"The Plant Does all the Work!" Remembering my friend...

This is the blog posting I hoped I wouldn’t have to write for a long time yet. But the day has come, and my heart is heavy. I’m taking a break from Wordless Wednesday this week because plant lovers in Atlantic Canada are feeling a loss tonight.


It has been almost a decade since I met the famous, formidable and funny plantsman Captain Richard (Dick) Steele. Our meeting was happenstance: Longsuffering Spouse and I were out driving around on the south shore of Nova Scotia in late spring. He, of course, had one eye peeled to the water, looking at fishing boats: I was looking at gardens. We came around a curve in what was a particularly twisty road, and I saw wooden racks of interesting plants, and a modest sign: Bayport Plant Farm. “Stop the truck!” I hollered.


LSS, being an agreeable sort, piled the binders on. At my urging, he backed us up and pulled in the parking lot. I clambered out to examine the plants, and he ambled up a path beyond a line of large yews. Moments later, he came bounding back and grabbed my arm. “You HAVE to see these!” he announced, grinning from ear to ear. I followed him, and stopped in my tracks. Blue poppies. In bloom. Around them, dozens of rhododendrons filled with silken blossoms, irises flinging their fascinating flowers skyward, a joyful riot of evergreens and perennials, foliage and flowers. I was in love.


(Dick Steele with "Other Jodee" on the Great Plant Hunting Expedition of 2007, en route to Battle Harbour. He had two Jodis, both left-handed, a tad mischievous, and besotted with him, among the pilgrims on this voyage. )

A few moments later I was taken to meet the owner of all this beauty, a dignified gentleman I assumed to be in his mid-sixties. (He was actually in his mid-80s). Snow-white hair and beard, glasses smudged with some potting mix from the plants he was transplanting, firm handshake. A retired naval captain, he had a stern countenance until you saw the twinkle in his eye and heard him laugh. If he liked you, he liked you forever, and treasured you as his friend. If he didn’t like you…my understanding from others is that he was exquisitely polite, or else not to be found. For some inscrutable reason, (inscrutable on his part--I was smitten immediately) we hit it off very well, and I owe so much of what I know about plants to having learned from this enthusiastic and generous man. To many people, he was Captain Steele. To those who had the honour to call him friend, he was just ‘Dick’.


Dick has been working with plants, especially rhododendrons and azaleas, but also many other plants that caught his eye, for well over fifty years. I know of exactly two types of plant he heartily despises: goutweed (Aegopodium) and Japanese knotweed (Polygonum cuspidatum). A man after my own heart! He has developed countless hundreds of cultivars, which he has been cold-testing at his farm on the south shore of Nova Scotia and at his home farm in New Brunswick, and has donated who knows how many plants to public gardens and parks, to his beloved Atlantic Rhododendron and Horticultural Society, to friends near and far.


“Take this home and see how it does for you on that damn windy hill of yours!” was a regular comment when I came to visit. A visit with Dick usually started out with a tour around the 30 acre property known as Bayport Plant Farm, and wrapped up with tea in the shed/office where countless visitors had come to talk plants, buy plants, bring plants, ask questions. Although he wasn’t the best email correspondent I have ever encountered, he thought nothing of picking up the phone and calling to tell me about something that had struck his fancy. If he was praised for his plant breedings, he would wave it off, saying, "I don't run around taking credit for breeding this plant or that. The plant does all the work, but I had a lot of fun with helping them."


It was from Dick I learned about the amazing dawn redwood (Metasequoia glyptostroboides) and how one of the oldest specimens in cultivation is right in Halifax. From him came a cutting of the huge, magnificent wisteria from his property that he insisted would grow in my garden as well as it did his. The pieris in my front garden, covered in buds and quivering in anticipation of its bloom period ss one he said I couldn't go wrong with. He always teasingly scolded me that I didn’t have nearly enough rhododendrons, and I always said that the garden wasn’t quite ready to take on too many, because of my wind and clay and and and…

This year, however, I’ll be adding a number of rhododendrons and hardy azaleas.

