STRAIGHT LINES

Something I learned very early on in my farmwife life is how much straight lines matter.  Not lines of writing on a page, not when drawing a diagram, not even when sewing a patch on a pair of work jeans - in all these instances arrow straight lines are just being 'fussy'. 

"Just get on with the job!" 

"Just scribble your note down!" 

"Grab a pencil and do a quick sketch to show me!  Nobody's going to see me on the tractor - I just need my pants so I can get to work!"

But, and it's a very big but ... when a wife is entrusted with a tractor and harrows she had better put her perfectionist hat on.  Even newly married and still very much in love with me, if I made curvy or wiggly lines in his fields, it just made him twitch.

I thought his insistence on straight lines was just a tiny bit over the top.  There I was, learning how to operate a huge four wheel drive tractor, worrying about how far out those harrows swung when I was turning (don't take out the fence posts!), and making split-second decisions on whether that low spot was dry enough to farm or someplace to sink a tractor in mud, and he was all crazy about leaving straight lines behind me.  Sheesh.

Oh, I'm not saying that straight lines don't look nicer if you can pull them off, but it's trickier than it looks.  One would think, what with Saskatchewan being flat, and being that our entire province is surveyed on a perfectly square grid system, that straight lines would be in our DNA.  Sadly, this is not the case. 

Saskatchewan doesn't exactly live up to it's tabletop flat billing.  There are places that are pretty level, and there are places of high hills and deep valleys - and the other 95% is rolling farm land.  There are bluffs of trees in the way, rocky creek beds to avoid, and countless sloughs in the low spots; all places to go around.  You can start out, your first line right against the municipal road allowance, arrow straight, and by the time you've crossed the field twice you're already off kilter.  Well, at least, I am.

He tried valiantly to coach me.  "There's a science to it", he would say, "it's not hard."  He had been doing it since his early teens; I was trying to pick it up at almost twice that age.  I think I missed my sweet spot of 'field talent development'.

"You just set your sights on a land mark directly in front of you.  Way in the distance.  Just aim for that one tree, or road sign, or rock pile, and your line will be straight." His confidence that this was going to work always amazed me. 

"And when you get to a slough, just do a headland around it and then come around and pick up your line on the other side and make for your land mark again."  Simple.  Just like that.  And don't do it twice just to 'pretty up' a sloppy first time; that wastes time and fuel.  But again: it's simple.  Just like that.

Every once in a blue moon, just like when the total at the grocery till comes out to an even $72.00, karma would allow me maybe 5 swipes of a field arrow straight, but I never let this go to my head.  I know a fluke when I see one.  I never did master the art (and it is an art) of consistent straight lines but I did get so I planned a field so that I would be out of sight of the road before my lines got too wonky. 

Two things though: he judged other farmers by how straight their lines were (I wasn't alone), and I was never given the job of seeding - way too permanent to see those rows growing crooked for a full season.

The way he feels about my garden rows not being straight is something I choose to ignore.  They're MY rows.  I garden to de-stress, and the vegetables taste the same.

I just came in from mowing the yard.  It's a huge expanse of grass and I have a wonderful zero turn lawn mower to do the job with.  Just for the fun of it I try to change the pattern I mow from one time to the next.  Today's operation was a diagonal, which meant I had to pick a landmark on the other side of the yard for my first line.  I failed miserably, and spent the rest of my time trying to get the 'wow' out of my 'straight' line.  Took me back to the good old days.

He wasn't home to see it, thank goodness.  He's working for a neighbour - seeding... in a tractor with GPS.  His lines have never been straighter, and this time there is "a science to it".

                                                 PURE POTENTIAL

“Give a woman an inch and she’ll take a mile.”

It’s an old adage and there’s probably some truth to it although I’m pretty sure you could substitute words like ‘kid’, ‘man’, ‘teenager’, or ‘dog’ for ‘woman’ and it would be just as true.  With the #metoo movement going full on these days it’s important to keep things non sexist.

On the other hand, if you were to say “Give a gardener a square foot and of dirt a single petunia and there will never be an end to their expansion plans.”  My husband is fully aware of this.  So was my dad, and his father-in-law before him, not to mention the two sons-in-law we have acquired.   The women in our family have this gardening bug bad.  Or maybe, I should say we have it good – wherever we go we manage to carve out a space and create our very own happy place.

More than it being a simple matter of just plunking seeds or bedding plants in the ground, what sets true gardeners apart from folks who fill flower beds that already exist is that we would never think of stopping at the status quo.  It would just make us twitch.

