When I first moved into my house, in Kitsilano, my elderly neighbour on the left shrieked at my kids, who were very young at the time, for going into her yard to retrieve their ball. She was an obsessive gardener. I let the grass grow tall. After the cantankerous woman died a decade later I dug up my grass and grew vegetables in the front, tomatoes, potatoes, zucchinis in the summer, broccoli, Swiss chard and garlic* in the fall. All was peaceful for many years.
When my elderly neighbour on the right died, a couple I’d seen at a rally to protect the environment bought the property. They were planning major renovations and needed a letter from me to the city agreeing to their non-conforming design. For the following year my head felt as if I were constantly being staple-gunned. But I comforted myself with the thought that at least the racket was on behalf of a family and not impersonal developers.
One day, with nary a word of discussion, the new owners entered my yard and hacked my beloved old yew tree in half. Whoosh went a lacy curtain thirty feet high and fifteen feet wide. Where once was magnificent natural beauty there was now an ugly gash in the landscape exposing the construction site next door. When I confronted the tree-attackers they defended themselves by saying, “We didn’t think you’d care about privacy and we don’t like the look of branches hanging over things.” NIMBYs: they liked trees, but Not In My Back Yard.
I shouted “imperialists” at them. Just like corporations, they’d felt entitled to do the irredeemable. We had lots of words after that, and eventually they bought me a new tree. It was lovely and the largest I could find, though small in relation to the space it now occupied. But I’m hoping as the tree grows so will our relationship.
I’ve lived in Kitsilano since the 1960s. It’s where the Squamish Nation lived for thousands of years before they were brutally displaced by British settlers at the end of the nineteenth century. In the 1970s, when the developers saw what a nice job the artists and hippies had done with the area, they swooped in and the residents who’d improved the neighbourhood got pushed out by developments and bizarre rents.
Zoning laws have kept the buildings low and property prices high with taxes to match. The air is clean, the landscape lush. I live in a craftsman-style house built in 1910. Renting out space in it is the price I pay to be able to stay. I value what the poet, Robin Blaser, who lived around the corner, referred to as the polis, the community within the city, the interactions of the people.
Everything I need is within walking distance—decent food stores and the public library, the oldest branch in the province, with its self-appointed security guard reporting into her calculator. A couple of times a week I’ll drop by the thrift store on Broadway. The same group of us has been going there for several years—we’re a society of strangers. We never exchange names, only opinions on the merchandise, and whether what we try on looks good or not.
Every day, Chris of the long white beard carefully sets up a display along the chain link fence at the corner of 4th and MacDonald. He gives away furniture, books, houseware, electronics and clothing. And tells me, “I’m trying to topple the economy.”
I used to run a free store in my basement where “customers” donated or took things, depending on what they had or needed. No money ever changed hands. Free stores were common. I still have the oak printer’s cabinet, full of lead type, which I got from the Divine Light Mission Free Sale.
The cabinet has twelve drawers each divided into twenty-six small cubicles, one for each letter of the alphabet. Over the years most of the type has disappeared, and I’ve invited friends to fill a drawer with whatever they wanted. Jam has filled hers with rocks and minerals.
I walk along the beach, lost in the propaganda of the picturesque. When I first came to Vancouver I never saw homeless people, nor anyone asking for money on the street or visibly helpless. There was only the Umbrella Lady at the corner of Granville and Georgia, her umbrella held high above her in all kinds of weather. Neck craned, face beseeching the sky, it was as if at any minute she might lift off and fly.
If she were here today, I might join her.
* How to Grow Rocambole Garlic on the West Coast
(Adjust for your growing zone)
– Plant in a sunny spot in the fall before hard frosts.
– Use rich, well-drained soil and dig well.
– Separate cloves of seed garlic but don’t skin them, the largest cloves will produce the largest bulbs.
– Set each clove pointed side up with the tip about two inches deep in soil and about four inches apart from each other.
– Fertilize when spring growth starts, water as needed and keep weeded.
– In June, cut curling ends off shoots to keep energy in bulbs.
– Water lightly or not at all from this point on.
– Pull up towards end of July or when tops begin to brown.
– Air-dry like onions for about three weeks. Save some cloves to replant the following year.