This Week's Book

All the World by Liz Garton Scanlon & Illustrated by Marla Frazee

The world of this book is just small enough that you can see from one end to the other, you can recognize many of the same people from page to page, and see where you just were from where you now are. It's like streetview on Google Maps for preschoolers! 

My 3 year old and I both enjoy finding familiar details such as the the tandem bikers, the beach ball left at the pond overnight, the family's red truck as the day carries on in the book. There are no protagonists here just people doing what they do. 

I also appreciate how the text is written into the illustrations. The words fill a cloud or bump along the top of the garden. Their appearance even illustrates the meaning of words: the word "up" is raised and the word "down" is lowered. The font is similarly suitable, straightforward and legible yet whimsical in the way it is sometimes level and other times free flowing.

This book reassures both me and my children telling us this world is safe and inviting and exciting and varied and beautiful - exactly the message I want to tell my kids every day about our world. 

This Week's Book

That's Not a Daffodil by Elizabeth Honey

We have read dozens and dozens of books in the past few months but truly, none have made me smile the way this book does. And so it deserves recommendation, a mighty acorn of approval, if you will.

This sweet book is about a preschool aged boy and his neighbour, a grown-up gardener.

The weeks, months, and seasons are marked by visits from neighbourly Mr. Yilmaz, who brings homegrown produce to Tom's family with each visit. First apples and an unlikely looking daffodil bulb, and at other times carrots, a pumpkin, and lemons. The passing of time is also marked by visiting grandchildren, a weekend at Grandma's and Mr. Yilmaz's absence when he's away in Turkey.

There is a peacefulness about this book. It contains just the right details; the reader is left needing no more than we are given but savouring every encounter.

With the daffodil's growth a trust and friendship also grow between Tom and his neighbour. Mr. Yilmaz's gift turns a skeptical, expectant boy into a clever-metaphor weaving believer. Mr. Yilmaz sits back and lets the magic unfold for Tom, giving the boy an even better gift than a flower: the experience of  discovering something first-hand.

I hope Mr. Yilmaz moves to my block soon!

Working for the 'Hood

It's a whole lot better than working for the man and there are decent perks too. Since moving to my current neighbourhood and staying home full-time with my two kids I haven't been able to get involved enough in the local goings-on. I like to feel like I'm making a difference and being active on a super local level lets me see the change my efforts make; it's more gratifying than vacuuming! I've also really honed my clip art skills as you can see below.

Here's a sample of a few of the projects I've help organize.

My Local Orchard

I never would have guessed how much local fruit I'd be eating living in my central city location. This August I picked, ate, shared, baked, and froze a bowl of superb yellow plums, a handful of Italian prune plums, a couple buckets of blackberries, three colanders heaped with red Santa Rosa plums, 150 apples, and at least two dozen bunches of the best green grapes I've ever eaten - and all grown within one square block of my house! 

In our backyard we have two apple trees. Last year we had two dozen apples from the big tree and maybe two edible ones from the small tree. We pruned the trees last fall and this summer we got 100 apples off the big one and 50 off the small one!

Doin' it homesteader style

We ate and baked with the gorgeous 100 apples from the big tree but, other than giving the somewhat scabby little apples to my younger son for teething toys, I figured sauce was the solution. I was able to borrow from a neighbour (who's also a friend) an apple saucer (well, that's what I call it). She had it from her mother (who's also a neighbour) who used to use it in her homesteading days. 

I covered the apples in water, brought them to a boil, simmered them until the flesh was soft and the peels cracked, then tossed them in the apple saucer and sauced 'em. I added back in half the cooking water to lengthen the sauce (and not waste that pink gold - yes, the apple cooking water was a lovely pink lemonade color) and my boys ate it up right away. I got two mason jars out of two dozen of the worst apples and I feel right pleased about it!

Last meal ever eaten out of that tea cup;
he broke it on his way to the dishwasher.
Fortunately, no apple sauce was harmed.

Apples, sauce, and a prime example of
applesauce coma after two helpings.

