Trespassers Will

We are back at the cottage for another summer. I am always filled with trepidation, as we turn off the highway onto Howe Point Road and I see the cottage for the first time in eight months. Is everything OK? Yes, it all seems intact, at least from from the outside. Big relief, especially considering the 25 feet of snow which smothered the province last winter. But what about the interior? Have mice chewed the place to bits?

Not this year, thank goodness, but we did have a number of other trespassers — from the animal, plant and human worlds.

The plumber, who came a few weeks ago to turn on our water, reported evidence of a squirrel in the crawl space under the cottage. Thank goodness, he seems to be a bachelor, the squirrel not the plumber, that is, as there is no evidence of a nest for babies. I was heartless in wanting him gone dead or alive, until I saw him scampering around the bunkie, the woodpile and most recently the deck.  So cute.  He seems to have eschewed the crawl space now that the weather has improved. One of the vents, which he pushed on to get in, needs repair, something Greg discovered when he lowered himself into the depths.  Greg is tired of doubling over and ducking his head down there, so Nutkin's departure is a good thing.  

Alas, the bad news is that Nutkin has also rejected the live trap we set. We used  peanut butter as irresistible bait. A friend suggested using Squirrel peanut butter rather than the No- Name brand might have been the better choice. 

And people at church attest to the native intelligence of PEI squirrels. Apparently, they have long since figured out you can get at the bait by putting a paw through the bars and not actually going in. 

We have reduced the amount of peanut butter to a dollop rather than a ladle-full and have now placed the trap out by the woodpile. I am not holding my breath. The young woman who sold us our trap at Home Hardware in Souris said they caught two birds, a mink and several other critters before nabbing their squirrel.

We shall of course have to get the vent fixed. Our builder was by early one morning to investigate, and the thumping and crashing convinced us we had caught the squirrel, but no, unless squirrels have also learned to drive trucks and are called Mackenzie.

My second area of concern was the labyrinth which I have renamed the dandelinth, because of the thousands of  dandelions now overtaking it.  There is also a lot of twitch grass invading the path. However, the path is still visible, and Greg has made a few more  runs for the large, flat, red sandstone rocks we use to mark the outline.

Initially I was quite dismayed by the weediness. But then I thought it is a wild labyrinth not a perfect one.  Dandelions are great for bees, but I must admit not seeing too many redeeming features to twitch grass. I may try to discourage it by pouring on a mixture of vinegar, salt and Blue Dawn dish detergent, a non-poisonous remedy  recommended by friends on Facebook. I will keep you posted.

Then there was the possibility of ear-wigs in the well. The plastic casing around the electrical wires had come apart, thereby opening a way for bugs to crawl in. Initially I thought the mowers had hit it, but more likely it was the result of frost heaving the ground and snapping the housing. When I went to pay the plumber’s bill, I asked about it. Turned out it was something plumbers fix, not the well drillers. Go figure!

Lucky I mentioned it, as having earwigs get into your well contaminates the well and is therefore something to be avoided  at all costs. A somewhat taciturn young man turned up at our doorway at breakfast  the next day and once we realized why he was there, he put things to rights and we had a nice chat about the weather. So our delicious water is now safe from insect invasion.

The fourth trespassers were of  the human variety and a bit more complicated to deal with. I’ll save that for another instalment, as I  have promised myself not to be too lengthy. Also I have run out of steam for this afternoon and feel a murder mystery beckoning.

 ‘Til later then…

Eve's Monologue

I wrote this a year ago during Lent after hearing some especially egregious blame-ridden commentaries about Eve's being the mother of all evil. It irks me that the coming-to-consciousness of our species should be seen in such a negative, moralistic way. The temptation story or myth is an attempt by ancient peoples to explain why human beings are the way they are. There is archetypal and psychological truth in it about the nature of self-awareness, a characteristic which defines us as a species — in our eyes anyway.  I don't take the story literally. 

I also don't freight it with a heavy-duty moral message around the concept of original sin and the misogyny that Christian church fathers endorsed, but I do think it captures the essence of what it means to be human.  We are responsible for our own choices, a good many of which are ego-serving and have led to horrible actions over the centuries. And we would prefer not to have to know much about our inner selves and what leads us to do what we do. It's easier to blame others.

