An hour ago I was walking on Westmore Avenue, on my way to Pharmaprix on Westminster Avenue, when a cardinal flew across the road; maybe he's here for the winter, or maybe cardinals stay all winter. Westmore was always my favourite street in this area, large lots, nicely kept Cape Cod houses, and quiet. In fact, in 1997 when we were looking at homes we looked at two houses on this block of Westmore; this was two years after the 1995 referendum on separation (we call the topic the "neverendum") and the bottom had fallen out of the real estate market; home owners were accepting rock bottom offers for their homes; what else could they do if they wanted to sell their home? Political instability will destroy the economy because business hates instability. Anyhow, those inexpensive homes from 1997 are now worth six or seven times what people paid for them, but it's almost thirty years later and house prices across the country have become prohibitively high.
One day, years ago, my mother commented that back in the early 1950s my Uncle Bill lived on Westmore. I checked it out in Lovell's Montreal City Directory and there was his name, living in the house where the cardinal flew over the street earlier today. I think he and my Auntie Lill and possibly his son Bill Jr., stayed for a year in this house before buying a home in Ville St-Laurent. My mother was never critical of Young Bill but she was also never critical of anyone in the family.
My cousin, Young Bill, as opposed to Old Bill who was my uncle (this is how they were referred to), had been in the army in World War Two and had been part of the Canadian army that liberated Holland; his mother would speak to my mother and read her letters from Young Bill that described in detail the horrors of war. Young Bill was alcoholic and returned to Canada with possibly/probably undiagnosed PTSD; maybe when he was younger he also had Asperger's disease or ADHD, maybe that's how he would be diagnosed today. People were critical of Young Bill for his alcoholism that seems to have consumed his life. I've heard stories about him falling down drunk in the streets . . . I don't know what became of his wife, the mother of his daughter Jo-Ann, she was never mentioned, but Uncle Bill and Auntie Lill raised Jo-Ann and she was very close to her grandparents and, as far as I know, estranged from her father.
I haven't mentioned any of this before now; I didn't know Jo-Ann when she lived in Montreal but I got to know her on Facebook. I am sad to say that she died about a year ago. I never mentioned her father, Young Bill, to her, I felt he was persona non grata.
This is the house at 5265 Westmore Avenue that Uncle Bill rented in 1950, back then it would have been typical of other Cape Cod cottages, not renovated like it is now.
This is the grave of Lillian and Bill Morrissey at Mount Royal Cemetery; their son, William Chipman Morrissey, is also buried here. He died on 27 February 1990.
Creativity
has the capacity to heal; some have fallen into the darkness of existence, and
writing poetry or making art is one way to find light in the darkness; what is
the light? It is the discovery of love in one's life. It is greater than any
darkness.
Only a month ago we had +20 C weather (that's 68 degrees Fahrenheit), the colours of nature were brilliant and gave variety and life to things, but now late fall and the approach of winter has been pulled over our heads like a large wool sweater and it is a grey world we're living in, reduced, monochromatic, cold (-5 C or 23 F), dull, and uninviting.
Out walking, when I approached Meadowbrook Golf Course I saw this long line of cars and people standing around, my first thought was that there must be an extraordinarily rare bird in the swampy area to the right of the road and all of these people had gathered to see this bird, or maybe a deer was there, or a bear, the Bear Clan are just a few miles away . . . of course, I was wrong, stupidly wrong, projecting my own interests on a lot of parked cars and men standing around waiting for the golf course to open, possibly for the last time this season. But I would have preferred my scenario and seen some extraordinary bird before it took to the air and flew south for the winter.
Here is a quotation from Thomas Carlyle's Past and Present (1843):
All great Peoples are conservative; slow to believe in novelties; patient of much error in actualities; deeply and forever certain of the greatness that is in Law, in Custom once solemnly-established, and now long recognized as just and final.--True, O Radical Reformers, there is no custom that can, properly speaking, be final; none. And yet thou seest Customs which, in all civilised countries, are accounted final; nay, under the Old-Roman name of Mores, are accounted Morality, Virtue, Laws of God Himself.
Soul is what makes us more than a pile of chemicals and a
tangle of neurons; soul is that essence of consciousness that
enables us to know ourselves and our world, to recognize
what is unique in us as individuals and what each one of us
shares with the immense totality of which we are a part.
–June Singer,
Boundaries of the Soul (1994), p. xi
1
No poetics should ignore the place of psyche or soul
in writing poetry, this is because poetry is the voice
of the soul. Of course, some people don't believe the soul
exists, they associate it with organized religion
that they oppose as irrational and superstitious.
