Yet again, I am emotionally involved with someone new.  This time the “someone” is of indeterminate gender.  I call him Oscar but for all I know it could be Oscarina;  no matter.  It is important only that the two of us are in love.  All it took was a couple of pounds of sunflower seeds.
 
Chippies are notoriously easy to tame.  They would say the same of us.  Oscar now sits on my lap while he stuffs his cheeks before bounding off to his underground kingdom.   He and his kind are the busy ants who store food rather than stuffing their stomachs.  I should be so smart.  This winter Jon and I watched a terrific show about chipmunks on Netflix;  I didn’t know that they might actually rob another’s stash, a move that could mean death to the aggrieved party (who will hibernate like a squirrel but who counts on Dagwood sandwiches now and then during the winter, as opposed to the adipose waddle squirrels model in late autumn).  I was horrified and had to leave the room but Jon assured me that justice triumphed. 

Slim and sensible, Oscar permits me to massage his little boney back and hips while he shovels in the seeds.    His burrow must be deep because his wee toes are frigid whenever he returns from his 90 second round trip.  He probably doesn’t like being stroked but may figure it’s the price he’s prepared to pay for dinner and a movie.  I heard him mumbling "Don't rock the boat" this morning. I have a feeling, though, that he’s cheating on me.  When we met at the mailbox I greeted him familiarly.  He had a mouthful of something and pretended we had never met.


Oscar has another failing:  he is a complete mess around snakes.  A luckless garter snake has been convalescing beside the garage from what looks like a lawnmower accident.  Luckless is in terrible shape — clearly despondent and unable to hunt.  I’ve been providing water and bits of ground beef but I think a call to Dr. Kevorkian is in order.  (S)he is the most pathetic snake I have ever met, if you don’t count the ones we found on Galiano Island who had the misfortune to be run over by a cycling party.  But try to tell that to Oscar.  He spent most of yesterday afternoon barking from the back porch and has taken to mapping out elaborate detours to avoid someone he clearly hates and fears.  Who knew?

It’s a jungle out here.  But Oscar(ina) and I have each other's backs.  At least, I have his.

"Alan Watts, who wrote Psychotherapy East and West and by so doing introduced Zen Buddhism to Western mainstream psychology in 1961, said:  Since what we know of the future is made up of purely abstract and logical elements - inferences, guesses, deductions - it cannot be eaten, felt,smell, seen, heard, or otherwise enjoyed.  To pursue it is to pursue a constantly retreating phantom and the faster you chase it, the faster it runs ahead.  This is why all the affairs of civilization are rushed, why hardly anyone enjoys what he has, and is forever seeking more and more.  Happiness, then, will consist (…) of such abstract and superficial things as promises, hopes, and assurances.”

Watts redirected us towards mindfulness as a way of living in the present.  More easily said than done.  But I have an idea.  One word:  June.  In fact, I find myself unable to live in anything but the present during this magical month.  Nothing gets done.  Dishes sit in the sink, the staircase is dusty,  email is unanswered.  And what am I doing?  Plenty of nothing.  I stay home and I wander into the garden dozens of times a day.  Sometimes I water.  It’s quite dry right now so this is a life-giving activity I can easily justify.  Sometimes I am transplanting someone to a more felicitous spot.  But, truth be told, most of the work is done by now, so 90% of the time in June I am simply watching what’s going on.  It’s pretty much all I do this time of the year.  There’s a sideshow a minute.  All I need to do is to put on a hat and sunglasses.

Although the Mallards, a married couple who have been coming to our street for years, have departed as usual just in time for pools to be opened, it’s anything but lonely here.  Over by the blackberry bushes, dragonflies hunt like armed helicopters, gracefully  dodged by tiger swallowtails who waft here and there in their typical blissed-out calm.  I am happy, nay relieved, to see numbers of bees, bumblebees in particular, and hope they will pollinate the amelanchier too;   we called its berries “saskatoons” when I grew up, devouring bowls of them in heavy cream.  It is a young tree and this year will be the first real crop, if all goes well.   About 8 feet up some pioneer has built a nest  which seems vacated;  perhaps the builder should have selected higher purchase.    The woodpecker brood, demonstrably alive and healthy, is close to fledging up in the cheap seats, spending most of the day peering out at the stage, bored to tears at home but still too scared to fly. I watch the cavity entrance incessantly, hoping to catch sight of the First Flight. Meanwhile I can hear the purple finch trying to free a sunflower seed from the feeder while being vocally harassed unmercifully by her kids, who prefer begging to working.    Starlings have swept the Excellence in Reproduction Category - like loose clouds they rise and fall along the street;  resistance is futile for any who yearn for individuality.   Under the ferns, garter snakes and giant toads roam, ungainly sanitation workers doing essential jobs.  As long as nobody eats my chipmunks, they too are welcome. 

