There’s a new rose bush in the garden

Twenty years ago, although we already had my two cats (Crazy Clancy and Lady Jenny), Mike and I decided that it would probably be good for Heather, his cat-loving daughter (at the time living with us), to have a kitten of her own.

A friend of a friend had taken in a stray who turned out to be pregnant. Mama Cat somehow managed to produce eight kittens: five females and three males, all with remarkably similar colouring and markings. I figured a female kitten would be less likely to make Crazy Clancy any crazier. By the time I rang the woman in question, four of the females had already been adopted. There was one female – claimed by me – and the three males left.

As explained in a previous posting, Heather and I set off to collect one kitten and came back with two.

Angie, the female, quickly worked out that she was getting the fuzzy end of the lollipop as far as Heather’s affections were concerned and decided she was going to adopt Mike as her person. No argument from him.

If not at first sight, it was definitely love.

When I returned to Gabriola after Mike’s sudden death in Vancouver, Angie had no interest in me or in Catherine, who so kindly came back with me. Angie trotted out to the car to see where Mike was and when it was clear to her that he was not with me she was inconsolable.

But we muddled along. As well as having Tri on my lap while I was reading or watching telly in the evening, I now also had Angie curled up by my shoulder.

Blind as a bat, Tri kept on grooming Angie.

About this time last year the vet told me Angie’s kidney functions had all but packed in. There were, he said, medication which might work, but no guarantee. I started trying to prepare myself for the worst. Happily, the medication did seem to do the job. Angie perked up, back in my arms again.

Then Tri, my big galoot, got sick and was gone so quickly I couldn’t believe it.

Jenny died in 2002, aged 16. She was buried in what was then barely a garden. Clancy made it to age 18. Typically, although he’s been in the garden for several years, he can still scratch.

The same weekend I buried Tri under a rose bush last October, I dug another hole nearby, convinced his sister would soon be following him. I started trying to make bargains (with whom I’m not quite sure): Please don’t let Angie die before my birthday, before Christmas. Like the Energiser bunny, she just kept going, bless her. In the spring I filled the hole back in.

Well, we were together for nearly a year longer than I thought we would be. But when she stopped curling up with me in the evenings and then stopped eating anything except cooked chicken, I knew it was time to let her go.

I’m not much on the afterlife, but as I buried her beside her brother yesterday I was hoping that Angie and Mike have been reunited.

For the first time since we bought this house in 1996 there is no cat in it. But there are four in the garden.

Once upon a time

A couple of months ago I finally felt up to the task of going through the boxes of photos and memorabilia I’d left in the closet after Mike’s sudden death. In amongst the holiday snaps and opera programmes and baseball tickets I found one envelope which contained some photos of the house on the day we first came to see it and in the early months of our occupancy.

I thought those who’ve only been here in recent years (and those who’ve never been), might be interested in seeing the transformation since 1996. And now, thanks to Darryl very kindly scanning the photos for me, you can.

November 1995: We arrive with our estate agent (and friend) Patrick and his partner Jill to have our first look at 460 Spruce Avenue.

We enter through what will eventually become the kitchen, but on first sight is a utility room, with lovely fake wood panelling. (This photo was taken after we moved in, got rid of the ramshackle shelving and put in a table and chairs.)

More lovely fake wood panelling in what should obviously be the livingroom (it’s where the woodstove is, isn’t it?), but is being used as the diningroom. (The “kitchen”, such as it is, is in an alcove off this room.)

The big front room, with wonderful picture windows on three sides is being used as the livingroom. This room and the semi-finished basement underneath it (see below) have been added on to the small cottage at some point.

What we fail to notice on our first or second visit is the lack of a single electrical outlet in either of the extension rooms.

And this tiny room, purporting to be the bedroom, seems as it if might be the deal breaker. By the time you put a double bed in here, there wouldn’t be room to swing a cat – and we have two. (Not that either of them particularly enjoys being swung around rooms.)

But then I say to myself (and Mike): “Wait a minute, this house is backwards. The big front room, with all the windows, is where the bedroom should be, so you can wake up in the morning and see all the trees.” (At this point I actually lay down on the carpet in the front room to illustrate my point.) The livingroom should indeed be where the woodstove is, the kitchen should be where the utility room is and the diningroom should be where the so-called bedroom is.

And, as for the basement, it should one day be the study and spare room, complete with its own bathroom.

Speaking of bathrooms…

Just kidding. Although I don’t have a picture of it, there was actually a bathroom (same dark fake wood panelling as the middle room – and lovely orange carpeting), but the outhouse – until it was felled by a tree knocked over by a wind storm – did come in handy during winter power failures when the pump wasn’t working and the indoor toilet couldn’t be flushed.