Every late summer for the past number of years, Dick has led an annual plant-hunting expedition to north-western Newfoundland and southern Labrador, culminating at Battle Harbour. I had the privilege of being one of about a dozen on that trip in 2007, having him blaze past me on the Labrador Highway in his new Honda, listening to his stories in the evenings as we gathered the group together for supper, watching him charge up the side of the hill on Battle Harbour—charge along, with two canes, two artificial hips and one replaced knee. Or maybe it was two knees and a hip. Whichever it was, he put people half his age to shame with his enthusiasms and his energy, and his boundless curiosity about plants.

In 2008, I was too unwell to go; in 2009, there was no trip. And now, there will be no more trips, at least not with Dick as chief expeditionary leader and plant hunter extraordinaire.

(Yellow rhododendron, 'Nancy Steele', bred by Captain Richard Steele. Photo from Atlantic Rhodo Society website)

Our last conversation was before Christmas, and it was no good to ask how HE was, because I knew the answer would be an amused but pithy, "I'm old!" as he always replied when asked how he was, and then he'd change the subject. I knew from talking with his daughter Diana in January that he was slowing down, but given that he had celebrated his 91st or 92nd or 93rd--no one seemed exactly sure--birthday with us in Labrador in 2007, we weren’t all that surprised. Then he went into hospital, and a niece who I have known for years gently explained to me that he wouldn’t in all likelihood be getting out again. And our formidable plantsman slipped off to the great greenhouse beyond on Sunday evening, March 14th.


To say I’m tremendously sad at his passing is an understatement. Look at me sideways, and pass me the tissues. The sadness is shared by any number of family members, friends, fellow gardeners, horticulturists, plants people around Atlantic Canada, and beyond. Yet beyond the sadness, I’m also determined to honour his life, and his legacy, by remembering him and his passion for plants, and following in his footsteps, at least a little.

Dick always believed that if we would put our energy into growing beautiful plants, there would be less unhappiness in the world. I can do this.


I read a quotation on Monday by Sharon Lovejoy, in which she says, "I grow gardens for my life and my soul." So did my friend Captain Dick Steele. We’ll not see his like again any time soon, but we will carry on his work.


And you know who my next book will be dedicated to. My teacher, my friend. Fair winds and following seas to you, dearest Dick.

Inside Memory: Timothy Findley, My Father, and the Memory Garden

"People can only be found in what they do."  Timothy Findley, October 30, 1930-June 21, 2002.

As we roam toward solstice/midsummer, I'm flashed with a bit of elegaic, bittersweet memory. Last week, June 11, was the 4th anniversary of my father's death from Alzheimer's, one of the most hideous of diseases. Tomorrow, June 21, is the 7th anniversary of my favourite author's death: Canadian novelist and playwright Timothy Findley. 

I was very sad when Findley died. I'd written my masters' thesis on his fiction, and had correspondence and several meetings with him over the years. It says a great deal about his work that I continue to love it even after having studied it somewhat exhaustively for several years at Acadia University. In fact...I think it might be time for a Findley read-a-thon here. 

What's this got to do with gardening? A lot, actually. For Timothy Findley, I planted the first shrub in honour of someone who had passed: at the time, a rosebush, and then one for his partner to keep his company. However, I don't trust rosebushes to be longlived (except for rugosas), so I decided to plant a tree instead. So for Findley and Bill Whitehead, his partner of nearly 50 years, I put in a Japanese Katsura (Cercidiphyllum japonicum). 

Findley wrote a great deal about memory in his various works of fiction and nonfiction. The first of two memoirs is called Inside Memory, and remains one of my favourite of his writings. We all use memory daily for a thousand myriad things, of course. Until we can't. Like an Alzheimer patient. So for them, we plant forget-me-nots. Not surprisingly, there are literally thousands of Myosotis around our place, and they're still festooning the yard with a sea of blue lace reminders as we head towards summer. 

It's funny how some plants instantly remind us of other people. In my case, they remind me and I plant their plants in their memory and honour. For my mother's twin sister, I have lots of portulaca every summer. She loved their brilliant colours, their silky petals and fleshy leaves. I just have to see the word portulaca and I see my aunt. 