We'd like that snake of inner wisdom to stay coiled up deep in our psychic underground.

Source of image:  http://mdbigg.me.uk/blog

(Eve, now outside the garden, is talking to an imaginary friend. She is about 14 years old.)

 “I am not quite sure what happened. One moment I was sitting in the garden having an apple, and the next thing I knew, I was being told I had to leave. What gives!

It just seems so unfair. God is such a buzz kill. What difference does it make to him if we want to eat something. Well, yes, he said not to, but it was just an apple, for goodness sake. I didn’t really believe what the snake said about knowing good and evil. Like what are good and evil? And what difference does it make! … Apparently quite a lot!

God certainly seems to think it’s a big deal, or he wouldn’t be punishing me and Adam. At least that’s how it feels. Adam now has to work in the fields for food, and I have to labour in my body for children.  Whatever …

Mind you, if I do childbirth, it would be nice to have more people around to talk to, other than Adam. Adam’s okay, but I was not impressed the way he left me twisting in the wind about the snake. I didn’t make him eat the apple any more than the snake made me eat it, for that matter. It was my choice to eat it, and it was Adam’s choice as well.  

I shouldn’t blame the snake any more than Adam should blame me. Except it hurt more.  I wasn’t in love with the snake. I was in love with Adam.  I still love him, but now I see him warts and all. He can be so stuck up and superior.

It’s funny I am thinking about all of this because before I ate the apple, I didn’t think about good and evil at all. I just enjoyed being in the garden.

And also, let’s face it, snakes don’t talk. Come on, the voice I heard was my own, pretending I could talk like a snake. I was such a four-year -old back then.

Anyhow, it was warm and there was lots to eat, and we didn’t have to do much of anything. It was nice talking directly to God. It was odd how he couldn’t find us after we ate the apple. You’d think he’d know where we were because he is God after all.

On the other hand, maybe we just thought he couldn’t see us, the way we used to when Adam and I played hide-and-seek and thought that if we hid, God wouldn’t know where we were. Like closing your eyes and thinking because you can’t see anyone, no one can see you.  Except now I realize they can.

 … I must admit I had begun to wonder where we had come from. Adam told me he got to name everything in the garden.  I thought that was so cool (I’ve decided I’m going to name our children). Anyway, that naming stuff seemed a bit odd to me. What were the creatures before Adam called them something?  He even named me! Who was I before Adam named me? How come I didn’t get to name Adam?  You know, I hadn’t thought of that before either.

So there you go, I was beginning to be curious. When my friend the snake asked if I wanted to be like God knowing good from evil, I thought good and evil were another kind of plant or animal, like knowing a pepper squash from a Hubbard. So I said, ‘Sure.’

 I didn’t know about evaluation. Everything seemed good to me. But once Adam named things, they were out there, not part of us.  So I guess it was only a matter of time before we wanted to put a value judgment on them. Is this object  good?  Is that one bad?

Not only that, it now seems that some things you do are good and other things you do are evil. I hadn’t thought of actions in that way before either. We just played up until that point  in the garden.

And supposing God hadn’t created me to be Adam’s helpmate. Would things have turned out differently if he had been created to be my helpmate? How about that!  Gosh,  Adam and I were so naïve we didn’t even know why  we looked different from one another. But then we did — know, I mean.  That was weird.  At first, I really wanted to cover that up. Lucky fig leaves were growing. What would we have done if they’d been out of season? Of course, that implies we understood about time, which up until very recently we didn’t.

I always thought Adam and I were more or less the same person: his thoughts were my thoughts and my feelings were his feelings and vice versa, but it‘s now obvious to me that is not the case.  We do actually have two separate bodies! Not only that, but to be one person, we have to have sex. 

Apparently getting together like that can make more people, as God pointed out. Mind you, I suppose that was just one more thing we would have learned by our own experience.

Starting to think about life has made me different from before.  I see things in a new way: I observe and wonder about things and then  I seem to stand aside from them. I suddenly feel like a more knowledgeable, even wiser, person.  I have realized I am in the world … and in my own life.

