OLDER THAN DIRT

With spring fever raging through my veins and Mother Nature cooperating in the weather department I moved beyond just staring out my dirty windows wishing away the last of the snow banks and decided that the time was finally right to hang laundry out on the line.  There is nothing that smells better than sheets and pillow cases that smell like fresh air.

That's how it all started.  Bright and early one morning I took my basket of washing to hang out on the line and then took to meandering around the yard because the sunshine was warm, and who wanted to vacuum anyway?

My next favourite thing to do in the spring is to go and poke around in my flower beds to see if anything is coming up yet.  Besides quack grass, that is; quack grass is always coming up.

I had an hour or so to play in the dirt so I grabbed a digging fork and started turning over soil and weeding out the unwanteds.  One such unwanted was the plastic border that was supposed to be keeping the grass out and had proved itself useless at the job for years.  Sometime before the snow fell last fall I had begun ripping it out and now it lay across the lawn asking me "So now what are you going to do?"  It was either re-install it, or grab it and keep pulling.  Full of vim and vigor I chose the latter.

Time flew by.  Demolition can be so fulfilling.  You go into it knowing that you're going to end up with a big mess, but that it will all lead to something new.  You don't let yourself think about the work involved: it's just better that way.

I worked my way around the circumference of the garden and eventually came to a small pile of rocks left there last summer by some (unnamed) crazy lady who thought the answer to this garden border quandary was to dig a trench all the way around, lay geo-teck along it so as to confuse the quack grass with something new, and then fit about 1000 multi shaped rocks into it like a gigantic puzzle she would make up as she went along.

"Easy peasey" you say?  Of course you would say that - you're not the crazy lady who did all the work.

The first day, while my sheets dried on the line, the work was mostly digging - done while in a standing position and using the standard muscles a person tends to use on a regular basis.  It ended off with placing the few rocks already there - just enough to show the potential for how this was absolutely the right thing to be doing.  It was approximately 10 feet out of 140, but I was energized with a taste of success.  And I slept well in those fresh aired sheets.

Day two dawned cool and cloudy but I had momentum on my side.  Not only that, but there was a whole rock pile behind the trees - suitable material at my favourite price from a time when my Farmer was going through his rock splitting phase.  It was a mere 100 meter trek, round trip.  Wheel barrow full by wheel barrow full I picked, loaded, transported and dumped rocks at my project site.  I got another 14 feet done that day and I slept really well that night too.  It was getting out of bed the next morning that was challenging.

The days went on and the stones got scarce so I moved on to another rock pile even further away.  Braving ticks and burrs and smashed fingernails I would climb the pile and sort through it.  My building blocks had to be flat on one side, about four inches thick, the bigger the better up to the point where I couldn't move them anymore.  Also, I was looking for unique colours and textures; if I was going to do this I was going to make it interesting.

By day four my body was getting down right balky about moving.  But I was more than halfway - there was no quitting now.  My trips to the rock pile did slow up a bit and I found myself sitting down more often, and getting all philosophical about my place in the space/time continuum.  At one point I found a particularly superb rock and began to marvel that it had probably been waiting for decades in that rock pile for me to discover it and place it in my garden - because, you know, in the 4.5 billion years of its existence the blink of time it's going to spend in my garden will matter.  I think I may have been a little dizzy from pushing the wheel barrow.  I can't even remember which one it was now, but they are all 4.5 billion years old and all just tickled to be chosen for my garden.  Of this I am certain.

By the last day the work was being done in slow motion - the only speed I had left - but I am done.  In every sense of the word, I am done.  And I feel that the space/time continuum has caught up with me ... I am now 4.5 billion years old too.

                                           TURNING THE LIGHTS ON

It all started innocently enough.  The little guy in kindergarten was telling his grandma and grandpa all about the eggs they were hatching at school.  In this new age world his teacher was sending the kids videos of the hatching progress because, of course, Mother Nature wasn't keeping the action limited to the hours of 9:00 to 3:30 Monday to Friday.  As of suppertime last night the video showed they had two fluffy babies to their names.

