Dreaming Of A White Garden

First published in the February 22 issue of The Oxford Journal by Sara Mattinson.

What does it mean to dream in mid-February about working in a lush flower garden? Is it a sign of an early spring?

On the coldest night of the year, I dreamed about gardening, a dream likely inspired by my mother’s phone call from Georgia wanting to know what zone we live in (she wants to plant moonflowers). An armchair traveller, she’s been reading about Tuscany all winter and already has called to inform us that she wants to plant a rose garden. So while the house snapped and cracked in the minus 27 degree night air, I dreamed about the work to be done when the snow is gone and the plants are growing. 

Winter is hard on gardeners but good for gardens. Freezing improves the soil while snow insulates plants. The bitter cold kill pests and diseases. While cold winds and blowing snow cleanses the   weed-weary spirits of gardeners, it is also Nature’s time for cleaning up her space. 

Gardeners survive winter by obsessively reading plant catalogues, drawing big, dark circles around preferences and enticements, however improbable. The catalogues slip between the sheets with us, our bedtime reading full of luscious, lulling words like begonia and peony, lily and alstromeria. As a result, we dream in splashes of red and pink, yellow and purple, with long strokes of green. Sprouts of colour blooming in the dirt our of minds. 

Winter erases the gardener’s memory. We forget the failures and excesses from the year before, and begin to believe (again) that this year, it will all work out: the ornamental grass won’t spread, the weeds won’t come up, the $30 plant won’t die, the mail order roots won’t rot while we wait for the ground to drain. The long, dark, snowy days of winter allow us to forget the impracticality of gardening, the time and expense, the backbreaking work, the endless watering, the finite results we eat or gaze upon for a few precious weeks. 

In my dream, I was in the large flower garden in our front yard, laying slate rocks to widen the garden paths that are tangled under plants every year by mid-July and digging up poppy plants to transplant them to other garden beds. The dream gave me answers to questions I had yet asked, questions that would have chewed at me, like black flies, in June. What to do? What to do?

There is only one cure to this mid-winter madness of dreaming about gardening: It is time to begin ordering roots and seeds because every gardener knows, winter is over when those boxes of possibilities arrive. 

In This Week's Issue of The Oxford Journal

When you are writing a regular column, you learn to recognize the jolt of a column idea, and you go with it because that deadline is always looming. 

This week in the newspaper, Field Notes explores the idea of socializing a puppy when you live in the country. How do you find other dogs and other people and other places to expose your dog to? I think the answer is obedience classes but my husband disagrees...

My friend Jane says if you only teach your dog one command, make it the recall one. A dog that comes when it is called, or better yet, freezes when it hears its name then knows it has to return to you immediately when it hears the word "Come", is going to be safer, happier and more trustworthy (and more full of treats, in our case). She reminded me that walking in woods around my home makes it particularly essential that my dogs have total recall - hello, coyotes! - so I'm to stop thinking about columns while the dogs run wild and instead, recognize that every moment is a training moment when you are with a dog. 

In a choice between two photos, this one didn't make the cut because it needed more space to do it justice. 

Abby performs perfect recall. With ears like that, she obviously hears me calling her. The promise of peanut butter flavoured treats helps, too.

Scenes from the Outdoor Cafeteria

We feed all the traditional creatures - blue jays, finches, chickadees - but we welcome others as well, if only for the entertainment value. 

We are really enjoying the presence of this pheasant this winter. We spotted him last summer in the field out back with a hen but no sign of her lately; likely the local fox caught up to her. He is becoming more and more comfortable being this close to the house but I suppose if the food is there, the bird will come. Skittish, though; any movement inside the house sends him scurrying away across the snow, road-runner -like, to the cover of the pine trees by the road. He seems to have figured out that if the crows are feeding, it's safe. We've figured out that if we want to see the cock pheasant, we can't scare the crows away. 

Pheasants love sunflower seeds, by the way, not just cracked corn.

Our fine feathered friend has my husband on the hunt for ring-necked pheasants to bring home and become a flock with this gentleman. 