We know what a soulless city looks like, it is sterile,
plastic, glass, concrete, stainless steel, and lacking
the human dimension, lacking the uniqueness of the individual.
The soul made itself known in my life when I was a child,
with dreams that changed my life and writing poetry
that allowed me to be creative and express my inner being;
how much less my life would have been without poetry.
I believe that the soul is fundamental to poetry,
going back to the "Epic of Gilgamesh", going back
to the beginning of time and the first poem, and going
forward to the next century and the next millennium;
as long as the human spirit exists people will write
poetry and the soul will express itself. For this reason,
poetry will never die; it may become scarce, but
it won't die.
2
"Break the line when you run out of breath", sd/ Charles Olson,
but is this applicable to poets other than Olson and his cohort?
Is breath so significant in writing poetry that it should be used
to indicate line breaks? This may seem obscure but it is important,
it has to do with how poems are written, how lines of poetry scan,
and where lines end and other lines begin. It also affirms the importance
of the human soul in poetry.
Although in a different way than Walt Whitman,
Olson follows Whitman in affirming the importance of the physical body;
however, Whitman celebrated the human soul as much as he celebrated
the body; in fact, it is Whitman's soul that is celebrating "the body electric",
it is Whitman's soul that is celebrating the physical side of life.
Other poets, Pound, Eliot, H.D., and Yeats, (there are too many others to list),
affirm a more practical way of putting words on a page; free verse and traditional
metrical verse don't place importance on breath indicating line breaks.
Instead of Charles Olson's theory, in "Projective Verse",
think of poems as transcriptions of the soul, and lines of poetry
are patterns of thought, they are what the soul has to say:
what the soul perceives, the poem says.
With deference to Charles Olson, here is a different model
for how poems are written; it pertains to the deep language of poetry:
From the soul to the brain;
from the brain to thought;
from thought to the pen
and the poem is written.
3
The vocabulary of the soul includes Jungian terms,
it includes archetypes, synchronicity, the human shadow,
anima/animus, individuation, and others; these are
descriptions of how the soul manifests itself,
not instructions on what to write.
You have had an experience of the soul
when you know something intuitively, or if you've
fallen in love, or spent years writing poems, or had
a synchronistic experience, or been moved by dreams—
by a dream that changes one's life—or by a work of art
or literature, by a movie or a play, or music; these experiences
can change how we see ourselves and our world, they can change
the direction of our life, they can deepen our understanding of life,
they are a part of our journey, including what we do in the future,
what we become, and who we are.
4
Whatever people around us may think, freedom is not negotiable,
whether it is freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, or freedom
to think whatever you want. No one can make art that is authentic
to their vision and maintain their integrity as a poet if they live in fear
of being censored; censorship and creative expression are mutually exclusive.
There is state censorship and censorship by social media,
which is cancel culture, and we also censor ourselves; self-censorship
comes from within us while other types of censorship come from
outside of us, but both are pernicious and dangerous to creativity and
free expression. No poet can accept silence imposed by cancel
culture or state censorship, it would be soul suicide to do so.
We don't live in what Keats described as a "vale of soul making"
just to pander to people who are ignorant, or intolerant, or bullies.
My rule is: write exactly what I feel hesitant about writing, what I
want to keep silent about, what I want to censor; that's where poetry
lies, it is found in the shadow of consciousness.
No matter how offensive something may seem to be,
freedom of speech is essential to the arts and to democracy,
it is more important than catering to someone's sensibility,
or giving in to the fear of being attacked by them, verbally or in print,
or their demand for censorship and the denial of freedom
that has been hard won over many centuries. When a poet sides
with those who would censor the writing and statements
of others, that poet has joined the gang of repressors,
that poet has denied poetry and the work of being a poet.
In this life there is always somebody who wants to impose
what they think is best for everybody else, who wants to close down
a conversation, ban works of art, and censor what people are saying.
But poetry isn't written to make anyone happy or safe; the soul doesn't care
if you are happy or not, the soul cares about the truth of your existence.
