for nine months and we were so completely committed to each other that we had just moved in together. My ex-husband had a house about 12 blocks away and my ex-fiance lived 3 blocks away. I somehow managed to stay friends with all involved. I had just gotten a promotion from research assistant to project coordinator and was managing a major fund and flying here and there and there and here.
I was contemplating quitting smoking but wasn’t quite there yet. I had been making a few fun project films and was craving still life so I had just ordered a brand new sony dsc-f717 camera which was the best digital that I could afford at the time.
Oh and … *blush* as of tomorrow, I posted my very first post though I had really no idea what the heck a blog even was … my first time
3 years ago
I was still living in the upstairs/downstairs trying desperately to save to buy a house of our own. My son, had just turned 11 and duke and I were so very much in love and so very happy together.
I had quit smoking for a year and was really into photography, it became my new addiction and I shot with every kind of film camera I could get my hands on.
(photo by paul ‘duke’ paetz)
That July, I shot my first roll of medium format film in my holga.
I was contacted about having one of my photographs published in a book and there was discussion of a photo show. I shot my first band photo shoot, all in film I might add as I was pretty much shooting exculsively in film in those days.
I took my first helicopter ride and spent 2 fun filled weeks road tripping across southern alberta with my boys. It was an amazing wonderful summer.
one year ago
My son officially became a teenager, hello 13. We celebrated the fact that we had been in our very own house for a year now and we were enjoying our first garden. It had been just over a year since our beautiful twin boys had died in our arms and we were still feeling fragile but were doing a lot of talking. We headed to the coast and vancouver island to spend some time with Duke’s brother who had lung cancer and are glad that we did as he passed away in October. We spent a lot of time reading buddhist texts and discussing whether we would try and have another baby.
I learned how to twist up jewelry and we decided to become vegan. we spent a couple of beautiful whirlwind days with my best friend and her beautiful family as we met up in Victoria.
and we were also lucky to meet up with another beautiful talented jen for breakfast.
yesterday
I worked through lunch, worked through coffee breaks but managed to make a whole lot of headway with the papers on my desk. I have less than two weeks before vacation so am trying to get things in order. I biked to work and biked home in the burning hot sun. I watered our garden and flowers and marveled at how far we have come with it all. We went to bed early because I was exhausted and listened to the rain pour down as lightning lit the sky from the wide open windows and the breeze lulled me to sleep as the fresh scent of grass and trees and flowers fragranced the first good night sleep I have had in days.
Today
I am not working through coffee, clearly, and am doing this fun meme that I found on a lovely friend’s blog. This morning I biked through the most incredible storm light, darkened skies highlighting downtown’s skyline as I biked through trails lined with grafitti to booming crashing thunder and emerged into the inner city downtown core to large raindrops cooling me. It was beautiful. The sun is out again and I am looking forward to biking home and then perhaps eating and walking over to the fairgrounds as I would like to see Joan Jett play at edfest because she was my hero when I was 12.
tomorrow
bike … work … gym … work … bike … home … hang with my baby and who knows what else, every day is a new possibility.
in the next five years
well. if i look back over the past 20 years, even the snippets that i have done here, i really hate to predict because so much can happen, so much can change and so much of that we have absolutely no control over.
I hope to see my son graduate high school and turn 19, I hope to enjoy five more beautiful years with this beautiful husband of mine. I hope that our house continues to be filled with the sound of his drums, music and laughter, the smell of paint and more photographs that I can keep track of. I hope our darkroom is fully functional in the basement and I envision my yard and garden to be so much fuller than it is. I would like to be working on my masters in fine art and I would like to be doing more traveling. Five years is a blink but it is also a lifetime.
At the end of the day, I hope that five years from now, I am enjoying the sunshine and my heart is full of love and that I am happy.
