It’s a strange feeling I have.

I want to be married now.  Right now.  Without all the hoopla and ceremony.  Why can’t Paul and I just be married and begin our lives now?  It feels like there is this big event, big production, that we’ve all got to gear up to.  Such a performance! And the real essence of the thing – the true rite of passage that it is – is somehow secondary, pushed to the edge of the plate like a side dish.

We don’t have many rites of passage in our western culture.  Marriage becomes such an obvious chance to mark it, to involve our elders, our community.  But somehow, so many weddings (even mine) become about the party, the canapes.  But what I really want it to be about is ritual, about transformation.  I want everyone to feel like they’re integrally participating in – not simply witnessing – a rite of passage that is sacred and magical and holy.  It becomes up to the ceremony to bear this effect out.

Planting a tree is fine – but it seems like a very western approach – and perhaps not as soulful as I’d like on its surface. But it could be made more solemn, more sacred, by the words chosen to describe this symbolic planting.  I really want to impart that we are all part of something bigger — all connected to a loving universe that cares, that wants us to become the people we were born to be.

If our ceremony could do that – have a deep impact on our guests – making them realize how they are each a miracle in the cosmos, a shining beautiful light that makes the world a better place because they ARE shining brightly, and, by witnessing our union, come to be inspired, to be touched in their own life to be a better person, to walk a little taller, to want to follow their buried dreams anew — if our ceremony could do THAT, then that’s something I’d feel good about. Forget the fucking canapes!

Because what it really comes down to is wanting to inspire people.  To remind people how precious life is.  To go after what they yearn for.  To take that trip to Guatemala.  To learn how to fly an airplane.  To tell their family they love them.  To be compassionate.  To love all things.

I want to inspire them to be strong by beginning to show my own strength.  I want them to open their own hearts by opening mine.  To show them love by being loving.  To model mindfulness by being mindful.  To have a core value that doesn’t feel threatened or apologetic when it bumps up against disagreement.  To stand firm and be able to explain the way I see the world without shrinking back, without attacking.

To master my fear, daily, and through that process, inspire others to look to the centre of their own calm and do the same.

All of this in a half hour ceremony.

But I know it can be done, and it just doesn’t begin and end with our wedding.  It continues to be taught by who I am being in the world.  Not by what I’m doing.  Teaching compassion by being compassionate.  Engendering gentleness by being gentle.  Inspiring desire by following my passions.  Which, for the first time in my life, I think I might be on the verge of doing.

And just between you and me, it scares the hell out of me.

Filed under: Connections by Abby Palmer
6 Comments »

Realizing full well that I promised ‘before’ and ‘after’ photos of the marital bed today, at 4 minutes to midnight I’m posting the pictures in question, along with some other shots of my father’s property where I’ll be getting married in August.

Before the ‘makeover’.

After the makeover.  Still a little puny.  But they’ll grow.

Filed under: Garden & Home by Abby Palmer
1 Comment »

In a small triangle of flower bed in late June, I attempted to plant 5 hydrangeas, 3 echinaceas, 5 ferns, 1 purple smokebush and a japanese bloodgrass.

It was in the name of marriage that I toiled.

In case you missed my last post – hardly likely as I’m now running at a month between entries but I suppose it’s possible – I am to be wed in August at my dad’s place.  This modest wedge of earth that I planned to “transform” is just one in a series of wedding day garden projects, one that I had imagined banging off between my mid-morning coffee and a leisurely lunch.

The universe had other plans.

My Opposition

The bed – freshly exposed to daylight by an unfortunate mistake while pruning an evergreen shrub – was rock solid.

A tangled network of thick roots from the recently deceased evergreen quickly ensnarled my garden fork.  Prison concrete would have been easier to break through than the grey and unyielding clay.

After 20 minutes of heaving a matock, I finally squeezed a fern into a crudely pick-axed hole.

Then I did the math:

With 15 plants at 20 minutes a hole, it would take me 5 hours to get them all in the ground.

A different approach was in order.