5
I began writing poems when I was young
and I've described this as the beginning of my journey
as a poet. "All my heroes were poets" writes Ken Norris,
as poets were also my heroes: including Allen Ginsberg,
Walt Whitman, Matthew Arnold, William Blake,
John Keats, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Chaucer;
and in my own country, my poet heroes are
the Confederation Poets, the McGill Group of poets,
Louis Dudek, Irving Layton, Al Purdy, Alden Nowlan,
and others. A young poet writes for the love of writing poems
and, if the poet is lucky, the soul appears, the soul is awakened;
a new maturity and intelligence in the writing is the appearance
of the soul's presence in the poet's work.
The nature of psyche, which is a synonym for soul,
is to find meaning and wholeness in life; and where is love?
Love is in every expression of the soul, every poem, every
insight, every action coming from the soul's awakening;
the soul has a propensity for individuation;
the soul gives joy to life;
the soul follows the bright star of love;
the soul lights the darkness surrounding us.
Author Bio
Montreal-born poet Stephen Morrissey is the author of twelve books, including poetry and literary criticism. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree, Honours in English with Distinction, from Sir George Williams University in 1973. In 1976 he graduated with a Master of Arts degree in English Literature from McGill University. In the 1970s Morrissey was associated with the Vehicule Poets. The Stephen Morrissey Fonds, 1963 – 2014, are housed at Rare Books and Special Collections of the McLennan Library at McGill University. Stephen Morrissey married poet Carolyn Zonailo in 1995.
Original:
First published at https://artisanalwriter.com/2022/12/01/on-poetics/, 01 December 2022:
Also available as a podcast. To listen on Spotify click here.
"Soul is what makes us more than a pile of chemicals and a
tangle of neurons; soul is that essence of consciousness that
enables us to know ourselves and our world, to recognize
what is unique in us as individuals and what each one of us
shares with the immense totality of which we are a part."
–June Singer,
Boundaries of the Soul (1994), p. xi
1
No poetics should ignore the place of psyche or soul
in writing poetry, this is because poetry is the voice
of the soul. Of course, some people don't believe the soul
exists, they associate it with organized religion
that they oppose as irrational and superstitious.
We know what a soulless city looks like, it is sterile,
plastic, glass, concrete, stainless steel, and lacking
the human dimension, lacking the uniqueness of the individual.
The soul made itself known in my life when I was a child,
with dreams that changed my life and writing poetry
that allowed me to be creative and express my inner being;
how much less my life would have been without poetry.
I believe that the soul is fundamental to poetry,
going back to the "Epic of Gilgamesh", going back
to the beginning of time and the first poem, and going
forward to the next century and the next millennium;
as long as the human spirit exists people will write
poetry and the soul will express itself. For this reason,
poetry will never die; it may become scarce, but
it won't die.
2
"Break the line when you run out of breath", sd/ Charles Olson,
but is this applicable to poets other than Olson and his cohort?
Is breath so significant in writing poetry that it should be used
to indicate line breaks? This may seem obscure but it is important,
it has to do with how poems are written, how lines of poetry scan,
and where lines end and other lines begin. It also affirms the importance
of the human soul in poetry.
Although in a different way than Walt Whitman,
Olson follows Whitman in affirming the importance of the physical body;
however, Whitman celebrated the human soul as much as he celebrated
the body; in fact, it is Whitman's soul that is celebrating "the body electric",
it is Whitman's soul that is celebrating the physical side of life.
Other poets, Pound, Eliot, H.D., and Yeats, (there are too many others to list),
affirm a more practical way of putting words on a page; free verse and traditional
metrical verse don't place importance on breath indicating line breaks.
Instead of Charles Olson's theory, in "Projective Verse",
think of poems as transcriptions of the soul, and lines of poetry
are patterns of thought, they are what the soul has to say:
what the soul perceives, the poem says.
With deference to Charles Olson, here is a different model
for how poems are written; it pertains to the deep language of poetry:
From the soul to the brain;
from the brain to thought;
from thought to the pen
and the poem is written.
3
The vocabulary of the soul includes Jungian terms,
it includes archetypes, synchronicity, the human shadow,
anima/animus, individuation, and others; these are
descriptions of how the soul manifests itself,
not instructions on what to write.
You have had an experience of the soul
when you know something intuitively, or if you've
fallen in love, or spent years writing poems, or had
a synchronistic experience, or been moved by dreams—
by a dream that changes one's life—or by a work of art
or literature, by a movie or a play, or music; these experiences
can change how we see ourselves and our world, they can change
the direction of our life, they can deepen our understanding of life,
they are a part of our journey, including what we do in the future,
what we become, and who we are.