In fact, we could not be happier than when we’re offered a whole new space to play with: a wide open untouched space, an absolute blank slate.  To a non-gardener it might look like a plot of land – a reason to buy a bigger lawnmower.  To a gardener it is a canvas to fill with colour and texture and scent.  And we can’t wait to get started.

Non-gardeners tend to see obstacles, whereas gardeners picture a whole array of options when presented with the same bit of real estate.  Things like rocks and trees and slopes present unfulfilled features to be added to, augmented, and enhanced.  “They” see work.  “We” see pure potential.

My personal chunk of prairie has been a work in progress for the past 35 years.  Over time the original shelterbelt/windbreak has been bolstered with new rows of trees, the vegetable garden has occupied four different locations looking for ‘the perfect spot’, and while we’ve added on to the house twice, we’ve also added two man-made hills to give the house a prettier setting.   We’ve built an impressive rock garden into a slope and then moved all those huge rocks and installed them a new hillside a decade later because of the snow removal difficulties the first location caused.  Although seeing the first one destroyed nearly broke my heart, the new one is, as promised, bigger and better with even more rocks.  My on-going project is to clear the deadfall and broken branches out of the tree line – the part I’ve got done looks so nice, proof that I have to keep going.  Lately we have opened up a new area and planted everything from apples and cherries, asparagus and strawberries, saskatoons, currents and grapes.  If we live long enough we will enjoy an orchard too. 

It’s a lot of work.  I love every square inch of it.

This week I was given a great compliment and a new challenge.  A young neighbour has asked me to help her create a garden in her yard.  She, like I did, finds herself in a large farmyard with only a few remnants of a previous woman’s touch.  She, like I did, sees pure potential.  We are both excited to get started.

                                                      A LITTLE MORE ORPHANED

I don’t know if it’s a tradition bigger than our little home town, but it’s customary here to post funeral notices at the post office.   I have no idea how this came to be a thing but it works well: everyone comes for their mail so the word gets out quickly and yet the post office lobby is usually a room you have to yourself when you’re there.   There have been a few times when I was glad to be alone when confronted with news of a sudden death, or the end of a long struggle with some terrible disease.  It allows for a private moment to adjust to the news.  Sometimes that’s important.

One such card caught me a little off guard not too long ago.  I saw the name and was thankful for a private moment or two to read the whole card and acknowledge the sadness I felt.  It wasn’t that I was surprised by the news – it just so happened that a few weeks earlier this gentleman and I had a conversation while he waited for his wife to do the grocery shopping.  I could clearly see his health was not good.  It seemed that he had aged twenty years since I had last seen him, although at most only a couple months time had passed since then.  He looked frail.  He had lost so much weight.

Our visit hadn’t been a long one, mostly because just the effort of speaking left him winded and I didn’t want to tire him.  The conversation had trended to life philosophies and although I don’t know if he used these exact words what I remember him saying is “I think I’ve run my race.”  I felt sadness then too: I’m not the kind of person who will argue against the truth, and we both knew he spoke the truth.

Still, the funeral card in the quiet of the Post Office lobby was a sad sight for me.  Another one is gone.  Again I felt just that little bit more orphaned.

Let me explain.

My own parents are both gone; I have been legally orphaned (if such a thing is possible at my age) for quite some time.  But as time goes by in this little home town the generation who are regularly passing away now are the parents of the people I went to school with.  The generation I was taught to respect as my elders when I was growing up, and who never lost that implied authority as I joined the work force myself.  Although my relationship grew to be more personal with many of them over time (especially with this fellow, he was always trying to sell the story that he was a grumpy old man when it was so evident he was just the opposite) they never lost that aura that they were older and wiser than me.

I wonder: does their passing bother me most because in the big picture their absence alters the fabric of our community’s life?  Or is the problem much more focussed - am I being forced to understand that as these wise ones go, others will have to step up and fill their shoes.  That would be my generation.  That would be me.  

Does being in the company of parents allow us to feel that we can continue to be followers, not leaders?  Can we still draw comfort that we are the protected ones, not be expected to do the protecting ourselves?  Is that why I feel a little more like an orphan with each and every funeral?  Is that why each of their deaths affects me on a personal level? 

It also has me wondering if it’s a comfort or a curse to spend a whole lifetime living in the same place, surrounded by the same people.  If my life had taken me away from this town would I have connected with people the same way?  Would I have built the kind of relationships with the people I’d met along the way to experience this same sense of loss when they died?  Would losing them leave me feeling slightly orphaned?  Or does it take an entire lifetime to create something so replete?