I have lost my heart and untold hours to the four chipmunks who have become regulars, lured by the raw almonds they stuff into their capacious cheek pouches.  Mr. Chips still lives under the driveway, a good neighbour who keeps his bolthole ship-shape, despite the traffic.  Oscar lives behind the stone garage;  he’s the young turk of the four, the chipmunk version of a Wall Street hot shot.  Baker (of whitened head, whether from flour or snow like Mount Baker) resides under the huge white oak stump;  I like to imagine his dwelling as a Gothic cathedral with flying buttresses of oak,a dignified residence befitting his white hair.  Finally,  X,  whose burrow is in the street garden and who remains something of a mystery, rounds out this rodent bridge table.  All four seem mildly myopic and tenderly test my finger in case it is edible before identifying and cheek-pocketing the proferred almonds.  The kids next door have been initiated into this addictive time-waster and come running when they hear me yell “Chippie!”

So because I’ve been trying not to feel like a Bowery bum, a wastrel, a ne’er-do-well, I return to Alan Watts to reassure myself that I have not been avoiding life;  apparently I have in fact been truly living it.  Sincere thanks, Alan.  And there will be plenty of time to fret,  come winter.

p.s.  Irony rules, as always.  While I was writing this, the maiden voyage occurred!  WITHOUT ME! Now the whole woodpecker family has gone dark, like the entrance to the cavity nest.  No more burrie quonks to announce themselves, just the careful silence of watchful parents whose kids just got their licenses.  Oh well, I suppose that the job of locating them gives me another good reason to explore the garden.  And so I shall.

Just now as I was washing the kitchen floor, I had to stop to peel a barcode off the floor.  It doesn’t seem like so long ago when the little devils started to appear.  The first one I encountered was on a pear;  it seemed so comical and inappropriate that I assumed it to be an esoteric satire on supermarket mentality.  Alas, I underestimated the banality of modern life and now our lives are littered with them.  Whenever I try to detach them from the hapless fruit, the barcodes jump to a secondary host, clinging like death.  There is one stuck to my favourite knife, another plastered to the counter,  two in the tv room, and at least one has been worn to work by my beloved.  While he proudly wears the gold star bestowed at the dentist’s office, I suspect the barcode was an accident.  I too have sported a few in public.

This may seem trivial for those of you with decent nails.  However, spare a tear for those of us who lack them.  Or those who need reading glasses.  I have to check both boxes.   So these ubiquitous limpets conjure a sticky future - one filled at worst with mouthfuls of plastic or at the very least with inevitably tattered fruit.  And in some indefinable way, these tiny aesthetic insults add up.

Which brings me to my question.  This painting is of a detail from Rita and John’s magnificent pear tree.  We have feasted on many a juicy delight from this tree.  Should I, must I, now go back and paint tiny barcodes onto their charming rumps? (Yes, I know you know I am talking about the pears.)  More troubling, might our own rumps be next?  The barcode police are massing at the barricades….  It’s only a matter of time. 

Oops, been watching too much American political theatre. Phew. What a relief to remember that we live in Canada.

Spring — so long awaited, so quickly over.  I am never prepared for the speed of the growing season. Just days ago, it seems, we were celebrating the scylla, but already the irises are almost finished and the canopy is completely open.  It must have been last week that lilacs perfumed the garden;  now spent blooms  of anemones, true geraniums and lamium litter the flower beds.  The bleeding heart too is winding down, slowly spending its pink hearts.  

Only in the past fews years has there been much colour left in our shady garden by the end of June.  The rhodos are at their peak today and as I write this, their pink heads nod outside the studio window, but they too will be reduced to their dark glossy leaves very shortly.  The last of the  showgirl flowers - peonies - are just starting to fluff their skirts but they too will be gone in a week or so.  For decades I have had to count on variations of green to satiate my hungry eyes in July and August.

This is a long preamble to admitting that my panic about the loss of garden colour is assuaged only by taking at last one photo - preferably more -  of everything that passes for a flower around here.  I comfort myself by knowing that these warm weather delights can be enjoyed in January by being  painted.  Because our own peonies are only several years old, I used to stage annual hunts for these blowsy beauties.  This miss was living downtown and we met when Jewell and I went to Woodstock;  I said hello, Jewell sniffed the air with unusual interest,  and Miss P preened and fluffed, clearly hoping to be immortalized.  I obliged.

Taking the reference shot is  the easy part.  For painters, complex white flowers have their own special condo in Hell.  The rendering, to begin with, leaves me cross-eyed.  Assuming I persevere further, the painting is even tougher.  The only way I can make it work is to identify and exaggerate the shadow variations.  This gal offered me only the transparent blues of her skirts, and hints of her  golden throat.  

Foreseeing the end of spring’s bright notes, I planted far too many pansies as usual, suckered by their cheery faces;  now I spend my days beheading them like so many little French aristocrats.  Last season they bloomed (and I dead-headed) until mid-October so I have hope that the effort will  rewarded again this year.  Because only my friend and dental hygienist, Anna-Louise, admits to finding pleasure in this activity, I have lately been absorbed trying figure out how to lure her to this paradise of dead heads.   I have suggested that she give up her day job, but so she’s not biting  (Get it?  dental joke!).  So if you call me, let it ring.  I will be outside, beheading pansies.  Frankly, I'd rather be Mme. Defarge.