“If the sight of the blue skies fills you with joy, if a blade of grass springing up in the fields has power to move you, if the simple things in nature have a message you understand, Rejoice, for your soul is alive.” (eleanora duse)
this weekend, i want to curl up with a good book
wipe the juice of raspberries off my chin
laugh from my heart
wander in love down tree lined trees
love with wild abandon
dance in my living room for no reason
and paint a canvas of colour
in my garden
“What is the most wonderful thing for people like myself who follow the Way of Tea? My answer: the oneness of host and guest created through ‘meeting heart to heart’ and sharing a bowl of tea.” (soshitsu sen, grand master xiv, urasenke school of tea)
I have to tell you that the best thing about my previous post is found in the comments spilled forth by some utterly amazing powerful in their own right, loving and giving bloggers, bloggers that my heart considers friends and oh my gosh, what a joy it would be to have them all in a room together. That thought alone makes my heart smile.
It was really fantastic to spill because it has helped me already in small ways and I even find myself taking baby steps towards opening up and engaging in this fabulous life that I live. I am myself on my blog and by allowing myself to be myself in my body, I am finding that the world is receptive in the same way as all of you are receptive. What an amazing concept and why I am I surprised really. I shouldn’t be. If I can somehow find a group of amazing women scattered across the corners of this not really all that big earth of ours than surely I can open myself up to amazing women here in this corner of some one million people where I currently reside. Its true, the universe is pretty giving when we allow it.
Dear friends,
I could go on and on but really all I want to do is sit down with each and every one of you and share a cup of tea and my heart. Since, my limited funds will not allow that at this time, I want to share a special cup of mine with each and every one of the 27 commentors on my last post. As I read through the list, I realized that I have many of your address already and that alone made me smile. For those few that I don’t, expect an email over the weekend or if you are reading this and commented on the last post, please email me your address. I will be sending mail love in the form of a print of the above photo in the hopes that someday, we will sit down and share a real cup of tea and a hug and many many words I am sure.
“As human beings we all want to be happy and free from misery… we have learned that the key to happiness is inner peace. The greatest obstacles to inner peace are disturbing emotions such as anger, attachment, fear and suspicion, while love and compassion and a sense of universal responsibility are the sources of peace and happiness.” (dalai lama)
I’ve been down lately, really down. I would even go so far as to say I have sunk into that apathetic sad place where depression clings to flatlined emotions and a sense of hopelessness. I have been feeling a bit sorry for myself, paranoid with regards to how others see me and seeing myself as a blog of nothingness, worthlessness. I have been looking in a funhouse mirror and seeing myself distorted and insignificant. Its been a rough week compounded with the grey dark cold outside (where has summer gone?) and the fact that my allergies have been going crazy with sinus and raw itcy watery eyes that hurt so bad that if I could have plucked them out I would have (honestly, its bad enough that just being around cats can send me to the hospital but for summer to turn against me too, so not right).
Last night I had a bit of an epiphany. I like that word epiphany. I was talking on the phone to a friend* who unfortunately had the misfortune to ’see’ me at my worst. It really can’t have been a fun conversation for her but I find myself grateful that she put up with me and was there for me and that fact alone lead me to another epiphany. epiphany epiphany epiphany. good things come in threes really.
1. I have no idea what I really want to do with the rest of my life. Wow. I don’t think I have ever really been in this place as I have always been filled with dreams and wants, desires and wishes. But honestly, I don’t know. Could this be a mid-life crisis? possibly. I find myself re-evaluating everything and at first I thought this was more grief work but on further reflection, I don’t think that this is about the watching my babies die. I think this is about me and the rest of my life. I am going to take a good friend’s advice and tread slowly with baby steps toward figuring it all out. I have started carrying a journal around with me again, a paper journal, a journal I can fill with stream of conscious reality, a journal to start figuring it out for me, the me I am now.