People can influence us in subtle ways we don't realize until years later. Both my grandmothers were gardeners; my father's mother a pragmatic kitchen-gardener, with beans and strawberries, sugar maple and apple trees all to help feed her family of five children. My mother's mother was more of an ornamental gardener, and there are plants from her garden that carry forth into mine (indirectly, because she died when I was a teenager and not yet a compulsive gardener). Nannie would have been fascinated by the new colours of Johnny-Jump-Ups that are available today, and she might have had some. But for me it's the traditional colours that freely seed around my garden that remind me most of her.  

Perhaps my huge love for poppies comes also from her, because I remember silky-petalled poppies, nestled in among exuberant plantings of lupins, in her Berwick, NS, garden. So it's small wonder that all kinds of poppies find their homes here in our garden. 

I began planting shrubs in memory of people, of cats we'd loved and lost, of people I never met but who were dear to people who are dear to me. Then my former mother-in-law, a woman I loved and admired, died, her body riddled with cancers. Marilyn loved butterflies, yellow roses, sunflowers, all kinds of flowers. So I drew these loves together and amalgamated them into an entire memory garden, well populated by butterflies and bees and birds and other living things. 

One of the plants in that garden is a pink-flowered potentilla shrub, for those who have been claimed by breast cancer. 


For my friend Ladny, who had befriended and rescued many cats and humans alike, a linden tree is growing in the back yard.


Brain cancer has become a noticeable blip on my radar in recent months. A colleague's best friend succumbed to it. A friend's young nephew is fighting it. A former professor and friend died of the disease in February. My favourite musician, David Cook, lost his brother on May 2; and ran a 5 km race to raise funds for ABC2, Accellerate Brain Cancer Cure, the very next day.

I can't run marathons, but can donate to them. And can plant trees in honour of heroes of all kinds. So for Hilary, and Janet, and Adam, and all the others...a flowering apple tree.


The June my dad passed away was a harrowing one, and I turned time and again to the garden for comfort and peace and a kind of support. I always feel like Dad is right there when I'm puttering, cracking jokes about me and the mint plantation I inadvertently created years ago; commenting on my lack of talent in growing tomatoes, where he excelled. And the June he died, my blue poppy bloomed for the first time: on Father's Day.


This year, the weather or fates or something conspired to have it bloom on the anniversary of Dad's death. And I was home, fighting that virus I had last week, so I got to see it both preparing to open and in its pure jubilant glory. It's still flowering, as the secondary buds are opening, and it makes my heart lighter to watch it.

The whole yard is now a memory garden, I realize in walking around it. And I'm all right with that. It brings me solace. I hope it brings solace to those who visit, by blog or in person.

Jodi's Gotta-Have Plants, Part 3: Never Enough Coneflowers.

Coneflowers are definitely a plant I can't get along without in our gardens. They were one of the first perennials I put in at Sunflower Hill, and they are so pleasing to the eye and to wildlife that I've just kept adding them. 

Despite their preference for good drainage, they do well for me, maybe because I've put them where the drainage is the best, and amended those beds with lots of compost and other organic matter to ensure decent drainage. They bloom for a long time up here, which just adds to their appeal, and they come on in mid-summer when some other plants are winding down. Some of them keep going until a hard frost, and probably more would if I were better at deadheading. 

We started out with the standard purple and white varieties, but then breeders began releasing new cultivars on a regular basis, and my addiction grew. And grew. And grew. 
E. 'Coral Reef' is far different from the old-fashioned coneflowers we all know and love, but I can't wait to get my hands on it. Some don't care for the double-flowered varieties, but so far I have yet to meet a coneflower that didn't incite instant plant-lust in me. 
(Photo by Terra Nova Nurseries.)

