Happy Two-Four

As a small child, I remember finding the Devil in my sandbox. My mother told me that when you dig in the ground, if you hit a streak of red clay, it's actually good old Beelzebub. No doubt this cautionary tale was meant to discourage mischievous younguns from absentmindedly burrowing through the center of the earth and releasing sudden torrents of hot magma on an unsuspecting populace. But to me the message was clear: STAY AWAY. God is clean: dirt is dirty. And that's where the Devil lives...down there...below the ground, in the sand and muck beneath our feet and fingers...

Tim Burns, Brian Moffatt, Six Days That Shook the Walt

The outdoors and I have the kind of relationship many of you fine folks claim to have with winter, to wit: nice to look at, awful to experience.

That point is driven home many times throughout the year, but never so forcefully as on Canada's National Gardening Weekend...this weekend.

This first holiday of "summer"--granted, calendar summer doesn't arrive for nearly another month, but Canadians will call "summer" at the drop of a snow shovel--goes by several names. Officially, it's Victoria Day, after the long-reigning (and even longer mouldering) Queen. It's also colloquially called "Opening Day" (as people take the opportunity to open their cottages). I've heard this weekend referred to as the "May Long". But most people under a certain age call it the "two-four". It's a mark of my naivete that I didn't get the pun until I was twenty four myself: a 'two-four' is Canadian slang for a 24-pack of beers, which are ubiquitous this weekend. "Why do you call it the two-four," I wondered, "when it almost never falls on the 24th of May?" That earned me the look I've come to expect, the one that says who is this moron, and what planet does he hail from?

In most of Canada, you can pretty much rest assured there won't be any more frost after the 'two-four'. That's not always the case: four years ago, we had flurries on this date, and it's been known to snow in Calgary in July. But it's considered a safe bet to plant your summer garden right around now, and plant people do. Every grocery store, mine included, rushes to set up as big a garden center as they can manage. It's the one time of year that people will actually buy literal shit. Cow manure, sheep manure, even pig manure. I can't help looking at you folks askance. I manufacture my own manure and flush it down without a second thought...you actually pay for yours and lovingly season your yard, the yard within smelling distance of your own home. This strikes me as mentally unstable behaviour.

I absolutely loathe the feeling of dirt on my hands. My pores somehow s-t-r-e-t-c-h (rhymes with wretch and retch) and suck the muck into my very bloodstream, where it corrupts everything it touches. Blech. Gardening gloves go some distance towards solving this problem, except I find it very hard to get a decent grip on anything while wearing gloves. I have the same attitude towards gloves that an old friend of mine has towards socks: I'll wear them if I have to, but, awww, do I have to?

The dirt is just the beginning. Also one must contend with the sweat and the clouds of gnats that it attracts. Gnats are crunchy, did you know that? I learned this yesterday morning as Eva and I lifted up the patio we'd laid three years ago in preparation for the deck that's replacing it this week.

Eva and I make a pretty fair team, if I do say so myself. A few weeks ago, we rehabilitated our front lawn somewhat, to the point where actual grass seems to be seeking a toehold on it. Yesterday we made remarkably short work of lifting that patio. It helped that the soil surrounding it was damp. Well, that didn't help my mood much: the muggy atmosphere was driving me gnatty. But the job itself was easier than I'd anticipated.

Every year I tell my wife I'm going to take better care of the backyard. Every year I renege on this commitment. I've become quite the expert at rationalization. Really, I tell myself, how much point is there in yard maintenance when our Georgia and her beloved Peach-ball have churned up such a huge fan-shaped chunk of that yard? It's all dirt at this point, nary a blade of grass to be seen. I tell myself I'll get serious about it when the dogs move on to that puppy-patch in the sky and it's time to sell. And I will: unless we're lucky enough to put the house on the market in January, nobody's apt to buy it with a yard looking like that one does.

Meantime, I'm slowly working my way up to a limited tolerance of the Great Outdoors. Limited meaning "in the morning, for a short period, before the heat comes along and fricassees my ass". I still resent doing tasks that recur: what I'd really like is an AstroTurf yard. But I'm coming along, even if it drives me to drink. Ahh, that explains it. Anybody got a two-four handy?