4
Whatever people around us may think, freedom is not negotiable,
whether it is freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, or freedom
to think whatever you want. No one can make art that is authentic
to their vision and maintain their integrity as a poet if they live in fear
of being censored; censorship and creative expression are mutually exclusive.
There is state censorship and censorship by social media,
which is cancel culture, and we also censor ourselves; self-censorship
comes from within us while other types of censorship come from
outside of us, but both are pernicious and dangerous to creativity and
free expression. No poet can accept silence imposed by cancel
culture or state censorship, it would be soul suicide to do so.
We don't live in what Keats described as a "vale of soul making"
just to pander to people who are ignorant, or intolerant, or bullies.
My rule is: write exactly what I feel hesitant about writing, what I
want to keep silent about, what I want to censor; that's where poetry
lies, it is found in the shadow of consciousness.
No matter how offensive something may seem to be,
freedom of speech is essential to the arts and to democracy,
it is more important than catering to someone's sensibility,
or giving in to the fear of being attacked by them, verbally or in print,
or their demand for censorship and the denial of freedom
that has been hard won over many centuries. When a poet sides
with those who would censor the writing and statements
of others, that poet has joined the gang of repressors,
that poet has denied poetry and the work of being a poet.
In this life there is always somebody who wants to impose
what they think is best for everybody else, who wants to close down
a conversation, ban works of art, and censor what people are saying.
But poetry isn't written to make anyone happy or safe; the soul doesn't care
if you are happy or not, the soul cares about the truth of your existence.
5
I began writing poems when I was young
and I've described this as the beginning of my journey
as a poet. "All my heroes were poets" writes Ken Norris,
as poets were also my heroes: including Allen Ginsberg,
Walt Whitman, Matthew Arnold, William Blake,
John Keats, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Chaucer;
and in my own country, my poet heroes are
the Confederation Poets, the McGill Group of poets,
Louis Dudek, Irving Layton, Al Purdy, Alden Nowlan,
and others. A young poet writes for the love of writing poems
and, if the poet is lucky, the soul appears, the soul is awakened;
a new maturity and intelligence in the writing is the appearance
of the soul's presence in the poet's work.
The nature of psyche, which is a synonym for soul,
is to find meaning and wholeness in life; and where is love?
Love is in every expression of the soul, every poem, every
insight, every action coming from the soul's awakening;
the soul has a propensity for individuation;
the soul gives joy to life;
the soul follows the bright star of love;
the soul lights the darkness surrounding us.
Author Bio
Montreal-born poet Stephen Morrissey is the author of twelve books, including poetry and literary criticism. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree, Honours in English with Distinction, from Sir George Williams University in 1973. In 1976 he graduated with a Master of Arts degree in English Literature from McGill University. In the 1970s Morrissey was associated with the Vehicule Poets. The Stephen Morrissey Fonds, 1963 – 2014, are housed at Rare Books and Special Collections of the McLennan Library at McGill University. Stephen Morrissey married poet Carolyn Zonailo in 1995.
Winter blows in soon, snow, ice, and misery. Many gardeners have done something to prepare their garden for next spring, including me. But for many others it's the minimum and that will have to be enough when you factor in a disinclination to even be outside in this cold weather (and winter hasn't even begun). I've just been on a short walk and I guess I'm not much of a Canadian anymore, winter fills me with dread.
Just a short aside; one of the best things I've done is have these fences enclose parts of the garden. The enclosed feeling, contained, and privacy makes the garden even more inviting to sit back there even, I am hoping, when it's cold.
Photo taken on 30 November after a second pruning of these trees this month.
A neighbour had this row of trees pruned, branches and some boughs have been removed; my hope is that this will give me more sunlight next year.
Some rose bushes have been wrapped in burlap while this area has a layer of leaves and burlap covering it.
Any gardener will tell you of the advantages of mulching; don't discard last fall's leaves, rake them onto your flower beds; in the early spring you'll see new growth where you raked your leaves.
A year ago I raked this area, I cleaned out dead plants, leaves, and ended up with the soil and a few remaining plants. What a mistake that was . . . the tall bee balm and flowers, miniature irises, and even the raspberry canes failed to perform as they had the previous summer. This fall I have left things as they are and we'll see what grows . . .
The end of November and these flowers, in a hanging pot, are all that is left in the garden despite the cold and snow we've already had and that subsequently melted . . .