After longer than expected negotiations with the owners, we finally moved in with same spare furniture in February 1996.

That was the weekend we first discovered the lack of plugs in the front room, making it necessary to make the acquaintance of an electrician as soon as possible. It was also the weekend when we finally registered that the middle room didn’t actually have a window in it.

Several weekends later it did (see new window on left), thanks to Tom, the wonderful handyman we discovered, who played a pivotal role in all future fixes.

Another thing we didn’t have was a woodshed.

So, in the summer, Tom and I built one. (Yes, that really is me on the roof.)

And then we were ready for the following winter.

The kitchen gets moved. Skylights are installed in most rooms. Painting over the fake wood panelling helps, but several years go by before we can renegotiate a bit extra on the mortgage to start the dream renovations.

The wall between the kitchen and spare bedroom comes down.

Work begins in earnest on the basement conversion (although Tom and I have long since built and insulated a downstairs bathroom/laundry room in one corner).

And, as for how it looks today (and with thanks again to Irmani for her help with the down with brown project), click here. .

Another, much sadder project

A year ago this week I dodged Icelandic volcanic ash (plus ça change)and flew from London, where I’d been living for a decade, back to British Columbia, where I’d lived throughout the nineties. I’m not entirely sure what I was expecting, moving from a major metropolis to a small Gulf Island. Whatever it was, I certainly wasn’t expecting that less than a year later I would be a widow of sorts, living alone on Gabriola without Mike. No, I certainly wasn’t expecting that.

Nor was I expecting to start this blog again. It had done its job. I was writing again. Well, I haven’t been writing since March when a massive heart attack took Mike away. (Yes, I know I’ve said it before. We all hope that when our time comes it will be quick and we will be oblivious and so it was with Mike, but it is brutal on those left behind.)

Although originally intended to be a blog (requested by friends in England) detailing the transformation of my once upon a time garden on Gabriola, this blog has also covered the transformation of the apartment Mike and I rented in Burnaby. It doesn’t, therefore, seem inappropriate that I should start it up again with another interior transformation.

This particular transformation is tinged with sadness, because Mike isn’t here to see and enjoy it.

In 2006, when our mortgage came up for renewal, we put some more money on it so we could do the renovations we’d been dreaming about since buying the place 10 years earlier, like turning the semi-finished basement into a guest suite and finally replacing the raised-pattern, diarrhoea-coloured carpet we’d inherited with the purchase. I was living in the UK, so poor Mike got stuck living with the renovations. I did my bit when I came over for Christmas that year, painting the finished basement and the kitchen and diningroom. We jointly chose a replacement carpet and the colour for the walls in the livingroom and bedroom. I didn’t think we needed to discuss the woodwork, because it was, well, wood. How was I to know that Mike (who was an easy mark for tradesmen) would somehow be convinced that the wood had to be painted to “protect” it? (Huh? Yeah, that was pretty much my reaction when I found out.) When asked what colour he wanted it painted, he said it should be painted the same colour as the wood – a reddish, mahogany brown. He thought, bless him, that I would like that, because he knew how much I liked the wooden window frames, doors and beams.

It was bad enough with the grey in the livingroom and bedroom.

But with the blue in the diningroom and kitchen it was just vile.

I got rid of the brown woodwork there over the long, snowy winter of 2008/9.

And now it’s also gone in the livingroom.

This transformation was part of the Down With Brown project undertaken last week with my wonderful friend Irmani, who flew all the way from London to pitch in.

Although the walls were probably ready for a lick of paint, I might have put off doing them had it not been for Mike’s perplexing decision to leave the cheap chipboard archways (instead of having them dry walled with everything else) and also paint it brown. (Honestly, sweetie, what were you thinking?)

So the walls had to be painted, too.

Those of you who remember the Burnaby apartment transformation story, may recall that it was all a bit crowded in my bedroom.

Well, there’s rather more space for everything now. (One of the things that sold Mike and me on the place originally was the huge front room with windows on three sides overlooking our “forest”.)

And the white woodwork makes it so much brighter. (Now, if I could only figure out what to do with the surplus to requirement desk parked at the end of the bed. I can’t get rid of it – it was a present from Mike – but there really is nowhere else I can put it.)

After a job bloody well done, I saw Irmani off on the float plane, stopping first for a lovely lunch.

Then she boarded the floatplane for a night with friends in Vancouver.

What a star.

