I met a few people at the Chilliwack Book Fair recently and some of them subscribed to my Words From the Forest blog. Thank you. And thanks to Owl and Cat Bookery for organizing this fun community event. I probably didn’t mention that I was moving soon. I head to Victoria for a new chapter soon and will leave Chilliwack and my little house in the forest behind. Here’s a poem to give you a taste of what I’ll always carry with me.
Honour the place
The mailbox, on its thick post, leaking and dampening the bills and those calendars from our do-nothing MP.
The postie who pushed letters to the back once she realized I was a famous author. She delivered my first box of books (and bought one too!)
Our tiny pebble driveway that fills in with weeds. I used to try and pull them, but Tom said it was pointless. They’d just come back again.
The bed for the impatiens: red, coral, white and fuschia. It’s where the hostas unfurl each spring, then every fall the deer eat them after we’ve had a good show.
The katsura tree with its shaggy bark and plentiful heart-shaped leaves. I rake them incessantly when they turn crisp and yellow each year.
The divot in the driveway from Tom’s 4-Runner wheels.
The old apple and flame trees. The magnolia that spills its shoots everywhere and the Japanese maple with its deep, red glow. That little stuffed bear the neighbour tied into its branches to trick us into thinking it was real.
That gravel path behind the house. Tom dug through the seeping and put in a French drain. Frida ran along the smooth rocks when she saw the real bear.
The laburnum, and the mock orange that smells like jasmine by the falling down shed that looked like garbage when we moved here 12 years ago. It’s held its own.
The rickety structure holds paddles and planks, a lawn mower, bikes and winter tires. An old crab net and chimney brush bristles at the back.
I sold the cedar shingles that Tom wouldn’t let me use as kindling, along with the patio bricks he lifted out of the sand. The ones that rotted the pony wall into the crawl space. He filled that gap with pink panther foam.
That mountainous red rhodo that lines an unused staircase. The pink blob bush. Sweet Williams that come up among the day lilies and hellebores.
The moss in the lawn and the buttercups.
The pruning Tom did to keep the forest from moving back in
The Russian sign in the shed.
The mosaic attached to the other grey walls and the non-functional copper clock.
The clematis vine. So many purple flowers crawling along the trellis. And the pink ones that have come out.
Every fern: lady, maiden hair, sword.
The three trilliums that I look for every year and the one that we lost. The ground so soft, hollowed by moles and/or running water.
The rhubarb babies that don’t get enough sun.
The clothesline that holds the bird feeders. A bear has gotten to them at least twice.
That giant birch whose fat belly pushes up from the ground.
And its branches that scatter onto the grass.
The junipers Tom shaped. The Cousin It espaliered spruce.
The birds every morning: towhee, robin and varied thrush.
The owls getting frisky at night.
The sliding door where I saw the cat, the racoon, and the bear.
The tanager that just plucked a salmon berry from the bush.
The bottom of the yard where the nettles grew (I think I picked too many as they haven’t come back). The invasive policemen’s helmets that we successfully rooted out.
The hot pink magnolia we planted but can barely see. The flame azalea.
The trail where neighbour Tom saw a bobcat.
The neighbours’ dogs.
And the kittens that were born in a hollow log.
The grove of cedars where Frida tried to lay down to die.
The cedars that a man chopped down so we could see the mountain.
The split rail fence in all of its fallen, imperfection.
I will miss all of these things when I’m gone.
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