Durham dreamin'

My children were all born in the northeast of England, the eldest in Newcastle, making him a Geordie, and the younger ones in Durham, making them travel a shorter distance home from the hospital. Last week, the New York Times published an article about this corner of England. It made me nostalgic, homesick even, almost to the point of tears. I hope the link works here:

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/06/08/travel/lost-in-time-in-englands-northeast.html?referrer=

It's a lovely piece, written as it happens by one of my favourite novelists, Jane Smiley, apparently during her stay in one of Durham University's colleges. She mentions the first street in which I lived in Durham-- Dun Cow Lane-- and describes Durham's appearance of belonging to a time long ago. It's true. It's properly called a city because it is home to a cathedral, but really it's a small town. It's old, and it's folded into nooks and crannies and constrained by its oxbow of a river. 'It did not remind me of anywhere else I have been in Britain,' Smiley wrote.

I agree. It does not remind me of anywhere else at all. I like to quip that, having lived in so many places, I can be homesick wherever I am, but the homesickness for Durham has a particularly poignant quality. Durham is where my life as it is now began and yet, while I am lucky still to have wonderful and dear friends there, I have no material or traditional hold on the place, no real right to feel homesick for it. It's not my hometown nor my husband's. We only passed through, but like magic, were completely different coming out from going in.

(Durham Cathedral with scaffolding, just as a reminder to self that the place was not perfect)

See How The Garden Grows

I'm feeling a bit like the sorcerer's apprentice. I keep acquiring things to put in the garden. Plants, plants, more plants! I am not alone. Suddenly there are native plant sales, neighbourhood plant swaps, and a mini-garden centre that has sprung up at the corner store. There is a fevered quality to gardening in Canada, perhaps because the growing season is so short and concentrated; it doesn't really start until late May. A couple of weeks ago I cycled over to Christie Pits Park to attend the North American Native Plant Society's annual sale, with the main aim of collecting some milkweed seedlings for a friend. I came back with not only the friend's baby milkweed (good for attracting monarch butterflies, yet another species whose population is declining) but several more specimens to wedge into my own pocket-size patch. They included a small tree. It was an interesting bike ride homeward, accompanied as I was by a number of children and the dog. We stopped, precariously, for ice cream on the way:

The tree, a grey dogwood, is now the centre-piece of the back garden, along with a little stone path, built by eldest child, which is bordered with sweet woodruff.

Last weekend our neighbourhood, Harbord Village, held a plant-sharing event, in which neighbours with too many plants donated to those of us in need. I turned out to need strawberries (ordinary and wild), nasturtiums, sweet peas, and a wild yam vine. Also I learned about burying sprouted potato chunks to improve the soil. We have tried to plant mostly native species, both for political correctness and for ease of maintenance. (It's so nice when those two things coincide.) That said, I have been yearning for bamboo, of which I had a small collection in England. It was difficult to find any here in the True North (England, at higher latitude, must be the False North), but I finally sourced some specimens at a mega-garden-store way out to the west of the city. After clarifying to the sales staff that I wanted actual, live, growing bamboo plants, not bamboo canes, I took the plunge and bought one, genus Fargesia, the favoured food of giant pandas. According to the pot label and a gardening website, it is hardy enough to survive in Toronto, but we shall see. Planting it is my expression of hope that the next winter can't possibly be as tough as the last one. Right? Right? To be on the safe side, we won't adopt a panda just yet.

In the front yard, with its little expanse of overgrown lawn, we are trying to attract hummingbirds and butterflies, although not with milkweed, as it's poisonous to dogs. And our dog, sure as shootin', would try to eat it, sweet foolish beast. I wonder whether a panda would have more sense.