ALKING down the front steps this spring morning, I                                 think about the piano I pine for and how unlikely it is that these shuddering old boards will support its weight. We do not know how old our house is or, more accurately, when our house became a house. A hay loft door in the attic points to a past life as a barn. In its long and varied life, this structure has been moved, lifted, gutted, added on to.  

 

our beloved home;

a migrant, an accretion,

a bulwark against time.

 

My coffee and I enter the garden, only a small yet psychologically important section of which has been civilized at this late date. The remainder grows feral with an increasingly defiant look in its eye. Infants and gardens are equally audacious in their demands, yet the former tend to trump the latter. My three-month old daughter is the new, undisputed center of our solar system. The preponderance of buttercup in the strawberry bed and the bags under my eyes are both testament to this fact.

 

A robin, perched on the fence, fires off a melodic report to his kinfolk. By the gate post, the wildflower that resembles-but-is-not bachelor’s button is poised for bloom.

 

blue petals out of green bud.

so. this is the world in which

i will live and die.

 

Spilling out into the paths and into neighboring beds is a sublime specimen, a veritable Platonic form of rhubarb. Its volcanic red bulbs pushed their heads out of the soil in early March, well before the last of the snow had melted on the north side of the fence. Our neighbors, who run a successful market garden and can make seemingly any crop grow well, struggle with their rhubarb. We are completely indifferent to it, and yet here stands our overachieving rhubarb in all its under-appreciated glory.

 

this riot of rhubarb,

effortless marvel of the garden.

If only we liked rhubarb.

 

I check the soil in the bed we will plant radishes and carrots in tomorrow. It is utterly parched. The earth has the feel of California August, yet here we are in British Columbia May. Even the phlox and dandelions have a tired, thirsty look.

 

The force exerted outward upon plant cells by the water-filled, balloon-like vacuoles inside them is known as turgor pressure, or turgidity. A useful acquisition from my past life as a farmer, my hand in the earth serves as a very rudimentary turgidity meter. This soil, crumbling between my fingers, points to depleted vacuoles pushing weakly, limply outward. We are all beings of habit, and the plants on this normally rain-drenched island have come to expect—indeed, have evolved their survival strategies around—an abundance of water.

 

cacti hasn't the stomach

for the feast. red cedar

dreads the famine.

 

Several years ago, we planted bulb flowers underneath many of the trees, including this red maple. Bulb flowers adhere to Poor Richard's aphorism: Early to bed, early to rise, makes a plant healthy, wealthy, and wise. The bulb is a dutifully acquired savings account. Snowdrops and bluebells, irises and tulips rise early in spring, cornering the market on sunshine and pollinators, and spend the rest of the growing season filling their underground coffers. The first seeds have only just germinated in the garden. It will be another month before tomatoes and peppers go in the ground. And yet for the daffodils under the maple tree, much of the year's work is already done.

 

wilted daffodil flower,

pleased to be done with a

successful seduction.

 

Because of its proximity to the house and propensity to jettison branches during storms, this fork-trunked alder near the raspberries has been deemed "problematic". And yet I love this tree, its graceful form and humble beauty. It provides the most consistent, well-positioned shade during the long, hot days of July and August, which is why the picnic table resides under its canopy. But mostly, I love this tree because my two-year-old daughter loves this tree. She hugs it. She kisses it. She watches ants crawl up and down its trunk. She hangs from its lowest branches and giggles.

 

gentle alder, what

does the love of a young

girl feel like to you?

 

Beyond the alder is the gate that leads to the back alley. Our first fall here, we would often find black bear scat just beyond the gate -- sometimes purple with wild plum and blackberry, sometimes red-flecked with apple skins. Will and Terry told us about the young pear tree in the front yard snapped in half by a grazing bear, and the crumpled section of wire fencing by the shed carries the memory of that forager's visit. Last year, the alley was all but devoid of bear scat. Cumberland is in the grip of a building frenzy, and the bears have largely taken to the hills.

 

we think we want

to keep the wild things out

until they stop trying to get in.

 

There is an immediate shift in air and mood behind the house. The cottonwoods and alders of the neighbor's backlot provide shade and bird habitat, while the wild understory is a tangle of ferns, brambles, and sour cherry trees. The previous owners lovingly built a fire pit that we have used exactly once, and I discovered recently that carpenter ants have taken up residence in a large cedar beam intended as a bench. I am tempting fate not to have relocated them already, but on this morning I kneel beside the beam and give it a few knocks to rouse some of its inhabitants. After an initial startled response, most of the ants return to their wooden tunnels and corridors while a handful of others remain outside. One of these latter pauses to clean her antennae. She does so with an unhurried, graceful thoroughness that impresses me.

 

Antennae are sensory organs par excellence; ants use them to hear, smell, feel, and communicate. Perhaps, I think, it was an ant who served as William Blake's muse when he penned the famous lines, "If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern."

 

this morning, I washed

my dead hair. this ant lovingly

tends her antennae.

 

It will be another week or two before the cottonwoods eject their preponderance of seeds, creating what appears to be a weeklong, unseasonable snow flurry. It is a marvel that each of these towering trees originated from seeds so small that they are born aloft by the slightest of air currents. I crane my neck to gaze at the canopy of leaves 150 feet above. How was it, I wonder, that the great Ur-Tree back in the mists of time mastered the art of scaffolding? For is that not the genius of the tree, this ability to organize matter into life while building upwards and outwards around embalmed death?

 

death and gravity

claim all, but that does not stop

the trees from soaring.

 

we often forget:

the living tree is a

paper thin sleeve of green.

 

The way in which the fern rouses itself from the slumber of winter and mobilizes for spring confirms to me that nature delights in whimsy. This particular fern near the back stairs has nearly completed its rollout; only its uppermost fronds have yet to fully unfurl. The patterns of circular spores, so mysteriously positioned on the underside of each leaf, bring to mind images of the songline art of the Australian aborigines. They say that the songlines—old wisdom infused in images and melodies—enabled people to navigate through vast, inhospitable distances.

 

So many of us are lost. So many of us could use a songline. Is it such a crazy notion to search for the opening notes on the underside of a spring fern?

 

the clouds have parted.

this fern wears green

to receive the love of the sun.