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Garden Star of the week: Raspberries

/ sweetsaraline

When I was a very small child, we had neighbours across the street who had a big garden with large paths. In the summer, they would give me a basket and let me pick as many raspberries as I wanted.

The raspberries in my garden are starting to ripen, which means I get a tasty, sweet, and tart treat every time I go outside. It’s like eating candy, but with fewer cavities. Nothing tastes better than a fresh raspberry. I hope to one day have enough of them to make jam. Congrats, raspberries, you are the Garden Star 🌟 of the week!

Boa

/ sweetsaraline

I have a memory of my grandmother, sitting in her armchair relaxing. She has a boa constrictor draped over her shoulders. The snake isn’t doing much or reacting to anything. Its face is cool and impassive and its body has twists and turns like a river. My grandmother is tilting her head back and laughing.

“That definitely didn’t happen,” my mother says when I share the memory with her.

“Are you sure?” I ask. “It seems like a really clear memory.”

“Maybe it was a garter snake?”

I shake my head. “No, it was a really big snake.”

“Was it a feather boa?”

“No! It was definitely a snake.”

“Well, I don’t remember that at all,” my mother says decisively.

I’m confused. I often wonder about whether or not I imagined it until one of my cousins tells me that he remembers the snake, too.

Yoga time, party time

/ sweetsaraline

The yoga mat unfurls with a fwooooop. My cats think, Oh, cool. A group activity.

Sirius hops down from the cat tree and trots over happily. If this cat was a puppy, he would be wagging his tail. Freddie stretches and says, “Brrrrrrt?” before he also makes his way over.

The YouTube yoga instructor tells me to go into plank pose. Freddie helps by going under me and rolling around on his back so that he may display his magnificent cat belly. In sphinx pose, Sirius stretches out as he lays down on top of my arms. In downward facing dog (downward facing excuse me?), I have one cat affectionately head butting me in the face and one sitting down on my toes and leaning against my ankle.

The yoga instructor says, “And now press back into a well-deserved child’s pose.” I feel tiny, heavy feet walking up my back, and then Sirius lays down between my shoulder blades.

The wrong school bus

/ sweetsaraline

I know that I’m getting on the wrong bus. Another kid says, “Hey, didn’t you move?” She also knows that I’m getting on the wrong bus. The teacher who is putting me on the bus does not know. I try to tell her.

“I don’t take this bus anymore,” I say. “I think my bus is over there.” I point at the correct bus. She looks at me and then looks down at her clipboard.

I’m just a disheveled kindergartener. I look like I’ve been lost in the wilderness, just aimlessly walking in a circle for days. If I were to find a witch’s gingerbread house as I walked, I would absolutely stand on my tiptoes to pull a gumdrop off of the roof and pop it into my mouth, 110 percent.

The clipboard is neat and orderly, with the papers clipped in a specific way. It lists the bus numbers in numerical order, and then the names of the kids on the buses in alphabetical order.

The clipboard wins the credibility test.

“No, this is the right bus,” the teacher says firmly.

I follow the line of kids onto the wrong bus. My worry increases as the bus rambles along until I arrive at my old bus stop and get out. The other kids are greeted by their parents, but nobody is there for me because my mother is probably at the right bus stop.

I don’t know what to do, so I walk along the county highway to my old babysitter’s house, which is on the way out of town. The scariest part is crossing the road by myself. I wait for what feels like hours for the cars to stop coming before finally bolting across the highway. One car honks at me.

My old babysitter is surprised to see me when she opens the door. I’m panting after my impromptu sprint, dust is sticking to my damp skin. She calls my parents and they come pick me up.

My mother asks why I got on the wrong bus. When I tell her, she tilts her head up slightly, like she’s beginning to nod. Her head doesn’t come back down, though, it pauses as she surveys the situation with elevated eyes. If you know my mother, and I definitely do, you know that her anger is gathering and will be released in a torrential rainfall when she is ready.

My mother calls the school the next day to give them shit, but the same teacher still puts me on the wrong bus like six more times.

Quitter

/ sweetsaraline

2018 is the year I quit smoking for good. This time I’m going to try some medication to help, so I find a doctor and make an appointment.

The waiting room is empty. I can’t remember the last time I saw an empty waiting room. The nurse with the clipboard calls my name sooner than expected. She tells me to sit down and asks me some questions. When she checks my blood pressure, she looks at me in surprise and says, “You have beautiful blood pressure!” I think, That’s because I smoke.

