What lies beneath

Today I was digging a hole to plant a potted rhododendron in the back yard. The yard, it is said, was part of an old Victorian dump back in the day, and this would appear to be borne out by the amount of dated garbage I dig up every time I even scrape the surface.

This time, I hit what appeared to be an old plastic bag. Things got stranger when I saw that there was knitted material inside that plastic bag. Things got stranger yet when I poked the material with the shovel and found there was something hard inside that knitted material.

Now, I grew up in the pacific northwest at the time of Clifford Olsen and the Green River killer, and I've seen my share serial-killer TV shows, so -- while I knew the odds were against it -- I did immediately think that it was possible that this may be a foot in a sock, or an infant cranium. Meanwhile, Ben -- who was "helping" me dig the hole -- started whacking at the hard thing with a trowel, saying "Oh, a mitten! Look Patrick, a mitten!" I could feel the very beginnings of a panic onset.

I decided to do what any stiff-lipped, steely hombre would do; I went and got G., who just happens to have a passing professional interest in forensics, bodies, and The Gruesome in general. She looked at it, and said "oh", and after a minute of discussion I decided "we should see what it is". I also decided that she should be the one to check.

G carefully unwrapped the still-half buried fabric and -- sure enough -- it was a skull, probably of a small dog.

"Oh, good," said G. "It's not human" and walked away.

I filled in the hole, moved over a few feet, dug a new hole, and planted the bush there.

Rest in Peace, friend.

Chocolate and forsythia

Magic realism is hard to come by in the suburbs, but it can be found. On Monday, me & the lads took a bike ride to Borderlands state park (the park comes from an old estate -- the mansion & grounds are still there) and en route encountered the fabled Mansfield Chocolate factory.

 

Yes, it is an active chocolate factory ("Like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory?!" asked Sam).

 And -- so it is said -- you can always tell when it is about to rain, for the air in Mansfield smells like chocolate.

Here are some snaps of Borderlands in the spring:

 

... the last shot is of the estate swimming pool, build in the 1930s (now filled).

Gettin' dirty

Okay, there is apparently more to home ownership than clearing the driveway. We've begun to enjoy the pleasures of tilling our patch of earth which, by downtown Toronto standards, is huge (by suburban Massachusetts standards, about average).

While we did engage in some first attempts at gardening at York U and the Co-op (with some success),  the condo rental we've been living in subsequently had a strict "look, don't touch" policy when it came to landscaping. In all seriousness, to post a bird feeder required clearance by the board.

All that is behind us now, and we are free to kill whatever plants we want to. In scattershot fashion, we have planted hydrangeas, hostas, lilacs, forsythia, Rose of Sharon, pansies, a Japanese something-or-other bush, various woodland plants -- all before May 1. Seeing as how we don't really know what we're doing, most will undoubtedly die. But some will survive, and next year, we'll plant more of the survivors, and so on it goes.

Our crowning achievement thus far? Three veggie boxes, meticulously constructed by a certified engineer (thanks, Drew!) and overseen by Deanna (college archivist-come-taskmistress, who kept us going despite whines of "man, am I ever tuckered out" and "my hands hurt from hammering").

Thanks to you both! As someone who mostly sits with his head in the nebulous ether of computer-space, going out back and getting just filthy feels pretty darn good.

Campus life in the first world

As just overheard outside my office door:

Her: Oh, hey, how's it going?

Him: I'm okay. Tired. You?

Her: Yeah, alright. I'm doing some research on human trafficking.

Him: Oh, yeah? Wow.

Her: Yeah, it's really depressing.

Him: Yeah, I'll bet...

(pause)

Him: So, we should get together and party!

Her: Yeah, totally!