This news led to Grandpa asking what was going to happen to the chicks when they were all hatched.  The grandson had thought that everyone in his class should get one to take home and it had to be explained to him that not everyone would want one.  Or know what to do with one.  He lives on a farm where he feeds the chickens and gathers eggs every day; it hadn't occurred to him that everyone else doesn't do the same thing.

This took us to the discussion of how few people know about these things.  If the food production and distributions systems were to suddenly disappear there wouldn't be many folks who would even know where to begin to feed themselves.  Of course from there we went straight into hearing Grandpa wax poetic about "the good old days".

Now, this is not a new subject for our supper table conversations.  When the kids were growing up there was many a night when we were all regaled with stories of him having to "walk to school, up hill, both ways, in a snow storm, riding his pet dinosaur because horses hadn't been invented yet."  And so on.  And so forth.

I give you this background to show that her father's age and experience is something that this little boy's mother is well aware of.  Or should be, at least.  But as we (Grandma and Grandpa) carried on with this topic of conversation she fell silent; amazed at the things we were saying.

I think it started out with how these chicks were being hatched under a light, using electricity.  Of course she knew that this was a job mother hens would have done naturally, it just hadn't occurred to her that there was no other way when her dad was young - they didn't have power until he was in his teens.  It wasn't that she didn't understand that there hadn't been a time when houses didn't have lights at the flick of a switch; the hard part to believe was that this had happened in her parents' life times.

For myself, I couldn't be sure.  I couldn't remember a time that the house I grew up in didn't have power but I knew my grandparents didn't have it when I was very young - I could remember them lighting coal oil lamps.  Out came the local history book: only to find that there really wasn't a specific mention of when the rural power grid came into being.  I was in on the planning and preparation of that book.  Why on earth hadn't we thought to give that very important achievement a notable segment in our history book?  Was it just a misstep of planning?  Or does it mirror our daughter's reaction - that electricity is such a constant in our lives that we forget it wasn't always there?

With both my parents unavailable for comment I called my sister who was pretty sure that by the time mom and dad were married there was power at the farm we grew up on - so that was 1946.  It is highly likely that we were ahead of other households because we lived along the main highway making it on the main route of the power grid as it was installed - the further you lived from the main line, the longer it would have taken to access power.  This was something that made sense to us old people but kind of amazed the 30 something gal whose experience of Sask Power as a business entity is to tell them when she moves so they will change the billing.

Later in the evening, after our daughter and her two non-stop energy sources had gone home, I got to thinking about our place in history.  My grandfather lived past his 100th birthday and I don't know how many times I've heard people note how he had been born in the days of horse and buggies but lived to see the moon landing, but it is almost as amazing that in a much shorter time span my generation has gone from lighting coal oil lamps to complaining about our Internet speed.  I wonder what the little guy in kindergarten will see in his lifetime?

                               PUDDLE POTENTIAL

"And you know what Grandma?  When we go to town next time I'm going to get some new rubber boots!"

He made it sound like Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy all rolled up into one.  There is nothing better than a new pair of rubber boots when the snow is melting down and the puddles are filling up.  He seems to have the idea that these new boots will keep his feet dry, not realizing that it's not the little cracks and holes at the bottom of his old boots that are letting the water in, but those big holes at the top of each boot that are to blame.

Somehow, some way, no matter which boots you buy, they are always that magical, mystical one half inch too short.  Trust me, I've done a lifetime of study in this field; I know it's crazy, but it's true.

Puddles bring out the kid in all of us.

Is it the peaceful feeling of standing in still water, contemplating life's simple pleasures?

Is it the venturing into the unknown ... how deep does this get?  How far can I go?

Is it a journey to the other side of the water, just to see if you can make it?  And what if it's not a simple pool, but a running stream?  Isn't it fun to stand in the turbulence and feel the current push against your legs, the moving water hypnotizing you until you almost fall over?