2. I have been angry and hurt by the slew of friends that let me down when my babies died. The pain of that has prevented me from really opening myself up again. Oh sure, I have opened up here in this space and I have opened up to a few people out there across the miles whom I met here in this space but there is a safety there that doesn’t exist when dealing with your immediate life, right here, right now. I have always been a pretty social person, my mom would even say a social butterfly but something changed for me a few years back. I think it started when my sister died, I started closing down and then when my babies died, I shut down completely. And some time in the wee hours of yet another insomnia night, I realized that there have been women in my life who have been reaching out to me and I have been the one who has been deflecting those advances.
I haven’t really been allowing myself to live fully in my life. I have been hiding. It may be time to start coming out into the light. Again, baby steps.
3. There is nothing like a good storm to get your blood pumping. This morning, I rode my bike through thunder and lightning and pouring rain, the streets slick and dark, the air fresh and wild. It was freaking fantastic. I arrived at work soaked and flushed and actually feeling alive again. I am so glad that I have found my sporty spice again because leaving the athlete in me behind has not served me well. I need to push my body and I need to stretch myself in this way to feel good.
This morning for the first time this week, I feel my blood pumping again, I stretch out my fingers and cock my head and realize my head feels clearer. I have some things to figure out but at least now I know what they are. I have to let life back into my heart and I have to allow myself to trust again, both myself and others.
***********************
I need to spend some time contemplating my navel and contemplating the navels of those around me. Speaking of navels, I think I need to get my bellybutton piercing redone and perhaps it is time for a new tattoo. More things to contemplate I think.
I also need to live, just live this beautiful life that I have and do the little things that I love doing. It sounds so easy but sometimes it isn’t, sometimes we get so caught up in what we think we should be doing that we forget to just do what we love.
I’ve been thinking. A lot. You know I have always been that person who wanted it all, I wanted to touch life with every ounce of my being ~ experience every emotion and use all my senses. I wanted to jump right in there good, bad, ugly and beautiful and looking back I can see that is pretty much how I have lived. Its not all been good and some of it has been heartbreaking but at the end of the day, I fall asleep with a smile.
I have skydived floating effortlessly in the sky watching the sun dip into the horizon and I have reached out and touched the barnacled skin of a wild beautiful grey whale while boating on the ocean. I have danced the night away and watched the stars break through the doors of perception while writing it all down in a jumbled poem of beauty. I have loved fiercely and had my heart shattered on the concrete line and wept as death swept across my vision. I have ran naked along a sandy beach and swam beneath the midnight sun and I have rafted down raging rivers and canoed over rapids wave. I have jumped off cliffs to cool waters and cried from hunger burning deep within. I have camped alone beneath the stars and lived in grassy fields awash with rain. There is still so much I burn to do, to see, to feel even now as I settle joyously into myself.
I put off traveling to have a baby and I don’t regret that one bit because the world will be there waiting for me and in a few years, I will begin to explore outside my backyard. My son turns fourteen on Monday and I am a bit taken aback somehow to realize that he is that old now though at six feet tall towering over me, I really shouldn’t be surprised. He is passionate about basketball and spends hours and hours every day training and it reminds me of me at his age only my passion was swimming. I used to competative swim and I completely loved everything about it from the intense training to the butterflies of a swim meet to the rush of adrenalin as I raced down the lane, muscles straining to beat my time, to win the medal. sigh. I busted up my shoulder and had to stop competing turning instead to lifeguarding, teaching and trying my hand at coaching.
I recently started swimming again. The smell of the pool makes my heart dance, its the strangest thing really. My shoulder is healed and I wonder why I stopped for long. My father plays baseball, he is a pitcher and a damn good one even at 65. When he was a teenager, he was scouted to go try out for pro ball but he didn’t want to leave his small town, he was shy. But he played all his life and a couple of years ago, his team entered in the Master’s tournament and they got bumped up to the pro level and they got a silver medal and my dad got to play in the big field and he was even interviewed. I was so proud of him because he continues to do what he loves … just for the love of the game. He is going to Arizona to play in the Fall, he was asked to go and tickets have been booked and I can see the excitement on his face. He was also asked to go to Australia next year and it sounds like my mom and him will be making the trip and staying awhile because you don’t fly halfway across the world for a week. I am so happy for them.