 I can tell you this, though: as uncomfortable as it is to feel orphaned, I’m kind of glad I’m a home town girl.

 

 

                                      SNIFFING THE WIND

The other day as I was preparing supper I happened to look out the window just as the scent of frying pork chops hit the breeze.  Our dog had been lazing in the afternoon sun, sprawled out on the trampoline – it’s where he guards his kingdom from.  As I watched he went from a dormant, oblivious, pile of fur to upright and alert, sniffing the wind.  I’ve never seen a dog more in tuned with the world through his sense of smell.

But then, aren’t we all?

This wonderful season of spring has us all out, sniffing the wind.

Finally the never-ending Saskatchewan wind has more substance to it than just ice and snow.  Its relentless movement across the land stirs up not only what we can see – good old Saskatchewan dust – but also the things we can only smell: the earthy goodness of warming soil, the pungent tang of opening poplar leaves, and the whatever-it-is that makes clothes hung outside to dry smell so wonderful.  Even the less savory smells of thawing cattle sheds or freshly churned slough mud are welcomed as proof of life in a world so long dead and frozen and white.

Just like our dog, Turbo, we’ve gone from dormant to alert, and ready for action.  Everyone is venturing outside to look for odd jobs to do – anything to stretch the muscles and soak up some sunshine.  There are yards getting raked and tree branches being trimmed; a general tidying up while we wait for the grass to turn green and the dandelions to start blooming.

Gardeners are all trying to satisfy their longing for green things by planting seeds inside.  At the rate my giant pumpkins are growing I’ll soon need to trail their vines around the living room.  I might have been a tad over-eager for an early start when I planted them, but it was something to do until I could go out and play in my real garden.  Everyone has the same itch – even those who keep their gardening down to a few deck planters - just want to get started, to feel the moist earth on their fingers, to see the sprouts break through the soil.

And, on a much grander scale, a drive around the countryside shows the industrial side of growing things.  Tractors and all kinds of implements are parked helter-skelter around farm yards where it’s dry enough to change cultivator shovels and grease wheel bearings; the kinds of things that give farmers something to do while they wait for the frost to come out of the ground.

The other day I had to smile at the sight of one farmer’s seeding machinery, all hooked up and parked at the edge of a field.  Obviously all of his pre-seeding tasks had been taken care of but the time still wasn’t quite right to get rolling yet – but boy, was he ever ready to go! 

To me, as I drove past, it even looked like the tractor had its nose in the air, sniffing the wind.

                                                IT HAPPENED ON A THURSDAY    

It finally happened.  Spring showed up, puffing in (at 26 kph, gusting to 37) last Thursday like she just realized she was late for a date.  I don't know where she had been dilly-dallying for the past month, but it seems she has snapped out of it now. 

The melting of the snow took exactly three days: on Thursday there were a few darker spots showing through the snow banks, on Friday the yard was half clear, and by Saturday night there was none of the white stuff left.  It was like watching a movie on fast forward.  If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes I wouldn't have believed it possible: an entire season took less than a week.  Up until now I had always thought that was just a cliché. 

We saw our first robins on Wednesday, I heard my first meadowlark on Thursday, and we woke to the mourning doves calling to each other on Friday morning.  At this rate I better get the humming bird feeders up too.  As I write this morning there is a whole flock of blackbirds in the maples behind the house excitedly chattering at each other like they've just arrived at a family reunion - they may be brash and noisy but it's a happy sound.

If our household is any indication of what's happening across the prairies, humans are poking their noses out of their lairs, dazed by the bright light in the sky, and feeling the need to find something to do in the sunshine.  By 10:30 yesterday morning I had performed my ritual first walk around the yard checking for life in my asparagus patch, under the peony mulch, and amongst the rhubarb debris from last year.  I am fully aware that these things will not show up for weeks, but I literally can't help myself, so I may as well get it out of the way first thing.

That way I can move on to what actually needs to be done ... we have a dog.

While I did my woman things the man went over to his shop and got going on his man list of things to do.  A local once told us that in Guatemala "if it can't be done with a machete, it's not man's work".  I don't know if they were kidding or not, but you can substitute the word 'machine' for 'machete' for rural Canadian culture ... and I'm only partially kidding, in case you're wondering.