But honestly, I still don’t know why God is so upset. Except, if I stop to think about it, I don’t know if he is all that upset. It seems to me we began all on our own to realize that the world wasn’t the way we thought it was. Then we assumed knowing this would annoy God. He didn’t really throw us out of the garden; we threw ourselves out because we knew things we didn’t know before. Why would we see the garden as perfect once we knew about good and evil?

We just wanted to blame God when we were actually angry at ourselves for figuring things out and having to live with them the way they are. Then we thought, oh-oh, God must be angry at us for knowing.  We seem to like to impute a lot of things to God which we really have no way of knowing about him.

I must say it was a lot easier to be ignorant and just live instinctively in the moment like the other animals than to be conscious of time and so many other things.

One thing I do  know,  I didn’t bring evil into the world. Adam and I just suddenly realized it was there...  in an instant... in the moment it takes to swallow hard.”

Skimpy pajamas

“He made the veil of violet, scarlet, crimson, and fine linen; he worked cherubs on it.”

To Eaton’s, they were “cotton shorty pajamas”

In dark red and blue, 
with navy piping around the lapels.

I thought of them as my skimpy pajamas.

I was wearing them that morning

in late spring or early summer

when I woke up to voices in the backyard:

my mother and younger brother,

bent together like two conspirators,

though he was too young to know

what he was a party to.

I ran as fast as I could

downstairs,

through the kitchen,

out the back door,

across the cold, dew-soaked grass

to my little garden

where my mother was hurrying to bury

Soot’s fourth kitten,

the runt of the litter,

sickly from birth,

dead overnight

and now being buried without me there,

before I woke up

as if hiding the tiny body in the earth

would guarantee it had never existed...

If only all sorrows could be so easily put away

and not leave you standing there

watching and shivering.

I wrote this poem while waiting for Greg while he had a spiritual direction session with one of the sisters of St. Joseph. She had found an unoccupied room for me with some books, an armchair, a lamp, and a side table on which there was a bible opened to Chronicles. 
After I finished writing the poem, which had been stewing round in my head for a while, I thought, out of curiosity, to play the game of pointing to a passage and then seeing if it had any relevance for me.

I held my finger over the open book and plopped in the middle of the left page. It landed on the verse quoted above (2 Chronicles Chap 3, verse 14). Cotton shorty pajamas indeed! I was, of course, startled by the unexpected synchronicity.

©February 11, 2015

Reflections on satire and the sacred

Yesterday at the breakfast table, I reacted strongly to something I read. I feel sorry for Greg as he probably would have preferred to enjoy his coffee, his bagel, and his journal, rather than listening to me hold forth. However, this is what happened.

I am appalled by the murders at Charlie Hebdo. I am also very sad that several people, including, so far, a maintenance person, two policemen and a visitor, who had nothing to do with drawing the cartoons, have also been killed.

But what also caught my attention yesterday was a headline in the Huffington Post. It was purportedly a comment by one of the cartoonists murdered in Paris. He had said, “Muhammad isn’t sacred to me.”

I thought, well other people do hold him sacred. And I wondered to what extent we should respect what other people hold sacred and not subject it to a vicious ridicule. Religious or not, we all hold certain things as sacred to us. It is difficult for most of us to have our beliefs (and ourselves) not only challenged but mocked. Where does using hard-hitting satire about social situations and beliefs end and nastiness for the sake of nastiness begin?

Then I thought, most people for whom Muhammad is sacred are not murderously fanatical and hate-filled followers of groups such as ISIS or el Qaeda. As a Christian, I am not fanatical or hate-filled (at least I hope not) nor are most  Muslims or, for that matter, most human beings. I expect most people of whatever belief persuasion (religious, humanist, atheist, agnostic, secularist, skeptic, or whatever) just want to get on with our lives and live together in a civilized way.

So I ask myself, what is the point of publishing cartoons like some of the ones pictured in the article at this blog:

http://www.hoodedutilitarian.com/2015/01/in-the-wake-of-charlie-hebdo-free-speech-does-not-mean-freedom-from-criticism/

Admittedly, I need to know more about French culture before jumping to conclusions about the use of humour there, but one cartoon in particular in the above article especially bothered me. It references the young schoolgirls kidnapped and raped by members of the Boko Haram — now shown as very pregnant — and according to the cartoon, wanting to be welfare frauds. What is the point of that? Why draw that? I am not asking these questions rhetorically. I really want to know. What purpose does it serve? 

