The remains (of Christmas day)

 It's the first garbage day after Christmas!  The steadily increasing complexity of waste disposal in Vancouver has me wrapping, bagging and boxing food scraps to abide by the rules without creating a mess in my green bin. Many editions of The Vancouver Sun were involved. Photo by John Denniston.

The main culprit was a 25-pound turkey. Even after I'd turned it into soup, there were still a lot of remains to be wrapped.

Once upon a time, every Vancouver householder had a garbage bin. Into it went all their waste – paper, plastic, grass clippings, food scraps, tin cans, glass bottles. Every week, on garbage day, voila! a big truck came around and picked it up.

 Things changed. At Christmas, I realize how very, very much. Now we have three separate garbage streams, each with their specific rules and collection days, and three separate trucks to grind up and down the allies (or in snow and ice, not) to pick them up.

There’s the garbage garbage – everything that doesn’t fit in the other two categories, but none that does – which is picked up every other week. There’s the recycling, collected weekly, with a blue box for plastic, grey box for glass and a yellow bag for paper. Then there’s the category that screams that whoever created this system never ran a household. Into the magical “green” garbage bin, also collected weekly, go all your compostables, from grass clippings to potato peelings to the dessert-that-bombed-and-had-to-be-tossed. Garden greenery makes perfect sense, but imagine tossing gooey, oily, smelly food into a big bare bin and not expecting a mess. Can you say maggots? Stinky summer days? Can you say a huge weekly clean-up job?

Since paper (but no plastic) is allowed in the green bin, I get around the mess factor by wrapping, wrapping, wrapping food scraps in layers of newspaper. Then, if they’re really messy, putting them in paper bags. Then, if they’re really, really messy, putting the paper bags in newspaper-lined cardboard boxes. That’s after they’ve all been frozen to take them through to garbage day. Mostly, this is a minor issue, time spent bowing to the gods of progress and green living. But at Christmas, when there are the remains of a 25-pound turkey to dispose of, along with all the other inevitable leftovers of holiday feasting, all that wrapping and freezing and bagging and boxing makes me wonder what’s really being saved here. I think longingly of the days when one big garbage bin took care of it all.

John's Christmas gift to all

I was going to try to be profound about our Christmas this year -- something about traditions, expectations, friendships, family connections -- but then John sent me his photographs from the day. Why blather on when he has already said in images what would take more than a thousand words in writing? Not many families are lucky enough to have a professional photographer documenting their activities, so I am going to take advantage. Let's call it John's Christmas gift to all of us.

Traditions  are malleable. The scent of evergreens has always been the most important reason for having a Christmas tree, but you don't actually need the tree. Evergreen boughs on the mantle serve the purpose just as well, and are much easier to handle. To the right is Emi's chair, handed down from John's childhood.

The Christmas table always looks more or less the same.  This year's version had red and white carnations instead of tulips, but there are always lots of  evergreen clippings to add scent and colour. I always find "Christmasy" napkins, and use the flowered place mats that my mother gave me many years ago. 

The key word is festive. So, even though I did no holiday baking this year, there had to be something on the table that shouted Christmas. My local grocery store filled the bill with shortbread cookies rimmed with red and green sprinkles and star-topped mince tarts.

Grapes and oranges add brilliant colour to that festive look, but t who are we kidding? The real treasures here are the chocolates, nuts and baked goods.

Another Christmas tradition is my mother's turkey gravy. Whatever's left at the bottom of the turkey roasting pan-- bits of meat, skin, stray dressing and fat -- gets sprinkled with flour, stirred until thick, then doused with the water drained off the boiled potatoes. Stirred, salted and peppered, it's not smooth or strained, but the taste is excellent.  Every year I read about how to make silky-smooth perfect gravy, and every year I do it just the way mom taught me.

When we first started celebrating Christmas in this house in the 1970s, the people around the table were very different. They often included my parents and whichever of my siblings happened to be in town. My parents are both gone and my siblings have scattered to the winds, but my sister Betty's son Etienne and his wife Aya and five-year-old daughter Emi, the latter two shown above, have taken their place. Along with my friend Linda, they made up our Christmas table this year. The faces change, but the spirit of togetherness and celebration stay the same. 

