Moss garden

Over Labour Day weekend, Brenna spotted a ruffed grouse on the roof of the cottage and determined to get there herself. This isn't easy. My cousin and I used to climb up there to shovel it off in winter, but with snow on the ground, the eaves are in easy reach of a tyical ladder. Brenna couldn't reach the eaves, so she set out to improvise a method. She prefers to address new challenges without scrutiny from others, but I happened to walk into the bathroom and espy her through a high window just as she figured it out.

She climbed to the top of a short ladder placed against the back wall of the cottage. From there she could reach a slender mountain ash that leans over the cottage roof. With one hand on the trunk, the other on a branch, she could swing one leg onto the roof and shift her weight back in that direction enough to scramble up.

Once there she was amazed by the amount of moss and lichen growing on the shingles. Grandad asked her to sweep, but she went a step further, collecting clumps of moss and bringing them down to transplant to the garden.

I started the garden a few years ago on the bare sand subsoil left over the newly installed septic tank. Not much will grow in the deep shade under hemlocks, yellow birches, a few young balsam firs and one venerable cedar. A few lanky Digitalis and Hosta have survived and flowered. Ferns and mosses do remarkably well, so I try to emulate Kokedera Temple in Kyoto. The most significant human stamp on the garden is a path of stepping stones to which I add each year, and several benches. The garden doesn't require much maintenance, either: a few maple and hemlock seedlings need to be pulled, an afternoon's work once a summer. Most of nature's offerings are welcome, like the Indian-pipes posted here recently.

Marian can always be counted on to find some red-backed salamanders (link to an essay I wrote several years ago) under a log. The one shown here is tiny and immature. Adults measure about 12 cm (5 in) long. These feed on insects and are in turn the favourite prey of our friend the ring-necked snake. The cycles of an ecosystem revolve through our own small tract of life.

Brenna provided us an opportunity to add to the moss garden. The two of us spent the afternoon of our last full day at the cottage this summer, tucking tufts of green around rotting wood and edges of stone. It was a calming endeavour. I placed a few more stepping stones, completing a path to a bench at the back of the garden. The next project will be to complete a loop past some destination in the other back corner. What that will be, I haven't decided. Something meditative.

Our work finished, we both sat quietly, me on the back bench, Brenna on a log. Words are unnecessary there. The garden is neither vivid nor splendid; it is green and cooling.

While we sat, the first spits of rain began to fall. Within an hour or two we would be deluged by the trailing end of Hurricane Ernesto, but for now we watched drizzle nourish our peaceful corner of the world.

The news from Montreal made me weep this morning. Shades of 17 years ago, less tragic, but who can honestly measure the tragedy of young lives lost and shattered? We can't prevent such senseless, unpredictable acts of malice; we can only savour what life and peace we have.