Enter, stage right:  Dad and his 20 foot trailer.

Not to be unhinged, and ever-resourceful as brides with a vision are wont to be, I called Devon Greenhouses on Fraser Highway and purchased 2 yards of their finest potting mix.

We transported the potting mix home on the trailer – in the rain – having to stop once to re-cover it with a bright orange tarp that we’d tied down using bungee cords and an elaborate origami folding technique.

We then set to our tools – in the rain – shovelling the black gold off the trailer.  Scoop, twist, throw.  Scoop, twist, throw.  We built up the soil approximately 1 foot above the surface of the ground so I could plant in the new soil and avoid the root compacted earth below it.

Using an amateur gardener’s old design trick  - the common garden hose – I mapped out the shape of the curved bed, and cut the new outline with an edger.  You might be surprised to learn that I completed this final task – in the rain.

The bed was now ready for planting with a cast of characters I’d selected from Arts Nursery earlier in the week.

The Cast of Characters

Ferns and Echinacea.  (At $19.99 for a 1 gallon pot, I’m more inclined to plant this Echinacea under glass. Padlocked and motion-sensor protected.)

Lacecap Hydrangeas and Japanese Bloodgrass.  Bloodgrass is one of my favourite grasses.  Truly stunning in August with the late summer sun shining through its blood-red foliage.

I also positioned a white hydrangea, a mophead variety, in the far left corner.  The lovely blob of purple at the back is a cotinus coggygria (Purple smokebush).  Yum!

Now that I had light-as-a-feather soil to work with, I was eager to get the plants in the ground.

All up, the planting took me 30 minutes.  Watering them in, another 10.  There is no question in my mind.  The soil was worth every penny.

Although I should probably hasten to add that I’m currently revising my list of wedding day garden projects.  Suddenly the miniature garden replica of Versailles’ parterres seems a little over-ambitious.

Stay tuned on Monday for the before and after photos of the “marital bed”!  And don’t miss these upcoming posts: “My Bridal Battle with Buttercup” and “‘Til Death Do Us Part:  A Second Life for Urn”.

Filed under: Garden & Home by Abby Palmer
3 Comments »

You’re absolutely right.  In order to have a garden wedding, first one needs a marriage proposal.  Well, a marriage proposal is exactly what I received a few weeks ago!

The Proposal

Paul asked me to marry him after 16 months of dating, a whiskey-and-cigar type visit with my father to ask for his blessing, a stop at a First Nations gallery on Granville Island to pick out an engagement ring (I love it), and finally the reading to me of his most amazing line-by-line written response to a poem I had sent him shortly after we met.

The Future

Many things remain unclear.

I’m not sure where we’ll live.  I’m a country girl and Paul works in the city.

I’m not sure how we’ll juggle our dreams.  Travel, babies, home ownership, careers.

But one thing I do know: I’m about to marry a man who charmed me from the first moment he reached out his hand to introduce himself, sitting down on the stool next to me.

I’m about to marry a man who asks the difficult questions (that most men don’t dare) in order to get to the true centre of a woman.

A man who suspects his own potential and has the courage to live into it, yet who remains humble and compassionate and ever-aware of his own hubris.

A man who takes risks, yet is steadfastly loyal.  A man who believes in and encourages the expression of my own purpose in life.  A man whose depth of character I admire, respect and most of all, love.  And I’m quite sure, at this point, I’m merely scratching the surface.

The Garden Wedding

Yes, we plan to get married in the garden.  And we plan to do most of the preparations ourselves.

And so, in light of this development, I hope you’ll cut me a little slack if you discover that over the next 2 and a half months, Green Slate is better described as a bridal blog than a gardening one.

I’ll admit there is a very good chance I’ll be writing about tablecloths and mood lighting in the weeks ahead. (Although a garden makeover is forthcoming!)

And for those curious folk:  the poem around which Paul based his proposal was The Invitation, by Oriah Mountain Dreamer.

Filed under: Connections, Garden & Home by Abby Palmer
13 Comments »