Planting Hope

It's happening. After seven years of thinking about it, looking at it, preparing for it, screwing it up last year, it's finally happening.
The mass planting of bulbs is underway.
Okay, by "mass" I mean 60. Perhaps 100 if my money, shoulders and right wrist hold out.
It must have been the long, snowy winter we had last year, the one that lingered into April, that cemented this plan in my mind. As you approach our property from the north, there is this space along the edge of our yard, these gaps between the sumac and pine trees, that receives a day's worth of spring sunshine before any of the leaves appear.
The perfect growing time for daffodils and tulips.
And whenever I saw this bare, sunlit swath of potential last spring, I kept thinking, 'That space needs colour. It's the perfect spot to plant thousands upon thousands of bulbs."
But sixty to 100 will have to do. (For now.)
This year, I vowed to buy the bulbs early and plant them early; in the past, I've waited until after Thanksgiving but got caught by rainy days, then cold days, by the time change, by rotted bulbs that couldn't overwinter in the laundry room. The planting never happened. And every spring, I was filled with regret and longing.
Spring is not supposed to be about regret and longing. Spring is all about hope and joy and anticipation.
So fingers crossed that in eight months, this vision for a profusion of flowers bursting out of that sun-warmed swath of our yard really, finally happens.

Hanging On To The Past

This is the small country church down the road from where I live. That could be all it is, one of many white clapboard churches that dot our countryside but two things make this particular church notable: 1) It is still open for bi-weekly worship services, and 2) It is my husband's family church.
St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church in Riverview, what my in-laws still call "the settlement", celebrated its 75th anniversary today and dedicated three gifts to its congregation. The "new" stained glass window at above the pulpit came from St. John's Presbyterian Church in Pugwash when it closed a few years ago; likewise, the organ came to this church as well. When St. David's Presbyterian Church in Springhill closed last year, that church gave its hymn books to St. Andrew's.
In 1939, when St. Andrew's opened after seven years of building (from scratch, the timber coming from my husband's grandfather's woodlot across the river), 600 people attended the opening celebration; this afternoon, the church was full but there was only 55 to 60 people in attendance.
Most of our rural churches are closing, their congregations shrinking because of a longtime trend in general for rural areas: A resistance to change. Those who grew up in this church in the 1940's and raised their children in this church in the 1950's and 60's want the church to remain the way it was then, including full of people. The same music, the same liturgy, the same order of service. It's so familiar and so comforting that way but this failure to adapt to changes in our culture and in our society means a failure to minister to new and younger people. With no new, younger members taking on the work of the church, the church dies with each death of its current, longtime members.
It's sad and it's a shame but it's reality. It's all about reality but most rural folks simply like to keep their head buried in the sands of the good ol' days. Denial keeps what is familiar and comforting alive.
Six families attend services regularly at St. Andrew's; that translates to about 12 people. Of those twelve, two are in their nineties; two are in their eighties; and two, maybe more, are in their seventies. The strong wills that have kept this church open all these decades are the same strong wills that have kept any change, any adapting, any updating from occurring.
It's sad and it's a shame but that's the reality of hanging onto the past so tightly, it squeezes the life out of a church.

Bursting Through

The path was boggy this week, sucking at the boots, grabbing on, making it hard to keep walking. The air grew dim, murky, motes of dust and doubt floated in the air. Breathe came in gasps, hands swiped at imaginary obstacles. It was hard to see the way forward.
Sometimes creative types find themselves in a dark, grasping forest of disappointment and despair. They stumble, fall to their knees, and need a hand to help them up, a strong hand that doesn't care about the mud on our palms.
This past week, I had many hands pulling me up, dragging me forward, helping me move out of the dark and the murk and into the light again. In gratitude, they shall be named: Sheree, Elaine, Christina, Ali, Cathy and Jane. Thank you for your words of support, thank you for your gift of laughter, thank you for your friendship. Particularly those of you who weren't even aware of what you were providing.
And Susan, a fellow quote collector, for this: "What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from." (T.S.Eliot)

In Conversation With...Cathy Duynisveld

First published in The Oxford Journal on Wednesday, September 17, 2014 by Sara Jewell Mattinson.