It's also very cool to toss stones out into the water to watch the ripples expand and subside.  For a little more excitement you can encourage the dog to go fetch them.  Or, you can use really big rocks that Grandma can discover later on ... with the lawn mower.  She likes that.

How about testing spray patterns?  If you ride your bike through a puddle very fast, can you get your brother even wetter?  And there's nothing better than a bike on training wheels so you can just park it in a mud puddle and pedal as fast as you can, shooting up a rooster tail of icy water.  (Thanks Grandpa; it's twice as much fun now that he knows the term 'rooster tail')

And, of course, the most compelling invitation of all ... to see just how high your boots really are.  The answer is always the same ... not tall enough ... but it never stops us from trying, and trying again.  When it comes to puddles we are all five years old.

I have to admit though, snow melt puddles - plentiful as they may be - are not my favourite.  Summer puddles are much more my style.  There is no more need for boots.  A girl can roll up her pant legs, kick off her shoes, and wade right in wiggling her toes in the soft, squishy, warm mud with the sunshine on her shoulders and probably a muddy little hand holding one of hers to help keep their balance.  Although if they fall over and get their clothes all wet, that's just one more memory they'll make that day.

It just so happens that this excited young man and his new rubber boots (plus his younger brother and his correspondingly shorter rubber boots) are coming for a sleepover next weekend.  We are at the height of runoff season at the moment with the mud/water/snow ratio at about equal parts in the yard.  I know for a fact that the water is over everyone's boots and the river running through the yard could easily wash a three year old away.  Constant surveillance is going to be needed.

Knowing the mess one dog can make I'm not too sure how this expansion in the mud lovers society is going to go.  Do they have enough clothes to last a weekend?  Can my washing machine keep up?  Is Grandpa going to be a help, or a hindrance?  And I better check out whether I need new rubber boots too.

                                          OFF THE WAGON


Even the strongest among us fail.  Merely being able to recognize a weakness gives one very little power to overcome it.  Even those who have walked this path before can succumb to sweet temptation over and over again.


All those promises I've made to myself to bolster self control, all those private pep talks to curb an unhealthy, unreasonable fixation, all those post-frenzy moments of clarity when it becomes crystal clear what I have done - yet again.  All undone (as usual) when I was at my most vulnerable; snow still piled high on my gardens, spring fever raging in my blood.


Hello.  My name is Jocelyn, and I am a garden-aholic.


This weakness - this dangerous tendency of mine - is hereditary.  It affects all the females in my family to some degree.  And, because we women tend to spend a lot of time in each others' company, not only does the actual genetic weakness exert its influence on us, but hanging out with other addicts reinforces a bad behavior.  They warn you about that sort of thing.  It's what's called a double whammy.


To make matters worse we have all managed to marry enablers - guys who are easily talked into cultivating another stretch of ground for a perennial bed here, and a strawberry patch there, here some asparagus, there some raspberries, here a bush, there an apple tree ... e-i-e-i-o.  They can even been sold on the idea of hauling massive rocks into the yard and inserting them into a hillside for esthetic appeal - even if they're not sure what that is.  Trust me, I know.


On the surface there doesn't seem to be a big problem.  I mean, what's another flower bed?  It can easily be rationalized as 'curb appeal' or 'doing our bit for the bees'.  An addiction dressed in environmentally friendly clothing can fool a lot of people, but while these don't seem to be so bad to the casual outside observer, living on the inside with the day-to-day consequences of weeding and watering every waking moment is another story.


It can tear families apart ... or indoctrinate the next generation into the family failing; it can go either way.  Just ask my own children about their childhoods of conscripted slave labour spent out in the potato patch.


I confess all this to show you how my life has been a rocky path of self-inflicted gardens.  But I also want you to understand that I have gained at least a small modicum of insight into my struggle.  I do comprehend the magnitude of my weakness, and I know I am helpless to battle it alone.  There are twelve step recovery programs out there for everything and if I ever find one for gardening I hope I have the strength of character to join.  Until then I am on my own.