Yesterday I dealt with the last of the ground level brown. (Not that I couldn’t have guessed beforehand, but painting louvered doors is really a pain in the ass.)

Of course, that still leaves the beams. General agreement that this is a job for a professional.

But it already looks so much better I think I can live with it until I can afford to pay someone. (Where is Josh?)

What, do I hear you ask, about the garden?

Well, I confess I’ve been pretty slack about that. (Without sounding flip, which I certainly do not intend, I did have a funeral and an apartment pack up* to sort out.) However, some progress had been made. Thanks to Krys, another wonderful friend, who flew out from Toronto after Mike’s memorial service and came over to Gabriola for a few days, a third of the vegetable patch was weeded (oh, yes, weeds had no problem growing in my barren soil) and dug over in April. My wonderful neighbour Pat did the rest of it. And now I’m finally getting to the rest of it.

More anon.


* When I went back after the move to do a final clean and inspection of the Burnaby apartment it had gone back to being beige throughout. It was as if Josh and I had never painted it, as if Mike and I had never been there. Made it easier to walk in the door in some ways and extraordinarily sad in other ways. When I asked the very nice building manager Zeb what was going to happen about the deposit, he at first told me it would be forfeited, as Mike and I had signed a lease agreeing to be there for at least a year. When I made it clear this wasn’t, under the circumstances, going to fly, he rang head office where someone, under the circumstances, agreed. I was then presented with an itemised list of deductions which meant I wouldn’t get anything back. With the exception of a charge for repairs, which I accepted as Mike’s walker had gouged a few corners, I told him I wasn’t going to accept any other deductions and wanted the deposit back, minus the repairs. This involved a call to someone else at head office, who wasn’t there. By then I just wanted to get out of the building. So I said, “Zeb, when you talk to this woman, you need to tell her three things. One, she is trying to rob a widow. Two, I am a media savvy woman who has good contacts in the press and friends at City Hall. Three, if she doesn’t agree to refund what is owed to me, I will become this property company’s worst nightmare.” An hour later he rang me back to say I would be refunded the amount I was asking. Bit of a letdown, really, such an easy win.

Call me a quitter

Well, you wouldn’t be far wrong. It’s not that I’m quitting on the garden altogether – far from it – but taking it to the next level (e.g. getting some frigging fertiliser into the veg patch soil) is a bit beyond me at the moment. In his last e-mail, garden guru Peter acknowledges that ultimately the only solution is to get him over here from England to supervise, as he has done for his various offspring in their time of horticultural need. This isn’t going to happen soon, I suspect. So, in the meantime I carry on watering what does survive and enjoy the tomatoes. As for anything more serious: next year.

Call me crazy.

And you will win you here this. Having stumbled on the veg growing lark, I need another project. I know! I think, as Mike and I are walking from the car back to the house. There is nowhere to sit at a table outside and have a meal or even a cup of tea. Given that I’ve had much more success with landscaping than I have with growing food, this seems an obvious next step.

And I spy exactly where this new feature should go.


It’s a nice spot, close to the house, so Mike can easily use it, too, under the trees, but it does get dappled sunshine in the afternoon. Perfect. Now all I need to do is excavate all the rocks which comprise 90% of the mound.

Set to it, armed with a recycling box to dump and move the rocks and the brush and pan we use for cleaning out ashes from the woodstove. Clearly not the best tools for the job (not that I have any idea what the best tools for the job are), but they are what’s at hand. After an hour, add a dairy crate to sit on, rather than kneeling on the rocks.

After three hours, some visible progress has been made.

Clearly this is going to take weeks. Bit back breaking, but also quite therapeutic. I’ll get there in the end. Mind you, at this rate, the summer – and its opportunities for enjoying sitting outside – will probably be long over. Never mind. Imagine the satisfaction when the job is done.

Go inside to get a bottle of beer and realise, coming out of the house, that I am a complete bloody idiot.


There is already a nice, flat area right outside the back door which would be perfect for a table and chairs. All I have to do is move the herbs and the flower pot. Smack myself on the head (seriously, I really do) and wonder what the hell I had been thinking.

Okay, so this is going to be a bit easier than I thought.

Watch this space.

What the fuck?

Back on Gabriola. Go out to inspect the garden, which Pat has been watering in my absence. What the fuck?

In the spot where the broccoli went to meet their maker there are plants. I blink, look again. Is it possible? Were the broccoli just resting before putting on a big growth spurt? Well, yes, I suppose it is possible, but if this is the case, why the hell do they look so much like tomato plants?


