Good Creature/Bad Genes

I feel like I am racing against a clock. It's exhausting and a bit exhilarating, but it's working.

Terrain Vague before the fence build

Now I don't mean the literal one or even the proverbial one we often talk about, but the one that ticks when you have big aspirations and a timeline that suddenly bends and tangles without notice, with just one phone call.

Unfortunate necessity is a fence, but I am also a private person who needs a secret place to garden.

I left a gap at the bottom so the animals that explore this space can still come in. I am trying to be a good creature to other great creatures.

This week's phone call was one that Hallmark movies can make a lot more dramatic. I was kind of expecting it anyway, so it wasn't like I was shocked. I wasn't surprised because I come from a long line of maternal genes that tend to misbehave once the body reaches the 40th decade. I am three years older than my mother was when she received her news, five years older than the age my grandmother died from it. I have always been a late bloomer.

Not 100% pleased I had to use treated wood, but I guess this fence will be around for awhile.

So, it seems I have breast cancer. I get a pink ribbon. The better news is that because I knew I have this family history and because I live in a time when computers can see better than a human, and I am blessed with good insurance (unlike others), I was meticulous about getting my mammograms. It's very early in my naughty cells' ardent revolt. Well, ironically, I was a bit late this year by about half a year and I was reminded by my primary physician I was overdue. Also, ironically, I joked with my sister that this would be my year because I was late (secretly, between you and me, I was going to skip it this year because I was thinking I had dodged the bad gene bullet...I think there is a lesson in here to pass on). 

A cat likes to visit the lot

So, I am racing against a schedule that will include surgery in the next few weeks. I have such big plans for Terrain Vague this spring and I hope I am not going to be down too long. But, because I am in the dark on the recovery time at the moment, I am working double time to get some logistical items completed. Particularly items like fence building that uses a bit of muscle and grit. Today, I managed to build part of the fence (I would have finished it, but I could only fit 15 pickets in my clown car). Next week, I plan to transport the other 15 pickets I need and build a gate. I also have a few fruit trees already here with more to come (nectarine, figs and a plum) to get in the ground and raised bed boxes to build. I have compost and soil being delivered soon. I have plans to build a greenhouse from old windows I have scavenged. I need to do all of this pre-surgery.

I am also speed reading because, this week, all of my long waitlisted books came in at once at the wonderful public library in my city. I love the library. I support the library. I am a Friend of the Library. Currently, my three favorites out of the giant stack of books are:

• Veggie Garden Remix by Niki Jabbour
• How to Be a Good Creature by Sy Montgomery (p.s. read her book The Soul of the Octopus)
• The Nature Fix by Florence Williams*

So, Terrain Vague should be dramatically altered in just a few weeks, not Hallmark movie dramatic or anything, but enough that I can escape and breathe when the fear of anesthesia and anger with my bad genes overcomes me. A place where I can plant some seeds, water them with tears and hope something grows.

*Unbeknownst to me, again ironically, I saw Florence Williams also wrote a book called Breasts: A Natural and Unnatural History which is absolutely going on my next hold list.

Winter-ish

Terrain Vague No. 1 Winter 2019

The beginning of 2019, as it should in the Northern Hemisphere, has looked like winter, felt like winter and smelled like winter. If I tasted the snow that lies across Terrain Vague No. 1, I am sure I would say it even tastes like winter. And winter, on this 62nd day of January, keeps reminding me that I can't play in the dirt just yet.




St Brigid, the Imbolc goddess

But what I can do is scheme and draw crude little pictures of what Terrain Vague No. 1 will look like if all goes as planned this spring. My library book pile consists of keywords like permaculture, urban farming, and green witch gardens. I've been creating lists of seeds, fruit trees, berries and flowers like a kid picking out toys for Santa. I've been drooling over Instagram gardens and making vision boards full of ideas bigger than the square footage of the lot itself. Winter, fortunately, also keeps me from getting ahead of myself. It is a time for list making, for dreaming.


Bricks from former vacant house

This weekend, just in time for Groundhog Day/Imbolc (it's also my late Bohemian grandmother's birthday), winter is going to take a brief respite from its dark, dank and dismal attitude and tease us with some warmer temps (50-60 F). I have big plans to start some seeds indoors and make a straw St. Brigid doll to bring springtime Imbolc blessings to my life, community and garden. I also plan to can vegetable broth from saved scraps and forest berry jam (remnants from a recent freezer excavation) and maybe dig some holes outside or seek out driftwood and ice clouds at our nearby river island playground, but the main thing I hope to accomplish is to just enjoy not feeling so winterish.



Snowprints

Nod to the French

This story begins with a lot.

In truth, it will also contain a lot of bullshit and memories, sadness and joy, gain and loss, courage and cowardice, learning and growth, opportunity and crime, deconstruction and reconstruction, history and renaissance. And, yes, this tale is definitely about a lot of beginnings and ends, tears and laughter, heartache and love, greens and blues. There will be a lot of characters to meet, both heroes and villains, human and animal and plant. And throw in a lot of discovery about new things and the self and community, plus a little soul and spirit. There will even be a lot of music and food, DIY and secret gardens.

But, to be specific, this plot starts with just a lot, a vacant lot to be exact. 

The French , never one to shy away from a beautiful expression for even the messiness of life, coined the term Terrain Vague to describe the hidden edges of the urban landscape, undefined areas like trash-filled alleys, the weedy space along a railroad track and or the forlorn vacant lots. Roughly translated into our too concise English it becomes "wasteland" or "vacant lot" without the mention of earth or ambiguity.  The Spanish Architect Ignasi de Solà-Morales expanded upon the French expression and used it to describe how these spaces are a sort of contradiction to the lucrativeness of urban capitalism. He proposed that these transitory spaces were unquantifiable and escaped the logic of traditional urbanism and that this very absence of contemporary metropolitan value gave a Terrain Vague it's own freedom to be whatever it wanted to be. Later this concept would be borrowed by artists to describe the feeling of a blank canvas before it becomes a work of art.

And here we shall begin the tale of such a lot., another blank canvas. It was purchased for a miserly sum from the city because it's purpose no longer had value in a contemporary metropolis. I saw the freedom in this space, daydreamed about what it could be. It stretches lazily north to south, a yawning gap left after a decrepit house was demolished by the claw of a bulldozer. It is two doors down from the formerly abandoned house I call home, also a Terrain Vague in its own right. Jurisdictionally, it belongs to a neighborhood that has also lost some of its former definition and value, a place of deep historical roots and the trauma of time and politics. And now it now belongs to this woman; I have also known the trauma of time and politics.

So, let's begin this tale about a pretty little lot named, with a knowing little nod to the French, Terrain Vague No. 1.

December 2018