Over the years I've had my ups and downs.  Sometimes I've been able to hold the line on reasonable expectations - you know, making sure that the tilled square footage/available manpower ratio is in balance.  And, other times, a friend will be giving away loads of perennials and I say 'yes!' to everything only to come to my senses when I get back home and remember that every square inch of my flower beds is already full.


My willpower ebbs and flows on me; I'm never stronger that at the end of a hot summer day, having weeded all morning, picked beans all afternoon, and made pickles after supper.  And I'm at my weakest in front of gardening bulb display in early March ... as the VISA bill will attest to when it comes next month.


It was the old case of one plant is one too many, a thousand is not enough.  If I could have just walked on by I might have been okay, but I had made a premeditated decision to buy a few begonias ... which derailed my self control and led to a question of 'which ones?' which grew to 'how many?' which in turn spiralled downward to 'how many of each?'.  In no time at all, with ringing in my ears, my eyes glazed over, and my pulse elevated and erratic I piled a large bag of gladioli into the cart to keep the begonia company and topped them all off with seed packets of sunflowers, cosmos, marigolds and zinnias.  As I furtively stowed this contraband in my car for the trip home I knew I had fallen off the wagon yet again.  I have my stash hidden down in the basement for the time being while I try to figure where on earth I'm going to put them.


I know this is just me rationalizing my failings here, but it could be worse, right?  I am helping out the bees, after all!  And it does make the yard look pretty.  Now that the kids are gone I'm only hurting myself, right?


I'll move on to promising myself it will never happen again the day I plant 45 gladioli in a flower garden that doesn't even exist yet.

                                          ONE FOR THE RECORD BOOKS


I don't know where this image in my head originated but I do know that it's been filed in there for a long time.  It's a picture of two old people sitting in rocking chairs reminiscing about some of the stand-out memories they have in their lives.  You know, it would go something like this:


"I recall, back in ought 7 - that was the year old Bessie had a set of triplets and they all lived!  Prize cow, that Bessie was!"


And the other person would reply "Yep, and I remember my one and only bumper crop back in '86.  Had to pile it on the ground.  There was mountains of grain everywhere.  Pity it wasn't worth nothing ..."  But that's another story.


At any rate, you get my drift.  People toward the end of long lives examining the outside-the-box moments during their time under this sun.  I already have a few to keep the conversation lively when I get to my rocking chair, and as of last week, I have one more to add - the blizzard of '17.  It was a doozy.


This winter has already had some significant weather, especially compared to last winter when the only significant fact was that it was such an easy-peasy walk in the park.  Just enough snow to make it look like Mother Nature tried and no major cold snaps of note.  Maybe Mother Nature was saving up, I don't know, but this winter has certainly been a different story. 


The Christmas Day blizzard hit the news bigtime.  It was a big deal, true enough; lots of snow and wind and the forecasters really making a big deal of it.  More than the actual weather hazards, I think it was the timing that had everyone going overboard with the warnings.  Is there a time more associated with people on the road than when everyone is headed to Grandma's for Christmas dinner?  The authorities wanted people to STAY HOME.  The storm certainly warranted those warnings, and with any other winter that would have been the highlight.  And the extreme bitter cold the week after New Years, too.  And that night Saskatchewan pretty much shut down because of wind (we were in Mexico at the time but social media couldn't stop talking about it) - these too, would have made the 2017 headlines on their own.


But, fast forward to March 6th ... after a period of warm melting weather that kind of softened us up for spring, and at a time when one would normally accept as safely past that March Lion we always look out for ... and we were back to blizzard warnings again. 