Go inside and do a Google image search for young broccoli plants. Who am I trying to kid? This bears no resemblance whatsoever to the plants outside. And then I remember that part of the area I’ve rototilled did have some compost – clearly including rotting tomatoes – spread on it. So, it turns out I have actually managed – albeit by accident – to grow something in this soil from seed. Well, big pat on the back for me.

A sudden reminder of the mutant tomato plant which grew from the seed of a fallen ancestor in our Walthamstow garden.

This was, I thought, a minor miracle, given that the reason we grew everything in containers was because the ‘soil’ consisted of an inch of mulch on top of an inch of sand on top of concrete. When I emailed this photo of the plant and six foot two Ben to my cousin Peter, he explained that tomatoes planted in shallow soil will simply grow up (and up and up).

Oh, well. Not sure these newcomers will actually have time to flower and bear fruit. And it’s not as if I need more tomatoes.

There are indeed hundreds of tomatoes coming out on the two well advanced Sweet 100s I planted when everything else in the so-called vegetable patch was withering and dying.


And, while Pat ended up reaping a lot of the benefit of the Tumbler tomatoes in the two weeks I was away, there are still quite a few coming out on these.


Elsewhere in the garden, the hanging-in-there rocket has not only had a bit of a growth spurt (are these leaves actually big enough to be worth harvesting for salad?), but are actually flowering. And, much to my astonishment, some of the carrots seem to be staging a comeback. I could actually get a few carrots out of my garden. Well, well. (The lettuce, on the other hand, has completely disappeared, as has the last trace of the beets. Oh, well.)

And the blackberries are ready to pick!

Not quite enough yet to make the blackberry crumble I’ve been wanting for months, but more than enough berries to have with some vanilla gelato for dessert tonight.

And there are other garden crops – even if they’re not mine. When I go over to thank Pat for watering the garden, he pulls out a large zucchini (courgette) and an acorn squash for me. (My own pumpkin and spaghetti squash plants are struggling to produce any produce, but I haven’t completely given up on them yet.) Mike turns his nose up at the squash – like I don’t remember he doesn’t like squash – until I remind him that I have a delicious squash soup recipe.

Meanwhile, indoors, the mouse war has gone ultrasonic. The absence for a fortnight of any dry cat food or a water bowl for Tri may have already discouraged them (no sign of new droppings on my return) and I’m keeping it that way.

Discovered at the Home Hardware on Commercial Drive (where they not only cut an eight foot curtain rod down to the seven foot I needed, but also fixed a lampshade the shippers had buggered up – I love those guys) that plug-in ultrasonic rodent repellers exist. This shop, as former Drive residents will attest, has everything. Where was the ultrasonic option at Canadian Tire or Home Depot? Nowhere, that’s where. So, fuck off, Mickey Mouse, and thank you, Home Hardware.

Anatomy of a room

I know this photo has already put in an appearance (and that this has nothing to do with the garden project), but it strikes me that it deserves some attention.

Anyone who’s known me during the past thirty years (blimey, how did that happen?), would probably guess instantly that this is a photo of my bedroom.

The small BOAC (from the days when long haul British Airways was still British Overseas Airways Corporation) travel trunk beside the dressing table has been with me the longest. Inside is a very glamorous doll named (by me) Aurora, for the princess in Sleeping Beauty. Hanging on the rack opposite her is a wardrobe including evening gowns, peignoir and ‘fur’ coat, most of which were hand stitched by my mother during long winter evenings after I’d been sent to bed. This trunk of delights was left unwrapped and open for me to discover with joy and astonishment on Christmas morning when I was about five years old.

On the corner of the dressing table, near the trunk are two mementos of my time in New York when I was 20: An art deco jug, which was the beginnings of my collection of 1930s blue glass and a photo of me with Dan, a man I adored (in a father-I-never-had way). On the other side of the dressing table is a photo of my mum, looking very jolly, in her RAF uniform during the war. In between the two photos is a crescent shaped piece of mirrored blue glass on which my perfume has resided in three cities on two continents.

The dressing table itself and a matching chest of drawers (corner of which can be seen in bottom right of photo) were purchased during my waitressing days in Toronto – when some days I made just mad tips – in what used to be a great antique/second hand furniture shop in the Beaches area where I lived.

Other excellent purchases from this fantastic shop included the beautiful blue glass coffee and side tables which the fuckwit house sitter from hell destroyed when Mike was in hospital, seen here in happier days in my apartment in Toronto. (The curtains in this photo, having also hung in my livingrooms in Vancouver, Stoke Newington and Walthamstow, are now hanging in the lounge in Burnaby.)



