The garden on June 4, 2026

 

"Sabbath Poem: 2008, XII”, by Wendell Berry

 

2014

My people are destroyed
for lack of knowledge…

Hosea 4:6

We forget the land we stand on
and live from. We set ourselves
free in an economy founded
on nothing, on greed verified
by fantasy, on which we entirely
depend. We depend on fire
that consumes the world without
lighting it. To this dark blaze
driving the inert metal
of our most high desire
we offer our land as fuel,
thus offering ourselves at last
to be burned. This is our riddle
to which the answer is a life
that none of us has lived.

    —Wendell Berry

"Peddler" by James Tate

 

James Tate

Please do not steal my flowers;

they are my last love,

I am immune to everything

but flowers. The pageantry

of most encounters

is not quite as exciting

as the pollinating

pasqueflower, it's like a river

washing itself over

and over.

And when the pretty waitress

Lillian of French descent

walks over a grate in the sidewalk

and a gush of hot air

slams her dress over her ears

I do not enjoy the view

as much as that of phlox blooming.

I regard human beings as signals

and therefore bow my head

to hide my silly grin

at the raucous world--a monkey

hanging by its tail

from an intensely white cliff:

that's why we hold out

our hands all day, all life,

to catch something like that.

And nightletters, the urgent hundred

syllables by which we 

express less than the minimal

Aristotelian tragedy--

an ash to swallow every morning

with my cereal,

a dictionary of stones in  the evergreen.

In the distance the man

who is in charge of beating children

hangs his hands on my cart

and I sprinkle pollen of goldenrod

on his open wounds:

these are ordinary obligations,

but flowers, flowers--

there are so many colors;

more than there were

in poor Joseph's coat I think.

Note: "Peddler" is from The Oblivion Ha-Ha (1970) by James Tate.

The garden on 22 May 2026

 

Dr. Wilder Penfield and Dr. William Cone

                                    Dr. Wilder Penfield and Dr. William Cone, residents

                                  in background; photograph by Yousuf Karsh, 1952; private collection

The co-founders of The Neuro are Dr. Wilder Penfield and Dr. William Cone. Of course, we've all heard of Wilder Penfield, he's famous! There is a street named after him in Montreal and years ago we received in the mail a short book by Penfield on the subject of the family; it was Man and his Family (1967), based on Penfield's Josiah Wood Lectures; Josiah Wood was my step-father's grandfather. I have only recently heard of Dr. William Cone, this was in a newspaper article (by Allison Hanes; published in the Montreal Gazette on 28 February 2026).  If you were to visit The Neuro today, you would probably not see any evidence for the existence of Dr. William Cone, except his image in the mural by Mary Harris Filer, and yet Cone was the co-founder of The Neuro. About Filer’s mural, Allison Hanes writes,

The work shows Penfield and Cone back to back at the bedside of a young woman, surrounded by a group of nurses, colleagues, contemporaries and some of the greats from the history of neurology. While Penfield, arms extended, looks toward the horizon, Cone’s sorrowful gaze is fixed on the patient — a perfect synopsis of their medical styles.

I plan to read The Mind Mappers: Friendship, Betrayal and the Obsessive Quest to Chart the Brain, by Eric Andrew-Gee (Random House Canada, 2025); published only last year, this sounds like an excellent book and will explain and describe something of the relationship of Wilder Penfield and William Cone; Cone deserves our attention, he dedicated his life to neurology and is also an eminent and distinguished physician. The William Cone Fonds are archived at the Osler Library at McGill University.

I can understand how Dr. William Cone felt betrayed by Penfield when he was passed over as head of The Neuro when Penfield retired; that is, Cone co-founded The Neuro and he was passed over by Penfield, the other co-founder of The Neuro and Cone's long-time friend. It was perhaps a correct decision but Cone’s feeling of betrayal were overwhelming; this betrayal, it is suggested, led to Cone`s suicide in his office at The Neuro. 

Perhaps the images of mental illness, the suffering endured by people as depicted in Filer`s mural, describe Cone's mental and emotional state at that time in his life. Dr. Cone’s suffering has more to do with psychology than with neurology; in Jungian terms, Cone was confronted by his shadow, by the unresolved dark side, the repressed side, of his psyche; he couldn’t deal with the personal injustice of betrayal by a longtime friend and colleague. At first I thought that Wilder Penfield didn't think Cone was up to the job of running an institution that Cone co-founded, but now I wonder if it was another case of someone not aware of their own shadow, this time Dr. Penfield's shadow. Whatever the reason, in a way it led to Dr. Cone's death.

Dr.Penfield was succeeded at The Neuro by Dr. Theodore Rasmussen. One day I will explain something of our family’s experience at The Neuro.

Dr. William Cone


Cone's obituary

This portrait of Wilder Penfield, painted by Lynn Buckham in 1972, is
on permanent exhibit on the first floor of The Neuro; behind Penfield
is the statue at the The Neuro's entrance

                                     

                                             Wilder Penfield's name inscribed on the wall at the 

                                                            entrance to The Neuro with the names of other 

                                                            important neurologists; Cone's name is absent

                                                                                                                                        

Dr. Penfield’s Josiah Wood lectures 

                                         

                                                       

Note: The statue at The Neuro's entrance is "a marble sculpture titled La Nature se dévoilant devant la Science ("Nature unveiling herself before science"). Installed in 1934, it is a copy of the original sculpture from 1899 by Ernest Barrias, chosen by founder Dr. Wilder Penfield to symbolize the ideal of neurological research."

