Rock on!

The last time I wrote, I had just finished getting the path cut out and spread with mulch. I decided not to use plastic sheeting under the mulch because it felt too slippery.  Admittedly the grass and weeds will grow through, but I leave that for next year.

There is still lots of mulch to spread if needed: 

My next challenge was to make sure the path was visible even if choked with weeds. Thanks to our friends on Howe Point Road, we found someone with rocks to spare.  Several trips  down the road to her place, and we had enough to begin outlining the paths:

The shot below shows the geometric and what is called the geomantic centre of the labyrinth. The geomantic centre is what is decided upon as the best place for the labyrinth design to start. There is an element of divination in deciding upon the correct place (more on that later). It is the rock in the centre of the picture where the path ends.

The geometric centre is the centre which is the result of having built the labyrinth around the geomantic centre.  It is the oddly shaped (sort of a blob with four arms) at the lower centre of the photo wherein sit the two flat rocks. 

At least I think is the case. I am unclear about this and may have them backwards, as I tend to be a bit dyslexic. If I can get something backwards, I inevitably will. Corrections welcome if kindly stated. 

I am referring to what I read in this web-site about how to design a seven-circuit labyrinth:  
http://www.labyrinthos.net/layout.html

Anyhow, I will leave augury for a later blog. 

This will finish as much of the labyrinth as we can do for this year. What I would like to do eventually is to plant wild flowers along the path between the stones. As you can see things quickly become tousled.



For reasons which remain opaque to me, Greg really enjoyed harvesting and placing the stones. It was heavy work. Some mysteries are just as well left that way especially if one wants to have the same behaviour repeated at a subsequent time ...

Off he goes to pick up another load:

Later on, we planted three daffodil bulbs in each of the 28 holes I had dug around the perimeter of the labyrinth. They will make a great spring-time display, that is unless the skunks dig them up in the interim. Not shown here is the sprinkling of moth balls I provided as a discouragement to more uprooting. The skunks don't eat the bulbs; they just hurl them over to the side with what I imagine is skunk disdain for their not being grubs.

An abiding image ...

Eastertime 1962

That day in April

I left my grandparents’ house

and walked to the river,

the majestic St. Lawrence.

Beside it sheep grazed,

their paddock filled with yellow daffodils:

yellow beyond yellow,

green beyond green.

Willow trees arched over the low stone walls,

their branches veiled against the blue-sky sunshine:

I walked on to where a young boy was fishing.

As I watched, he hauled in his catch:

not the delicate silvery fish I was expecting

but a long, thin, black creature,

the embodiment of a hiss:

S-shaped and angry,

muscular, coiling, wrestling on the hook.

How could such a thing be in that water?

The sheep, oblivious to menace, kept their heads down.

But I kept watching that startled boy and his writhing fish.

© Lorna Harris

May 5, 2014


I wrote this poem as an informal assignment for the final Spiritual Direction intensive at Mt. Carmel. At the previous intensive last fall, Cathy Smith-Bowers asked each of us to choose a colour or have a colour choose us and, using it, find an abiding image as the basis for our poem. I struggled with yellow all winter as I did not feel at all yellow. Several days before we were due to be in Niagara Falls I wrote this. You would hardly guess that yellow was the colour, would you!

The poems of the other members of my group were really wonderful, and I venture to say, none of us considers ourself as a poet. But of course, somewhere inside, we all are.

Off to get some spring bulbs

With apologies to Bulwer-Lytton, it's a dark and gloomy morning. However, it is not as cold as yesterday, and the wind has died down. I have just finished re-reading Wuthering Heights so there seemed to be a bit of pathetic fallacy going on: certainly the poplar trees in the back yard were endlessly sussing.  Wuthering seems a bit too strong a word for the pastoral village I live in. And Heathcliff is definitely not a spring bulb sort of guy.  Malignant grief contorted him ...well anyway, I will try for a better grief...and perhaps plant snow drops as a memorial.
I am heading out to get my spring bulbs today and not leave it so late that  I have a poor selection and must plant in a snow shower.  No tulips because the squirrels eat them as a delicacy.  I want the very early bulbs (winter aconite, grape hyacinths, crocuses, and the snow drops I already mentioned) to fill up the bare spots under the bushes in the garden. Planting them in the fragrant humid earth and then months later, after the iron-hard winter, seeing them  actually come up are one of my life's pleasures. 
I have planted grocery-store, forced daffodils once they have finished blooming, and after a year or so they revert to their natural growing rhythm and start to multiply. I am full in agreement with Wordsworth: everyone should have a host of golden daffodils.