It's not that we didn't believe the warnings.  A March storm is fairly commonplace.  The first eyebrow-raiser was that they were calling it a blizzard when it wasn't even here yet.  There are certain criteria to meet in order to use the big "B" word and Environment Canada don't use it lightly.  We're usually well into the storm before they admit that's what we have on our hands.  Not this time - 36 hours out and our phones were constantly dinging with Blizzard warning text messages.


It blew in right on time and they tell us we got the amount of snow they predicted (although how they measure when it comes in sideways at 80 kph and piles up in rock-hard banks wherever the trees hold it, I have no idea).  The thing of note is that it went on, and on, and on, and on.  I cannot remember another storm with that kind of constant power, that lasted so long.  There was a graphic on the weather news that listed the 5 longest blizzards going back to 1959; last week's storm was 31 hours long, the next longest was 19.


Another measurement compared our barometric pressure to a typhoon in the Indian Ocean - ours was lower.  We had the worst weather on the planet; the winds were equal to a EF2 tornado.  I ventured out to try for a few pictures and believe me, I've never been out in worse conditions and I wasn't there for long.


And the aftermath is amazing.  Our yard has a tree shelterbelt to the north and west.  Snow blowing across miles of open fields built up into amazing banks around our house and right back through the trees to the road.  Every one of them is concrete hard from the force of the wind.  Our grown son who lives in Australia laments he can't be here to build a snow fort, our grandsons are too young to appreciate to opportunity.  This is likely a once in a lifetime event. 


I've gone out and tied markers to where the branches come out of the snow banks so that we can measure their depth when the snow melts; we are guessing 12 to 14 feet but there is no way to tell at the moment.  I am also going to do a time lapse project when the melt starts to see how long it will take for it all to go away because that's the kind of nerd I am.  I am laying odds on there still being banks out there in May, and possibly even June.  This was one for the record books ... and something to talk about in my rocking chair in the old folks home some day.

                             THE PERKS OF WORK


I've been asked many times over the past four years whether I miss work.  That would be the paying kind of work where a person shows up for predetermined hours, performs designated tasks and gets a paycheck for the effort.  As far as I know there is no way to retire from the non-paying-and-it-never-seems-to-end kind of work I'm still doing.


The short answer to their question is "no".  I drove to town to work for 31 years - that's half my lifetime - and I'm not sad to be set free from that.  But that's not the complete story; the last thing I would want people to believe is that I wasn't grateful for such a good job or that I didn't enjoy my time with customers and coworkers over the years, because I am and I did.  It's just that life is short and I had other things I wanted to do.


A more in depth answer is that although there were bad days (everyone has them) my years of working for a paycheck were, by far, a happy experience.  Conversations with both customers and staff kept things lively; some were happy and some were serious and sad but they built a connection with my community that I still feel today.  The opportunity to bond with my fellow Redversites on such a regular basis is something that I do miss.


The silly and sometimes borderline crazy moments we staff members had behind the scenes are some of the happiest work memories I have: taking a time out from the boredom of sorting fliers to dance to some music (eh Terry?), the private challenge I would set myself to get the Coop statements sorted even faster than last month (summer afternoons were pretty long and boring), and then there was that gift thermos of Christmas coffee that will go down in history (eh Rhonda?).  Good times.


And, this might sound strange to anyone who hasn't been a wife and a mother in a busy household, but that quiet drive to and from work, even though it was only seven miles, was a precious pocket of solitude I looked forward to every day.  You have to have walked a mile in those shoes to appreciate it but trust me, it's a real thing.  And if I hadn't had my job I wouldn't have had that; I guess you could call it a perk.


The advantage of a paycheck is obvious.  Having a job with a pension plan; likewise.


But yesterday when this prairie storm came howling in I was reminded of one of the best 'extras' my job in town ever offered - the impromptu holiday of a grownup sleepover at a girlfriend's place.


Actually it wasn't me who thought of this first.  The girlfriend I used to stay with called to say how much she missed having friends who lived in the country and worked in town, thus stirring up all kinds of memories of those happy times.


