Artifactual Communication

Recently, I heard a talk about Artifactual Communication. The idea, in a nutshell, is that the stuff on your desk, or the way you decorate your locker or your home communicates information about you. The word artifact makes sense to me because essentially I accumulate, covet and adore artifacts. I've been carting around my Grandmother's collection of match books for ages. She collected them on trips she took and at weddings she attended between the 1960s and the 1980s (I know because she wrote on the back of each one). I often wonder what those artifacts say about me, and I guess I know that their presence means I have a hard time letting go of the past. I like simple objects from the past that were often used and cast aside without thought. I like objects people touched and fiddled with everyday. Perhaps she sat in a church hall listening to the toast to the bride and she turned the match book over in her hands. For me, it is like holding on to a moment from another life. My desk at work clearly communicates that I have children in my life. I am continually curating a little art display on my hutch. I keep most things at eye level. Some art stays up for a long time and changes jobs with me but some only lasts for a few days and then is replaced by a newer piece. I surround myself with it to keep the children in my mind but also to have a chance to catch glimpses of their inner selves that I'm usually too hassled to see. What do you surround yourself with? What's on your desk?

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I entered August without you.

I won't visit you this month. You won't call. I will raid your garden and you won't get any of the vegetables. I will make plans without telling you about them. We'll go to the store and not buy you one single thing. Whole books will be read and I will not tell you which ones. I will watch movies and not inform you. The nasturiums will ripen. Last month was different. I changed my schedule and took time off work to be with you. I dropped all kinds of plans for us to be together. You sent me messages, I received them. I picked up food that I thought you would like at the store and sent you pictures of every beautiful thing I saw. I sang with you. We watched the Great Canadian Baking Show. You chose the recipe for the garlic scape pesto and gave me instructions for making the gooseberry jam. I am in August without you. You are in July.

Fists full of lettuce

It is a pot of a variety of lettuce plants. It was planted by my mom. She has been living with Stage 4 bile duct cancer for at least 1.5 years (that we know of, probably a lot longer). Standing and gardening are becoming harder as time goes on. She learned about gardening from her dad as a kid and kept on gardening every year of her adult life. Sometimes the gardens were tiny or rudimentary, but with the help of my dad , they have become major and, at times elaborate, growing projects over the years. Now it is a collection of raised beds and regular beds that hold a host of plants, vegetable and flowers. Something that was clear that first spring with Stage 4 cancer is that gardening would continue in a big way, cancer or no cancer. It was important to order the seeds and start them inside and get them planted outside, no matter what. Spending time together in the summer with cancer now consistently involves gardening and following instructions. Planting, and prepping and weeding

Shake your Bummy

In recent weeks, two things have come to my attention, this article by Mary Beth Williams, T he real key to good health and the viral hit created by Dr. Mike Evans, 23 and 1/2 hours: What is the single best thing we can do for our health? Both coincided with when I was turning my attention to new years resolutions and reflecting on the year that was. Thanks to both, a reckoning came to be. Mary Beth Williams' candid advice was to get your heart stronger because you never know when you are going to need it. She herself has been receiving treatment for lung cancer. Dr Mike Evans' way of putting the exact same thing? "Try to limit your sitting time to 23 1/2 hours a day". In my day job, I sit a lot. I occasionally rise to retrieve something from the photocopier or to make a coffee, but an awful lot of the time, I'm on my bum. This is in steep contrast to my night job. At the end of the work day, occasionally in the middle, I have to burst out of the doo

Growing Versions

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