Today started out as a normal fall day with four easy hours of backpack blowing. Native big leaf maple leaves (Acer macrophyllum) and London planes (Platanus x acerifolia) covered my work site. Incidentally, Platanus is the only tree that makes my eyes water and my itchy throat beg for water.
The call
Then I received a call. I was asked to go and help another crew. This isn’t anything new. All sorts of stuff happens on Mondays. On the way to my truck I stole company time by watching salmon spawning in a creek. It never gets old. I always wonder how the fish find their way home after spending years in the ocean.
Meet the invalid
Every strata site has a special resident. This second site has an elderly resident who happens to live on the third floor overlooking the entrance beds. And she loves flowers. But she has a problem.
Her knees are completely blown so she must use a walker. And even then it’s a struggle for her. As a result, she is no longer able to do the planting herself. So my task today was to plant her winter annuals by the entrance.
She spent her own limited retiree cash on winter pansies and two winter kale specimens. Simple stuff. My only directions were to put color in bed corners closest to her patio. And to put only yellow pansies in the bed below the sidewalk. Sure. Anything to make an invalid happy.
Planting flashbacks
Every time I plant simple beds like this I get flashbacks to 2014. That’s when I apprenticed under City of Coquitlam gardener Tracey Mallinson. She took a landscaper and made him into a gardener.
I was new so I supplied the labour on several planting projects. I found it exciting because we used lots of different perennials and some annuals. In addition, we planted trees bare-root and we used dibblers.
Yet another project involved stuffing planters full of plants. Freestyle, because we had to use up all of our plants. Afterwards we polled unsuspecting citizens about their favourite planters.
Happy happy
My simple planting from today shows how a little bit of colour can improve people’s lives.
While this senior clearly struggles just to make it out to her patio, I think the pansies will bring her joy. And I suspect her life will be better. Therefore I’m glad I could help her again this year.