The same shop on Queen Street in Toronto provided me with the deco sideboard and table and chairs in the diningroom on Gabriola (furniture I considered, but am now glad I didn’t, move to London in 2001). So, yes, that shop did a lot of business with me.



Anyway, back to the anatomy of the bedroom in Burnaby.

The lady lamp on the desk (itself a fairly recent acquisition in Walthamstow) and another on the other side of the bed were purchased from a wonderful art deco shop in World’s End in Chelsea. Sadly, the shop is no more, but the lamps have resided beside my bed in London (twice), Toronto and Vancouver (now twice).

The Arrobus watercolour of Town & Country School in Hampstead, now hanging above the desk was also purchased whilst in Finchley Road and is also very well travelled. (Out of curiosity I’ve just gone on the internet to see if there is any information about the value of an Arrobus. Seems to be about what I paid for it 25 years ago, so no appreciation. Oh, well. I didn’t buy it as an investment.)


Not visible in the Burnaby photo, but seen here are two other pieces of art purchased whilst residing in Finchley Road. I bought the two Tito water colours because I liked them, having no idea that I had accidentally stumbled on the originals of two not entirely unknown pieces of art until I saw the one on the right reproduced as a print in a French restaurant in Toronto. I have never had them valued as I love them dearly and do not want to be tempted to ever sell them. Also not visible in the Burnaby photo is the fan, purchased many years ago when I was on holiday in Granada with my friend Angelika. Sadly, no wrought iron mantelpiece in Burnaby, so the Titos and fan reside on and above the chest of drawers.

The duvet cover also goes back to Finchley Road, ordered on impulse from an ad in the Observer colour supplement, back in the day when only the Sunday papers had magazines. (I do miss having a good Sunday paper to read. The total lack of one here has led Mike and me to actually save the Saturday Globe & Mail to read on Sunday mornings.)

The Casablanca poster above the bed was purchased in the Fremont district of Seattle when Mike and I were visiting friends many years ago. It’s been above my bed on two continents.



On the wall opposite the Casablanca poster, is another one I’ve had for years: Roses and Rue by Edward Bawden, purchased from the Tate for obvious reasons.


The cat looks like Clancy and I’ve always been a Guardian reader.

This second view of the room also includes part of the snow dome collection which began as a joke on holiday in Venus in the 1980s and somehow ballooned out of control.

And just visible on the door to the room is the poster from my dear (and tragically departed) friend Tim’s retrospective show.


The only time I’ve ever been able to hang this long, tall poster to proper advantage was in the upstairs hallway of the house in Walthamstow.

So, that’s it: my trip down memory lane.

Back to the Gabriola garden tomorrow.

Further discombobulation

Remember this bedroom in the beige Burnaby apartment I found in June?


Well, now it looks like this.


As the place in Burnaby looks and feels more and more like my home, I’m feeling increasingly discombobulated. Who am I? Where am I? Why am I here? (Actually, that’s all rather more like existentialism than discombobulation, so perhaps I’m feeling increasingly existential. Time to change my name to Simone?)

The summer Mike offered me to decompress is suddenly almost over and I really do have to start thinking about employment. As previously noted, the odds of finding a decent job are much greater in Vancouver than on Gabriola (where the odds are virtually nonexistent), so it’s good that the flat here feels like home. (Which Gabriola also will as soon as I get back there next Monday.)

While I struggle with (and spare readers from) the tortured process of figuring out what the hell I want to do with the rest of my life, I offer as a diversion, further proof that I might want to consider interior decorating as a line of work.

From this…

to this.



And from this…

to this.


Turns out, as I discovered when I unpacked my books, that I’d had a rather more severe cull before leaving London than I thought I’d had. So, one of the tall bookcases Luna and I put together last month is actually surplus to my requirements. Just as well, really, as the storage room is overflowing with boxes of books from Mike’s old office at the University of British Columbia. (He was in hospital being treated for cancer when he reached retirement age. The university informed him – like there was a lot he could do about it from his hospital bed – that they needed his office cleared out. Grad students boxed up everything and the 42 boxes were sent – for lack of any other option – to Mike’s daughter Heather’s place, where he had been paying her to store them. Years and years of books and magazines and journals and theses and papers. It’s a laborious process going through them, but at least there is somewhere to put the books he wants as they come out of the boxes. Then there’s the question of what to do with the ones he doesn’t want. I’m hot wired to never just throw a book out, but where or where can they go?)

And I also have a nice place to smoke, complete with a Provencal tablecloth and the Ricard ashtray I stole from a restaurant in Montpellier decades ago when my friend Krys was a student there. That ashtray has crossed the Atlantic almost as many times as I have.