3.You don’t become a poet expecting to be liked
for everything you write, or even for some of what you write. Why do people
become poets? It is simple: people become poets because they are called to this
work; writing poetry is an act of transcription, writing down what is given to
you and, most importantly, writing poetry is to feel that truth is so important
that it must be adhered to. This is why freedom of speech is so important; it
is essential if literature is to have any meaning or relevance for either the
poet or the reader.
4.
Poetry isn't antiseptic, it's passion for life. Poetry is love and death and
tears of joy and tears of sorrow. It's messy, it's stuff we don't want to talk
about, it's betrayal and jealousy, it's love and sex and tenderness and grief
and regret and awe and divine inspiration; it's the shadow falling across one's
life. Poetry is nothing if not passionate; passion, not the intellect, not
fashion, not popularity, not what other people are doing, defines poetry.
5.In The
Green Archetypal Field of Poetry (2022), I described how one's life can be
reconfigured to something totally different from what one expected in life; I
described this as the Great Reconfiguration. When I was six years old and my
father died my old life became redundant, everything changed; I was one person and then I became someone else. His death has
preoccupied much of my life, his passing reconfigured my life; this began
the relentless journey of grief and understanding, love and loss, that I've
been on, and trying to understand this existence and expressing it in poems.
6.
To write not parts of a life but a whole life, that is what I have tried to do;
it is an impossible task and can be attempted only if one refers to archetypes
and a mythological approach to experience as a way to communicate this
information. The poet's body of work is all of a piece, a single entity; it's a
life that is transformed by poetry, it's the soul speaking through the poet.
For John Keats life was a vale of soul-making, not a vale of tears; this was
always the direction of my writing, my concern has always been with soul-making
and I expressed this in my poems.
I want to preface this by saying that I rarely write about politics although it is a lifelong discussion, but it is always a subtext to what is important here and that is poetry and writing about poetics. So, here is something decrying the loss of a bit more of our heritage, being critical of the metric system that was imposed on us, and it is probably tilting at windmills . . .
After this, it's mostly back to poetry and poetics, gardening and photographs, life and love, and the politicians can do what they do best, which is to screw the public and call it true love.
1.
Whatever we change, we change at the loss of
something else, and not every change is for the better. Some things we change, what we
may have originally considered reforms, end up making life worse, or more
complicated, or destroy institutions that have supported society for centuries.
Not much thought is given to how change will affect us, what we are giving up, what we are replacing, or what we have lost. We are a society that believes
in change for its own sake, that everything new is better than what is old, and
people cheer for change as though all change is wonderful. What people are
cheering for now may be what people will regret in the future.
The reason we adopted the metric system is that
it was presumed it would make us more economically competitive with other
nations, for instance the European Union. Of course, the young accept the
metric system, it's all they have ever known for measuring and weighing things,
and it is taught in schools. Others among us have never wholeheartedly accepted metrification; fruit and vegetables in grocery stores are weighed
in both metric and the imperial system, in ounces and pounds, and measurement for building
construction material is still in the imperial system, we buy a sheet of
plywood that is eight feet by four feet, a two by four is measured in inches,
and so on. Measure twice, cut once, is the carpenter's rule; and it is done in
inches and feet.
Metrification
meant giving up an aspect of our both collective inheritance and the use of
words that pertain to measurement. But we didn't care, we accepted something that displaced centuries of
our history, our way of life, and our language. Metrification moved us further
from what is specific and historical, the Avoirdupois system, and into
what was conceived in conferences and has very little connection to the everyday
life of everyday people. My concern here is not which is the better system of weights and measurement, it the loss of language, history, and our way of life; of course, we can't go back, that will never happen.
The
Imperial system is derived from the Avoirdupois system which originated eight hundred years ago, certain words are from Old English, the Romans,
and earlier civilizations. An "inch" is 1/36th of a yard, from the
Old English "ince" or "ynce"', and it is 1/12th of a foot.
A "foot" is from the Old English, it is a linear measurement of a
man's foot measured as twelve inches. A "yard" is the length of a
man's belt but also calculated by King Henry I as the distance from his nose to
the thumb of his outstretched hand, it is 36 inches in length. While a
"furlong", a word still used in horse racing, is the length of the
average plowed furor, it is 660 feet long. A "mile" is from the
Romans and calculated as 5,280 feet; a "country mile" refers to travelling
over difficult terrain over a long distance since it is not a straight line.
If our previous system of measurement is ancestral and originated in a pre-industrial rural society,
then the metric system is fairly recent, originating in cities, by
intellectuals and academics, and based in measurement for science, business, and urban
dwellers; it is not a system of measurement with a relationship with the
natural world, with the earth, or with anything to do with forests, rivers,
wild life, oceans, fish, coast lines, farming, small towns, hunting, and so on.
