Living in the garden

June 30th, the day before Canada day. If I was a Canadian gardener, the front yard would be ablaze with red geraniums and white shasta daisies. Actually, despite the soggy weather, the front garden is attempting a vague nod to July 1st. That's at street level, where the tubs are full of geraniums and white spider flowers. Further back, the enchantment lilies are an orange sunburst and with the blue campanula, there seems to be a Dutch theme going on. Where did that come from? No connection to us, but I love the opposition of orange and blue.

The lilies have been in the garden for years. So long that I don't remember buying them. But they are a stalwart of the front yard. I look forward to their return every year, and, based on the comments I get from the neighbourly dog walkers, so do many other people who take their morning stroll down our street.

They are such an outrageous colour, (the lilies, not the dog walkers), I often think that they don't really belong in our rock terraces. However, I wouldn't want to be without them. We had a pot of them in the front garden in the UK, and before that they were the one flower that I had to have in my wedding bouquet, and before that they were the first flowers that HG bought for me one dreamy day on Queens Street in Leicester.

This year its been so wet that the slugs and other nasties have taken over the garden. I was horrified to find fornicating red beetles followed by black sludgey beings chewing up the leaves of my precious lilies. I was so upset, and resorted to wiping down the leaves with soapy water for several days running. Fortunately it seems to have paid off. the lilies are shouting as loudly as ever in vibrant orange -- Happy Canada Day.

The things we leave behind

We waved ARG off from the Pierre Elliot Trudeau airport in Montreal last Tuesday. She was off on a big adventure -- backpacking around Europe with a couple of girlfriends for three whole months. We stayed at the airport for a drink, monitoring the line containing our girl until it finally snaked its way through the security screen and we could see her no longer. Then we stayed a bit longer and had something to eat, before finally wending our way through the terminal carparks to find the bright blue car (bbc) on the edge of the furthest most car park. I drove home as HG was tired. It was dusk by the time we left, so it wasn't until the next day that I found the hair elastic abandoned on the passenger seat.

ARG has been a dancer her entire life. Hair elastics are such an integral part of her, that seeing it lying on the car seat almost reduced me to tears. It was not only a hair elastic, it was a thick ouchless hair elastic, seamless so that no hairs get snagged on the metal join. A carefully selected purchase, bought with the experince of many years of inferior elastics. And, it was a lavender blue colour, a colour that I always associate with ARG. There was one year when the entire class of dancers at the School of Dance adopted lavender leotards as their class uniform because ARG had a lavender bodysuit.

Seeing the hair elastic reminded me of a poem by Sharon Olds about finding a drop of crystallized maple syrup on the table after her daughter had left for summer camp. I looked for it on-line and then I found this from High School Senior

"There are creatures whose children float away
at birth, and those who throat-feed their young
for weeks and never see them again. My daughter
is free and she is in me--no, my love
of her is in me, moving in my heart,
changing chambers, like something poured
from hand to hand, to be weighed and then reweighed"

And then I remembered lines from my own work about DAGs First Leaving.

I've been thinking recently about the things we leave behind. It feels attractive to carry little through life, to tread so lightly on the earth that one leaves no trace of oneself, except a brief trail of consciousness like the water vapour stream behind an airplane. For me, at this point in my life, I'm not sure whether it comes from a desire to disappear, or from a real place. For now I litter my office and my home, and write and knit and garden in a way that binds me to others and which seems somehow contrary to this desire.

There's a glut of them

It's that time of year. Babies are popping out all over. A co-worker had her baby on Sunday, a couple of weeks earlier than expected. ARGs first friend in Canada had her baby a few weeks ago. She came home from Peru to give birth in Canada. She had a little girl called Luma and is planning to stay only for a few more weeks before heading back home. Then another co-worker's daughter, is due to have her second baby in October. All this reproductive activity is quite stressful if you knit. I like to knit baby sweaters, they're small and don't take a lot of time to produce. But when there's a line up, the pressure can be a bit much.

I finished the jacket for HG's co-workers new baby last week. Still waiting to take it to her, but I don't think she will have grown out of it yet. My co-worker is more of a problem as I didn't knit anything for the first child, but now feel as though I should overcompensate and knit matching sweaters for the little girl and new baby brother.

Then what to knit for ARGs friend. I don't know what to do for someone who pretty much became a hippie and has little use for material things. You still need baby sweaters though. I've considered rummaging in my stash of old yarn and mixing random colours and textures to make a ragbag sweater, but I don't feel right giving Luma leftovers, when everyone else will receive sweaters made from newly purchased yarn. On the other hand, I love receiving things that have had a previous incarnation, so perhaps it isn't really inappropriate.

While I mull over my baby sweater(s) dilemma, I'm posting a picture of the sweater I knit for HGs co-workers little girl.

