Until the tillings done...

April, 2005
I knew I liked getting my hands dirty. When we had lived in Toronto I had taken our front lawn, rather front patch, and ripped up the grass and laid a path with the help of my friend, Chantal (neither of us knowing how to do this) and planted flowers and bushes in its stead. That little spot of land kept me occupied for hours and gave me a wonderful feeling of contendness.

I was clearly baffled with 17 acres to work. But this was a time to not look at the big picture. I borrowed an ancient but respected rototiller from friends, Ronnie and Simon that had a 100 acres. It was a finicky beast and in the course of bumping and diving amongst the dirt clumps I seemed to have lost an essential cotter pin. Now I could not keep the handle in one place and did not have the thrust I needed to properly till the vegetable patch. Sheepishly the beast was returned and I vowed I would never borrow an important tool of a friend's again.

Next I rented one but did not get told how to operate it and therefore never knew that I had to raise the wheels to get the tines deep enough into the ground. I repeat, this was my learning year. So I lightly tilled and returned the tiller only to find out that I would need to rent one again. Off to a slow start I did finally have the satisfaction of walking behind a tiller that was tilling properly and I could see the ground responding. Dark, moist turned land behind, quaking green weeds and grass in front. I showed little mercy and after the vegetable patch moved to carve a rectangle out of our lawn close to the house that would later be my first flower garden here. The children and Tim watched from the house and gave me wide berth when I came in. I think the glint was back in my eyes.


There had been some patiostones placed in a square near the flower zone. I got myself some protective eyewear and a mallet and bashed the stones into smaller more irregular shaped pieces. They became the cross path to each corner of the flower garden, resembling remotely, flagstones. A cement birdbath from our old house became the center piece.The grass from the new flower garden was transplanted to the area that the patiostones had been. Another chance to reuse something in one area that was not needed anymore in another.

Finnie and Owen played at a distance, enjoying their freedom to roam. They were sometimes the equivalent of two city houses away and yet still on our property and within my eyesite. What a lovely thing to be able to let them explore this way. The main reason we had moved here was manifesting. Our children were going to develop a relationship with nature that they could not have fostered in the city.

Having little kids meant that you never could assume that a project started would be a project finished. To succeed with any projects I had to build into them an ability to stop them quickly and resume them again later. So our days were a mixture of playing outside, learning about the trees and bushes and plants that grew naturally there and then, bits of time that they played together on their own and I worked on the gardens. It was incredibly quenching to see my kids happy and at the same time, my accomplishing something so healing for me.