If there is one word to describe Cathy Duynisveld, it would be “beloved”. 

“Lucky” would work, too.

Originally from Wallace Bay, Cathy is now the senior science teacher at a school in a small village in eastern Quebec she’s called home since the fall of 1995.

“I had three interviews in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia but none panned out,” she says of her attempts to find a job after graduating from Acadia with a teaching degree. “The superintendent at the golf course [where she’d worked for several years] said if teaching didn’t work out, I could become a golf superintendent. I was all gungho, we were making plans. I loved that job at the golf course.”

But life had different plans for Cathy. 

“A week before school started, this job came up in the newspaper for teaching in a remote community in Quebec,” she says. “So I flew to Montreal and had an interview. By the time I got back home, they’d called and said I had the job. I left within a week.”

Raised in the lushness of Cumberland County, Cathy was shocked by the remoteness of her new home.

“I had to fly to Montreal, fly to Sept-Isle, sign my contract then fly up the coast in this little plane with six other people. You’re looking out the window – there are no houses, there are no trees, there’s nothing down there.”

Despite the lack of trees, Cathy settled very quickly into life in St. Paul’s River, partly because other first-year teachers were her neighbours in the apartment building. 

“I was homesick,” she admits, “but once the other teachers had moved in, we did so much adventuring together. We went cross-country skiing on the river in the wintertime and we climbed the hills.”

Incentives for living in an isolated fishing village included cheap rent with utilities included and three paid trips a year. Cathy used those to return to Cumberland County.

Even if she hadn’t met the love of her life at the end of her first year in St. Paul’s River, she believes she would have stayed for a few years.

“It was good for a new teacher. You’re young, you’re starting out. I enjoyed it so much and I made some good friends,” says Cathy.

A lifelong dog person, Cathy added an Australian shepherd named Sam to her life shortly after arriving in St. Paul’s River, and that is how she met her future husband. 

Sort of.

“She got her dog that fall,” Maurice says, “and that’s when I realized she loved dogs. I loved dogs too so I walked my mother’s dog back and forth in front of her place to see if we could meet that way.”

Alas, his ploy did not work. The following spring, they were introduced at the local bar by a mutual friend. For their first date, Cathy invited Maurice to her apartment ostensibly to eat cheesecake but really to pass the dog test.

“Sam went right over and chewed his bone by Maurice so I thought he couldn’t be a bad fellow.”

Cathy married Maurice, who was born and raised in St. Paul’s River and works as a crab and cod fisherman as well as a salmon guide, at the Wallace River Baptist Church in 1999. 

In 2004, after daughter number two was born, the family moved to Pugwash.  

“Back home, there aren’t a lot of things for kids to do so we decided we would move over here,” Maurice says. “More stuff for our children to do. But when we came here, Cathy didn’t like it. 

“Coming from a really small community like St. Paul’s River to a class with 20-plus kids was a whole different thing,” explains Cathy who teaches in a school with a total student population of about 70. “They were great students but I missed my ten to 15 students. You know them so well. It’s a whole different environment for teaching.”

 They returned to St. Paul’s River at the end of that school year.

Of his hometown, Maurice says, “You either love it or you hate. It’s so isolated.”

And Cathy loves it. An avid photographer and cross-country skiier, she enjoys the best of both worlds: A job and a lifestyle she loves in St. Paul’s River and summers in Wallace Bay.

“Summer at the farm means I get to be a kid again. Roam around the fields, take photos, help John out. I love the farm. And the girls love their ponies,” she says. 

“Cathy loves taking pictures of flowers,” Maurice adds. “She takes pictures of flowers I’ve never seen before. She uses a macro lens to get really close to the flowers on the ground which I’d never looked at before.”