It's Coming, It's Coming

Another (small?) snowstorm is on the way but that's not what has the dogs' noses, and my colleague Jane's nose sniffing the air.
"It feels like spring," Jane said as we headed out of the office for lunch.
It was cold - minus 6 - but it was sunny. I couldn't smell spring, not today, but I knew what she meant. Even though the snowfall warning claims we're in for 15 centimetres, there is definitely a spring-like vibe in our part of the world these days. Considering our chickens have been laying between 4 and 6 eggs a day since February 2 (let's see a groundhog try that!), it seems that the true arbiters of an early spring have spoken.
I have to admit, however, that I'm not looking forward to it. I know! I know!  Crazy lady here but I have a five month old puppy that needs plenty of exercise and walking on frozen paths I've spent all winter pummeling into existence is vastly preferred to wet, muddy trails --- oh, oh, oh, I can't even think about it. The muddy feet! The muddy bellies! The muddy boots!

In Conversation With...Shirley McLeaming

First published in The Oxford Journal on Wednesday, February 1, 2012, by Sara Mattinson.

The first impression I have of Shirley McLeaming is how pretty she is. It could be the deep magenta cowl neck sweater she’s wearing on her trim body, or the golden waves of her hair, or her sparkling brown eyes. I’m certainly not noticing that she’s in her late sixties, a mother of two and grandmother of five, or that she’s missing most of her nose. Shirley invites me into the large kitchen of the old farmhouse she moved into thirteen years ago and we sit down at her table. Shirley’s house on Route 6 between Port Howe and Pugwash sits on top of a hill at the end of a long lane and she has a sweeping view of Toney Bay and the Northumberland Strait.

“I was born in New Brunswick but raised in Wallace,” she explains. “I moved back here [from Ontario] in 1999. I’m glad I did. It’s so peaceful and quiet.” 

As the saying goes, you get what you need whether you know it or not because ten years later, Shirley found out she had a rare cancer. 

“My nose was sore but I thought it was just a bite,” she says. She saw a doctor in the fall of 2009 but it wasn’t until the following spring that she saw a specialist. “I had a lot of radiation and that didn’t kill it so they had to operate.” 

She traces a finger up the left side of her face, across her hairline then down from the tip of her eyebrow to her mouth to show where they cut the left side of her face in order to remove her nose and upper lip in the summer of 2011. 

Not only did the radiation fail to kill the cancer, it did a lot of damage. All the skin of her face was burned and the inside of her mouth, including her tongue, blistered. Shirley has been using the juice from a huge aloe vera plant that sits on another table as well as Vitamin E to heal her skin and it must be working; the surgical scars on her forehead are almost invisible. Despite this, her skin remains sensitive to sun and wind, a torture for someone who enjoys being outside.

“The sun doesn’t even have to be out,” Shirley says. “It’s very painful.”

And yet, she’s hoping to be in her canoe and fishing at Angevine Lake this spring. 

“The worse part of it was the pain,” Shirley admits. She doesn’t mean the pain of surgery; she’s talking about the pain of the cancer. “It was a shooting pain and I was on morphine for it and it was terrible. When I woke up after the surgery, the first thing I said was, ‘I don’t have any more pain.’ I still get pain but it’s not as bad. Sometimes it gets to you. I can’t do the things I want to do, like go on the four-wheeler. That’s the most difficult, not being able to do what I want to do because I suffer so much pain. Then it gets to you, you get a little depressed. But like Dad always said: Kick yourself in the ass and get going.” 

She laughs. “I’m so lucky. I could be dead.” 

Her father raised Shirley, her four sisters and their one brother on his own after their mother died of cancer at the age of 34. Shirley also lost one of her sisters in a car accident, and was herself seriously injured in an accident when she was 27. How does she explain her positive attitude and her cheerful resilience when she’s endured so much?   

“I accept things as they come,” Shirley explains then laughs again. “I kind of have to since I moved down here.” 

She lists a series of unfortunate events including a badly broken wrist, a mauling by a dog, and a finger crushed while using a saw. After that, she found out she had cancer. 

Her nose was removed last July then rebuilt in August using bone from her face and part of her right ear. There will be another surgery to continue recreating a properly working nose. Shirley points out that she has trouble breathing because her nostrils are too small; indeed, they look pinched, almost closed off. 

“When I got rid of the pain, I could take anything,” she says when asked how she reacted the first time she saw her face post-surgery. “I don’t think anyone realized how great the pain was that I was in.”

She’s practically shrugging off the dramatic change to her face. It’s shocking how upbeat this woman is. 

“Looks are a very tiny thing in life whether people know it or not,” she says. “Sure, people want to look good but I always say what you have in your heart and how you think are more important than being beautiful.” 