The doctor is an old and kindly man with a gentle smile. He must like this job, certainly he would retire otherwise. He’s more than happy to prescribe a medication to help me quit smoking, and he’s willing to throw in an inspirational speech to boot. He used to smoke way back in the day, back in med school, but then he quit. He knows that it’s difficult, but he also knows that it’s possible. He also knows about all the benefits that come along with quitting.

He says, “You can take the five dollars a week that you would spend on cigarettes and save up for a trip.”

Silver monster

/ sweetsaraline

A young girl named Bessie is walking home from school in Forestville, Ontario in the early twentieth century. She steps from log to log on the corduroy road that cuts through the fields and trees, occasionally stopping to balance on one foot. In about ten or fifteen years, all of these fields will be full of tobacco, but for now, various vegetable plants stretch out of the ground, waiting to be harvested. The layers of cloth under Bessie’s dress make it puff out, making her look like a triangle with legs from far away. She carries her books and her slate tied up carefully with a piece of leather.

She hears a noise in the distance. It is the most terrible noise that she has ever heard in her entire life. It is a grinding, roaring, clanking noise. She turns to see what it is, but all she can see is a blinding gleam on the road, and it is bearing down on her.

She runs. The hollow sound of her footsteps on the logs is drowned out by sound of this horrid thing. As it gets closer, she throws herself into a field. A sleek, silver monster with an unnaturally wide and somber mouth full of enormous teeth rolls by. The terrible sound fades away with the cloud of dust. Birds begin to sing again.

“I thought it was a monster coming to get me,” my great-grandmother shares decades later when she tells the story of the first time she saw a motor car.

License plate

/ sweetsaraline

Sometimes you have to make a quick decision during a stressful time. Your brain throws several options at you when, really, two options would suffice. Is the option to wait a good one, or will you have an even worse problem two minutes from now? Is the second option too dangerous? Will the third option get you lost, making your stressful situation even more stressful? You can’t sit here weighing options, you have to make a decision right now, immediately.

“Oh no, I just cut that person off!” I say as I drive around with a friend in Ottawa. She tells me that it’s okay because I have a Quebec license plate.

Garden Star of the week: Whatever the fuck this is

/ sweetsaraline

Here is a tip for Montrealers with out of town visitors: take them to Jean-Talon Market. It’s sure to be a hit, and it will be very convenient for you because you can pick up a few things for dinner while you’re there.

This is what my husband and I did yesterday. As we were all leaving the market carrying our goodies, I saw a sign that said “anti-écureuil”* and I floated towards it like a sailor being drawn to a big pile of dangerous rocks by a murderous mermaid. And there it was, a display full of this plant. The market seller told me that all I had to do was leave them in their pots and place them about five feet apart, and my garden would become like a Bermuda Triangle for squirrels. I didn’t even ask what the plant was called, I simply paid the man immediately and went on my merry way.

I have no idea if it will actually work, but I can’t resist any possible opportunity to one-up those pesky rascals. And that is why whatever the fuck this plant is has earned the distinction of being the Garden Star 🌟 of the week. Congrats… you.

*Anti-squirrel

Fireflies

/ sweetsaraline

The warm air is beginning to cool and the sky is turning a dark, navy blue. The first firefly blinks a hello. Soon small, soft lights are slowly blinking all around on a peaceful, lazy night. The fireflies are beautiful and magical, their lovely show makes their spectators feel calm and relaxed, just as they should feel on an early summer evening. If you’ve ever enjoyed a campfire or coasted a bicycle down a hill in the woods on a night during firefly season, then you know what I’m talking about.

Most people don’t know that the fireflies are using their special glow to lure smaller insects that are attracted to light, and even other fireflies who are looking to mate, to their vicinity so that they may slaughter and devour them.

Pickles

/ sweetsaraline

Once upon a time, my husband had a cat named Pickles who hated everyone but him.

When they met, Phil was still a child and Pickles was a traumatized kitten who had spent his life until that point living in some guy’s garage and getting beat up by other kittens. He wasn’t sure about his new home, but Phil carried him around in his shirt like a mother kangaroo until he finally felt safe.

They watched each other reach adulthood. Phil went away to university, but then he came back. Maybe Pickles was happy to see him, but it was hard to tell because he wasn’t generally a happy cat.

Pickles’ hobbies included sitting on laps (but not being petted), striking fear into the hearts of baby bunny rabbits, and biting people who were trying to be nice to him. He died many, many years ago and I think that my husband still misses him.