I wondered if it would have been more acceptable  to say I don't hold with certain followers of a religion than to go after the religion's head himself. As a Christian, I wondered how I would feel if someone said, "Jesus isn't sacred to me" and then drew images I found very nasty. I did a quick Internet search to see if there were such images. I didn't find any although I must admit my search was only cursory. 

I suppose too it is not only the disrespect for religious images which can cause anger. It is the disrespect for other people’s feelings about what they hold sacred (and these can be secular things like flags, the culture of hockey, the family, the self-reliant ego). What if I were to see a demeaning and horrible image of one of my own relatives or friends?

What should my reaction be? As upsetting as those images would be, I would have to step back from my anger and refrain from striking back violently in either word or action. Murdering people who say nasty unfeeling things is not the answer to cruel words. So, no, the cartoonists did not deserve to be murdered. But they deserved to be criticized.

The worst of it is that, as a result their self-proclaimed heroic stance in favour of free speech, not only did they get killed, but innocent bystanders were killed as well, not to mention several children left fatherless. Should they have considered that outcome, or is free speech so important as to trump all other considerations. To what extent should people expose others to danger in the defense of their own beliefs?  A question their assassins obviously need to ponder as well.  

Where does the boundary between social satire and hate speech lie? It is a difficult question to pose and to answer. And I am not able to answer these questions, but just to ask them. What behaviours as a civilized society do we require in order to be civilized? Is self-censorship always wrong?

And if we are going to defend the right of free speech for the cartoonists at Charlie Hebdo, will we also defend the right of all groups to say whatever they like? I am thinking now of Westboro Baptist church and its adherents, whose homophobia and incitements to violence are vile misrepresentations of what I believe as a Christian. If their church were fire-bombed and their followers killed, should there be a similar out-pouring in favour of their right of free speech?

Why do we so often we feel must treat others callously, in thought, word and then, unfortunately, in deed. What does it accomplish in the way of promoting harmonious, civilized and yes, loving, human relations?

This raises a yet more ominous question: what about people who don’t care about civil behaviour at all?

So no, I am not suggesting that the journalists at Charlie Hebdo brought their fate upon themselves. Their murderers chose to kill when they could have taken other paths to communicate their displeasure and disagreement. But I am decrying the brutal world we live in.

The secret Lorna not very many people know

The other day, as is my wont, I sent a “bread and butter note” to a friend for inviting us over for a meal, as I do believe in the grand Anglican tradition of sending thank you notes. However, I now use electronic cards — tastefully provided by Jacqui Lawson. Imagine my surprise when I chose a card, composed a thoughtful message, and then hit “send” only to find a red notification at the top of J-Law’s web-site that my planned recipient no longer accepts electronic cards.

Well, that set my back on my heels, not to mention plunged me into the morass of my hurt feelings.

I got to thinking does this person really receive so many cards on a daily basis that they are irredeemably clogging their inbox? Couldn’t my friend, like a few of my other recipients, just decline to open the card and quietly delete it?

Or are they receiving cards only from me and do not want to get them, but for some reason don’t want to tell me directly? Why would they not courteously let me know in advance!

Or is it all a mistake? Might they inadvertently changed a cookie or some other arcane mysterious inner working on their computer? Maybe they don’t even know the e-cards are being blocked.

Or maybe they just don’t want electronic cards and I shouldn’t take it personally? I try so hard to take the high road and be polite, sympathetic and endlessly forgiving when I really thoroughly enjoy being sarcastic, judgmental, superior, and hurt. Really, what is wrong with me?? Or what is wrong with that!

I suppose partly it is so easy to be witty and sarcastic, but it is not so easy to be witty and kind. I like being witty. Being witty is revenge in words and it’s often very funny (to me anyway).

So I say to myself and my significant other (who is the soul of patience and must think I am the worst person in the world), “When I get a paper card from my friend, maybe I’ll return it and write on the envelope, the recipient doesn’t accept paper cards anymore.” So there!

I won’t really do that, of course, just think about doing it. Why is it so important to me to access my sniffy little prissy self? I suppose recognizing I have an S.L.P.S. is a good thing. I can stand back from my little Slips and observe it/her/them without inflicting the results on others.

