Return of the window flower box

You don't see many window flower boxes anymore. I remember my mother standing at her dining room window and planting flowers in the flower boxes beneath the windows. Not many people bother with flower boxes today; maybe the awkwardness and possibly dirt of leaning out of a window and planting from inside one's home is a part of the lack of popularity of window flower boxes. 

    This flower box (pictured) is outside of our kitchen window that faces the street. The brackets holding up the box have been there for at least twenty-six years, that's how long we've lived here and the brackets were there when we moved in. For years I looked at these brackets and thought I would like to have a flower box there and, finally, this last spring that's what I did. I know it's not the most beautiful flower box, it's just a plastic box from a big box hardware, some bagged soil left over from previous years, and some geraniums and a few marigolds not planted elsewhere. The plywood was something I found in the basement workshop and I cut it to size in a few minutes. Not a big job at all but it has given me a lot of pleasure and happiness. Now, when I do the dishes (always by hand) I can see red geraniums just outside the kitchen window. Maybe I'll paint the plywood base if I can get around to it which, knowing me, is unlikely. 

    This flower box gets no direct sunlight and yet the plants were thriving all summer and into fall. It was a very rainy summer so maybe that has something to do with how well they've done. Even the simplest, most crude flower box will give a lot of happiness. It increases the space you have to plant flowers, and it helps beautify you home. It is also an extension of container planting, but the container is attached to the wall instead of sitting on the ground. A flower box at an upstairs window requires watering from inside the house. Hanging plants need to be watered every day, or every week depending on the weather, and during a hot summer they will dry out in a day; so be sure to water them. I don't think you want too many flower boxes, it might look ostentatious and over the top, but it's your home so you decide what you want. They have flower boxes that attach to railings on balconies, I don't really like the look of these but you might give it a try if you live in an apartment. Having flowers is always better than not having flowers. A flower box is a small thing, like a bird bath, but, as I keep saying, it gives a lot of happiness.   

                                         

    And, finally, an inside view.

The Cape Cod Cottage

Casa Bella on Belmore Avenue, July 2021

I think of cottages as being cosy places and there is a lot to say in favour of being cosy. For years I've read detective novels and it's the cosy detective novels that are my favourite, this includes Agatha Christie's Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot novels. There are hard boiled detective novels but, basically, the detective genre lends itself to being cosy; Dorothy L. Sayers' Peter Wimsey novels tend to be long-winded but to some extent they are cosy. Are Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, or Colin Dexter cosy? They may not have cosy content but they are excellent to read on a winter afternoon when you have little to do but stay in-doors and drape a blanket or throw over your legs while lying on the couch. That is cosy.

A cottage is cosy because by definition it's small while a house is a house is a house. We don't speak of an English country house, it's an English country cottage; a house suggests something bigger than a cottage. A house is not cosy but it can have cosy rooms in it, a cottage should be nothing but cosy. Our home, named Casa Bella by my wife when we moved here, is one of many cottages all looking the same and built for returning soldiers after World War Two; it was inexpensive at the time and these cottages were called, euphemistically, five and ten houses, in other words, alluding to the old five and ten cent stores, Kresge's and Woolworth's, and they sold in the 1950s for anywhere between five and ten thousand dollars. A house is meant to house people, a family, so its primary purpose is functional and it isn't necessarily warm and cosy; these post-War cottages were functional and also housed families, they were a way to help veterans get started in life, they were starter houses. We bought our cottage in 1997 just after the second referendum for Quebec's independence or separation from Canada; real estate agents couldn't give houses away in those days because when there is political instability house prices collapse; instability in society threatens the value of people's homes.  

These specific cottages, I am referring to post-war cottages including the one in which my wife and I live, were called Cape Cod cottages although they have nothing to do with Cape Cod, but a Cape Cod cottage refers to certain characteristics of the building; the cottages were meant to house two adults and their two children, they are detached, they have one and a half stories and a basement that one day can be finished, they have maybe 1200 square feet, and they have a backyard. The construction of these cottages was mostly very good as it still was in the old days and builders had possibly better materials than are found in some properties today. These cottages have one important requirement that is lacking in most construction these days, they are quiet, and quiet now costs money; no one buys an estate to have to listen to neighbours talking outside but noise is a part of low income living; there is noise from neighbours, trucks and cars, and people with loud voices playing loud music heard through walls that are paper thin. When we moved here some of the people living in these cottages had lived here since the 1950s and 1960s; they loved their homes.  Now, the area is being gentrified, you see Mercedes and BMWs parked outside these formerly humble houses that are renovated and have lost all of the original floor plan. They are no longer cosy, They aren't even nice.

These Cape Cod cottages are also in demand because there aren't many detached houses in this Montreal neighbourhood, we live in this least stylish area of a stylish neighbourhood. There are mostly four-plexes, duplexes, and semi-detached homes in the stylish areas and most of these homes are very nice, they have hard wood floors and hard wood trim, French doors opening into the living or dining rooms, a working fire place, and they have large bed rooms. I grew up in one of these four-plexes not far from where I now live and it was very pleasant to live there; however, I doubt that a single-woman, or a single parent, raising a family on one income could afford to live there today, which is what my mother did, she kept us living in a nice place after my father died in 1956. Now, here is the ironic thing; I remember my mother saying, many years ago, that she should have moved to a less expensive neighbourhood, perhaps to a little house in Verdun by which she was referring to a Cape Cod cottage in that working class city adjoining Montreal. It was fate that I should end up living in Casa Bella.

Casa Bella, 27 May 2021

The garden on July 2, 2021

Echinacea or coneflowers

Bee balm

Day lilies

Snowball hydrangea on the left, hostas in the foreground and background; this bird bath has given me more pleasure than I can tell, seeing birds submerging themselves in the water, flapping their wings in the water, having a great time in the water!

Lavender

Daisies, hostas in the background

The gate to the driveway

 

A Canadian Cottage Garden

My plan is to write about gardening here, it is one of the activities where I find real happiness. There is a lot of happiness seeing birds in the bird bath, a lot of happiness seeing flowers growing and blooming. Uncovering a plant that was covered by mulch, after the winter is over, is seeing again something that was gone but has been found. Hello, little plant! Fireflies on a summer evening, beautiful! 

These photographs were taken at the end of June, 2021.

 

Last snowfall of winter 2020

It is not unusual to have snow in April, as we did this year on April 21. It is even possible to have snow in May which is why garden planting day is May 24, Victoria Day, the last day for frost.

Birds in the bird bath

Nothing has brought as much happiness this summer as seeing birds in our bird bath. I change the water in the morning and then, later, the birds arrive, sitting in the water, dunking their heads under the water and flapping their wings so the water sprays over them. Even today, 7 October 2020, there was a big fat robin sitting in the water by himself. It's not particularly warm outside, maybe + 15 C., but there he is, enjoying himself, having a great time. When he leaves the feathers on his head are all sticking up and spiky, like some kid trying to look sharp.

 

Noni Howard at Casa Bella

This must have been 1997 when Noni Howard stayed with us at Casa Bella. Here we are at the side door with Noni. Maybe it was just after this we walked up the street to visit Irving Layton at his home on Monkland Avenue. See Noni's last collection of poems at www.coraclepress.com.

This was back when poets were characters, personnages, not politically correct award winning creative writing graduates... Now, "characters" are not wanted, just bland career building "poets"... Even Layton was a character back then...