Perhaps most urban dwellers don't care about forests, rivers, wild life,
oceans, fish, coast lines, farming, small towns, hunting, and so on. The metric
system does not spring from the earth that we walk on or from our ancestors or
a belief in the importance of place or where we live; its origin is an abstract invented system of measurement.
How
do we define what it means to be a human being and does this definition include
a soul? The soul does not resonate to the metric system, the soul demands
specificity, place, tradition, and history; the soul includes forests, rivers,
wild life, oceans, fish, coast lines, farming, small towns, hunting, and so on.
The metric system was imposed on us as so much else has been imposed on us;
what is being imposed on us moves us away from tradition, our ancestors, and
the ground on which we walk. The metric system does not spring from place, or from our ancestral and historical place.
Of course, after the fact this refers to what one becomes familiar with, and you can become used to anything. Metric displaced pounds, ounces, and Fahrenheit, it displaced what our ancestors knew and lived with, and it displaced words that were used every day by average people going about their lives. We can't go back to the old system but we should remember that change is not always for the best, that what changes displaces what we already have, and in retrospect what we already have may not be all that bad. Today's society is beginning to look very different from what we had, and were happy with, even just five years ago. I am not saying that change is not needed in society, but change and the direction in which our society is now headed is not a place some of us want to go, it looks to be dominated by the State, by globalism, by the end of the family unit, and the end of our way of life. So, this is about a symptom, metrification, and no doubt it seem ridiculous, but it is a symptom of a future that is already happening.
I really enjoyed, more than enjoyed! last night's "5 Poets Breaking into Song" (this is the link to a video of the reading), an event held in Toronto. George Elliott Clarke included one of my poems, commissioned by George and set to music and performed by James Rolfe, and this can be found at 1:37:00. Many thanks to George and James and everyone else involved in this event!
A few weeks ago I had fairly extensive landscaping done at our home, which included new fences for the garden. The old, collapsing, wooden fence that we had by the side of the house may have been countryish and maybe it had another ten years before it would have collapsed, but it needed to be replaced. There was another fence, in the back of the garden, and it had completely collapsed; it may have been sixty years old.
Our Cape Cod Cottage, and there are many of them in this neighbourhood, were built in 1950, after the War, for returning veterans; they housed a family of four people, they are single family dwellings, they have a backyard, and the same design of house was constructed in many parts of Canada. Cape Cod Cottages are remarkably well constructed and quiet inside, if quiet is as important to you as it is for me. Only seventy-five years ago this area of Montreal was all farmers' fields, there were also apple orchards, and it was the country; that is all gone now and few people either remember how it was or know anything about the history of this area.
There is one thing most old people would agree on and that is to prepare for the future. We know the future we don't want but it takes some effort to avoid it; we want to stay independent and to do this requires at least basic ambulatory health and some mental acuity; fortunately, the Quebec government seems to be working to keep old people in their homes for as long as possible, they pay to have someone visit the elderly everyday, and this is a lot cheaper, and better for the elderly, than having these old people institutionalized. We saw what institutionalized care for old people is like, it's something we all want to avoid, among other things it was also a breeding ground for Covid-19. So, the message is, Prepare now! That is one reason I had these fences built, so I can have a nice environment now and not worry about the place falling apart when I'm older and not able to look after it.
These new six foot fences may seem extreme, but they also make the garden feel private and enclosed. I told someone when the fences were being constructed that I didn't want the Berlin Wall and then I realized they hadn't heard of the Berlin Wall; ah, the young . . . I suspect that fences are what a garden needs, to be enclosed for privacy; I am also reminded of one of the greatest children's novels, The Secret Garden by Francis Hodgson Burnett, well worth reading by yourself or to a child. Fences enclose the garden and make it feel private, like a room, a place of flowers, birds, and being a little closer to nature, be sure to add a few chairs so you can sit for a while, and enjoy the garden you have created,
Yesterday's snow will probably melt, it's 0 C., moving between +1 and -1; just think, ten days ago it was +20 C. No wonder we're obsessed with the weather; before bed we listen to the weather report, then we'll know what kind of day tomorrow will be; upon waking we listen to the weather report, has it changed since last night? Where I live, so much of daily life depends on the weather.
You ask if I like snow and winter? No, I don't. But we are stoics here in Canada, we live with it, we say "You get what you get."
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