Though the garden season is just beginning, it’s time to bring Garden, Farming and Food month at KIRBC to a close, and what better way to do it with a little music?
At the risk of getting too sentimental on you, I’ve decided to share a song my musician boyfriend wrote about my garden. Have a listen, not just because it makes me a bit teary, but because I think he captures the gardener’s frame of mind, connection with the land, and the passage of the seasons so beautifully. So here it is, “Albany Botanical,” written and performed by Jordan Venn:
Want more Jordan Venn? You can get a taste of his rock ‘n’ roll on his website and at fine music venues around Toronto as Jordan Venn and the Slizneys.
But what of other garden tunes? In my interview with garden guru Gayla Trail, she pointed me to her list of gardening songs, which you should definitely check out. I’ve made my own preliminary list on Grooveshark, which you can listen to below! Probably you saw the abundance of Sarah Harmer coming, but what can I say, the lady gets it. The list opens [...]
By JK, on April 9th, 2012 A confession: I’m a big supporter of community building in theory, but when I have to get involved, I get a little gun shy.
I was raised in a family of mostly introverts in the suburbs, where comfortable lawn buffers insulate us from our neighbours. In university I had a roommate from small-town Nova Scotia, and I discovered the inherent intrusiveness of small town living from her, listening in on phone conversations or gossip with her family as they sussed out the 5Ws of every town happening with the dedication of the most hard-nosed journalist (and a lot more delight). A couple years later I ended up in Toronto, where people may mind their own business, but sheer density and proximity force us into one another’s orbits.
Gardening is often praised as a community builder — which, as I said, I’m all in favour of in principle, or for others, but I’m wary of myself — it’s “Stranger Danger” all over. Sometimes I don’t want to impose on people, and generally I’m reluctant to go through those halting steps and stumbles that often come with new conversations and unfamiliar terrain. I usually choose the awkwardness of mutually ignoring someone over the awkwardness [...]
By JK, on October 6th, 2011 I was fortunate enough to do some business-related travelling to London recently, and looking for an additional adventure to tack on, I decided to explore the volcanoes and fjords of exotic Iceland. Wherever I go I tend to gravitate toward bookstores, and when I can, I’ll report back on my adventures here (see reports on Bookstores of San Franscisco and on my trip to The Strand in NYC). So as I rambled through downtown Reykjavík where I was staying, I stopped to wander through the shelves and snap a few photos for inquiring minds here.
But first, a little context: Iceland only has a population of around 320,000 (not much more than the population of my suburban hometown!), and are fiercely proud and protective of their language and culture. They even have a language board that invents Icelandic equivalents for new words (like cellphone or email), so that English doesn’t creep in. (And further, after they got their independence from Denmark, a large number of Danish words were expunged from the language.) Yet even with such a small population, Reykjavík had 3 bookstores in the downtown area (2 part of what seems to be the major chain, Eymundsson) each with several [...]
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