By mid afternoon I knew the ground was too frozen to even scratch around in, and the gardens were too muddy to explore for signs of life.  There was just one thing to do - my favorite - go and clear out dead trees from the shelterbelt!  I've been waiting years for a wood chipper; this year my piles of chopped branches are all going to be guilt free!  If there is a scientific name for my particular brand of crazy, I'm not aware of what it is, but I do know I'm not alone.

Meanwhile the man had fired up his tractor and brought a bucket of black dirt in to fill in a couple of low spots in the lawn.  It was easy to see he needed a farming fix, but this didn't quite fill that need. 

It was no surprise to me a little while later, to see the tractor and tiller pull into the pasture to the east of the yard - he was looking for somewhere dry enough to till.  My thought was "That will keep him busy untangling bale twine from the tiller."  There had to be at least 14 miles of it out there from all the years of storing bales and feeding cattle.  I went back to what I was doing - that was his problem.

Some time later I noticed the tractor was stopped.  I was impressed that 14 miles of bale twine could be wound up that fast, but at least it would give him lots to do while I made supper. 

A good while later I checked on him again and was surprised that nothing had moved since I had come inside.  Strange ... either he should have been going again by now, or he at least would have come in to report on whatever was going on.  I picked up my phone to text him a question mark and spotted his phone on its charger.  Well, okay then, I would have to go check on him the old fashioned way.

There's always something a little scary about checking on a machine that's sitting still when it should be moving.  What if he was trying to cut wrapped twine off the rotors and something let go or jumped into gear when he was too close?  What if it clunked him on the head?  Or ran over him?  I double checked the yard for any sign of him or a missing vehicle but those possibilities were ruled out; I would need to check the scene of the crime.  I fired up the quad and headed out to the pasture.  Maybe he had taken the .22 and was trying to get the gopher population down.

The pasture was empty.  The tractor was empty.  I took a short tour around the fence line; nothing.  I checked the approach out of the field - my quad tracks seemed to be the only ones there.  The only walk this man would ever take would be straight back to the yard.  This was a head scratcher, alright, but eventually I came to the obvious conclusion - he had been abducted by aliens.  I always knew it would happen someday.

They returned him by suppertime though, disguised as neighbours who had wanted help to unload a new corn planter. 

As of this morning spring is in full spring ... I have laundry hanging out on the line, my bedding plants are getting their first day of outside sunshine on the deck, I'm heading out to clear more forest, and he's off to work getting ready to put this year's crop in.  And everybody's smiling.  It's good to see you Spring!  Better late than never.

                                                           HOUSE ARREST

*sigh*  When will this winter ever end?

I realize Canadian winters have a reputation to uphold.  Ask anyone who isn't from here and they will tell you that cold and winter is what we're known for.  Well, also there's Banff and the RCMP and Niagara Falls, and how nice the people are, but top of mind is always ice and snow. 

As Canadians we know this is not true.  We have summers too.  There is proof.  We have pictures. 

In a normal year (if there is such a thing), winter should be in our rear view mirror by mid April but spring 2018 is proving to be a reluctant participant in the regular story line.  I think even the snowmobilers and the ice fishermen have had their fill by now.  If we could figure out how to give Old Man Winter the old 'heave-ho' I think the whole country would show up for his going away party.

Some winters are particularly harsh with a steady train of storms to snow us under.  Some are bitterly cold for weeks on end.  Some start before Hallowe'en.  And as seems to be the case this year, some plan to stick around until the May long weekend - just for the heck of it.  *sigh*

As it is, I personally feel like I am under house arrest.  I pace the rooms, looking for something to do (Well, not the dusting.  I'm not that desperate.), I reread books, I stare out the windows.  I sigh, and I dream of bbq suppers and sipping coffee in the morning sunshine on the deck.  These days I do a lot of sighing.  I just want out of my cage.

Not only do I not know what my crime is, I have no idea how long the sentence is going to be.  It doesn't seem to help that my fellow countrymen are imprisoned with me under the same circumstances - so much for the saying "misery loves company".  At this point Misery just wants let outside without having to wear a parka.

In a cruel conspiracy, the weather predictors keep promising us temperatures that will melt the snow; taunting us with lines like "plus 2 on Saturday!" or "7 above by mid week!"  Whether they do this to undermine my sanity, or because they are just plain mean, I don't know.  *sigh*  What I do know is that if I had a dollar for every time they have broadcast these false promises I could afford a trip to Mexico to thaw out.