Nestled into the cowl neck of her sweater is a gold necklace with a pair of cutting shears as a charm, a gift from a friend because Shirley was a hairdresser in Ontario. She also crochets and quilts and paints. She repaired and renovated the old farmhouse herself (there are sparkles in the paint she put on the kitchen floor). Cancer and the other tragedies have not altered her positive outlook or her creative energy. These days, Shirley is excited about taking up one of her favourite past- times again. 

“I couldn’t paint for the last two years on account of my nose,” she explains. The smell of the oil paint, as well as perfume and cigarettes, made her eyes water. She’s pulling out canvases to show me, and a calligraphy set, another hobby, so it’s inevitable she’s going to bring out a photograph. 

It seems brave of Shirley to show me a photo of herself from the days before cancer invaded her life because she was a very pretty woman. Yet as I glance away from the picture to look at Shirley, the truth is as plain as the nose on my own face. She is no longer pretty; now she is beautiful. 

Walking In A Winter Wonderland

What great days we're having for walking, whether in the woods, in town, or along the old rail bed trail. There is no excuse for not being active in the wintertime although those of us with puppies that have reached that age when they could run and play for ten hours a day without stopping, we love it whether we want to or not.
I once worked at a summer camp with a woman who claimed she was immune to mosquito bites because years earlier, she'd allowed them to swarm her and bite her all over. Whether it's true or not, the theory is kind of the same for weather. I've always found that being forced to be out in whatever the weather makes you more immune to it. Living in Vancouver, where it rains A LOT, you not only accept rain as a near-daily part of your life, you also appreciate that spending $400 on a Gortex jacket is more than worth the money.
Right now in northern Nova Scotia, we are enjoying fresh snow that isn't too deep for walking. My friend Jane and I also are enjoying a new discovery: the trail that once was the old train tracks through south Oxford. It's a new discovery only in that we realized it's the perfect place to walk the dogs, thanks in great part to the snowmobilers who have tramped the snow down, making for excellent walking conditions. With the woods on either side, we were protected from the chilling wind; we actually had to loosen zippers and remove gloves. On a beautiful day like Sunday, it was hard to believe we didn't encounter anyone else out with their dogs, reveling in a perfect winter's day.
It's what we learn from living with dogs: Carpe Diem!

Heart To Heart

First published in the February 8 issue of The Oxford Journal by Sara Mattinson.

When my niece was four years old, she learned how to sign her name. She loved to draw so, suddenly, she was able to sign her name - Mimi - to every picture. She then went through a phase of drawing hearts on all her pictures.

At the same time, I read an elegant phrase about how the hoof prints of deer look like the hearts that young children draw. Although I can’t remember the author or the exact quote, this idea has stayed with me because a few days later, a picture arrived in the mail from Mimi, who lives in the southern United States. On the back, she’d signed her name and drawn a heart. A perfect hoof-shaped heart.

I’m not clever enough to explain what the deep, symbolic meaning of that could be but Mimi is seven now and I still have that picture. Perhaps the way it happened, the quote then the proof, made the connection indelible to me, for every time I see deer tracks in the field or on the lane behind our house, I search until I find the one that looks like my niece’s heart.

Tracks are easy to find in winter, the snow providing a blank canvas for deer and fox, rabbit and squirrel, crows and pheasants, and if very lucky, the wing tips of partridge. Sometimes I worry as I walk around our property with my head down, looking, that I am not paying attention, yet in truth, every sense is engaged. While my eyes scout for tracks, my ears are tuned to the call of a pileated woodpecker or the sound of water running under the snow or the whump-whump of  the wings of  crows cutting through cold morning air. My nose draws in the smells of frozen air and earth while my hands tingle from the cold. (The dogs love these walks because I pay no attention to them; they are free to follow a trail of rabbit tracks into the copse of poplar trees.) Every step makes me feel acutely alive and grateful to be in this place. 

A few years ago, just before moving here, I stepped out of a coffee shop with a large cappuccino in my hand. I took a sip then looked down at my topless beverage. The tilting action of my sip had caused the cinnamon and foamed milk to swirl into the shape of a heart. I stood in the parking lot, astounded and searching for someone, anyone, with whom to share it. It was a random occurrence, but part of me believes it was a simple affirmation of my decision to follow my heart.  

When I come across a line of heart-shaped hoofs in the snow, it reminds me of my (only) niece and how much I wish I could share these walks with her, show her the connection she created for me with the deer. Dropping to my knees, I deglove a hand to trace a finger in a perfectly-shaped hoof print, drawing a line from the deer through me into my niece, connecting us through the heart.