I did it

I ran the Ottawa ING half marathon. Its the first half marathon I've ever run, so I'm pleased that I made it to the finish line. I was a bit disappointed by my time 2 hours 14 minutes. I had hoped that I would make it in under 2 hours. In a training run a couple of weeks previously I'd run 18km in 1 hour 42 minutes (according to HG). However, I was jet lagged and had suffered a bout of food poisoning a few days previously. Also, I really wasn't prepared for the heat. It must have been at least 24C, and although in the height of summer that doesn't feel too hot, at this time of year it was baking. After 10K I was feeling dizzy and had to walk for a bit. I was feeling cross with myself, but finally decided that my primary goal was to finish, and so I should just relax and enjoy the experience. After that I started giving all the kids in the crowd high fives, and made sure that I kept taking on water at every station. It was probably wise as I saw at least 3 people collapsed along the way. It was an unbelievable experience to be running with so many people. From the starting line on Elgin street where 9,000 runners sang Oh Canada together, until the finish line along the Rideau canal at the back of Confederation park, the crowd never thinned.

So now I know I can run 21K

Running with 9000

On Sunday I'm running the Ottawa half marathon, with 8,999 other people, if they all show up. Yesterday, I went out for a final training run around the Norwegian countyside. The airport hotel even gave me a map. They have a strong health policy, which includes encouraging their guests to get out and run along the narrow roads. However, the map left a lot to be desired. It was printed from a google satellite map, so although it gave a good indication of buidlings etc, it was very grey and murky and the details (including roads) were hard to make out. I tried to orientate myself from the hotel, and ran in what I thought was the right direction, but never found the old airport buidlings marked on the map and ended up after about two and a half kilometres facing the hotel again. So I set off in another possible direction, but again never found the buidlings marked on the map. This time I kept going, and tried to run in a big loop that I figured should be about 5K. The last leg of this loop took me up a dirt track, and eventually a realsied that it was a farm road and there was no way out. So even though by that time a had run a further 4K or so, I had to retrace my steps and run back the way I came.

Running around the Norwegian countryside by myself, I realised that there is a benefit to running with 8,999 other people. With any luck, none of us will get lost.

That's what friends are for...

Monday night I was still in Dundee. Invited by my colleague to his house for dinner, I didn't want to disappoint. After the afternoon meetings, I went back to my hotel, dumped my bag and rushed to Tesco to buy some suitable plonk. I think it was on the walk back that I started to feel queasy, but I put it down to tiredness caused by jet lag. I got back to my room again and answered emails and worked on some reports, still feeling a bit off, stomach cramping a bit, that sort of thing. Didn't really think much of it, in fact I made myself tea and ate several ginger cookies while I surfed the net.



David picked me up around 7:30pm. I decided that his car had a distinctly funny smell -- nonedescript animal, something between pig and hen, definitely enough to turn ones stomach. he took me the long way to show me the coast and the sand dunes. By the time he reached the house I was feeling a bit green. I was greatful for the offer of a pre-dinner G&T, which I thought might settle my stomach. Instead I found myself unable to pay attention to the subject of discussion -- whether the regulations for human-animal hybridization were the same in Canada as the UK. There was a bill under debate in the House of Commons that evening. My palms were sweating and my stomach was doing hurdles. Finally, I had to admit there was something wrong, and with a hasty -- "where's the bathroom, I feel weird" -- I threw myself at the toilet.



Of course, David's wife would happen to be a microbiologist. She was totally embarrased by the thought that I had been food poisoned by the local fare -- although as David said, it was lucky I threw up before dinner, otherwise she would have been mortified in case it was her cooking. he blamed the pub lunch, and I tend to agree. I don't eat meat, so why I thought that liver and onions was a good idea is beyond me. The nice thing from all that was I realised that over the years working with colleagues, some of them become good friends. Such good friends that it really doesn't matter if you choose to throw up at their house.



This week was supposed to be eating carbohydrates to boost my glycogen levels. I think that was why I ate liver and onions -- for the iron, not the carbs. Instead I threw up until my knees were shaky standing and climbing a flight of stairs at Edinburgh airport was near impossible. Not a great start to pre-half marathon week.

Dundee

Suddenly I find myself in Dundee. That's the nature of my job. I'm not complaining, I neither particularly like to travel, or don't like to travel, its just what happens in my life. So here I am in
Dundee right in the docklands area. I'm staying at the APEX hotel. Turns out that its a spa hotel. David, my colleague who collected me from the airport was telling me that its been built to resemble an old dockside building, complete with weathered wooden siding -- looks just like home. Before last weekend I wouldn't have had a clue what to do with a hotel like this, but thanks to our Saturday at the Nordic, I had no hestitation in donning my bathing suit and submitting to an hour of steam, cold pool, sauna, cold pool, steam, cold pool -- just like an old pro.

It was a great way to unwind after a long weekend with family. Tomorrow I have to be sharp and ready to work with my UK buddies, but for now its another Sunday evening, far from home.