There are so many levels of being storm-stayed that make the experience special.  There's something about sharing a meal with friends - breaking bread together - that we humans value no matter whether the menu is a simple bowl of soup or a three course meal.  An entire evening of conversation can be so much richer than a simple chat over a cup of coffee.  The mini adventure of finding an extra toothbrush and something to suffice for pyjamas is its own kind of fun too.


When you wrap all of these things together, though, in a cozy house with warm-hearted people, when a storm is raging outside while you and everyone you love are safe inside, when to try to get home would have been dangerous or even deadly but instead you find yourself invited on a mini holiday: well, there's just not a better perk to working outside the home.  I hadn't thought about it until she called, but missing a storm sleepover is a definite downside to being retired.


So, to the question "Do I miss work?" the long answer is "kind of", especially at a time like this.

                                                     EXCUSE ME, WHAT'S A WEEKEND?


"So!  Whatcha got planned for the weekend?"


The question, posed in a chipper young voice and set between bits of soft, happy humming came from the other side of a computer monitor.  The voice's owner was waiting for her machine to do its thing and had some time for small talk.  My mind had been on all the other things I had to do while I was in town so it kind of surprised me to be asked about plans for further down the road. 


Besides, I'm retired.  I wasn't even sure of what day it was or that there was going to be a weekend anytime soon.


I did manage to come up with an answer for her.  I had a bunch of things planned over the next few days although only one of them was going to happen on the weekend.  My answer seemed to satisfy her though.  She went back to work - still humming - and I sat back and thought about how two people could use the same word but have such different perspectives on what it meant.  While we were both speaking English and we had both said "weekend" we weren't on the same page at all.


She was in her early to mid twenties.  She was thinking about fun stuff: maybe a hot date?  A sporting event?  A dance?  A concert in the city?  Or, being as she was a working girl, did she just want to sleep in and take it easy for a couple days?  I reached way way way back into my memory banks and recalled what that felt like.  Back then the word "weekend" had the ring of magic to it.  No wonder she was humming to herself.


Weekends are something that kind of fade in and out of significance as one goes through life.


When we are very young life is just a steady stream of days.  My dad was a farmer so every day was a work day; it wasn't like he went to town for a nine to five kind of job.  Besides, we had dairy cows - they had to be milked twice a day, every day.  They didn't take days off, and neither did we.  Sundays were the only day that stood out because we went to church and sometimes spent the afternoon at the lake.  But a weekend?  What was that?


School life answered that question.  We still had the cows that needed milking twice a day every day, but the understanding of five days of work and two days off took hold.  Along with all the other things you learn in those early years is the concept of days, weeks, months, and years, the rhythm of the classes, the power of the bell either calling you in or letting you go.  Five days of work, two days of play; the message is clear - play days are less frequent and therefore more precious.


Our teen years are spent trying to cram the most (usually the dumbest or most dangerous) stuff into those two days off.  Miraculously most of us survive.


The word 'weekend' takes on a whole new meaning when we reach adulthood.  The years of careers and kids means another adjustment.  There are so many bases to cover that free time becomes a most coveted resource.  Party time fades out and family time takes over.  The closely monitored calendar counts off the days to camping trips and sports tournaments, family reunions and weekend getaways.


Life continues to unfold.  Those busy years pass and you find your social calendar shrinking as the kids leave home.  I have even gone one step further and retired so that I could stay home and play in my gardens.  I work when the sun shines and stay in when it rains - Mother Nature cares not the least what day it is.  And, since she doesn't acknowledge weekends, and my husband's job has a similar attitude, I don't tend to pay much attention to them either.


There are weeks like this past one when I haven't been on the right day once.  The Monday holiday messed me up and threw off my planned trip to the city.  We had company on Wednesday so it felt like a Sunday.  I went to town on Friday but my brain kept thinking it was Monday.  Today is Saturday, but you couldn't tell by me.


I'm going to church tomorrow hoping that it will start me off on the right foot for this week - and it occurs to me that this is how it all started out.