Whoever plants a pear tree plants it for his heirs. An expression heard more than 20 years ago when I had planted two. The saying seems true. A fruit from time to time.
Wild leek looks great. The magnolia has just faded after two weeks of fireworks with tulips and crocuses. It’s the apple trees’ turn to shine this weekend. A white sea of floating flowers. Further, in the forest, on the ground, lily of the valley showed up. Spring too. A cat met a tomcat one night and it didn’t look like the consent instructions.
The vegetable garden is completely planted and sown. Mid-May is average. Hands in the earth, not to feel the vibrations of the ground, but for the temperature. It’s cold, but it endures. Then the plants, which know better than us, will survive. No risk of severe frost in sight. Several days of plowing in recent weeks, with strength this year; the tiller died last fall – I took it apart this spring and the parts are no longer there, “discontinued”, the lady in suburban Toronto told me on the phone when I found the problem and wanted to fix it. I had managed to change several parts on a snowblower last fall through a supplier in Maryland. You have to learn to manage through the thousand and one promises of new things that you can buy and get delivered quickly to replace anything that’s a bit wrong.
If it’s not paint or dirt, it’s machine grease that I have on my fingers all year round.
It will be a little Sunday, for when the body is exhausted by the hours of physical labor, there is less irritation of the soul by the news.
Although… this one caught my attention: a person in Hawaii followed his GPS onto a dock, didn’t stop, and the car ended up in the water. You are free to find a resemblance to the incredible pun of the third link. Do not always rely on the guidance system.
We will be back.
Sugar maple planting ended this week. Due to an area calculation error, 150 are missing to finish the job. No big deal, the forest engineer says, I have bur oaks. Yesss sir, Madam, I said. And happy day to all the moms in the world by the way. I always offer wild garlic to mine these Sundays in May.
PHOTO PROVIDED BY MARC SÉGUIN
Planting new bur oaks
While walking in the forest several years ago, I came across a “family” of Bur Oaks. A group of 9 majestic trees, between 250 and 350 years old, I was told. One wonders how they were able to escape exploitation for so long. Together, they form a surreal and grandiose landscape (35 m high and trunks like temple pillars). A kind of spiritual, liturgical respect. An attraction coming from a feeling that tends to disappear. Fascination and strangeness therefore in front of this nature, because one rarely comes across this kind of temporal testimony. It commands respect and reverence. So things know how to last, we say to ourselves. Even if sometimes, often, it is because they are hidden.
About 80% of the human workforce could be replaced by AI, we also learned last week. And through this voluntary blindness of yet another end of the world announced; when it’s not ecological disasters, it’s the fault of robots, technology, narcissism, objects that don’t last, the short-sightedness of people in power, inequalities of wealth and spirit… I wondered if we were smart. Enough, it seems, to invent a GPS and follow it blindly into the ocean. Well hello. And I smiled as I imagined another human, three or four centuries from now, who might marvel at a small forest of 150 bur oak trees planted with no commercial or exploitative intent. Only for the feeling that they can touch a conscience. Just to send shit the end of everything.