Every Christmas has something a little different, and this year it was a chocolate Christmas tree from a specialty chocolate shop on West 41st and a Christmas orange decorated with happy faces by Emi. Aya was likely laughing at something else, but let's say she was finding these two objects amusing. 

Distant family was very present at this year's Christmas, as some of Betty's gifts from Quebec ended up at our place for opening. Betty's gift to me was a page of literary insults intended for my wall. It includes gems like Jane Austen's: "You  have delighted us long enough." Betty's gift also included a sock full of candy, as according to her, there's still a child in all of us. I think Emi, here holding the same kind of sock she had received earlier herself, was pleased that we were both getting the same treatment. 

My friend Linda took time to carefully explain her gifts to Emi. They included a little purse holding a tiny writing pad and envelopes so Emi could write notes to her parents. Emi  later quietly  confessed to Linda that she couldn't write yet, and asked if she would write "I love you daddy," in a note to her father. Much drawing was also included before the missive was sent. The little purse also contained "worry dolls," which Linda explained is a Mexican tradition in which children tell their worries to tiny figurines that they then put under their pillows. By the morning, the worries are gone, thanks to the dolls that lift them off the children's shoulders. It seems that Linda's thoughtful gifts were great hits.

The excitement of Christmas eventually tires everyone out, especially if you're a five-year-old who has to put up with a lot of adults talking all night. Hopefully, this one will have some happy memories from her adult-oriented Christmas. 

Signs of the season

Christmas time is cookie time. To the left, the bag of  very decorated cookies and  greeting card delivered by our neighbour's small children. To the right, a tin of  cookies from my friend Georgeann. They were baked by her daughter and her daughter's friends in what has become a traditional cookie-baking event. And they were delicious!

Every year about this time, there is the “thump, thump, thump” of little feet on our front steps, and when we open the door, two small shining faces appear. “Merry Christmas!” they call out, and thrust a little package at us. They’re the kids next door, usually quite shy, but at this time of year they summon up the courage to distribute home-baked cookies to their neighbours. The first year it happened, their mom explained she was trying to teach them that Christmas isn’t just about getting gifts, but about giving as well. It’s a small thing, but it’s one of many that make this time of year different from all the rest. Here are some photos, all taken by John, of the signs of the season:

Aunt Leah's Place is an organization that helps kids in foster care and young mothers by providing guidance, housing, job training and life-skills coaching. It also has a  great big sign saying that even this close to Christmas, laggards like us can still get their festive greenery at its Granville Street lot.  

We don't always get a tree, but if we can find the right size (small and bushy), it's a possibility. 

Maybe this one? Maybe that one? John thought both might look a little skimpy once they warmed up.

In the end, we decided a bunch of greens over the fireplace would be best. Here is my armful.

Heading back to the car with this year's greenery. We might even get it into place a day or two before Christmas.

An interesting sign. Here at Aunt Leah's Granville Street tree lot are some pretty wreaths from Saltspring Island. 

Can spring be far behind?

My garden in mid-December. I thought it would be fun to compare it with what the same areas look like in the summer. Also, at this time of year, we all need to be reminded that winter won't last forever.

The same garden beds in the sping, when the Lady's Mantle (that yellow patch), the delphiniums (the blue) and the roses (pink, in the background) are blooming.

Same area, slightly different angle, showing some of the brighter pink peonies in front of the roses.

In mid-December, the dead delphiniums stalks are black tubes that I leave standing for nesting insects. The peonies have been clipped at the base for next year’s growth, the astilbes are blackened seed pods and what remains of the daisies is an unruly tangle of brown and green. Since this is Vancouver, there is still lots of green from evergreen shrubs and trees, and there has been no snow (yet) to turn the lawn into a snowy field. But it’s a flattened, brown-and-grey time of year, when my gardening neighbor Audrey puts out signs on her flower beds that say, “Shhh, the garden is sleeping.” After spending a bleak couple of hours in the early dark of a winter afternoon clipping dead hydrangea blossoms yesterday, it was almost a shock when I later opened some picture files showing the same place in the spring. What glorious exuberance! What a surge of growth and colour! From bleak deadness to hopeful life, something Percy Shelley may have had in mind in the concluding line of his Ode to the West Wind: “O, Wind, if Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?"