The first new-coloured varieties to be released, at least that I heard about, were two from the Chicago Botanical Gardens breeding program. I first saw 'Orange Meadowbrite' and 'Mango Meadowbrite' (above photo) at Canada Blooms five years ago, and tried the plants a year or so later with mixed success. My speculation was that they didn't care for the freeze-thaw cycles of a Maritime winter, but I was also concerned at the size and health of the plants when I bought them. Sometimes plant companies are in such a rush to introduce new varieties that they grow them on a little too fast without doing proper hardiness testing. However, last year I picked up two very-well-grown plants, one of each Meadowbrite, from my friend Rob Baldwin's nursery, and I expect they will return this spring. 

One of the exciting colour lines comes from Itsaul Plants in Georgia, who have at least half a dozen colour forms in their 'Big Sky' series. I managed to get both Big Sky 'Sunset' and 'Sundown' several years ago, but 'Sundown' is the only one in the lineup now. 

'Big Sky Sunrise' is one of my favourites, with its soft yellow petals, and it's done quite well for me here. It's nicely fragrant too, and definitely a bee and butterfly magnet. 

'Big Sky Sundown' is a handsome plant, but I can't always tell it apart from 'Sunset' especially if the labels go among the missing. 

'Harvest Moon' has a handsome gold colour, not that irritating brassy yellow of many later-summer flowering perennials. I wish it would multiply more rapidly but maybe I'll just have to get a couple more plants to add to the grouping. 

'Twilight' is probably popular with those fond of the movie and book series with the same name (count me out there, yawn), but I bought it for its nice red central cone and because I'm trying to collect the whole Big Sky Series. 

I extolled the virtues of 'Coconut Lime' in a previous post, but it's such a pretty thing I had to show it off again here. 

Pale pink is NOT my favourite colour, but I bought 'Hope' because Terra Nova Nurseries dedicates this to breast cancer survivors and to the memory of those lost to the disease; they donate a sum for every plant sold to a national association dedicated to finding a cure for the disease. I plant it in memory of my former mother in law, Marilyn, who was taken far too soon by this damn disease. 


(Photo by Terra Nova Nurseries.)
This is the well named 'Green Eyes', and its striking green cone is enough to make me track it down and tuck it in among the rest of the coneflower collection. 


(Photo by Terra Nova Nurseries.)
Now we come to the 'Oh-my-gawd-I-must-have-this' cultivars. As a former volunteer firefighter, I simply MUST add E. 'Flame Thrower' to my garden, don't you agree?


(Photo by Terra Nova Nurseries.)
I'm not sure what wag decided to name this beautiful plant 'Tomato Soup', but it's about the reddest of all the coneflowers. It's not available around here yet as far as I know, but when it is, you KNOW I'll have it. 


(Photo by Terra Nova Nurseries.)
Also from Terra Nova comes the equally waggishly-named Mac N Cheese. I may pass on this one because it's a lot like Sunrise and E. paradoxa, (one of the parent plants in some of these colourful crosses) and I'm not a fan of Kraft dinner. 


(Photo by Visions Photography )
Then there's this, which I have to have no matter what. Kylee mentioned it a few posts back, as has Graham Rice, and I haven't gotten this worked up over a coneflower since 'Green Envy' several years ago. Meet 'Hot Papaya'. What a perfect name for this plant, and why do I have a sudden urge for a papaya with hot sauce on it? The breeder of this plant also brought us 'Coconut Lime', so I'm hopeful to have 'Hot Papaya' joining the ranks in our garden within a year or so. 

You know what? The original plants were called purple coneflowers, but I've never found them to be particularly purple, more of a magenta--a colour I love, but it's not purple. I wonder when the breeders will actually give us a truly purple coneflower to add to the collection?

Farewell to a Friend

It does not make me at all happy to open the newspaper, be working my way through it, and discover the passing of a person who was a light in so many people's lives. 

Dr. Hilary Thompson taught in the English Department at Acadia University when I was there. If people have a colour around them, Hilary's was all colours of the rainbow. She reflected joy--she emanated joy, a zest for living, a kindness to all, a delectable sense of humour. 

