springtime rambles

After spending a couple of months with my place fluffed up for selling, and then taking it off the market, I've been moving back in. It's nice to dig stuff out of drawers, and put back some of the personality into this apartment. I'm into Plan B: to sell at a later date. For now it's a road not taken (not offered?) but sometimes the path you are on turns out to be just fine. For instance yesterday we took ourselves for a long walk along the seawall, around False Creek, and back over the Cambie Street Bridge. Then we finished up at Granville Island to pick up some snapper and vegies for dinner, before bring our weary feet home. Very urban, extraordinarily lovely, no car.Why would we want to move?

Since all the fluffing, my place became much lighter, as so much stuff got cleared out, and so now I want to keep it that way. But to answer why I want to move, eventually: I do have a rented storage locker and it does have all my books and bookcases, and I do want a room to put them in, so I think this place won't in fact be home for too many more years. But for now, it's quite a pleasant place to live. So I'm back to organizing, both inside and out. I bought a new chest of drawers that fits into a spot in the living/dining room, and with some shifting around of furniture, it still feels relatively spacious. Cozier too, because I shifted around the chairs in the living room. We don't have a couch just now. The old one was very old, tattered (the cat) and huge, so it got tossed in the fluffing. I was thinking we should get a new, smaller one, but the way I shifted our furniture around, I don't really miss it. Except for when I feel like lying down for a nap The only option is the bed, and I did like dozing on the couch... Pretty small problem, eh? Next place.

The new chest was so I could organize my sewing stuff in one place. It was scattered into several drawers, closets, crannies, and so I never sewed anything unless one of my kids showed up needing pants hemmed. The table is the only spot to work the sewing machine, but that's fine, as I do have a spot to put it away. And I pulled out a bunch of my own mending, and actually mended some. There are several pieces of fabric I've bought, that I want to make clothes out of, and that seems possible now too. The trick is to be able to clean it up in between, as I've gotten used to the place being clean, since all the showings.

I got new glasses too, recently, and so have been literally looking at things differently. In fact more clearly, as the glasses correct my vision properly. I've given up on contact lenses, after forty years! They were bugging me, and the soft ones don't correct exactly. I can't stand seeing things unfocused anymore. So back to glasses. There were always pros and cons to both methods of vision correction, but I find some bonuses to not wearing contacts. My vision is really bad, can't see clearly much past my nose, but interestingly I can see really clearly up close. Threading needles has become possible again. So I sew.

There's been one unfortunate thing about the glasses. I can see the dust bunnies now. Having slightly unfocused vision has kept me a casual housekeeper for years, but now I notice the dust as it builds. And between the cat and myself (long hair) there can get to be some impressive bunnies. My partner is sorry to see my vision clear, in this particular area. Turns out it wasn't that I was so casual about cleaning. I just quite literally couldn't see the need. But it's okay. He does most of the cooking, so needn't feel pressured to clean to my new standards.

Outside's been changing too. The other day I got out the pruners, and tidied up the rhododendrons that sit in the planters outside my front window. Result? I have a mountain view. I'll have to remember to do that again before the next time I try to sell this place. Everyone wants a view, including me.

We've scattered a great number of potted plants all over the courtyard; that's another reason we'll need to move eventually. The plants, like my books, and like us, are waiting for somewhere to root. I was a dabbler in the garden before, sigh, when I had a house and garden, but I think it may be because there was just too much else going on in my life. But now, faced with a concrete courtyard, I'd like to get out and grow things. (I'm not the first late-middle-aged woman to want to garden am I?) My herbs in pots made it through the winter. I think my azalea is going to bloom, as is a hydrangea I planted a few years ago. I set out some carrot tops that are happily growing into a pot full of the snowdrop bulbs from my dad's front lawn (my partner salvaged them before we sold the house). I'm thinking I'll get another reasonable sized (pretty) pot to set out in the courtyard, and grow some lettuce. I do want a garden. If it were possible I'd grow some snap peas. At the store, they always seem to be shipped from China! My partner is a real gardener and he too needs actual dirt to dig in, but for now all those potted things definitely improve the outlook, and they get us outside.

Things are growing. The lilac from my father's yard produced two flowers this year. Poppies, also from his yard, are popping up (sorry) all over the planters. What else from Dad's? Forsythia, originally a transplant from my own former house (it has no flowers yet, too young), a winter rose that has one healthy looking leaf right now, but did produce a flower earlier this year. Rhubarb. There is a lily about to bloom (I think it's a lily) from off his back porch.

There's irony in all this. Though a lot of the plants remind me of my father's house, they also remind me that he didn't give a hoot about any of them, and by extension, of much else either, grumpy old man that he'd become. They're all plants that meant something to his wife, my stepmother, who died about six years before Dad did. My sister tended to them, and also kept many going on the back deck, as homage to her mother. And so they carry the mix of feelings that our father and his house held. Which is fine. I like it that life goes on, and some of it blooms.