The view from the back pathway toward the garage, now hidden by trees, and the bench. 

Irises and astilbes fill that area in the spring. 

A little further up the path, the peonies and roses are in the foreground, looking toward the bench.

The birdbath area in winter,

The birdbath is virtually hidden in summer behind all that greenery -- ferns, hostas and three kinds of daphne.

Looking toward the basement door in winter, dead daisies in foreground.

That end of the house is virtually hidden by the flower beds in summer.

A similar angle, featuring the delphiniums.

The back pathway, which often gets so overgrown in summer that it is virtually unusable.

And this is why it's unusable: the hostas, astilbes and Solomon's Seal don't confine themselves to flower beds.

Another view of that back-path jungle.

Peonies with buttercups, which are terrible weeds. I included this picture as a nod to the resilience of buttercups; they, too will be back again in the spring.

Touring

Once upon a time, when newspapers were rich and staffs were fat, photographers would be assigned to do something called “touring.” It meant searching for serendipitous photos for the next day’s paper – something newsy, something funny, something out of the ordinary, or something that just told readers what was happening in the world around them. Photographers had favourite haunts for this exercise – one spent so much time in Stanley Park that he published a book of his photos from it. 

Freed as I am from the project that has limited my ramblings for the last while, I assigned myself today to go touring – by foot of course. My goal was to find something of interest, akin to the pictures that photographers would turn in at the end of a shift. Here’s how it went, concluding with the photo I would have submitted had I been an old-time photographer:

Heading south toward the Southlands area -- land of horses, rural scenes and Thomas Hobbs' fine nursery -- I came across this extraordinarily huge outdoor display. Air-filled Christmas characters the size of laneway houses. 

Objects like these say something -- I'm not sure what -- about the state of Christmas decor these days. In Vancouver at least, the trend seems to be toward huge-ness: Air-filled characters are getting bigger, and I've noticed outdoor tree ornaments the size of basketballs. 

What I come to Southlands for: greenery lined streets, this one reminiscent of an English lane.

Across the path from the river are a line of newly built, obviously expensive houses. I am grateful they are not huge and that the landscapers made some effort to help them blend in with nature. However, I'll be Home for Christmas was blaring out of one of them. 

The view from the path along the river; this is what the houses above would look out on. 

The path is a favourite for the many horseback riders in the area. 

A good place to come for a spot of peace and serenity. Pleasant scenes so far, but not newspaper-worthy.

A short walk back brings you to Thomas Hobbs' sophisticated, always beautiful nursery. It was here I expected to find something unusual to complete my mission. Rows of poinsettias are lovely, but wouldn't make the newspaper.

Now these are different -- I think the mouths are fountains. But in these sensitive times, I wouldn't touch them with a 10-foot pole. 

I think this is a birdhouse, but I suspect the squirrels or worse would take up residence pretty quickly.

Hobbs always has beautiful displays of orchids. Lovely, but not different.

Old-fashioned version of Santa, combined with other antique objects and greenery. 

And outside, the primulas are waiting to brighten somebody's doorway.

The combination of the chair, the terra cotta pots and the blooming hellebore makes this a pleasant scene.

There are two of these very large, very fierce creatures awaiting someone with lots of space -- and money. 

Back inside, this cushion reminded me of a young ex-colleague who eyed me suspiciously one day when I talked about my cat. "How many cats do you have?" he asked. When I said "one," his relief was obvious. His older colleague was not a crazy cat-hoarder lady.

Now what's this? Ceramic cats and rabbits in straw-like bedding, protected behind glass. They look a bit unusual.

The explanation is fascinating. The cats are special -- ultra-expensive -- early 20th-century antiques from Normandy, France, "traditionally used on farmyard roofs to scare away rats." The arching cats are $1,200 apiece; the stretching ones $800, and the big rabbit -- a garden ornament and not as old -- is $800.

That not-so-valuable $800 rabbit. 

This cat doesn't appear to be either arching or stretching, so we don't know his price-tag.

But look at what he's observing: a very fierce blue cat, who is yes, arching for $1,200!

The winner: If I was heading back to the office with a photo, I would choose this one for his fierce look, his high price-tag and his unusual occupation -- sitting on a French farmyard roof scaring off rats. Thank you, Thomas Hobbs!