She wasn't one of my professors in that I didn't take a course from her. But she was one of my teachers in that her constant positive attitude in the department was a joy to behold and to absorb. Occasionally we had tea together, or joined the department secretary (aptly named Joy) for that particular break, shared stories about cats and plants, laughed and chattered like friends do. I remember Hilary showing huge compassion to students, including to me when I was coping with being a master's student and a single parent. It used to delight us to see her coming off the elevator from teaching a class, carrying puppets or masks or other trappings that she used in her course on children's literature. Her office was festooned with these colourful, happy reflections of Hilary's passion for writing, reading, and teaching. 

I learned of Hilary's illness only a couple of weeks ago, when I met her and her beloved husband Ray in the radiology department of the hospital. Preoccupied with the book I was reading and not so quick to focus when I look up, I didn't recognize her initially, until she spoke and smiled at me from her wheelchair. I was shocked when she told me of the brain tumour, but she faced it with far more grace and courage than many would. Including me, I'm sure.

It's somewhat ironic, somewhat apt, that I wasn't able to go to her memorial service on Saturday--because I was teaching a weekly workshop class in writing to a group of adults who want to develop their passion for writing. 

Hilary, your light may be gone from the world, but the love of the word that you kindled in so many students over the years will blaze brightly on. Rest easy, dear teacher. 

(photo from flickr, with thanks)

Garden Bloggers Bloom Day--The Meconopsis edition

Because Carol is a wonderfully gracious and understanding gardener and blogger, I know she'll forgive me for posting a bit of a bloom day report ahead of schedule. Because with our weather, who knows what will be happening by Sunday, when Garden Blogger's Bloom Day is really scheduled to happen?

Things are chaotic here. Not only am I busy with work, etc, backed up with emails to answer and other things to do, the weather has been moody as all get out. Decent enough during the day--after the fog lifts--warm, even hot, and raining almost every night. As a result the garden is LUSH with growth, from poppy seedlings to perennials and shrubs to weeds. Yes, weeds. I have plenty. I call them native plants for the most part.

However, one part of the garden is in reasonably decent control, because it's planted so profusely that it mostly controls its weeds. This is the part out front by the door. When I go out to fill the hummingbird feeders, I'm invariably smitten by a rainbow of flowers, foliage and fragrance. But I didn't see this coming yesterday.


The photo at the top of this post was taken on Sunday afternoon--less than 48 hours ago. This photo above was taken about an hour ago. What do you see? I thought you might notice it.

Regular readers of bloomingwriter know that there are some plants that give me fits. Yarrow, Russian sage, and others that want perfect winter drainage usually expire for me. Tomatoes ripen ONLY in the greenhouse (after they finally get planted, of course). But there are many things that grow well here, and for inscrutable reasons, I do fine with the coveted blue poppy, Meconopsis betonicifolia. We have a few plants, and normally I add one or two each year just in case some of them arbitrarily die (that happens) or behave monocarpically, flowering and THEN dying (that also happens).

Three years ago tomorrow, my beloved father died of Alzheimers disease. It's hard to believe it's been three years already, and yet he'd really been gone from us since about 2001, lost in the hideous fog of Alzheimers. A few short days later that summer--on Father's Day--one of my Meconopsis bloomed for the first time. I went on to put that flower's photo on the cover of my first gardening book. (Optimistically, I call it my first book. Whether I go ahead and finish a second one is still up in the air).

Tomorrow will be an introspective day. I don't talk to people much on that day, other than family members, and am inclined to disappear somewhere, whether into the woods on my horse or down the road to somewhere else. Or I might just sit in the garden and look at the message that my Dad sent to me today. Tomorrow, it will be fully open.

Thanks, Dad. Still miss you, and always will.

Bread and Salt for Gabriel

Like most of us, life gets away from me sometimes, and I don't have time in my day to do all the things I normally do at the time I like to do them. Take reading the newspaper, for example. Normally, I read it while I'm eating my breakfast, assisted usually by a cat or two. Simon Q is especially fond of the paper and has been known to devour sections of it before going to sleep in the middle of the editorial pages. But since I've been eating my breakfast at my computer of late, the newspaper gets read in spurts when I have time. Like tonight at suppertime. I was just finishing the salmon and fiddleheads when I pushed Simon off the obituaries page and found this.