Apparently our wall color is a dead ringer for homemade applesauce.
Put that on your paint chip Benjamin Moore!

Unearthing Local History

Last week I got in my first gardening days of the year. I spent hours weeding dandelions, pruning the hydrangea, planting poppies, bachelor buttons, violas, and scarlet runner beans, training the clematis, turning over the garden and getting the greens in. During this process I found countless rusty nails, a handful of porcelain chips, a couple unbelievably large rusted bolts (how could I not have come across these before?), and a four inch shard of glass. (And that's nothing compared to the bent spoon and hockey puck I found last year!)

All this takes me back to my last house where I found similar items in a similar veggie patch every spring, despite turning over the soil and double digging that dirt and sifting out the roots and rocks for five years. And then there's my parents' garden where my mom found (and likely continues to find) random flotsam from bygone eras and previous tenants since we moved in two and a half decades ago.

I enjoy thinking about this stuff. The people who lived and breathed and cried and laughed right where I am sitting now and their way of life and their trail of breadcrumbs that leads me back to them. I like thinking about what it would have been like in my neighborhood when you could still find creeks with fish in them, alleyways with outhouses, and streets with streetcars.

It's my sincere case of nostalgia that causes me to find this as fascinating as I do and so I got a kick out of it when there was a knock at my door one afternoon last week. Assuming it was a mom friend and her girls come for our play date I invited the knocker in verbally from down the hall. To my surprise a middle-aged man opened my door. Apparently he was friends with the boys who grew up in my house in the 70s. He was able to enlighten me as to the stains on my hardwood floors (black Scottie dogs), the pink 1961 license plate nailed to the ceiling of the garage (three boys lived here and worked on dirt bikes and hot rods) and that hockey puck I found beneath a dead rhododendron in my garden (alley hockey and errant pucks).

In this vein, here is a poem I wrote a few year's back after visiting a dear friend's father who found some nifty odds and ends while renovating his house in small-town Ontario.

Erinsville

Lynn’s old house hid countless relics.

During renovations he found newspapers

and a dozen shoes in the walls.
Four coins in the crossbeams for luck. 

Outside, after the thaw, there were daffodil bulbs

in the grass, a marsh, and a rowboat in the field.

Bridget O’Neil had been buried for a hundred and thirty years

when her scribbler turned up behind the stairs,

one guilt-ridden Victorian phrase per page

copied meticulously in her nine year old cursive.

The O’Neils had seven children

and a summer kitchen.

They bought the land from the Burns,

the Protestants, not the Catholic Byrnes.

Those veins of vanity ran deep enough 

to provoke a bar fight ending with a nose bite; 

bank embezzlement settled the score.

Touted tales told by cattle farmers

at the barley houses on the ridge.

This has always been a one-horse town,

though back then it had a one-room schoolhouse

and the hardware store sold two sizes of men’s pants,

34 and 42; muddy farmyards never minded suspenders.

Driveways have always meandered into the mist

and the creek in the ditch is nothing new. 

The same dandelions work at uprooting the house.

“Barnacle Bill” on the victrola, a nail for a needle,

and yes, black cherry pie on the sill.

A night in Erinsville yields more

than five toads crossing the road.

To the Man Who Used to Live in My House

Thank you for the rhubarb and raspberries and sage.

I heard from a neighbor that back when he was a young man raising his family

you taught him to how to prune roses.

Last year he taught me how to find an eye in the stem and make a healthy cut.

I found your pennies under the fringe of grass that grows over the walkway.

I found the bottle opener you kept on ledge in the shed.

I found your cigarette tins full of nails.

I found your garden in shoulder-high weeds.

I’m sorry to say the cherry tree no longer produces fruit

and the pear tree, that must have been young when you were old, needs to be pruned.

The original wooden gutters are still in use but not of much use to anyone

but the starlings that bathe in the streams that pour through the holes.

After every rainfall the garden glimmers with clean shards of glass

and I wonder who lived here before you that dared use our garden as a dump.

I wonder which layer of house paint was yours.

I wonder if the same floorboards creaked under your feet.