Or maybe the money would be better spent on a small greenhouse in the backyard.  I'd still be 'on the inside' but it would be warm, I love the scent of moist earth, and the colour green is soothing to my soul.

I'm not sure if this means anything, but late yesterday I noticed brown patches showing through the snow banks in the front yard.  This morning they are slightly bigger.  I think this is how spring goes.  Is our parole about to be granted?

I have also been invited to spend a day at a halfway house of sorts.  It's being offered as a re-integration to normal life, work-the-day program at a greenhouse, but I'll take it, if only for the warmth and the chance to hang out with other parolees.

This may signal the beginning of the end.  Or the end of the beginning: the weatherman's latest news concerns a 'wintery mix' early next week.  *sigh*

                                          THAT SMALL TOWN FEELING

 Friday night, April 6, just before bedtime, I took a scroll through my Facebook feed to see what was going on in the world.  It was meant to be a weather check, or an update on family members' holiday in Hawaii, but that's not what greeted me at the top of my page.  Instead there was the notice from the RCMP that there had been a serious accident involving a semi truck and the Humboldt Broncos team bus on their way to a playoff game in Nipawin.  Although the accident had happened almost three hours before there was no other news to be had.  The radio silence gave it the feeling of very, very, very bad.

As I prepared for bed I tried to whittle down my foreboding.  Arbitrarily I picked the number 4 and decided that would be bad enough - a loss of 4 lives would be bad enough.

My first waking thoughts at dawn took me right back to the news story and the people involved.  I've walked a mile in those shoes.  I've been delivered that exact kind of news.  I know all those grueling stages of grief ... starting with the glaring surrealism of the morning after a fatal accident.  My heart went out to everyone having to deal with that.

As I made coffee my sense of foreboding nudged me to pick a more realistic number.  A big truck, a loaded bus ... I adjusted my number upwards to 7, thinking that would allow for relief when it didn't turn out to be that bad. 

I reached for my iPad, keyed in my password, brought up my newsfeed, and my heart sunk.  14.  Double my 'grasping at straws' number.  I, and every other person in Saskatchewan (on the prairies? in Canada?), felt like we'd been gut-punched.

The News Channel played all day.  News trickled out.  There was a photo of the crash site with a jumble of metal impossible to make sense of.  There was a post from one of the trauma doctors in Saskatoon praising everyone for their work in such horrific circumstances.  A father of one of the players posted a picture of his son and two team mates all holding hands across their emergency room gurneys - powerful evidence of team spirit and solidarity no hockey game had ever asked of them.

And there were all kinds of messages of support from all levels of the hockey world, from all levels of Canadian government, and from around the world.  Sheldon Kennedy spoke of his experience in the Swift Current Broncos bus accident 30 years ago.  The New Brunswick basketball team accident story surfaced again.  It's not like accidents don't happen all the time, but when they take kids bound for games, there's something that just takes your breath away.

Listening to the National News was an opportunity to view our province through outside eyes.  One announcer's opinion stood out to me as he seemed unable to fathom how, with the vast open space of Saskatchewan, how could it be that these two vehicles could come to be in the same place at the same time?  Good question, Fate.  Care to let us in on the answer?

The other comment that stood out to me was from our new Premier, Scott Moe, who in his remarks referred to Saskatchewan as "one small town".  My first reaction was one of defensiveness - we are a vibrant and industrious people - but then I realized he wasn't saying we lacked sophistication, he was commending us for our empathy.  He is bang-on right about that.

This province has huge land mass.  We have more miles of road per capita than most other places on the planet; small towns dotting the map, population scattered across our farming landscape.  There is much physical distance between us but our experience of living with these demographics also unites us.  One such example of common ground is that our communities all have hockey rinks and home teams we cheer on.  Players, parents, and fans all travel between towns for games; it's part of the fabric of our lives.  In this way, there is no one who doesn't feel connected to this catastrophic accident on a lonely intersection 15 minutes from the arena this team was supposed to play their next game in.  But for the grace of God, it could have been any one of us.

And despite the low population numbers spread across such distances, there are no six degrees of separation.  Personally I knew no one on that bus, but a friend of mine regularly played golf with the driver and another lives in the area and is closely associated with it's hockey community.  A few of our local boys have played on these teams in the past and would know the billet families and team staff, at the very least. 

That's one degree of separation, multiple times.  In this 'one small town' atmosphere you can multiply it by about a million, and if such a photo were possible you would see every one of us holding the hands of those boys, and all who love them, across the gurneys, and the miles, as we all begin the journey toward healing.