Maybe it’s good to balance one’s good behaviour outwardly to the world with a little dose of bad behaviour inwardly. A lot of my life seems to spent being a good, kind, sympathetic person when I really just want to say, “Oh, give me a break” and be as judgmental as all get out!

All this mental stewing  reminds me of St. Paul’s words to the Romans: “For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.(7:15)” Except that in my case, I keep the thing I hate under wraps and don’t actually do it, but I do let it fester. 

However, in a sidebar to that on-line quotation was this one from Ecclesiastes 7, “All this I have tested by wisdom. I said, I will be wise, but it was far from me.” Well, that seems to sum me up even more accurately.

So I sent my friend a nice paper note with a nice message, and one day I’ll get up enough courage to ask them about what happened around blocking electronic cards. It will be the mature, sensible, kind thing to do!

( ... although possibly not as much fun...)

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.

More about the labyrinth: the sod-cutter cometh

I spent some time mulling over how on earth to make the labyrinth permanent — but without spending a lot of money.  Labyrinths can cost into the six-figure range and even higher, as you can see by clicking on to this link: http://www.labyrinthproject.com/pricerange.html

My preferences fell into the under-$1,000 range. After a wide-ranging Internet exploration, I was taken with the labyrinth at the convent of  the Sisters of St. John the Divine in Willowdale, Ontario. I walked it one chilly day in winter several years ago while on a retreat.  In fact, I wrote a poem about it earlier in this blog.

Here is a picture of their 11-circuit labyrinth. The path is a bit too narrow for my liking, but the mulch works well, and I like the rocks.

Source: http://www.ssjd.ca/labyrinth.html

This is the URL for a description of how the sisters constructed their labyrinth:  http://www.ssjd.ca/labyrinth.html

When I consulted with Rick, our landscaper, about how to make the paths of the labyrinth permanent, he had a few suggestions that seemed to fit the bill and one that, as it turned out, didn't.  

He recommended using an 18-inch sod cutter to remove about two inches of thatched grass and roots. On top of the newly scalped path would go a layer of mulch to squelch the weeds.

The question was how much mulch. I determined the diameter of the labyrinth, and then Rick estimated six cubic yards would fill the path. As it turned out, we have some to spare but better than not having enough.

So this is how it all played out: First of all, the heavy equipment arrived. The young guy is trundling the sod cutter off the trailer.

The dump truck backed down to the labyrinth; six cubic yards seems ... well ... a lot;  we won't run out for a while!

Down it went into a handy pile: 

I suggested starting to cut the sod first from the centre and then going outwards would be easiest, as the turns would get progressively less tight. Also, they would end up with the cutter in the open not in the middle of a series of trenches to bump over in order to extricate it. However, after providing them with this illuminating advice, I left them to their own devices. Men seem to appreciate that.

There is no doubt that lifting sod is heavy work. 

Eventually, using the wheelbarrows got too onerous, and the front loader was brought in to help haul the sod bits to the sod pile. 

When this all breaks down, I'll have some really great compost.

This is what the finished path was like. We plan on putting rocks beside it. Fortunately there are a lot of rocks on PEI. More on that later. 




It felt good to walk the labyrinth. You may be wondering if I ever change my gardening clothes. The answer is no. You may also be wondering what I was carrying. It was a piece of plastic, which Rick felt we should put under the mulch to deter the weeds.

I experimented with  the plastic sheeting, but it felt very slippery underfoot. We have an endless supply of mulch, so adding more next spring might be the better plan. As a result, I decided not to use it after all. We now have the rest of a box of house wrap for our as-yet-to-be-built garden shed.

Next step was spreading the mulch. This necessitated buying a wheel barrow. I digress, but I may fill you in later, as this decision is a story in itself.

Anyhow, next time I would take a look at the mulch before buying it sight unseen. This has a few too many sticks in it, but frugal soul that I am, I will separate them  for use as kindling.

It took me about four or five  hours, spread over as many days, to carry and spread the mulch. This is our handy light-weight, two-wheel wheelbarrow.

I am not sure if I have spread it thickly enough but I have used trial and error as my modus operandi successfully so far, so we shall see. 

The next challenge will be what to do about the rocks for the edge of the path.