Cathy used to be a watercolour painter but a riding accident in August 2009 resulted in a head injury that affected the right side of her body.

“It was three days before we were supposed to go back home,” Cathy says. “I’m not a great rider. It’s not the horse’s fault; she stumbled, I fell off.”

Even though she was wearing a helmet, Cathy was badly injured.

“We were in Halifax until Christmas,” Maurice states. “We got a ton of support from the community. When Cathy was in hospital, we had to rent a place in Halifax and they had bingos back home to raise money for us. A lot of the fishermen I work with, they sent thousands of dollars. They were unbelievable. We had a lot of help to get through it.”

Cathy was off work for two years and had to battle a school board who heard ‘head injury’ and wrote her off. Between her determination to recover and her husband’s  gifts of technology (to aid her writing in the classroom), Cathy returned to the science lab full-time where she is happiest. 

“It feels good to prove them wrong,” she smiles. “I call it being stubborn.”

Her husband never doubted her fighting spirit.

“The nicest thing she ever said to me was when she came out of her coma,” says Maurice. “She didn’t really know anybody but she looked at me and told me, ‘I haven’t got a clue who you are but I know I love you’.”

Finally, for Cathy, it was love at first sight.

Where Cathy and her family live, courtesy of Google Maps.

This Apple Tree

You know what this apple represents?
A wish.
After seven years and a half years of living on this rural property, I wish we'd planted a couple of apples trees every year in the field behind the house. I wish by now we had a small apple orchard.
Instead, we planted two apple trees six years ago alongside the chicken coop when I assumed the pen would remain where it was and we'd expand it to encompass the apple trees once they were big enough to withstand the interest of chickens.
Since then, the outside pen was moved out back and the apple trees aren't growing much. One leans towards the north as a result of our prevailing south wind.
The good news is: This year we have apples! They survived the spring aphids and produced four apples. All on one tree, mind you, but so much better than nothing.

I don't even know if these apples are edible and I'm not going to chase that metaphor. What I am going to say is that they represent another wish: That I was a long-term planner.
In so many areas of my life, I wish I was more skill than enthusiasm; instead, I get enthusiastic about an idea and I just charge ahead with it. Instead of taking the time to think about what I would like -- in this case a whole lot of apples producing apples for us and for the deer -- I simply bought two apple trees on impulse and planted them in the back yard. No planning, just impulse and enthusiasm.
The apple is red,  its sister apples are red, I have no idea if and when to pluck them off the tree, or if I dare sink my teeth into one (okay, you know I will -- too tempting a metaphor awaits -- sweet or sour, what will it be?). For now, I'm enjoying their hopeful presence. I doubt I'm ever going to change, to learn to think and plan, but this suggests to me that one tree finally producing apples is just as satisfying as a whole orchard of apples waiting to be picked.

New Column - A Year In 4H

The first column in my new bi-monthly series, A Year In 4H, was published in the Chronicle-Herald this morning. For the coming year, I'm going to be a member of the local 4H club and write about the experience. I called 4H Nova Scotia on Thursday, thinking I really should give them a heads-up. I explained to the Executive Director what was happening, assuring her it wasn't investigative journalism to find flaws and scandal but to examine what this program brings to the lives of young people. When she exclaimed, "How wonderful!" I realized I'd been holding my breath. We had a great chat and I look forward to meeting her at the 4H Provincial Show next weekend in Truro/Bible Hill.

Here is the link to the introductory column:

http://www.thechronicleherald.ca/thenovascotian/1237396-finding-the-farm-girl-within

Shadow Walker

Mid-September morning, 7:30.

No fog today and the sun comes up over the trees in a burst of yellow.

The air is cool and the shadows are long,  

Stretching across the road and into the ditch.

An extension of ourselves,

We who are walking in the world this morning.

Our long legs carry us forward

And home.