Gardening Age 4 – 70

My Gardening Path

My first gardening memory dates back to around age three or four. I overheard Mum talking to Dad about flowerbeds, maybe how she wanted one. We had moved from my grandmother's home in England, with its sprawling country garden, to the suburbs in Canada, with about six blades of grass and one rose bush. I don't know how I picked one rose without getting lanced by thorns. I stole a Kleenex box from the bathroom and removed all the Kleenex from its box, except for one — the bottom sheet. I folded another Kleenex as a pillow. I placed the rose in the box, the bud on the stem, and covered the stem with another Kleenex. A flower bed for Mum. Probably the only flower bed she got—thanks to my Dad's job, we never stayed in one place long enough to cultivate a garden. I couldn't even keep a houseplant as my bedroom was always in the basement. I missed Granny's garden.

My grandmother grew all kinds of vegetables and fruit bushes, including gooseberries. My sister and I were told that babies came from under the gooseberry bush, so we were constantly weeding in the gooseberry patch when we weren't pouring boiling water over flying ants. (Yep, toddlers with boiling water. How did we survive?) I was always relegated to weeding between the pavement cracks, which should have turned me off gardening forever.

Around the time I left home at fifteen, I read "The Secret Life of Plants," and it left a lasting impression on me. (Remember that book?) Unfortunately, I lived a nomadic life for the next five years until I moved west from Montreal to Vancouver Island with my boyfriend, Mike.

We had a plan. Mike and I wasted no time finding a little homemade camper that fits snugly on the back of a '67 pick-up truck. Even though it swallowed up nearly all of our savings, the big bucks were just days away and we could live in the camper and work anywhere. We were promised jobs in Gold River —a small logging village in the middle of Vancouver Island — from a guy Mike befriended at a beer hall in Victoria. Mike couldn't stay away from beer for too long. Besides, he needed to be around "the guys" to get work, and he made friends easily. Too easily.

Gold River was, in those days, surrounded by wilderness. A desolate logging road was the only way in or out from the highway cut-off. For hours at a time, the only vehicles we saw were monstrous logging trucks barrelling down one lane – the same lane we were driving on. After several mechanical glitches and a few flats, we arrived from Victoria two days later. While we waited for work and our meagre savings dwindled, we spent our days fishing for Steelhead salmon, washing our clothes in the frigid river waters, and as the job never materialized, bickered at each other.

"How long are we going to wait here?" I'd yell- ask. "We could get jobs in Victoria, what makes you trust this guy who you met once in a bar? "Just cool your jets," he'd say, and smoke another joint.

After about a month and the pot gone, we drove to the only phone booth in Gold River. Mike phoned his parents, and they sent us one-way plane tickets back to Montreal. I was devastated at the thought of having to go back. Sullen and depressed, we broke camp. The air was thin and crisp, with thick, green mountains surrounding us, and the scent of cedar permeated my clothes and hair, although it was likely the result of clear-cut logging. I wanted to climb to the top of the highest craggy peak and stay there. We drove past pastoral rolling hills and through the fertile Comox Valley, and I wanted to run through the misty, green pastures and stay there forever. We drove through an old-growth forest with towering conifers, and I wanted to dig up primeval ferns and decorate the camper. (I later dug up ferns in the park in the dead of night and rehomed them at our rental house.) Instead, we heaved up to the intersection, turned right on the Island Highway, clunked the old beater into fourth gear and headed back to Victoria, British Columbia's capital.

We were flat broke, busted. Someone had told Mike about the Salvation Army and how they gave out food vouchers. That was our first stop. We both felt defeated and small. This time, I didn't holler at Mike. After a few hours of waiting and filling out the necessary forms in triplicate, we received a paltry twenty dollars. Naturally, Mike wanted to stop at the Ingraham Hotel, where draft beer was three for a buck. But the voucher was only redeemable at Safeway, so he waited for me in the parking lot. We had heated discussions about how this voucher should be spent: big, fat steaks or veggies, beans, and rice. Mike was a true carnivore. We just needed enough food to last a day or so until the plane tickets arrived.

I sauntered out of Safeway into the fresh, crisp September afternoon, and strangers smiled and said hello. The parking lot was landscaped with brilliant flowers cascading from hanging pots, and tropical flora – pampas grass, palm trees, and bamboo — filled the boulevard. It was nothing like the streets of Montreal, where scruffy weeds sprouted from the cracks in the concrete, and everyone scowled, never making eye contact.

Mike took one look at me and went ballistic.

"What the fuck is that?" he screamed, so the whole parking lot full of friendly gentle people turned and stared.

"It's a plant," I replied.

"I know it's a fucking plant, where's my steak?"

I told him we weren't leaving. Or maybe it was "I'm not leaving." He grabbed the plant and threw it on the pavement, calling me a stupid bitch and a moron. I started to cry and yelled at him that I wasn't going back. Victoria was now our home. I was down on my hands and knees, scooping up the Philodendron and packing it back into its little green plastic pot.

We drove a few blocks to the beer parlour, my face blazing red, plant on my lap, not speaking a word to each other. He disappeared into the beer hall, and I sat in the back of the camper with my plant and books, hungry and alone. I was afraid of not knowing what tomorrow would bring, but I felt strong.

He met a guy with work. The next day, we were painting the exteriors of people's homes. I picked up a few extra bucks for weeding gardens. A few days later at the beer parlour, Mike met a few guys on a construction crew and said they could use some help. My Philodendron grew into a tree and stayed with me for fifteen years, a lot longer than Mike did.

Fast forward five decades. I have a quarter-acre property in Victoria with three fenced-in vegetable and fruit gardens – keeps the dogs out. Nothing satisfies me more than germinating seeds and giving plants to friends. Last year, I counted over 400 seedlings in the sunroom. I tend to go overboard, but they all find homes. Before they move outside, the labels have all vanished because I've moved them in and out of light and heat, so my friends may get cherry tomatoes or heirloom tomatoes. By September, I'll be frantically canning tomatoes, cucumbers, and peppers, drying garlic and cannabis (legally), and dehydrating figs and apples, among other things. Thanks to Granny for my love of gardening.