2000-08-20
Dear Diary:

"The pig waits for no man."

Fortune cookie? Psychic prediction? Tarot reading?

Nope. Just my buddy Gail breathing a sigh of relief as we drove back from our latest garden center commando raid this morning through buckets of rain. She was grateful we hadn't had this weather during our outdoor community supper yesterday.

Gail is one of the organizers of this village summer tradition, a free meal which consists of all you can eat baked potatoes, corn on the cob and a whole roasted pig. You cannot get any further from the shrink wrapped otherness of supermarket meat than seeing an entire pig on a spit.

And the thing is, you GOTTA eat it the day it's roasted, because nobody but nobody has a fridge big enough to hold a whole pig on a stick. The pig waits for no man. Roast one of those puppies, and Mr. Man you'd better be prepared to eat it.

Luckily, the weather gods were benign yet again, the rain held off yesterday, and a good time was had by all.

I hope they'll thrown a little extra hunk of benign kindness my way shortly and make the rain, rain go away, come back another day. I have something like 20 half gallon pots and six or seven litre pots of new perennial plant goodness to weave into my garden.

I am so pumped, soooo ready to launch myself into a little gardening frenzy. I even managed to score some cimicifuga racemona, a really tall plant with white flowers that look kind of like candlesticks--incredibly stinky flowers that apparently smell like something died nearby. Imagine the hours of fun as Paul tries to identify the cause of the stench!

I can hardly wait.

Globe thistle and coneflower, one of my favourite pairings. Did you know that one of my favourite pairings has begun? Yep, the waltz between echinops ritro (globe thistle, the blue thingie) and echinaecia purpurea (purple coneflower, the mauve plant which has become a star of herbal medicine) started a few days ago.

The thistle is a native of Europe, the coneflower of North America and both were considered weedy wildflowers in their native habitat for a long time. Originally born continents apart, yet here they are together in an isolated garden off in the woods in Quebec. One man's weed is another man's treasure, huh?

I've been scouting my gardens for weeks now, looking carefully at how the plants are balancing out--which are too aggressive and have grabbed more than their fair share of real estate over the last year or so; which ones simply haven't lived up to the hype in the gardening magazines, and which ones I love and want to increase.

There was a time when I would try to coax and coddle a newcomer to my garden, but now I've learned to be ruthless. Two seasons, no pay-off, and you go to the big compost pile in the sky.

But then, I used to feel time was infinite. I don't feel that anymore.

After all these years of gardening, I can look at most perennial gardens and have instant perspective on them. With most gardens, in my head I can play the kaleidescope of how they will look over a summer, their strongest points, their weakest ... in a sense I "read" the garden.

I often wish I could bring that same clarity and perspective to my life.

--Marn

Old Drivel - New Drivel


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Want to delve into my sordid past?
She's mellllllllllllllting - Wednesday, Feb. 15, 2012 - Back off, Buble - Monday, Dec. 19, 2011 - Dispersed - Monday, Nov. 28, 2011 - Nothing comes for free - Monday, Nov. 21, 2011 - None of her business - Friday, Nov. 04, 2011 -


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This template is a riff on a design by the truly talented Quinn. Because I'm a html 'tard, I got alot of pity coding to modify it from Ms. Kittay, a woman who can make html roll over, beg, and bring her her slippers. The logo goodness comes from the God of Graphics, the Fuhrer of Fonts, the one, the only El Presidente. I smooch you all. The background image is part of a painting called Higher Calling by Carter Goodrich which graced the cover of the Aug. 3, 1998 issue of The New Yorker Magazine.

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�2000, 2001, 2002 Marn. This is me, dagnabbit. You be you.