The garden on 17 May 2026

Winter began early last year, around the beginning of November, so there wasn't much chance to rake and bag leaves, or tidy up, or put away garden furniture, or do whatever else one does at the end of fall. Years ago a friend, who had an incredible garden, told me that he rakes the fall leaves onto his flower beds. Of course, gardeners tend to be neat people and don't like the look of last year's leaves in the garden the following spring; I never had a chance to rake and bag last fall's leaves but I did rake some leaves onto the garden beds. Now, it's been a long and cool spring and the dead leaves are still there, and I've decided to let them decompose where they've fallen or been raked. It was a terrible winter, it was relentlessly cold, no January thaw and below average winter temperatures. Perhaps partly because of this leaf mulch the garden survived, although most of my lavender has died, other bushes are only half alive, including rose bushes. Most of my hostas survived but they are very slow in making an appearance even by mid-May, and some hostas are indeed slowly pushing through the bed of leaves. 

One last thing, after six or seven years of working on my Canadian cottage garden, it has finally become truly established and I doubt I need to buy many plants this year, I can just leave most of it as it is. The garden is established and it doesn't need my input as when I was planning this garden. Ideas for the garden come at unexpected time, for instance, when watching a mystery on TV or while watching Escape to the Country, or just out of thin air. Last year I decided to let part of the garden go "wild", not cut the grass there, just leave it; so, it's been from planning to abandoning (not interfering).The garden is an invitation to urban wildlife, birds, and insects, and any plant that self-seed; it is an invitation to visit or live where they'll be left alone and admired. Like the rabbit who visited the other day or yesterday's visit by a cardinal and sparrow, both at the birdbath, and then a robin who had waited his turn before having a drink of clean water I'd left for them. Here are some photographs taken on May 17th; photos mostly of hostas that are pushing through last fall's leaves.

Update: It was +29 C yesterday, very hot. In the morning I went to our garden centre and I spent about $175.00, too much (just a few years ago that was a lot of money); everything is expensive. I bought a small bag of grass seed, some annuals for a flower box and two or three containers, and two pricey hanging planters.   

At The Neuro, 30 April 2026

This is the first time I've visited the Montreal Neurological Institute since October or November 1969; the entrance, on University Street, is the same today as it was in 1969 or when The Neuro opened in 1934, it is the same Art Deco design. The Neuro is a world class institution, founded by Dr. Wilder Penfield and Dr. William Cone; a website reads, "The seamless integration of research, patient care, and training of the world’s top minds makes The Neuro uniquely positioned to have a significant impact on the understanding and treatment of nervous system disorders." 

 

The garden on 9 May 2026

It was a long and cold winter, a nightmare of a winter, and now spring weather is still cool. Usually by this time I have installed our air conditioner and it is hot outside, that's how the seasons work here, one day it's winter, the next day it's summer, but this year I am still putting on the furnace when I get up (it's only +5 C and overcast on 13 May 2026).The other day I looked out of the dining room window and there was the rabbit that visited us this winter, he was sitting in the garden and having a nice quiet time. Then a cardinal flew by and landed a few feet away from him, it scared the rabbit who ran away. There is a lot of life out there but you have to make your garden a place where birds, insects, and animals want to visit. As a Canadian writer said, "if you build it they will come." That was W.P. Kinsella. The crows are often flying overhead, sometimes they are eyeing squirrels that would make a nice meal for them. A few days ago I went out to put clean water in the bird bath--birds don't like dirty water--and everyday I leave a few unshelled peanuts in the bird bath for the crows--but this day I found something else in the bird bath, it was a squirrel's paw. Well, that's life around here, last year I saw a crow fly away carrying a dead squirrel. I am no friend of squirrels, they made life hell for a few years, there is no bird feeder here because the squirrels ate the bird food I would leave, and then the squirrels entered the attic and wanted to live there; squirrels can be squatters. The noise they made was terrible. At great expense I had their entrances closed up and that was the end of squirrels in the attic, although for a few years they would return to try to enter what had been their home, but without luck.

Squirrel paw found in the bird bath

 

 

Ian Ferrier, poet, at the Visual Arts Centre, 8 May 2012

 

These are photographs I took of Ian Ferrier reading
his work at the Visual Arts Centre in Westmount; 
in the background is the organizer of the reading
Ilona Martonfi

John McAuley, poet, some photos

 

John McAuley and Claudia Lapp, at Bleu Met Literary Festival, April 2018

John McAuley reading at Rare Books and Special Collections, McGill University, 26 April 2018

Waiting to read at Rare Books and Special Collections, 26 April 2018
from left to right, Endre Farkas, Tom Konvyes, Claudia Lapp, Stephen Morrissey

John McAuley, sound check before reading at Rare Books and Special Collections, 26 April 2018

John McAuley and Tom Konyves, 26 April 2018

John McAuley reading at the Yellow Door, May 2013