FISCHER, Dr. Gabriel - 85, Wolfville, passed away Saturday, May 31, 2008, at his home. Born in Satu-Mare, Romania, he was a son of a respected lawyer, the late Joseph and Ella (Adler) Fischer. He graduated Doctor in Law (Doctor Juris) from the University of Debrecen, Hungary in 1946. Before becoming a professor and eventually the Director at the Institute of International Relations in Bucharest, Romania, Dr. Fischer was Chief Editor of a Hungarian daily newspaper, "Free Life", in Romania. He later collaborated and edited another Hungarian language newspaper, "Forward", in Bucharest. After the Hungarian events in 1956, Dr. Fischer was forbidden to teach or write and was confined to his native city, Satu-Mare. In 1965, he immigrated to France with his family to join his brother, Georges Fischer. In 1966, Dr. Fischer was invited to the University of Alberta as a postdoctoral Fellow in Political Science. In 1969, he began his long career as a Professor of International Relations (Political Science) at Acadia University. He implemented numerous programs and served on a number of committees. He was passionate about his teaching and his students. He gave all of himself, to his students, to his colleagues, to his wife and to his children and grandchildren. He was an avid reader, a lover of fine objects and a chocolate connoisseur. Together with his wife, he traveled extensively to countries with exciting political situations, such as the Middle East and Latin America. He was predeceased by his wife of 31 years, Dr. Lois Vallely-Fischer.

It amazes me how much can be said, and how much omitted, in an obituary. To the casual observer, you read that this man was a political science at Acadia University, the other of my alma maters, and a writer and thinker from Europe who had seen and endured much. And he was eighty-five, and had lived a good life and full. But that doesn't give even the beginnings of who he was to countless students, family members, friends, and colleagues.

I first met Gabriel nearly 20 years ago, when I was working at the Blomidon Inn in Wolfville. He came in to make a request of the guest services department of the Inn. Some Russian and Ukrainian professors--or maybe they were still USSR, I don't remember! were coming to Acadia, and they were staying at the Inn, and arriving later that day. Would I greet them when they arrived with the traditional offering of bread and salt? I would indeed, though I pointed out I could say only one word in Russian, less in Ukrainian, and had no traditional garb. That didn't matter, he insisted, kissing both my cheeks and thanking me profusely. Of all the people I met while I worked there, Gabriel and the Russian professors--one of whom gave me a little trinket of a horse, with some words in Cyrillic text on the back--were among those I remember best.

My next meetings with Gabriel were only a couple of years later, when I decided to go back to university after a ten-year hiatus. His wife, Dr. Lois Vallely-Fischer, was dean of the faculty of arts, and welcomed me into the BA program with open arms--and later, with open funds, as they kindly gave me scholarships and fellowships to continue my studies. I switched into the honours program, decided to do an overload to get the 4 year degree done in 2 years, and asked permission of Gabriel to take his course in Peace Studies. "It would be an honour to have you there," were his words. No, it was an honour to BE there, listening to and learning from this man of peace.

Gabriel was an engaging speaker, with a prodigious amount of knowledge and experience in his mind, and while sometimes he would wander off topic a bit, he always kept it interesting. I don't remember how many languages he spoke, but they were numerous--somewhere between 7 and 9, it seems to me--and he was interested in everything, including the students who showed an interest in his course. I would credit him with being one of those who shaped who I am today in my beliefs and leanings, especially because he was so non-judgmental of all he met.

His wife died suddenly (to me) in September of 2005, and I was shocked and saddened, because Lois and Gabriel were inseparable, and always seen together out and about. In a tribute to her, one of her colleagues said that 'human rights lost a steadfast champion." So it is with Gabriel's passing. We are all poorer for his leaving this world, but richer for having known him in whatever capacity.

A new tree will be planted in my memory garden for Gabriel, beside the amelanchier shrub that marks Lois's passing. United in the garden as they were in so much of their life. And maybe one day, we'll see the peace that they both strove so hard for.