I love that my family provides me with inspiration. Yesterday, I went online and found the Master’s Swim Team in my city. It starts up in September. I’m terrified but I have decided that I am going to join because I miss it and why should I miss doing something I love. After spending a couple of years living in fear and depression, it is nice to feel the spark of life again, the life in me that makes me want to reach out and grab hold of it all, to fully live the life that I want and to experience passion. It started again with a spark of creativity and is moving into all aspects of my life including how I feel inside my body. Its week five of biking to work and I feel so fantastic and strong and I want more more more ~ rain drops can fill a bucket and that bucket can water the garden and that garden creates life and nourishment. I love that.
“One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon-instead of enjoying the roses blooming outside our windows today.” (dale carnegie)
two years ago, we moved into our house. we were broken, grieving, lost trying desperately to be hopeful about a future that felt like it had been tossed in the air and shattered on the ground. we moved into a house that wouldn’t hear the laughing cries of our baby boys, with grass that wouldn’t feel their little toes and grasping fingers. we bought a small charming house that was built in 1945 complete with coved ceilings, original sash windows and fir doors and trim and pulled up the ugly green gold rug to reveal lovely maple hardwood floors. we bought a yard that was sorely neglected and filled with weeds and dying grass. our house had been a rental for some twenty years and while the bones were strong and hearty, the neglect showed on her tired face. when i walked in the door, i knew it was the house.
we had flirted with a big old victorian number, two stories and a balcony and room enough for the two of us, a teenager and babies while still giving me an art room / study and a big ol’ veranda to while around the lemonade hours. but in the end, it was this tiny little scrapper of a house which sang to my heart from the moment i entered the little entry way and opened the french door into the living room. it looked battered and bruised and in need of love. much like me. small but open and expansive and just the right size for the two of us and a teenage boy as it turns out.
that summer that we moved in proved a flurry of activity, a mad dash to clean and adjust to our new home, oh my gosh, we had a home. we ripped up carpets, tore down blinds and painted walls bright yellows, greens and blues, with a dash of pink and a blackboard wall. we surveyed our yard and realized that it was out of control and worked at weeding and mowing and attempted to bring our lawn back to life. we got married in our living room, threw an all day, all night party filled with people and music and merry laughter and then we collapsed into ourselves and finally allowed the depression to hit and the grief to leave us comforted in the warmth of bright yellow care.
Its been two years.
The kitchen cupboards still aren’t painted the pretty light blue paint that sits off to the side of the dishwasher and the ceiling needs patched and painted where we put in the beautiful new hanging kitchen light. We have not redone the wood floors like we thought we would have and the trim on the house waits for us this august to sand and paint it a pretty green. But the occupants no longer lay about broken and wounded and much is left in the house for another day as laughter rings out and artwork is hung and basketballs roll across the wooden floor as a bike helmet clatters down and swimsuits soaked in chlorine hang from windows ledge. Sunlight dances in revealing dusty corners smile. And we spend more time outside in the garden poking and prodding the land into something magical.
I had no idea that I would even like gardening but I find myself losing hours in the sunlight as I plant and weed and water and plan. Last summer, we bought a rose bush, not knowing whether it would live or die. We forgot to cover it in the fall as the snow came before we knew what was happening and yet this spring, I was out with clippers pruning a bush that had doubled in size and was sprouting greenery everywhere. The rose bush not only lived, it flourished and this year we added another one to the mix and I can’t wait to see what it does next year. We are eating out of our vegetable garden and our perennials are blooming and budding and the bees are plentiful and the birds chirp and a butterfly landed on my arm yesterday. I am living a dream filled with laughter and joy enjoying the roses that bloom outside my window.
