The view from our hotel window

Dear Readers, this hasn’t been an easy trip to Toronto, but for the last few days the sky has been blue, the sun has been shining and although it’s been cold, the wind has dropped so it hasn’t been quite so brutal. I know that in other parts of Canada it’s been much, much worse, with shedloads of snow dropping on places that we used to visit with our aunts Rosemary and Linda, and temperatures of -35 in Winnipeg, but I am not used to my face hurting because it’s getting frozen, a rarity in East Finchley for sure.John was here saying goodbye to his childhood home, and I was fascinated by a photo that his father had taken of the garden.

In the front garden there was a climbing hydrangea (much like the one that I have in the back garden), and some blousy pink hydrangeas. How English, you might think, along with the manicured lawn. But John’s Dad was English (from Cornwall in fact), and one of the things that he found most difficult about living in Toronto was the short growing season – it’s freezing from November to March, baking from July to September and in between anything can happen, so I can understand his frustration. He quite fancied moving to Vancouver, where the weather isn’t so extreme, but there was no way that that was going to happen. In the living room there are some dried hydrangeas in a vase, that have been there for as long as I can remember. I find myself wondering if they were picked from this very shrub.

And in the back garden there’s a pine tree that was planted by John and his Dad when John was a little boy, sixty-odd years ago. Now it’s taller than the house, and it’s survived the storms and droughts and other vagaries of the Canadian climate. At some point, someone new will own the house, and the garden, and who knows what will happen to the tree then? But for sixty years it’s been home to squirrels and woodpeckers and probably the odd raccoon, plus a whole myriad of invertebrates and fungi and lichen, so it’s probably done its bit for the local ecosystem. Sometimes, it’s all about letting go.

And maybe you’ll forgive me this poem, by Elizabeth Bishop. What an extraordinary poet she was! See what you think.

One Art

By Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.