In memory yet green...the memory garden

Amy over at Garden Rant started an interesting discussion because she wrote an incredibly moving, but not maudlin, post about how she chose to bury a cherished pet, her cat LeRoy, on her property, and wondered what others do. Some readers are grossed out by that idea; others admit to having ashes of beloved family members (animal and human) on their land, too.

There are a number of beloved cat-children buried on our property, and probably one day there will be others. But I also do something different here as a way of remembering people and special cats (ours and others). We have memory plantings all over our garden.

It started when the best cat ever, my big stripy puss Nermal, died eight years ago this month. I decided I would bury his ashes in the garden, although it took me eighteen months to actually do so. I couldn’t bear it. Yes, I’m a mushball, and I still miss Nermie, eight years later. I had a special garden stone made for him with stained glass inlay and his name on it, and that marks his final resting place—which was also a place he loved to sleep. Above this spot is planted the yellow Father Hugo’s rose, a great and zealous once-flowering rosebush with lovely fern like foliage (similar to the pimpernellifolia type roses).


And there are also forget-me-nots everywhere, because the same month as Nermal died, my father was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. I’d always loved forget-me-nots, especially when they take over a lawn in spring and there is a blue mist around homes. But after Dad got sick, I started planting forget-me-nots in earnest, all around the property.

Then the great Canadian author, Timothy Findley, passed away in the summer of 2002. I wrote my master’s thesis on his work, met and corresponded with him a few times, and thought he was the most marvelous of writers and humans. He also adored cats, and he and partner William Whitehead had as many as 27 at one time at Stone Cottage, their home in Ontario, throughout the years. For Findley, I planted a hardy Explorer rose; and then, lest it be lonely, I planted a French one (because they lived in France and Ontario) for Bill Whitehead, even though he is still very much alive; they had been together for nearly 50 years, after all, and that needed to be commended.

The memory garden idea just snowballed. Other people near and dear, and other cats, were honoured by plants in our garden. Sometimes, I’ve put plants into the ground for people I’ve never met, but because I’ve known someone who cared deeply for them (and in a couple of cases, it’s been for the cats of friends, too), instead of a sympathy card, I’ve added a plant to the garden. Usually I send a photo of the plant to the friend; and of course those who have loved ones remembered this way are welcome to come visit whenever they wish.

When my former mother in law died two years ago, I decided to dedicate an entire bed of the garden to her. She loved butterflies, and so Marilyn’s butterfly garden, which is even sort of butterfly shaped, came to be. I’ve mentioned this before, and it’s growing nicely, with plenty of plants that butterflies (and other pollinators) love, as well as plants that Marilyn loved. I do have to put more sunflowers in, however, as she was as fond of them as I am, but most of our sunflowers grow in other parts of the yard. So that’s on the agenda for this year.

Mostly I’m planting shrubs and trees now for people, like my friend Ladny, who has a linden tree in her memory. Sadly, I have plantings in waiting now, for several people who have died in the months since I’ve been unable to plant. I try as much as possible to match a person (or feline) personality to a particular plant. My husband’s cousin loved working with wood, so for him I put in a young oak; a friend’s cat was a French-speaking and exploring type of feline, so for him, the Explorer rose Louis Jolliet. And so on.

I’ve gotten smarter in recent months, and started labeling the plants with the name of the person (or purrball) being remembered, so that I don’t lose track. It’s easy to write the names down, of course, and I have, but the little copper tags from Lee Valley that you write on then tie on with copper wire really appeal to me. They’re tough, too; I haven’t lost one yet despite the vagaries of a Scotts Bay winter.

Does this memory garden tending help the grieving process? I like to think it does for others, as it does for me. Other writers have commented on how they feel a loved one’s presence nearby as they work in their garden; even though my father’s ashes are ensconced in a plot in a hideous (ie, tree and shrub-free) cemetery in another part of the province, he is always, always here, especially as I tend the gardens and mutter at the goutweed (I hear him laughing and reminding me about mint!) And I still hear Nermal ‘talking’ to me as he helped in the garden, and so with the other furbabies too. And for me, that’s as good as heaven on earth can be.